A handful of aspiring filmmakers in East 麻豆传媒映画need a financial lifeline so they can make a beeline to the Big Apple.
First, the good news: four films produced by students in Templeton secondary鈥檚 Afterschool Film Program have been accepted into the prestigious All American High School Film Festival in early October.
One of the higher profile events for student filmmakers in North America, the festival fielded 5,000 submissions from 40 countries.
The bad news revolves around extremely tight timelines. The films were accepted in late August, the week before school started. Getting 18 students to New York City costs roughly $13,000, a figure that was successfully raised in just over five weeks.
A Go Fund Me campaign was launched in the days after the films were accepted, and the funding push met its initial $13,000 goal on Sept. 19. That amount covered partial costs around airfares, accommodations and festival entry fees.
The updated push for an additional $10,000 is intended to fully cover all those costs and to help subsidize some of the students.
The deadline to get the dough is Oct. 4, the same day the students leave and the festival opens.
鈥淭ypically we could pull off a fundraiser with a few months鈥� notice or we could apply for some grants, but this is all very last minute,鈥� said Corin Browne, a media arts teacher at Templeton.
The Templeton films are all shorts under 10 minutes long, and the subject matter ranges from comedic sci-fi and trauma to internal family pressures and altered states of reality.
The filmmakers are between grades 10 and 12, though the majority of the films were produced last year, remarkably enough, by 14 year olds at the time. The students did everything outside of the acting: cinematography, producing, location scouting and script work.
As part of the program and filmmaking process, a particular emphasis has been put on righting long-standing industry wrongs: most of the students are women, immigrants and people of colour.
鈥淭here are constant conversations about what it means to be a woman in a field that is just abysmally male and white,鈥� Brown said. 鈥淪o we definitely talk about that a lot and it鈥檚 something the kids are really conscious about and really trying to subvert.鈥�
A breakdown of the necessary money works out as follows:
- $750 will subsidize the cost of one student鈥檚 airline ticket.
- $125 will pay for one student鈥檚 festival participation.
- $300 will pay for the hostel stay for one teen.
- $200 will help a student cover meal costs.
- $100 will give a student the chance to see a Broadway musical.
- $50 will cover the cost of admission to the Museum of Modern Art and the Paley Media Centre.
The Go Fund Me page is online at .
