Algonquin teen director drawn to gritty dramas

Taylor Sinople doesn't watch a lot of movies, and he's hard-pressed to name his favorite director, but the 17-year-old filmmaker knows what kind of movies he wants to make.

Sinople's short films "Breathe" and "Crisis," on which he collaborated with writer Zack Pesata, reflect the young director's interest in characters pushed to the edge of rationality.

"I've always done the dramas with some kind of twisted thing to it," Sinople says. As opposed to comedies, he adds, dramas "allow for more cinematography. It gives you room to open up to the artistic side of it."

His first movie was "Breathe," a short feature about the aftermath of a botched robbery. The project was the first to emerge from the Jacobs High School film club, which Sinople helped create.

Sinople and Pesata said at the time that school officials were skittish about letting them film the story and requested changes to the original script, which focused on an accountant who was cheating on his wife. Showing a gun on-screen was out of the question.

Many of the restrictions imposed on their first film were relaxed for their second collaboration, "Crisis," precisely because the movie was intended as an emergency training video for teachers.

Sinople spent almost a year working on "Crisis." The movie, starring fellow Jacobs student Ryan Green, is about a teenager subject to intense pressure from his overbearing basketball coach and father.

Jacobs Principal Michael Bregy, who appears as himself in "Crisis," also produced the movie, giving Sinople access to teachers, shooting locations on school grounds, Algonquin police officers and Bregy's own house, where some of the film was shot.

The familiar locations and faces, plus Sinople's use of untrained actors, lent the movie a sense of authenticity the previous training film lacked.

"The original film - was outdated," Bregy says. "Our procedures had changed, and it wasn't reflected in the film. After I found out about Taylor's productions - I thought this would be a great independent study project for him. I had never been involved in the making of a film."

Sinople and Pesata knew they were making a training video and tried to avoid being corny. They started with a more conventional story about a misfit who explodes under the strain of bullying, then changed it to focus on a basketball star who wants to quit the team against the advice of his coach and father.

"We went through so many drafts of the story," Sinople says. "I just did the best I could trying to make it harshly realistic."

After Sinople finished the script, he needed a student to take on the challenging role of the overstressed athlete. After failing to find his leading man in open tryouts, Sinople approached Green, who he knew from the school's stage productions.

"He came up to me and said, 'You wanna be in my movie?'" Green recalls. "I said, 'Sure,' and it just went on from there."

When it came time to cast his first music video, which brings to life The Airborne Toxic Event's "Sometime Around Midnight," Sinople again turned to the Jacobs talent pool, approaching his English teacher for the female lead.

"He was like, 'Hey, do you want to do something cool?'" remembers Sabrina Nivler, the teacher. "I was like, 'sure.'"

Nivler saw"Crisis" when the school screened the film for teachers in August.

"Seeing that film and how great it was made me want to work with him even more," Nivler said. "Our teachers were just blown away. I brag about the fact I have the kid in class that did the film."

Actors who worked with Sinople were impressed with his professionalism and vision.

"He has the idea in his head and you can't tell but once it's all done and put on film you see exactly what he was doing and realize that was an awesome move," Green said.

Sinople is now in postproduction on the music video while filming a documentary about his school that will be shown at a national conference in January.

Sinople, who lives in Carpentersville, hopes to attend Columbia College to study filmmaking next year.

"I want to go not the indie route," Sinople says. "I just want to be in the business of it. My goal is to be successful as a filmmaker, not just creatively successful. Sundance would be great, but I just want to be able to make a living from movies."