AHS filmmakers win Lip Dub, national festival honors Posted by Jacob Buckenmeyer | May 16, 2012 | 496 views

Young filmmakers at Anacortes High School are basking in their recent success, and looking forward to more of the same.

Anacortes won the judges and audience awards at the regional Lip Dub competition April 25 at Brodniak Hall. (See the finished video, and others by AHS students, here.)

AHS Lip Dub director and senior Mariel McCown said all the schools had fun making the videos, but the Anacortes team’s entry was the most polished.

“Ours was the cleanest and most professional-looking,” she said.

Teams from Anacortes, Mount Vernon, Sedro-Woolley, Everett and Arlington high schools participated in the third annual competition.

More success came when 12 AHS student filmmakers traveled to Seattle for the National Film Festival for Talented Youth, which began the day after the lip dub competition and lasted through the weekend.

Teacher Jim Thompson drove the kids down to the festival. He said several short films from AHS students were shown at the festival, and a team of four students participated in a 48-hour competition to create a three-minute film.

NFFTY is the largest youth film festival in the world, attracting an array of international filmmakers under 22 years old and more than 10,000 attendees.

Junior Max Magerkurth produced “Somnolence” for a 65-hour Guerilla Film competition in Bellingham last year. The film was put up on the big screen during the “Late-night adrenaline” films portion of the festival.

Tyler Thompson’s “The Love of Adventure” won the audience award for Best Sports Action film.

Junior Owen Craft was part of the team that produced “Trapped,” which played the closing night of the festival. The film follows a high school student (played by McCown) who stays late after school and finds herself trapped on the campus.

The festival highlights the accomplishments of young filmmakers and celebrates their work. Craft said it’s an honor to even be accepted to the exclusive expo.

“Basically, with NFFTY, getting in is winning,” he said.

Senior Alexis Lee led a team in producing “The Face of Facebook,” a critical look at social networking “personified” and its effect on authentic social interactions. The film was selected for the Seattle International Film Festival’s Futurewave program and will be featured with other Futurewave shorts on May 28.

Thompson said many of his students also have films that will show as part of the Northwest High School Film Festival at the Cinerama theater in downtown Seattle on Tuesday.