Lampasas High School students Kourtney Tyson and Yanina Gonzalez Villegas are developing two films for this year’s UIL Young Filmmakers Festival.
The pair of seniors are creating a seven-minute thriller titled “The Forest Files” and a seven-minute documentary highlighting the efforts of Lampasas Association for the Arts (LAFTA).
“The UIL contest is a good opportunity for a lot of students to showcase their work and get recognized by the state,” Gonzalez-Villegas said. “Specifically, the film part of it is really cool because it has to be fully student-directed. You can’t really take any help from other people, and it’s nice getting that hands-on experience in creating.”
Both students have been involved in audio/video production classes at LHS since they were freshmen. Tyson said she was intrigued by the program due to her love of filmmaking.
“For me, it was pretty much one of the only classes that felt really interesting for me,” she said. “I started doing animation in my freshman year, and then I moved on to doing audio/video production because movies are just like amazing,” Gonzalez-Villegas said her love for the 1985 film “Back to the Future” motivated her to step behind the camera.
“That is one of the films I feel is a rite of passage for a lot of people who aspire to be filmmakers,” she said. “I really like editing too, because you can take control of the final product and how you want it to be.”
Tyson and Gonzalez-Villegas have experience in UIL competitions.
Tyson’s first project was a short animation crafted in Adobe Animate about an individual working hard to find a job, while Gonzalez-Villegas developed a threeminute, stop-animation film about someone who wins a creative painting contest.
The duo developed their first film together, “The End Radio,” last year for UIL competition. The movie was a postapocalyptic film about a radio that randomly started working for a traveler on the voyage.
The narrative film Tyson and Gonzalez-Villegas are working on this year, “The Forest Files,” will follow a detective who goes to the forest to uncover the cases of three missing people that appear to all be related. For their acting cast, students have been dependent on their peers.
“Sometimes people agree; other times, they kind of look at you like you are crazy,” Gonzalez-Villegas said on the challenges of finding acting talent at LHS. “It is kind of a humbling process to go up to people like, ‘Hey, you want to be in our student film?’ ” Fortunately, the duo have had help from students in the theatre program. Tyson and Gonzalez-Villegas said some of their high school actors provide good feedback on the script to take it to the next level.
“I think it is important to be open to change,” Gonzalez-Villegas said.
Tyson and Gonzalez-Villegas started planning in August for their narrative film. The students admit their projects were off to a slow start with outdated equipment, but they were aided with new tools after a generous donation came from members involved with the local nonprofit group Creating Badger Builders.
While both students are professionally certified in using Adobe Premiere Pro -- a video-editing software used in postproduction -- the pair have learned how to use a video camera on their own. Tyson and Gonzalez-Villegas anticipate they will be done filming their narrative in December before shifting to the editing process.
While developing their narrative short film, the students are working on a documentary that highlights the impact the LAFTA volunteers have had in the Lampasas community.
“We are trying to focus on how the community comes together for a cause, a cause they believe in, and the effort and all the work that goes into doing things like the Boots & Blazers Ball and the sculpture garden,” Gonzalez-Villegas said on the purpose behind the documentary. “I think we want to highlight the efforts these people put into cultivating a creative landscape in the community.”
For their LAFTA documentary, the students interviewed multiple LAFTA members, including board president Robin Gradel at the nonprofit’s recent sculpture installation. The students also talked with one of the sculptors who donated work to the Hanna Springs Sculpture Garden.
Also, Tyson and Gonzalez-Villegas attended LAFTA’s Boots & Blazers fundraiser in October to capture “B-roll” or secondary footage for their project.
“Right now, we are just compiling all of our footage and trying to coordinate maybe one more interview with LAFTA, so that way we can begin finalizing the editing process,” Gonzalez-Villegas said.
Students must submit their projects by Jan. 10. The seniors said they are not too far behind, or ahead, in their efforts.
“I feel like we are somewhere in the middle,” Tyson said about their films for the competition.
