Laguna's Camila Lemere & Jack Stein win SBIFF 10-10-10 Competition

On Saturday, February 10, Camila Lemere '18 took home the award for Best High School Director and Jack Stein '19 was named Best High School Screenwriter at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival's 10-10-10 Competition. We sat down with Camila and Jack to learn more about this project and their respective filmmaking journeys.

How did your love for movies get sparked?


J: I’ve loved movies ever since I can remember. Ever since I was old enough to look at a TV, my dad has supported weekly family movie nights, which gave rise to a lasting passion for film that stays with me today.

C: I’ve grown up loving movies my entire life. I watch them all the time with my family, and going to the movies is definitely my favorite thing to do. I give credit to my dad. He raised me as a kid who loves movies.

What films have been the most inspiring or influential to you and why?

J: I have a lot of respect for movies that have taken the art of film into a new direction. Those are the kind of movies that get me really excited. Primer is a great example of such a movie. Produced on the most shoestring budget, it managed to give an interesting and engaging take on the science fiction genre. Evil Dead, both the first and the second one, had a lot of influence on me, both in the DIY way that Sam Raimi threw them together and the elegant blending of campy B-horror and self-referential comedy. Another one is this smaller-scale movie, A Most Violent Year. It came out a few years ago… beautifully shot with a killer cast. I love it because it manages to tell this intense, wonderful story about a struggling businessman without the need to get distracted by looking at the bigger picture. It’s happy just to stay small, stay focused.

C: Film wise, I have a bunch of favorite movies. But films telling stories that emphasize the human experience, like Ladybird, Moonstruck, Flipped, and The Florida Project are what I love to watch and hope to create one day.

What are the qualities that make a film great for you?

J: For me, it really depends on the film. Yeah, of course it needs to have decent cinematography, writing, acting. But I love the movies that take even one of those aspects and amps it up in quality to like an 11. Tarantino’s movies, for example—he’s all about ratcheting things up from what anybody’s done before. He looks at all these great movies in the past, and thinks, 'How can I take this further? How can I make this better?' He isn’t afraid to go in bold new directions with his movies, and I really respect that in a film and a filmmaker.

C: A great film is one that tells a beautiful story. One that is interesting the whole way through, and one that is loved and cared for by the people who made it.

You are both collaborators. How have you discovered members of your team and how do you keep the relationship with them strong?

J: That wasn’t really my end of the operation— Sydney Edgecomb and Camila handled most of the coordinating with cast and crew. Mathew Goldsholl '17 and I spent a lot of time together on set. He’s at NYU now, but we still text and hang out when we can.

C: A lot of the members in my team, both this year and last year, have been Laguna students. That’s something I’m really grateful for because of the established friendships. Other members of my team I discovered through Santa Barbara film and theater groups on social media and through family and friend connections.

How did you learn the skills needed to write a screenplay?

J: The most important thing about writing is just getting words on a page. Before starting this process, I’d never written a screenplay before—nothing even close. One night I just went onto my computer and read through the scripts from some of my favorite movies—just to get a feel for the style. I cranked out ten pages in an hour or two after that. I was just fooling around—and that was the first draft of what I ended up submitting to the SBIFF 10-10-10 contest. When it came to writing the script I used in the competition, I learned essentially everything from my mentor, Paul Kurta. He basically took me from knowing nothing about screenwriting to being able to put together a half-respectable script in a matter of weeks. I really can’t thank him enough for that.

What was the most important lesson you learned throughout the writing process?

J: Not to get attached to anything, because it will almost definitely be cut. This especially applies to early drafts. I remember there were tons of lines that I just loved writing and I formed intense attachments to them. By the final draft, the whole thing was completely unrecognizable, and, looking back, I hated most of the lines I’d started off loving.

What was your biggest challenge throughout the writing process?

J: Keeping the thing at ten pages. I am, for lack of a better word, a verbose writer. Writing anything that short doesn’t come naturally for me. It was definitely an adjustment, but I’m glad I stepped outside my comfort zone and got a chance to learn how to tell a complete story in a really, really brief time period.

What are your screenwriting aspirations for the future?

J: Really any projects I can get my hands on. I’m planning on writing something that I can shoot with my friends this summer. It's just a fun project to let me step outside the 10-10-10 restrictions and mindset. I really want to move toward directing the things I write, because I have such a strong vision for what I want to see on the screen. It makes it a lot easier if I can be on both sides of the creative process. I’m a big supporter of the DIY, self-made kind of cinema. I think that stuff is really stellar, so I’m excited to try and make something just with my friends without the SBIFF name to back me up. Kind of a “test my mettle” kind of deal.

What inspired this story?

J: Well, the theme for the competition this year was love. When we had our first writers’ brainstorming meeting, I started thinking about movies and how love is portrayed in movies, romantic comedies in particular. But the funny thing is, the way all of these movies portray romance isn’t really accurate at all—but it makes for a really entertaining film! So I wanted to make a movie that both reflected on the surreal, fake-love aspect of romance in movies while also giving a kind of meta, self-aware commentary on the fact that I’m commenting on it at all, and also making something entertaining for people to watch.

How long did it take you to write the screenplay?

J: It took weeks. I worked on it on and off, an hour or two every couple of days for about a month. When we got to around two weeks away from the final deadline, Paul and I went full-steam-ahead with it. I’d be at his house for five, six hours a day after school just going through the script line by line, word by word, asking “Can we cut this?” “What can make this better?” and “How can we develop this character further without dragging the script out too much?” It was intense, and I got really behind on homework. But it was such an enriching and fun experience overall.

How did you learn the skills needed to direct a film?

C: I obtained the skills necessary for directing a film during the actual process of directing itself. Regardless of how much effort I put into preparing for my shoot, everything really sank in once I was actually on set, filming with other people. Filmmaking is something one learns through experience and through doing. Not by reading about it or hearing someone else talk about it.

What was the most important lesson you have learned over the past two years of directing?

C: I think the most important lesson I’ve learned is to not try and fit the mold other people are putting in place for me. Throughout the process of 10-10-10, I’d watch my film and think it wasn’t “cool” enough, or “modern” enough, and I would spend a lot of time re-editing and changing things to try and make it something that my audience would like more. I was trying to force my film to be great. In the midst of all that, I realized that the most important thing in film isn’t appealing to the audience, but instead telling a story that I’m passionate about, because in the end, love and passion are what show in a final product. I hope that after watching my film, that’s what people see...something I love and care about and put my all into. That’s something that automatically makes a film great.

What was your biggest challenge throughout the filming process?

C: The biggest challenge I had to face on set was filming at the airport. Everyone there was incredibly accommodating, but, I mean, it’s an airport, so we were constantly dealing with passengers walking through shots and really loud noise from airplanes landing and departing. It definitely taught me patience!

What will your emphasis be at Chapman next year?

C: I will be majoring in Film Production with an emphasis in directing.
Back