TEENS HAVE OWN VERSION OF ACADEMY AWARDS.Byline: Eric Leach Staff Writer With the Academy Awards set for next Sunday, a competition for Conejo Valley teens is under way to select outstanding young actors, documentary makers, cinematographers and other motion picture talents. The seventh annual Conejo Teen Video Festival is open to teenagers throughout Ventura County, as well as Agoura Hills and Calabasas. ``I've been making movies since I was 7, and I was working on a movie anyway before I learned about the contest last year,'' said Ethan Kuperberg, a 16-year-old student at Agoura High School Agoura High School is a four-year high school, freshman-senior, in Agoura Hills, California, United States. It is the largest high school in the Las Virgenes Unified School District, with an enrollment of approximately 2,400 students. , who won last year's Best Documentary prize for ``Goodbye Afro - A Trip to the Barbershop.'' ``I just thought it would be funny to make a film about getting my hair cut. I guess people can relate to it. ... It was very tongue-in-cheek - mockumentary style.'' Entries have been improving over the past seven years, officials say, partly because teens have greater access to video cameras and sophisticated home computers. Also, the teens are incorporating more serious social concerns as themes for their projects. ``In the beginning we had many films about skateboarding and rollerblading, because that is what the kids knew and what they were doing,'' said J.J. Linsalata, an assistant director for television shows like ``Charmed'' and ``Beverly Hills 90210,'' who serves as one of the preliminary judges in the contest. ``Now I see more involvement with social consciousness. I think it might be a sign of the times A Sign of the Times was a 1966 single by Petula Clark. Written by Tony Hatch, the uptempo pop number juxtaposed Clark's driving vocals with a powerful brass section. She introduced the tune on the Ed Sullivan Show on February 27, 1966. . We had several very compassionate pieces last year, one about a homeless person An individual who lacks housing, including one whose primary residence during the night is a supervised public or private facility that provides temporary living accommodations; an individual who is a resident in transitional housing; or an individual who has as a primary residence a , one about a teenager despairing over her life.'' The entries must be original works completed between June 30, 2004, and May 31, 2005. The awards will be announced at 7 p.m. June 29 in the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza's Scherr Forum Theater, where the winning videos will be screened. The entries must be submitted either in standard VHS (Video Home System) A half-inch, analog videocassette recorder (VCR) format introduced by JVC in 1976 to compete with Sony's Betamax, introduced a year earlier. or DVD DVD: see digital versatile disc. DVD in full digital video disc or digital versatile disc Type of optical disc. The DVD represents the second generation of compact-disc (CD) technology. (with MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts Group) An ISO/ITU standard for compressing digital video. Pronounced "em-peg," it is the universal standard for digital terrestrial, cable and satellite TV, DVDs and digital video recorders (DVRs). 2 or better) formats by the deadline of May 31. The general entry categories are documentary, fiction and music video. The documentary and fiction entries cannot exceed 10 minutes and music videos are limited to four minutes. Awards cover everything from best documentary to most original and best music video, best screenplay, best cinematography cinematography: see motion picture photography. cinematography Art and technology of motion-picture photography. It involves the composition of a scene, lighting of the set and actors, choice of cameras, camera angle, and integration of special , best special effects, best editing, best actor and actress and best video (for videographer A person involved in the production of video material. Videographers shoot the images with a video camera (analog or digital) and may perform minimal or extensive editing of the resulting footage. under 15 years old) and overall best video. Aaron Blum, 15, won the award for teen videographer 14 and under last year for a documentary about a 12-year-old neighbor who is a champion mountain bike rider. Blum first entered the contest when he was 12 with a documentary about a day at a Thousand Oaks fire station, and the next year he did a documentary about prejudice, for which he interviewed Holocaust survivors and African-Americans. This year he is working on a documentary about a rock 'n' roll rock 'n' roll: see rock music. band made up of Thousand Oaks High School Thousand Oaks High School is a high school established in 1962 and located in Thousand Oaks, California. It is a California Distinguished School, and offers curriculum at all levels for Thousand Oaks students. The mascot is the lancer. students. ``I think the contest has really helped me,'' Blum said. ``I've progressed so much by seeing what other people have put together and gaining ideas from them.'' Eric Leach, (805) 583-7602 eric.leach(at)dailynews.com IF YOU GO Filmmaking for Novices will be held, 9 a.m.-noon March 5 at the Thousand Oaks Teen Center, 3575 E. Janss Road. For information about that class or about the Conejo Teen Video Festival, call (805) 381-2793. CAPTION(S): photo, box Photo: Ethan Kuperberg, 16, of Agoura Hills won the best documentary award in last year's Conejo Teen Video Festival and hopes to enter two more projects in the contest this year. Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer Box: IF YOU GO (see text) |
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