East Haven High's Star Filmmakers Win for Fiction

The next Scorsese might hail from East Haven High School.

A group of Yellow Jacket filmmakers won Outstanding Fictional Short at the 2011 CT Student Film Festival for their short film, “Quest of a Commoner.”

Students from Jay Miles’ video classes received the award on May 13 at the Palace Theatre in Waterbury.

“Quest of a Commoner” was an admission to the Connecticut Career Choices Film Challenge, shot last December. The rules were schools had to complete a short original film in less than 84 hours, using predetermined elements like character names, background, shots, props, colors and lines of dialogue.

In a recent visit with Jay Miles and some of his students in the program at EHHS, I had the privilege of touring the studio and talking with some of the kids about their experience in making the film.

Mikhail Morgozov, who played “the commoner,” said that he enjoyed all of the aspects of making the film and the chance to work with Mr. Miles and his fellow students in doing something different and exciting.

Cindy Recinos, the film’s production coordinator, was looking to take a course that would be different and exciting when she opted into Video I. Next year she will be taking another one of Miles’ classes to further her understanding of the art of video.

“I wanted to do something different, meet other students and try something with a challenge,” said Recinos.

Melissa Marro, an EHHS junior, said she started the tech classes in her freshman year because she was thrown into TV1 in order to fill a free class period.

“Mr. Miles made this class fun,” said Marro. “He saw I had a talent for it and taught me how to edit. I took TV2 the same year, started doing more projects and entered into the film festival. I want to work in this field when I graduate.”

“I have loved film and theatre and acting since I was a little girl,” said senior Jordyn DiNatale. “I have played Cinderella and the Scarecrow from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ in school plays. My mom and dad and my brothers are all singers and into the arts.”

DiNatale plans on pursuing a career in acting after she graduates from Southern Connecticut State University, where she will attend college in the fall.

Nicolette Riccio, another senior in the film, will be majoring in communications and education in the fall at Bryant College.

“I feel like I can take all I’ve learned in these classes and teach it to other students in the future,” said Riccio. “I have taken video classes at East Haven High School the entire time I have been [here]. It started out by accident when I was a sophomore; I went down to guidance to get out of Spanish class and ended up in the recording course. The following period was free, and I ended up hanging out in Video 1.”

Jay Miles talks candidly about his students and what makes them so valuable to him as a teacher. Although he runs a tight classroom, he takes the time to make the classes he teaches fun and rewarding for his kids.

“They are a pretty extraordinary bunch,” he said of his students. “There are days when it’s a real struggle because I am trying to build a program, teaching kids who are still becoming adults. I want them to learn life skills from this like following through on commitment, working through deadlines and communicating in a team dynamic.”

“I used to be really oriented toward making them into filmmakers, but I’ve gotten away from that by teaching them technology and using it to give them confidence and a sense of responsibility.”