Apple Valley Student Films Hit Biggest Screen for District 196 Festival

Thirty-three student filmmakers on Saturday got to see their projects on the screen that boasts being the largest in the upper Midwest, at the first District 196 film festival.

Fifty video projects were shown on the ’s ’s six-story screen. “The Abduction,” by Rosemount High School junior Ryan Floysand, won the prize for best entry of the festival.

“For students this is an opportunity to have their projects displayed on a enormous screen,” Rosemount High School teacher and festival organizer Mark Hubbard said. "I hope to make this an annual event.”

Hubbard teaches a yearlong course in multimedia production. In connection with the course, called Digital Film Factory, Hubbard has built a relationship with the Imax theater, he said.

Last spring, Imax projection booth manager Rodney Johnson gave the class Imax film that they used to create animated clips by drawing on the frames, Hubbard said. After finishing the clips, the animation students also got to show those clips on the big screen.

From there came the idea for the film festival.

Hubbard’s Digital Film Factory students created most of the entries this year, but high school students across the Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan school district participated. Seven middle school students also entered films.

A panel of nine judges critiqued the student work and selected the winners in each category.  The four categories were public service announcements, experimental and music videos, stop motion and animation, and news and documentaries.

juniors Dominic Paczkowski and Dwayne Edwards collaborated on a stop-motion project called “Squish.”

Stop motion is a technique in which an object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames. When the frames are played in a continuous sequence, the manipulated object appears to move on its own.

“It’s a lot harder than it looks,” Edwards said.

To create the three-minute film, Paczkowski said they spent more than 30 hours editing almost three hours of footage.

Paczkowski and Edwards have taken advantage of a district policy that allows them to take courses in other schools in the district. They travel to Rosemount each day to take Hubbard’s Digital Film Factory course.

“I love the class,” Edwards said. “I think next year a lot more students will take advantage of the opportunity."

Hubbard said corporate sponsors helped fund the event, and a discount from Imax also helped make the event possible. Best Buy provided ushers and prizes, he said.

Kathy O’Connell, the theater’s manager, was “totally blown away by their work,” she said.

Johnson was one of the judges, and said he was impressed with what he saw.

“If these students had a $50 million budget like they do in Hollywood, they could do the same thing as the professionals,” Johnson said. “The artistic intent is there, and the creative talent is there.”