Beware any artificial intelligence app that wants to take over your life.
Sounds like good advice, and it was the subject matter of a film short by three Nacogdoches High School students entered last weekend into the Boomtown Film & Music Festival in Beaumont.
The NHS students will have their short film screened Feb. 22 at the historic Jefferson theater in Beaumont after completing their production in roughly 37 hours last weekend.
The Boomtown’s 48 Hour Film Race had participants assigned a genre by chance on Friday then have 48 hours to complete the project. The first 13 teams to turn in their film would automatically qualify for the screening. That’s also when the winner of the contest’s Golden Gusher Award will be announced.
Blake Beguin, David Valencia and Damien Masson worked with Nacogdoches High School Career and Technical Education Coordinator Mike McHaney for 30 minutes twice a week during the school year. They were also the only students to enter the Boomtown contest. (Valencia is not shown in the photo with the story.)
Participants received their assignment at 7 p.m. Friday and had until 7 p.m. Sunday to complete the project and upload it to the contest’s website. David, Damien and Blake were actually the first team to submit their film.
“This is such a super cool achievement for these three young men,” McHaney said.
The three students had brainstormed on the way to Beaumont about a theme, or genre. They caught a break when their assignment was related to a horror/comedy production.
“The stars aligned,” said McHaney. “That led them to getting finished early.”
They spent roughly seven hours Saturday morning and afternoon gathering footage. Went back to the hotel, had dinner and began putting it together. They went back out that night to complete filming.
“We weren’t sure exactly how to do that night scene,” Blake said.
The majority of the filming took place on Saturday inside a Beaumont grocery store… but only before the students asked the manager for permission.
“The way these students behaved and the way they represented themselves and Nacogdoches was great,” said McHaney, who makes a brief appearance in the film.
Damien filled the role of lead actor in the production, David was Director of Photography and Blake served as a director. The completed short was a horror/dark comedy titled “AIdan” about an artificial intelligence app that goes a little haywire and does in its members.
The first cut was a little more than seven minutes in length, Blake said, requiring some trimming to get closer to the four minutes. They worked off what turned out to be a three-page script. McHaney said typically, one page of script equals one minute of film.
Damien, the main actor in the film, immersed himself in the role and slept little during production so he could more accurately portray someone unraveling as the app controlled more and more of his life.
“I wanted to be tired and look tired,” Damien said.