Kicking off a new activity for the high school this year, film students and their advisers traveled to San Marcus last weekend to video their first project and work on writing two new scripts. The group plans to enter the UIL Film Festival this January and hopes to find themselves at the state meet in February.

While the skills are new to the advisers and most of the students, junior Nicollette Arabie has some film background.

“When I was younger, I liked making movies, but stopped the summer between eighth and ninth grades mostly because COVID took away my film locations and the fact that I didn’t get to go to my local film camp,” Arabie said. ¨So when we were in Salado for debate camp and asked Mrs. Menefee if we could do our own films for UIL and she said yes, I was super excited and I started writing.”

Menefee was excited to have students eager to take on the activity, which she has been hoping to enter for the past few years.

“I actually bought equipment at the start of last school year,” Menefee said. “We were still kind of getting our feet back under us after COVID, though, and it just didn’t happen. So when we started talking about it at camp and the girls were so excited, I knew we had to make it happen.”

Junior Ryan Brown was eager to join the group and said she enjoyed working with

“I’ve always been really big into analyzing the shots and cinematography and so it kind of merges itself into my work,” Brown said. “I worked a lot with Emma because she has steady hands and I have the ideas for the shots and we just kind of worked hand in hand.”

The first project for the group is a documentary on the Maestro Arts Project, which works with theatre directors and students in Texas and has been a big influence on the BHS program.

“Eastwood Hill is a house in San Marcos that hosts Maestro, which Mrs. V and I attend each year,” Menefee said. “The house is very historic and is haunted, so we thought it would be a fun project to get started on.”

Other projects for this year include two narrative films that the students have written scripts for and possible plans to create some animated shorts for that category.

“I’m super-excited to see what they come up with,” Menefee said. “They are so creative and work hard to get everything right. I am enjoying working with them to get this project started.”