Young filmmakers hope winning ways yield Smart Board for room

For the last two years, the art room at Dryden School in Arlington Heights has doubled as a movie set, where award-winning filmmakers create their works.

From this unlikely studio, they have produced the film, "Young Sloppy Brush," that was chosen to play at the Chicago International Film Festival and in a children's festival in Italy. This summer, it will play at another festival in Australia.

Their latest video, "Swept Away" -- about the tragic consequences of art supplies not put away -- has been chosen as a finalist at the Shortie Awards, the student film and news festival taking place on June 1 at George Washington University.

All this, and these filmmakers are only in fourth and fifth grade.

"It's fun to make a movie," says Andi Marfilius, 10, of Arlington Heights. "It's not about winning a contest, it's just fun to film a movie."

During a recent lunch hour, Andi and some of her fourth-grade classmates worked with teacher Tricia Fuglestad on a 30-second commercial they are producing for a contest sponsored by Smart Technologies. If they win, they could land an interactive Smart Board for their classroom.

"It's pretty exciting, but we still have lots of work to do," Fuglestad says. Already, they have spent three weeks working on the spot, including composing lyrics for the jingle, and creating animation for the background. Their latest task is choreographing the sequences for the live actors in the film.

Students follow a storyboard they created of each of the scenes in the commercial, and they carefully check off what they have filmed so far.

During their lunch hours, they have filmed classmates singing and dancing in front of a green screen, a video editing technique allowing the green background to be removed once they load it onto the computer, so they can layer in animation.

"Ready on the set," Fuglestad called to the cast before they started to film.

Michael Schwingbeck, 9, of Arlington Heights, operated the camera, and counted down with his fingers, before shouting the familiar command: "Action!"