Student Film Goes Abuzz Online
February 13th, 2014 was one of the worst snow days New York City has seen this year. Instead staying home despite the treacherous weather conditions, film senior Christine went to school (which was surprisingly open) and took an opportunity to create a short film that received a lot more views and exposure than anyone expected.
Christine Carone had planned on doing an Animal Planet style “mockumentary” on the everyday lives of students in Frank Sinatra School of the Arts since she came to this school , but the night before the snow, she sparked an even more creative and detailed idea.
“I figured I might as well have fun with it if I was going in, so I decided to adapt my idea to make it about kids coming into school on a snow day,” she recalls.
Carone’s short film “High Schoolers in School When there Should be No School Because it’s Cold and Snowy, Ugh, Why Us?” was expected to just circulate around the school as sort of an inside joke like many of her films she does in school , but social media has had a big impact on how films spread in this day and age. Her video gained popularity when it was shared by the Facebook page “Keep Schools Closed in NYC During Snowdays.”
“I wouldn’t have half as many views on the video without social media. It’s how I share my work with friends and family, and now even strangers have seen it!” Christine exclaims. “When I checked how many hits I got and saw it was more than 3,000, I was shocked. I didn’t expect it to gain so much popularity, but I’ll take it!”
The video has close to 4,500 views as of right now.
Chirstine’s next film, Suncatcher, is being developed in association and participation with the Tribeca Film Fellows®; a program that selects 20 NYC youth filmmakers ages 16 – 18 to participate in their program. The Tribeca Film Fellows® helps with the development of a personal creative project, provides panel discussions, workshops, and mentoring by Festival film directors, screenings, and other special events. Christine’s creative project, Suncatcher, tells the story of a little boy with the ability to store sunlight in jars and how he helps his neighborhood during a blackout.
Christine originally came to Frank Sinatra School of the Arts for her passion in writing and to develop her creativity to become a writer in her future, but this school’s film program has changed her path for the better.
“Once I got here, I made my first film The Stapler, I just fell in love with filmmaking because it’s a whole other way to tell a story,” Carone expresses. ”If I could do something for the rest of my life like this, I would in a heartbeat. I owe everything I’ve accomplished to our film program. It’s where I learned to write scripts, use equipment, and edit. Now I’m getting ready to take my filmmaking to the next level in college, but I owe all my knowledge to Sinatra (School of the Arts) and its great teachers.”
You can check out “High Schoolers in School When there Should be No School Because it’s Cold and Snowy, Ugh, Why Us?” and other films by Christine Carone at her vimeo page at vimeo.com/christinecarone
by Lorraine Bishop ’14