Students filed into the auditorium on Jan. 31 to watch sophomore Emma Kolah and senior Madelyn Carrillo’s short film “Friend or Foe,” a film about “two friends as they approach graduation and history repeats itself for the last time.” The film was submitted to the annual UIL Young Filmmakers contest, the first time Bellaire has submitted to the contest in four years.

“This was my first time making a short film,” Kolah said. “It was really intimidating at first, but film is something that I’m considering doing full time, so I was really excited. When this opportunity came up, I was like, ‘Oh, this is really cool. This is good practice to make sure that this is what I want to do.’”

“Friend or Foe” was filmed and edited over the course of six days leading into the start of the spring semester to meet a rapidly approaching submission deadline on Jan. 11.

“[The time crunch] made our actual film days pretty rushed,” Kolah said. “We had a schedule that we set up before we started filming. Most of our shots were like one or two takes. We didn’t get the exact final product that we were looking for, but we got as close as we could with the time we had.”

Seniors Ria Nanjundan and Jonathan Dimacali were chosen by Kolah and Carrillo to star as best friends BJ and Charlie. Playing Charlie was Dimacali’s first time acting in front of a camera.
“I’ve never actually participated in [a film],” Dimacali said. “Having to retake so many shots was weird because in theater you get one chance to perform something, whereas in a short film, you can just say cut and do it again. I found fun in it just because I got to redo it, fix stuff and do stuff differently. It was a new experience.”

To split up the work of producing the film, Kolah did most of the storyboarding while Carrillo wrote the script. Kolah took heavy inspiration from directors Wes Anderson and Tom George when planning out shots, symbols and images for “Friend or Foe,” and both drew on Anderson’s use of chapters in Fantastic Mr. Fox.

“Every filmmaker’s going to say that Wes Anderson’s their favorite director,” Kolah said. “He’s definitely one of my favorite directors. His style uses a lot of symmetry, and single-plane images are his iconic thing that he does. I really wanted to embody that.”

Head theater director Kayla Boffone felt that everyone involved in the film did “a lovely job” producing “Friend or Foe,” especially because their seventh period theater classes do not cover screen acting.

“[The theater directors] weren’t sure that we were going to have any entries [to the contest] this year, but [Kolah and Carrillo] took the initiative and took the time on their film to make it happen,” Boffone said. “I was really impressed with their knowledge of filmmakers [and that] they were doing shots in different styles. I’m super proud of them.”

Despite the limited amount of time to produce the film. Dimacali enjoyed getting the chance to participate.

“I think that the finished product is a culmination of our fun experiences and what we could do in our time allotted,” Dimacali said. “If we had more time and more planning, it would be a lot more finished and perfected. But with what we had, I enjoyed it. It was a trial experience.”

Kolah plans on submitting to the UIL Young Filmmakers contest for her remaining two years in high school and encourages others to try out producing a short film for themselves.

“Anyone who wants to or is considering participating in [the film contest] should just go for it,” Kolah said. “Even if you don’t end up submitting your film, it’s a really fun process just coming up with an idea and a story and finding people who support you and would like to help you with your journey.”