Young Adult Summer Film Festival Showcases Talent

The second annual Teen and Young Adult Film Festival was hosted by the Patchogue-Medford Library Monday night. The event gave a small group of young filmmakers a night to showcase what they have been working on at home and in the library's video production class taught by Patchogue-Medford High School graduate Josh Wein.

Wein, a sophomore at Five Towns College who works for a video news website, trained the students to shoot B-roll shots, interviews, and news videos as well as provide personal assistance and insight about the film industry.  

Wein presented "Chat Roulette", which was a short film poking fun at random chat websites, and "Hungry Dog", which the filmmaker claimed was influenced by comedian Jim Carey.

Patchogue student, Bennett Stolz, 14, made three videos for the festival. The first was a teaser trailer for an upcoming film he plans to debut in February called "Dinosaur Attack #2," which he made using photographs of dinosaur figurines, which he later animated. The second was a music video made to Weird Al Yankovic's Queen parody, "Another One Rides The Bus," made by animating photographs of Sarah Palin, George Bush, and other internet faces. The last film by Stolz was "Dinosaur Test Animations", which featured a combination of animated dinosaur photographs with live action scenes made using a green screen.

Stolz's eleven-year-old brother, James, submitted "Drawing with James," a short film teaching the viewer how to draw a dragon, a dinosaur, and the earth, filmed by having the camera in one hand and the pencil in the other.

Brothers Ryan, 17, and Nick Grippi, 16, from Medford presented a commercial advertising a fake company that would pick up after a client's dog, and a short film called "Off The Wagon," about the brothers' need to drive to the hospital but lacking a driver's license.

Emily Marge, 13, of Medford, presented two videos. One based on Tim Burton's film "Ed Wood" and another entitled "Planet 10 From Outer Space," which Marge made using a green screen, paper plates, paper clips, and dental floss as props.

The class is part of the Young Adult program run by Martha Mikkleson, who has organized three film festivals since summer 2009.