A trio from a high school in the south suburbs planned to attend a Halloween party recently but two friends didn’t want the third to come, so they gave him the wrong address. When he found out, he was so mad he was driven to murder.
Luckily, this wasn’t actual mean girls and boys, but rather a story from the vivid imagination of Hillcrest High School students who turned their idea into an award-winning silent film.
Their film, “Whispers of a Ghost,” recently won the award for Outstanding Achievement in Cinema at the Halloween Student Silent Film Festival at the Tivoli Theatre in Downers Grove. The film won for the quality of its story narrative, development, camera work, lighting and editing, according to contest organizers.
The four students who acted in the film said the hours of work inside their media classroom and outside in the community were well worth it. They received a trophy, as well as an HD digital file of the movie with the accompanying soundtrack of live organ music by festival founder Derek Berg.
“We all had our individual stories and we all put our ideas into one story,” said Lakaiah Thomas, a freshman at the school in Country Club Hills. “I just liked how it all came together. We all envisioned something and it just came out the way we wanted.”
Thomas, who lives in Markham, said she was toying with the idea of going into film after college, though being a lawyer is her first choice.
The students filmed their scenes in one of their homes as well as an abandoned house, though the opening shots are set at Bremen High School in Midlothian. They also incorporated a ghost who appears on a roof, as well as in one of the houses.
“It was pretty fun working with people and putting together different ideas from different people and putting it into the movie,” said Jonathan Guyton, a senior from Country Club Hills, who is also considering law but hoping to do more film work.
Guyton said the group, which also included students Mari Yarbrough and David Carey, had the script planned and written before they began filming. Anyone who wasn’t acting in a scene might be doing the camera work. Guyton played the ghost at the end.
The project was fun, he said, but winning was an additional perk.
“I was completely surprised,” Guyton said. “There were a lot of good films there and I really enjoyed watching many of those films.”
Hillcrest media teacher Michael Lynch was impressed by their performance. He said his courses are project-based and that he is a “big proponent of learning by doing.”
“That’s the awesome part about this — they edited in class but the majority of the film was filmed outside of class,” he said. “They were really dedicated to putting time in and doing what they had to do.
“From my perspective, it was kind of all them,” said Lynch.
Ten high schools participated in the contest, including teams from Oak Forest, Tinley Park and Bremen high schools. Films were judged by professionals in the entertainment or art education industries.
Janice Neumann is a freelance reporter at the Daily Southtown.
