By Cara Goldstone
A little boy scrawls cartoon characters on his homework; he skips recess to doodle indoors. As he ages, he makes a business of it, selling his artwork to classmates for pennies and using the profits to buy comic books.
By high school, the young artist is set: this is what he wants to do for the rest of his life. But the people around him doubt the prospects of his career. What will he do?
Anna Daniel, Sawyer Rice, Grace Donovan and Gonzalo Zarazaga attend the Student Silent Film Festival.
Such begins the true-life story of comic book artist Tony Daniel— as presented in the award-winning silent film “Between the Panels,” the most recent production from Lake Forest High School’s New Media video storytelling program.
“It’s a project-based learning class where students learn essential skills in communication and problem-solving while learning the production process,” said Steve Douglass, Department Chair of the Career Pathway Department at the high school.
This is his 20th year teaching the New Media program, which he sees as crucial in today’s media landscape.
“I believe we need to prepare our students for our changing world, so it’s essential we are out in front and partnering with our community to identify the key skills our students need to lead teams in the future,” Douglass said.
Every year, media programs across Chicagoland are invited to participate in the Student Silent Film Festival, wherein students create silent films to be screened in Downers Grove for celebration and judging. A team of LFHS New Media students met on a day off from school in November to begin planning its entry for the festival.
The assignment was straightforward at first glance: create a 5-to-7-minute silent film guided by the prompt “Creativity Unleashed.” But the execution of the project was far from simple.
“Silent filmmaking is really interesting because it pushes the boundaries of the craft itself,” said Jillian Duer, LFHS senior and cinematographer for the assignment. “While [audio] components can really bring your project to a whole new level, it’s also important to make sure your baseline visual storytelling is strong enough to hold your project up.”
“We wanted to challenge ourselves to see how much of a complex story we could share solely through visuals,” added fellow LFHS senior Grace Donovan, producer of the film. “This was a test of skill and creativity. It took a lot of reworking and breaking down ideas and shoots.”
Gonzalo Zarazaga, Grace Donovan, Sawyer Rice and Anna Daniel get together with the award.
The group settled on the subject of its film by happy coincidence. During the brainstorming session, junior Anna Daniel remarked that one of the group’s ideas sounded similar to her father’s life story; after a group discussion with Tony Daniel himself, the students were set on adapting his story for their film.
“This project was very different from projects we’ve done in the past because of how much it transformed through the whole process,” Duer said. “Traditionally, you have multiple drafts of a script which become finalized as you start shooting. This is because we don’t really shoot things in the order that they’re shown, so it’s important to maintain consistency so you don’t mess up continuity. But because there was only visual storytelling, it became a higher priority to play the project more by ear, modifying it to serve our thematic purpose as we shot.”
Grace Donovan elaborated on the logistics of the project.
“We shot in six different locations, so planning it was a good challenge. As the producer, I had to make sure certain actors were available when the shooting locations were available and faced a few obstacles when scheduling. But it all worked out!”
After about six weeks of hard work, the film was finally finished; in January, the LFHS New Media team headed to the Tivoli Theatre in Downers Grove for the Student Silent Film Festival. More than 400 people attended the event. “All the students from the other schools were supportive,” said Donovan. “It was such a cool experience.”
At the festival, “Between the Panels” was crowned with the Outstanding Achievement in Cinema award—one that Douglass says the LFHS New Media program has not received in more than five years. “Mr. Daniel’s story was incredible and to create something that could make him proud is special,” said Douglass, who is immeasurably proud of the team’s work and achievement.
As for the students, though, no one could treasure the experience more than Donovan and Duer, both of whom are finishing their fifth semesters in the program. They emphasized the importance of the community they’ve built in the New Media program to the success of the project.
“I feel like everyone really came together to make it happen, and I’m so happy to see how engaged everyone was,” said Duer. “We were one team just trying to make this thing happen.”
“I’m so happy with how this turned out,” echoed Donovan, “and celebrated our love for cinema and filmmaking!”
“Between the Panels” can be viewed in full on Steve Douglass’s New Media YouTube channel; watch the film at https://youtu.be/TAzyeUwaoKQ.