Photo Credit: CHEYENNE PINO
BY JEREMY HAAS
Sitting behind multiple cameras in front of the CTV room’s green screen, I feel a strange feeling, something that’s unusual when working with high school students, and that feeling is professionalism. I am currently working with senior and CTV president Mitchel Worley on his latest directorial endeavor: a short film called Quietus. Specifically, I am acting in the movie, as a character named Riley, but more on that later. The real focus of this project is Worley himself, who spends every day of shooting doing a real director’s job, and that is, quite simply, directing. For Quietus to conform to his vision, Worley has recruited many of his friends to help. On the first day of shooting, he had an assistant director, editor, cameraman, boom-microphone operator, and even a script supervisor present. Through it all he lead the group with a finesse that truly shows maturity and pure devotion to his work.
Quietus is a “mockumentary” style short film that follows one student’s mission to create his own amateur documentary about death in lives of high school students. The three subjects, who act as the three main characters of Quietus, are Veronica, Jed, and Riley. This trio grows close and experience romance, arrest, and even death throughout the story. Like I mentioned earlier, I play Riley, who is a fairly typical seventeen-year-old kid, except for his terrifyingly religious mother, who causes serious problems in his life and ends up playing a pivotal role as the not-so-typical villain of Quietus.
“Quietus deals with a lot of serious topics, but its biggest theme is death,” Worley said, “So it’s definitely going to be a serious film,”
This film is long overdue, considering Worley’s lifelong passion for movies. Growing up, he spent most of his time watching classics, obsessing over Star Wars, Ghostbusters, and Jurassic Park, until he was an absolute powerhouse of movie trivia. Worley inherited his interest in film from his mother, who is a passionate camerawoman, the type of woman who “would shoot home videos all the time” as Worley puts it. When he was little, he followed her around, hassling her to let him use her camera. The day he was old enough to use one, he found himself taking over her role as the family moviemaker.
Worley realized his desire to be a director while taking Janessa Puig’s mass media class during freshman year. That class introduced him to a whole new world, a career that he would soon pursue passionately.
“I remember watching the ‘behind the scenes’ DVD extra’s of movies, and when I saw the director, just calling the shots and creating an incredible film, well, that’s when I knew what I wanted to do,” Worley said.
It was in Worley’s sophomore year that he really took action. Alfredo Pichardo, the school’s TV production adviser, chose him to join CTV. Since then, he has seen three generations of CTV students come and go, including his own class of 2013. Worley has been heavily involved in CTV, going to STN, the national TV production competition three years in a row. This year, as president of CTV, Worley put his destiny to direct in place. Besides Quietus, Worley has made one other short film, a piece about the Internet phenomenon “Slenderman.” The movie was called He’s Watching and it aired as CTV’s annual Halloween special. That horror flick served as a learning experience for Worley, who isn’t too proud of the way procrastination and mediocrity found ways into the production of He’s Watching.
“One thing that happened with He’s Watching is that we were writing scenes right before we shot them, which is really something you shouldn’t do,” Worley said.
I also played a role in He’s Watching, so I experienced the stress first hand. Since there was no shooting schedule, the crew was scarce much of the time, and finding every member of the cast on a given day of filming was rare. There was really no planning, no set script, and many of scenes for the movie were taped in the few weeks leading up to its air date. The night before film aired was beyond hectic, with an editing session that took nearly twelve hours. In the end, though, He’s Watching was finished on time, and for a movie with so many complications, it came out pretty well. Worley, being a perfectionist, is critical of his work, but he did finish a full 20 minute long short film. That’s something most high school students can’t say.
“What I was going for was extremely scary, and what I got is, in my opinion, pretty mediocre,” Worley said.
As I sat there, reciting my lines for these two cameras, I felt something real. The heat of an intense lighting kit lingered on my face and I looked up from this scene to see a dedicated crew, hanging on every word of one guy. Worley seems to have what it takes; a perfect balance of passion, talent, charisma, and determination is putting him on the path of becoming a successful director.
“I want to be able to say that when I was in high school, I made a short film and actually liked it,” Worley said.
