Down in the dungeons of the MAC basement, 13 students and film teacher Justin Bull have spent the past year on a huge artistic endeavor. They are the Feature Film Project, and over the 23-24 school year, they have written, filmed, and edited an entire feature-length film. Feature-length films are what people mean when they say “movie.” They are full-length films, usually between one and three hours long, that tell a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end. As such, making one is a massive amount of work.
The students in Feature Film did not choose the course lightly. All participants needed to submit a letter of interest last spring, and have taken the Intro to Film class as a prerequisite. Unlike most arts classes, Feature Film Project is a major. It is also a year-long class, and everyone in it also took Feature Film Project as their Winter season athletic option. This after-school commitment was when the filmmakers filmed the project and was as much of a time commitment as a team sport or the Winter Mainstage. However, the filmmakers still found a way to keep things light. Hannah Bodnar ’24 explained, “Just being on set is fun because you’ve spent a whole semester together, and in winter it's your sport, so you get to spend three hours a day together just hanging out and making a film.” These filmmakers were aided by two students from Concord Carlisle High School and a paid actor, though most of the roles were played by members of the class. In the spring, students in a different two-credit minor class worked to edit the rough footage into a final film.
The class began in the fall with a month of acting lessons to give the students the basic skills they needed to be on screen. Then, the class began to work on a story. Thomas Crowley ’24 shared, “Justin [Bull] had the idea to do a surrealist comedy, but he didn’t tell us. So he sent us off to create our characters.” Thomas also described the process of making characters, which involved the class discussing what traits made people interesting in real life. The class brainstormed a story based on that work and Bull wrote a final script over Thanksgiving break. When everyone returned, it was the start of the Winter athletic season and time to begin filming.
The entire Concord Academy community will have the chance to watch the final film on the evenings of May 10 and 11, but until then, the filmmakers have been very careful to avoid sharing details. They have let slip that Grant Hightower and Andrew Stevens may have roles in the film, but much of anything else about the 8th Feature Film Project has been kept secret.