Students Show Off Work at Film Festival

Via the intro movie, the  missing flashdrive for the annual Shorewood-Shorecrest Film Festival arrived thanks to student Javier Caceres, and a night of film and fun kicked off Wednesday evening at Shorecrest High School's auditorium.

More than 50 films were shown from the "Social Experiment" documentary produced by Caceres to movie trailers, motion effects, ads, animation, music videos and short features.

The "Social Experiment" was a documentary based on the attempt by hundreds of Shorewood and Shorecrest students to stop using social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, cellphone texting, personal e-mail, etcetera for about a week. 

The documentary chronicled the effort which proved difficult for some students.

"If I didn't have Facebook I would lose all my friends," said one student.

"It's not something I would do of my own free will," said another student. "It's a challenge."

"Basically my whole day is taken up in community with other people using modern tehcnology," a female student said. 

About 350 students completed the challenge, about two-thirds of the number of students who started it.

"I haven't had the craving so much," said one student afterward.

There were many standout films shown, whittled down to two out of the four hours of films produced by the more than 200 video and animation students of Shorewood teacher Marty Ballew and Shorecrest teacher Trent Mitchell.

Sam Chudler's short movie Scribbles starring senior Joe Veyera as student struggling to find a way to ask out a girl out took Best in Show along Alvin Cao's Declarative Ghost movie trailer.