A Junior Filmmaker, or: What Kind of Movie Did You Make in High School?

Speaking of the Dallas Video Festival ...DVF founder Bart Weiss mentioned during our conversation this morning that this year's short film that'll be used to introduce each screening was made by a student filmmaker. As in: a junior at Greenhill named Ryan Kline. Says Weiss, Kline "came to me looking...

By Robert Wilonsky

October 29, 2009

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Speaking of the Dallas Video Festival ...

DVF founder Bart Weiss mentioned during our conversation this morning that this year's short film that'll be used to introduce each screening was made by a student filmmaker. As in: a junior at Greenhill named Ryan Kline. Says Weiss, Kline "came to me looking for advice," and he opted to give the kid a job ... along with a crew of 20 local pros (including commercial, music video and feature film cinematographer Bill Schwarz).

"And he had total control over it, which meant Ryan had to tell 20 adults what to do," Weiss says. "When I was that age, I'd be scared shitless." He laughs. "But he knew exactly what he wanted. He might have been scared inside, but he held up really well. All throughout the process I was amazed."

From the sound of his brief intro posted to the Video Fest's YouTube page, Kline was indeed, um, worried. He writes, "People who read my script continually described it as ambitious, but many got excited about its possibilities. I slowly began to realize how ambitious my script really was: a war, a Lamborghini, a supermodel, what was I thinking?" Dunno. See for yourself.

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