Ballard High School alumnus George Westberg compiled a laundry list of accolades in the school's video production program by the time he graduated in 2006. Now at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, he's hoping to start a new list, post-high school.

This summer, Westberg returned to Seattle to direct a 20-minute short film titiled "Time Keeps on Skippin'" with a crew of current Ballard students. It took the crew five full days to shoot "Time," which was a labor of love for Westberg, who wrote the script for a writing class at NYU.

"I just really wanted to come back and do something with all my actor friends," Westberg said.

"Time' is about a chronically-late slacker who discovers a nudie pen that offers more than a cheap thrill. The pen allows him to travel through time and get his life on track, until advanced quantum physics and a Twinkie-obsessed agent put a kink in his plan.

Westberg submitted the film to about 16 film festivals around the country and expects to hear back from them later this month. In the meantime, he premiered "Time" at an invitation-only screening Jan. 9 at Ballard High School.

The screening was a chance for friends and family of the young crew to see what they could do.

Matt Lawrence, head of the video production class at Ballard, said he was delighted that Westberg wanted to use sophomores from his class on the shoot because it would allow them to get experience they could use in their junior year.

After getting a lot of responses from interested students, Westberg chose Emily Deering, Daniel Maldonado and Alexandra Papac to help him.

The students got a chance to do a little bit of everything for "Time," Westberg said. They recorded sound, worked the camera and did anything else they could on what Westberg described as a "no-budget film."

For example, the crew didn't have a dolly, so they pushed the camera operator in a wheelchair.

"It cost me 50 bucks at Goodwill, but it was a lot of fun to do," he said.

Westberg said he was initially interested in film as an actor, but that changed when he enrolled in Ballard's video program, created in 2001.

"Once I realized all the stuff I could do behind the camera, that was much more interesting to me," he said.

Lawrence said Westberg fills a number of requirements of a filmmaker. He is proficient, meticulous and creative and can visualize how scenes will come together in the final product, he said.

"There is some kind of film sense that some people have," Lawrence said. "And, George has got it. It was there in his first project and it's still there."

During his junior year at Ballard, a music video created by Westberg was accepted to the Derek Freese High School Video Festival in Philadelphia, but his final short film at Ballard really got him some attention.

"Bittersweet," a short about the domino effect of happiness, received an Award of Excellence for Dramatic Narrative at the Northwest High School Film Festival. It was also an official selection at the Westport Film and Video Festival, the Derek Freese Video Festival and the Young People's Film and Video Festival. It won an Award of Excellence for writing from the National Student Television Awards.

Westberg credits his success to his talented collaborators, but also on the quality of the Ballard High School video production program.

Ballard students are given great equipment to work with and enough time to make their films look good, Westberg said.

Lawrence is a great instructor in that he gives input, but allows the students to follow their own direction, he said.

The Ballard program allows students to create impressive work not because it is better funded than other programs, but because the students are allowed to focus on different types of media, not just news media, Lawrence said.

He said high schools often make the mistake of focusing entirely on news production, which ignores opportunities in other types of media, such as advertising and documentaries.

For now, Westberg is looking forward to his next project at NYU and considering a future job in on-set sound recording, which would allow him to stay employed while waiting for his own projects to take off.

Despite the intensity of his five-day shoot for the 20-minute "Time Keeps on Skippin'," Westberg said he hopes to one day take the leap into writing and directing his own feature-length film.

"That's just a big, big thing," he said. "But, that's just one of my dreams to do in the future."

Michael Harthorne may be contacted at 206.783.1244 or michaelh@robinsonnews.com