The Falcon Film Festival, presented by the school’s broadcast channel Falcon Vision, premiered short films, PSAs and documentaries in the Performing Arts Center on Friday. 

Falcon Vision students Portia Perry (11) and Bailey Dotters (12) organized and hosted the festival, which was the first in at least 15 to 20 years, according to Kara Adler, the program’s adviser. The festival featured guest judge Ron Fusselman, a producer, director and art department specialist. 

“It’s been a long time, and so because of that, we really had been in the talks of bringing it back for a while,” Adler said. “And then, I had two student leaders, Portia Perry and Bailey Dotters, this year, who really suggested the idea and helped out a lot with the planning and logistics of it.”

According to Dotters, she and Perry dreamt “up this vision of a potential Film Festival” since last year. Perry described it as more of their “own reimagined” festival, rather than just a revival of previous festivals. 

One of their goals was to bring attention to the school’s large arts presence. 

“[We wanted to] bring arts to Torrey Pines because I feel like it’s a very sport-prominent school, and I feel like CCA and SDA definitely have the arts going for them,” Dotters said. “So [we] just want[ed] to broaden our horizons, for Torrey and for the future generations coming to Torrey who might have interest in the arts programs or film programs.”

Centered around the theme of community, 52 registered groups submitted across three categories, each with its own thematic, technical and structural requirements: Short Film with prompt “This is My Happy Place,” Public Service Announcement (PSA) and Mini Documentary.

“I was like, ‘Well, it’s going to be our first year. What’s really the mission and the goal of the film festival?’” Perry said. “We want to bring everyone together and show that Torrey Pines is here, and we have really great arts and really great filmmakers … Community kind of, then, captures the entire message of what we wanted to do. It was … not too hard of a prompt for the first year to, like, ease everyone into.”

According to Perry, the festival extended beyond the film department and was a “whole-school activity.” Adler agreed.

“I think the biggest thing, and that’s why we made the theme community, was just to bring people from the community to Torrey Pines to see what the students here are capable of and what they’re working on,” Adler said. “So, I think that was kind of our goal … just connecting the community and opening up the opportunity for film to everyone on campus.”

During preparations, Falcon Vision reached out to sponsors in order to award scholarships to winners.

“It was a little bit of a struggle this year, just because it was our first year, so we didn’t have any data,” Adler said. “But, thankfully, we were able to get a good amount of sponsors — Jan’s [Health Bar], Jimbo’s, La Jolla Copy Cove — and then we had some nice family donations as well.”

Judging used a rubric based off of Student Television Network (STN) competitions, covering five main categories — story, creativity, impact, cinematography and editing — and two subcategories — production audio and staying within time limit. The judging panel included Perry, Dotters, Adler and guest judge Fusselman. 

“The whole idea behind that was making sure that it was a cohesive story that made sense to anyone watching it, but also that it was creative and engaging,” Adler said. “And then each category also had guidelines to adhere to, in addition to time limits … So that adds a little difficulty to it, but also it was really cool to compare and see how each group handled those different prompts and tasks.”

• Best Mini Documentary: “Fostering the Community” by Kyle Busby (12), Steve Doh (12), Max Brown (12), Haydn Schengel (12)
• Best PSA: “It Takes a Village to Foster a Child” by Grace Liu (11), Yutong Feng (10)
• Best Short Film: first place: “We’ll Miss You” by Eamon Hinton (10), Catalina Baraya (12), Katerina Wietfeldt (12); second place “Second Hand” by Chase Clabo (12), Maddie Guillory (12), Anushka Choudhary (12), Chris Kam (12), Daniel McKie (11); third place: “DND” by Ethan Shin (11), Timothy Chang (11), Alessandro Noya, Costa Mellos (11), Tianyi Li (11)
• Overall Festival Winner: “This is My Happy Place” by Karina Shukla (12), Cade Barber (12), Jamie Crowley (12), Riley Blais (12)

“I loved the direction that people took with the short film prompt,” Dotters said. “It just went in so many different ways, and people were just really creative with it. And the [overall] winners, like Cade Barber (12), Jamie Crowley (12), Riley Blais (12), Karina Shukla (12), theirs was really unique in how they used graphics and took it a whole different route than what you would normally think a happy place is. They did a horror film, and it was just 10 out of 10.”

Eamon Hinton (10), a student on Falcon Vision, produced Best Short Film “We’ll Miss You” with Catalina Baraya (12) and Katerina Wietfeldt (12). 

“Initially we had this idea of wanting to show the significance of inanimate objects and how they hold memories,” Hinton said. “And so … we kind of had the concept of a time capsule and wanted to play with that idea, and eventually, we came to the idea of our main character, Dawn, who moves away from home, and she finds this memory box. And as she goes through these memories, she initially finds herself frustrated at all the things that went wrong, but at the end, when her friends come over and say goodbye to her … she realizes that her memories actually were … meaningful, and these items and the community around her helped her cherish what she had.”

Hinton’s favorite part of the process was filming and finding interesting angles while collaborating with friends.

“I think it’s great to showcase the arts, especially in film, and I’m so glad that we could do that through Mrs. Adler’s hard work and as a team on Falcon Vision,” Hinton said. “I think it’s great to not only to foster community, but to showcase student work.”

According to Adler, they kept it “very small and simple” to ensure “quality over quantity.” The competition and festival were both free entry to “get as many eyes on the festival and the films as possible.” For next year, Perry hopes to change “little things” like being more organized, adding roles, changing judging, categories and requirements, and expanding the festival. 

“This year … was just a tester to see how everything would work, how everything would go, so we probably want to open it up to not just exclusively Torrey next year,” Perry said. “… So, I think all that … is what’s gonna make it next year really great, and a bigger presence, bigger community, just next year is going to be bigger.”

Perry and Adler discussed how an additional goal was to bring a “film emphasis” to the school. 

“An overwhelming amount of our submissions, like over half of them, were all for short film, and we only had a couple mini documentaries, which would be more of, like, what Falcon Vision is used to making, what Torrey is labeled as,” Perry said. “… I think it was just really great to see how there is definitely a community here that wants to pursue more of the artistic side of film instead of just broadcast … I think that enthusiasm was really exciting, and … we’re really excited to, like, bring that momentum into next year.”