Palo Alto Filmmaker, Brad Leong in Action on Venice Beach

For many youth, high school spring break is a time to make some extra cash, relax or go on an extended vacation with their friends and family. For others, Spring Break is a time to make their dream films. Thanks to Voice Films Institute young filmmakers are being given the opportunity to develop and express their voices through the Voice Films Create Program.

Take for instance, Dan Englehardt, Brad Leong, Sophie Shepard, Eon Mora and Tiffany Livingston. All four have been hard at work making their own films in Los Angeles. Sophie Shepard recently finished directing "Time After Time" in Los Angeles over a two week period as part of the Culver High School's production program. She has created a 20 minute film shot on a Panavision in 16mm.

Eon Mora was cinematographer while Tiffany was the producer. They also traveled over an hour and a half outside of Los Angeles to the hills of Tejon Ranch.

According to the team, the production went as smooth as ever. Now, Sophie and Eon are busy editing the film using Final Cut Pro 4 on a Mac G5.

Dan Englehardt and Brad Leong, who are from Northern California's Silicon Valley, are a team of 17 year old filmmakers. Brad's script "God Bless" is being shot on location in Los Angeles at places such as Venice Beach, Balwin Hills and Santa Monica. They are shooting over a nine day period with professional actors and a production team from Culver High and Palo Alto High (aka "Pali"). Like Sophie, they are also shooting on the Panavision camera which is one of the most advanced 16mm cameras.

Yesterday, Dan and Brad filmed at Venice Beach and got some incredible shots. While they put a tremendous amount of time into pre-production, they are learning how to balance costs against achieving an artistic vision. They're learning about the importance of scheduling and transporting equipment and people to a location according to the schedule.

Today they are shooting a scene at Baldwin Hills (overlooking Culver City) from 5pm to midnight. In order to capture the scene correctly, they'll have to power the lights through portable generators.

Dan Englehardt, who is a senior at Menlo-Atherton Highschool, says that he's learning so much each day that it helps him with the following day's production.

As in any production, the filmmakers have had minor bumps along the way. Their lessons learned and production schedule can be followed at the CreateSF site.

Guiding and supporting these young directors, producers and actors is John Bradford King, a professional producer with Epiphany Entertainment, who has been impressed with how organized and calm these filmmakers are. Brad is the mastermind behind Voice Films together with his business partner, Norm Wada.

Voice Films Institute is attempting to apply the principles of Positive Youth Development (PYD) and the principle of sharing to help youth to become not only better filmmakers and animators but also better people.

Voice Films focuses on the strengths of each youth and provides positive, complimentary assets in the form of advisors.

The goal of Voice Films is to develop the capacity of young filmmakers and animators to express their voices through digital filmmaking and to provide a vehicle to share their authentic voices with mainstream audiences worldwide. By authentic voices we mean voices representing local communities, diverse ethnic groups, personal issues, young women and men, and underprivileged youth.

The advisors are a network of professional directors, actors, teachers, musicians, producers, animators and studio executives. They help by challenging youth, developing their skills, providing direction, communicating high standards and inspiring them to express their own voice and view of the world. The production teams also share their work and collaborate through the Voice Films site.

All of the work is original, authentic youth content: adults are not allowed to direct, write or edit - they can only advise.

So what does the future hold for these creative youth?

Ms. Shepard will be attending NYU's filmmaking program this fall as a freshman. Dan Englehardt and Brad Leong have aspirations and plans to shoot their first feature length film this fall.

More power to you!

For all we know, these names may some day be synonymous with Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Mel Gibson, Tom Hanks, Francis Ford and Sofia Coppola.

Inspire & Be Inspired.

~Jennifer King