Students in the Ballard High School Digital Filmmaking Program led the pack of winners at the Northwest High School Film Festival on May 1, claiming thirteen awards and honors across six different categories at the Cinerama Theater in downtown Seattle.  Currently in its 20th year, the NWHSFF is the largest and longest running festival in the Puget Sound region exclusively for high school filmmakers.  Hundreds of students from twenty-two high schools competed for awards in twelve different production categories.

Ballard students also won two of the four competitive scholarships presented at the event.  Skala Leake (’18) won the J-Dogg Scholarship, a $7,000 per year award that she can apply at the college of her choice.  She’ll be studying film at Columbia College of Chicago – a program ranked by The Hollywood Reporter as one of the best in the nation.  Veronica Redpath (’18) was one of only two filmmakers awarded a scholarship to The Prodigy Camp – an intensive week-long filmmaking workshop attended by gifted filmmakers from all around the world.        

The festival was judged by a panel of industry professionals and college media professors.  It was organized by the Media Educators for Excellence Team (MEET), an inter-district organization of high school media production teachers.  Sponsors included The Seattle Film Institute, The Studio School of Los Angeles, Washington State University, Central Washington University, Montana State University, the Cinerama Theatre, and Vulcan Enterprises. 

All the awarded productions from BHS had their premieres at the Ballard Film Festival (BFF).  This event screens new films by BHS Digital Filmmaking students at the end of every semester.  The next BFF will be Saturday, June 16 at 7 pm in the BHS auditorium.  Tickets are $5 for students and $10 for adults and will be sold at the door.

Here are Ballard’s Northwest High School Film Festival winners by category.  (Many of these can now be screened on the BHS Digital Filmmaking Program’s vimeo site at www.vimeo.com/bhsfilmprogram .)

 AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE

Comedic Narrative

  Paul, Dark, and Handsome

  Ellie Dynes, Jesse Romero, Miles Anderson & Cole Kastner

   Richard

  Wylie Soltes, Ian Colbeck, Ethan Hawthorne-Dallas & Aaron Mamaril

 Commercial

  Let There be Bacon

  Ellie Dynes, Alec Gabbert & Julian Whitworth

  Your Neighborhood Bookstore

  Jasper Swift, Caleb Flynn & Naomi Glunz

 Documentary

  On the Backs of Salmon

  Miles Whitworth, Cecilia O’Rollins, Martin Bolivar, Aaron Miller, Chris Barrett, Jasper Land, Maddie Lausted & Freeman Marshall

Dramatic Narrative

  Bottled Emotions

  Zach Boone, PJ Hase, Aiden Jereczek & Bailey Wall

Public Service Announcement

   Locked Doors

   Drew Hedlund, Calvin Johnson & Sandro Rios

 TB Time Bomb

  Casey Chamberlain, Maddie Lausted, Freeman Marshall & Elliott Russell

 Satire/Mockumentary/Parody

  Road Trip Week

  Ethan Hawthorne & Jessica Lueck

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Commercial

  Truth Bar

  Aven Fay, Liam Bonds & Zach Boone

  How to Lime

  Martin Bolivar, Krystelle Kurz & Caroline Lavallee  

 Documentary                          

  Building Solutions

  Krystelle Kurz, Jonathan Bowers, Claire Elliott, Aven Fay, Duncan Kastner, Skala Leak, Elliott Atkinson & Annabelle Bowman-Mohn

Dramatic Narrative

  I’ll Be There

  Veronica Redpath, Maureen Brown & Claude Brun