Portland Press Herald Article

Close to Home: Young filmmakers in the spotlight

Friday's Brunswick Student Film Night will feature works by five budding filmmakers.

Courtesy of The Theater Project

Brunswick native Hannah Weddle, a New York University film student, is one of five student filmmakers whose work will be screened Friday during Brunswick Student Film Night.

Hannah Weddle first visited the Theater Project performing arts center as an elementary school-age show attendee. She returned as a performer and a box office employee during high school.

On Friday, Weddle, 21, takes a seat in the Brunswick-based theater again, this time as a producer, director and editor. Her original film, and those of budding student filmmakers Carl Elsaesser, Ripley "Rippy" Swan, Christian Schneider and Jasper Lowe, will be screened as part of the first annual Brunswick Student Film Night.

The event is a fundraiser for the 38-year-old theater and a celebration of youth achievement. Those selected have won awards for their work, and Weddle, Elsaesser and Schneider are theater alumni.

"(They all) started making movies in Brunswick as little kids and have really taken off with it," said Maria Padian, theater board member, event overseer and mother to theater alum Schneider. "What the quill pen was to Shakespeare, the camera has been to these kids – most of them got their start in seventh grade with the laptop computer program, making movies for school projects. The types of things they are producing in class are amazing.

As high school students, they entered their films in festivals and won prizes. (Weddle and Elsaesser) are pursuing filmmaking in college. Carl spent the summer working with filmmaker Ken Burns on a project. And Jasper and Rippy just won grand prize for their film 'Recall.' Rippy likes the engineering side of filmmaking. He's just 17, but has developed lots of interesting stuff – like a camera box that took some extraordinary underwater shots in their movie. Jasper started his own filming business (Thompson St. Productions) in town making movies and doing recruiting videos for student athletes who are applying to college."

For Lowe, also 17, owning the business is no big deal. He's been making films since fifth grade. Lowe's biggest challenge is the acting. To keep budget costs down, he and Swan played the lead characters in their movie about two best friends facing a traumatic event. "Some of the scenes make me wince when I see them," said Lowe.

Students fund their own projects and use everything from the family video camera and a laptop to more high-tech tools.

Theater Project Executive Director Wendy Poole said the event offers the young filmmakers an opportunity to have a wider audience view their works. Those offerings include documentaries, animation shorts and "plot-twisting-psychodramas," each running from three to 20 minutes.

Weddle submitted four original films for potential screening on Saturday, including "City of Dreams" and "Squirrel Encounters."

A 2006 Brunswick High School graduate, she is pursuing a degree in film and television production at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

"Animation and sound design is my primary focus," said Weddle. "You really invest your life in (animation), crating one frame at a time is a lot of work. One of my three-minute animation films took an entire semester to make."

Weddle said she's interested in hearing feedback from the audience.

"I'm so excited about this," said Poole, who was Weddle's sixth-grade theater teacher. "It's nice to have this connection with these students - to introduce their work to the community. This is the kind of thing we support."

For Weddle, trips home to Maine always include a visit to the theater. "I'm focusing on filmmaking in college, but I really miss the theater," she said. "It was where my passion for performing arts was born."

The young filmmakers will be available to answer audience questions about their work after the screenings.

Staff Writer Deborah Sayer can be contacted at 791-6308 or at: dsayer@pressherald.com

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