When Marion County students went to the statewide high school video production competition last year, they made their presence felt in a big way. The local teams captured half of the awards presented — just the latest in a series of remarkable performances by local video arts students in state and national competitions.
Now, the community is looking to build on those talents and successes with the fledgling but growing Ocala Film Derby, a five-day event slated for Sept. 18-22 that will be staged in downtown Ocala and feature teams made up of area high school and middle school students.
In its second year, the Film Derby is an immersive and, at times, intense competition where students and local mentors are given one day to produce a video. Each team is given mandatory prompts — a prop, a location, a line of dialogue, and a character name — and one day to write, shoot, edit, and produce an original 7- to 8-minute film.
The Film Derby was the brainchild of Laurie Zink, development and community outreach director for the Institute of Human and Machine Cognition in downtown Ocala. As chairperson of the Marion County Public Schools Career and Technical Education Audio/Visual Arts Business Advisory Council, Zink pushed the idea to help elevate an already robust video arts program in the schools. The Public Education Foundation of Marion County is partnering with the Film Derby committee.
“Recognizing the talent pool we have in the county, and trying to support them moving forward, is why the Film Derby was created,” she said. “We want to give them real world application of the visual and communication arts and prepare students for a possible future in these industries. And from last year to this year, we learned a lot.”
And grown a lot. In its inaugural year in 2023, the Film Derby included four county high schools and two middle schools. This year, the Film Derby will include participants from all seven public high schools in the county as well as five middle schools.
David Guest, the video production instructor at Forest High, said students selected for the Film Derby are “the cream of the crop.” He said the program not only teaches how to produce a film under pressure with set parameters, it teaches teamwork and leadership as well.
“It’s a real-world experience where you really see the personalities,” he said.
Each of the Film Derby teams will consist of six high school students, two middle school students, one alternate student, a local business mentor and a teacher. The names for each team will be drawn from a hat. Teachers are not allowed to participate in the actual production process – that is what the mentors do.
The unfamiliarity of the team members and the outcome of that was a learning experience, for Film Derby organizers last year.
“When you blend kids with kids they don’t know, with mentors they don’t know, with teachers they don’t know, it became apparent that those who didn’t understand how to be a team were at a disadvantage,” Zink said. “If everyone doesn’t come together, we can talk about filming all we want, but they won’t be successful”
As a result, the second Film Derby will put an emphasis on team building with workshops and discussions with experts in film making, including actress Wendy Makkena. Makkena is best known for her role as a young nun in Whoopi Goldberg’s “Sister Act” films.
Makkena said she likes the premise of the Film Derby, especially the short time frame.
“I think something magical happens when you don’t have time to think,” she said.
Makkena, who taught at the Manhattan Film Institute for a dozen years, said with young people, smartphones have made all of them videographers, “whether they call themselves that or not.”
“I teach people how to lean heavily on their instincts,” she said. “I teach a skill that encourages students to follow their instincts.”
Instinct is crucial to success in the Film Derby because of the time limitations.
The five-day event will kick off on Sept. 18 with introductions, team selections and scholarship opportunities. On Sept. 19, a day of workshops and a tour of filming sites will be conducted. Sept. 20 will be devoted to the teams producing their films – starting at 8 a.m. and concluding with submission of their final work at 6 p.m. Sept. 21 will feature an actors’ workshop with Makkena, with the Film Derby concluding on Sept. 22 with screenings of the films at the Marion Theater, followed by award and scholarship announcements.
Zink said the objective of the Film Derby is to help prepare “student pathways to the field of video media and digital technology, which is a fast-growing field.”
The short films being produced by the Film Derby teams are intended to emphasize a major shift in video and film making.
Guest, the Forest High video arts teacher, said the Film Derby gives students a clearer idea of the future opportunities available to them.
“We’ve always had a really talented base for video production,” he said. “This just helps the students realize that they can turn this into a job.” He added that one big aspect of the Film Derby experience is to show “there are more jobs behind the camera,” like writing, editing, audio, lighting and directing.
And while most of the students who will participate work within their schools’ producing videos and films for those schools, the Film Derby presents a new challenge.
“It’s nice to see them go out into the real world and face a deadline and persevere and come up with a final product,” Guest said.
He said the Film Derby is a positive and needed step to bring video production in our schools to the forefront – that it is something more than an elective course.
“It used to be like the Fun Club,” Guest said. “Now, it’s more like ‘I’m an artist and I can make this a profession.’”
Guest said after the first Film Derby the benefits of the Film Derby for the students was evident.
“It’s really the most enjoyment of my career,” he said. “It’s all them. You want it to be their product … and there’s no barriers for them.”
Zink said that while the Film Derby is only in its second year, the community has rallied to give its support. The school system has been engaged and supportive, she said, and the downtown businesses have been welcoming and accommodating.
“We couldn’t do it without them,” she said.
The scholarships that will be presented to winners will be provided by local supporters to allow students to pursue a film making career at a college or a film certification program. The scholarships will be managed by the Public Education Foundation.
The Film Derby will not be over on Sept. 22, however. On Nov. 1-2, screenwriter Tony Spiridakis, who is the pen behind the current hit movie “Ezra,” will be in Ocala for a workshop with teachers and mentors as well as an Ocala Film Derby critique and workshop with the event’s seven teams.
“Ezra” is a film loosely based on Spiridakis’ personal experience of raising a son with autism, and he will host a screening of the film at the Marion Theater on Nov. 2 at 1 p.m., followed by a question-and-answer panel discussion covering filmmaking and neurodivergent youth.
Zink said this year’s Film Derby will be bigger and, she anticipates, better because of the lessons learned last year.
“From last year to this year, we have grown and learned a lot,” she said.
