Irvington Middle Schooler Wins Award at Nantucket Shorts Film Fest

Irvington Middle School eighth-grader Jack Bosco recently won the coveted People’s Choice Award at the Nantucket Shorts Film Festival for the film “Survival on Nantucket.”

Bosco, who worked on the film with his younger brother Thomas, said he spent the entire summer in Nantucket filming and editing the movie before submitting the finished product at the end of the season.

“We were excited just to be selected for the festival,” said Bosco in a statement. He admitted that he and his brother didn’t expect to win an award, let alone win by a landslide.

The brothers were the youngest filmmakers in the Nantucket Shorts Film Festival, and were up against two high school students and 10 adults, including a professional filmmaker.

“It was amazing to get rewarded for something we spent a lot of time working on. It was a great feeling to have the recognition for our work,” he added.

Bosco described “Survival on Nantucket” as a “mockumentary” because Nantucket is an exclusive community where the idea of needing to learn how to survive on the island is not something you would expect.

“The film is supposed to be funny,” he said. “Nantucket is not a place where you need to survive, but it’s definitely a place that has a lot of quirks.”

The eighth-grader wrote the film’s script and jokes and shot the footage. He said he got the idea to make a movie after going to the Nantucket Film Festival with his family in 2013. Then, when he heard that a local film studio on the island was allowing community members to use their equipment for free, so he and his brother jumped at the opportunity to make a short film. Thomas did the acting for the film.

The young filmmaker’s interest in making movies began when he participated in the seventh-grade “Reel Change” project last year, held in conjunction with the Jacob Burns Film Center. He said he watches a lot of movies and pays attention to how they are filmed.

According to Bosco, he and his brother drank a lot of soda and sparkling water so they could use the empty cans as props for the end scene of their movie. He realized that they had to shoot their scenes at the same time of the day in order to avoid strange changes in the lighting in the movie. His brother also had to wear the same clothes every time they filmed to maintain consistency throughout the film.

Photo 1: Jack, left, and Thomas Bosco accepting the People’s Choice Award at the 2015 Nantucket Shorts Film Festival; Photo 2: Thomas, left, and Jack Bosco. Photo credit: Irvington Union Free School District