Wednesday evening, the Carver Community Cultural Center hosted the equivalent of the Oscars for a group of young San Antonio filmmakers.
The Eastside Youth Content Creators Program held a showcase of 10 short films produced by 24 students during its eight-week summer session, with all participants in attendance for a gala red carpet celebration and screening.
Program director DeAnna Brown lauded the work of her 24 students, ages 10-18, and said, “these kids put in work — blood, sweat and tears,” to bring their films to fruition.
“It’s like dream to screen,” Brown said.
Brown was hoping for a substantial audience, and 175 people turned out for the showcase, including friends and family of the students, and Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2), who early on in his tenure helped the program get up and running with a $250,000 infusion of City of San Antonio funds.
“When we developed this program, it was to celebrate you, and to be a program that would connect you with the resources and the training that would complement the talent and skills that you already have,” McKee-Rodriguez said during his introductory speech before the screening.
Multiple skill sets
The Content Creators Program uses a comprehensive approach so that each student works on multiple productions in multiple roles, from screenwriting to directing and editing, to lighting and working the boom microphone that captures actors’ words, to acting in main and supporting roles.
The students invent the stories themselves, drawing from their knowledge of genre movies including horror, sci-fi, noir, comedy and drama. Their 10 short films ran the gamut of styles and approaches.
Seventeen-year-old Ava Gutierrez was a background character in the physical comedy Spilled Coffee, acted a main role in supernatural drama Endurance, was director of photography for noir spy thriller Espionage and wrote and directed Killing Melody, a jarring dark comedy vampire story inspired by Tom and Jerry cartoons.
Directing was her favorite role, she said. “It feels amazing. You have all these ideas in your head and you’re like, ‘I want to put this on screen.’ So when you finally see it on screen it’s just such an amazing thing to experience.”
Isabella Cevera acted as the vampire in Killing Melody and as a spy in Espionage. A Northeast School of the Arts acting teacher recommended the program to the 14-year-old student, who said her favorite part was “definitely getting to be on screen because I do a lot of theater and stage [acting] and so this was my first time ever trying any film [acting].”
Stories they know
While several students appear onscreen in the various films, many more are involved behind the scenes, working the cameras, helping with props and costumes, and once filming is done, editing to hone stories into their final forms.
But students also learn the marketing side of movie making, which marketing instructor Uchennaya Ogba said imparts an important skill set.
“When it comes to content creation, you are your own brand,” Ogba said. “As an actor, as a producer, as a director, as a sound or lighting person, you’re constantly marketing yourself, whether your services or your actions, and how you’re able to perceive yourself.”
Ogba guided students through making promotional trailers for their short films, teaching them how to generate interest in their work.
Students also participate in creating all-important movie posters to draw attention to their films through eye-catching graphics and intriguing taglines such as “Dudes get crazy when coffee is involved” for Spilled Coffee, directed by 18-year-old Jireh White, or “Friendship is beyond the grave” for 17-year-old Sa’Nyah Crockett’s Endurance.
Videography and editing instructor Alejandro DeHoyos brings decades of industry experience to his role. As a native of the East Side, DeHoyos said “I have this history of being in this neighborhood and knowing what it’s like to grow up without the proper equipment, or the technology needed to make videos, to make films,” he said.
“Being a part of this project really took me back to when I was a teenager,” DeHoyos said, and his goal as an instructor is “trying to share with them how they could make films with what they already have, the stories that they know.”
The Eastside Youth Content Creators Program is housed within Alamo City Studios, a media production company run by producer Kerry Valderrama. The program also receives support from the city’s Department of Arts and Culture and the Department for Economic Development, among other sources.
Valderrama said one purpose of the tuition-free program is to give students an early understanding that a career in media production is possible without having to leave San Antonio.
“They know when they come out of this program, they have the context and they’re armed with the knowledge on being able to pursue their dreams in the city that they love,” Valderrama said.
