Filming in their backyards and local parks, juniors Hailey Johnston, Jeremy Gaske, Kaitlyn Hartrum and Kara Voisey never let their age, busy schedules or difficulties with equipment get in the way of their passion for filmmaking and music composition. They have created short films together for the last few years and one of their pieces, “Life After the Storm,” recently got accepted into the LA Children’s Film Festival, which, according to Gaske, was “wonderful news” considering all of the work that was put into their film.

“I feel very lucky to have at least an idea of what I’m doing and where I want to go in life. I know a lot of people, even people who are older than me, who have no idea of what they want to do, but ever since I was 10 years old, I knew I wanted to entertain,” Johnston said.

Starting as a child, Johnston writes scripts and creates short films, this marking her fourth consecutive year being accepted into the LA Children’s Film Festival. According to Johnston, she plans to extend her  interest in the process of filmmaking into a major in film production in college and turn her passion into a career. Her most recent short film started for a script writing class that she took for a semester at El Camino, but even once she submitted the first act of the script for an assignment, she completed the film with her friends and submitted their work to the film festival.

“Filmmaking is one of the main things that I want to do with my life and it’s always been something that really interests me, so I took the class because it seemed right up my alley. We had to come up with a concept for a script for the class and I ended up loving it, so I finished the script on my own,” Johnston said.

Johnston has had an interest in movies since as long as she can remember and drew some of her inspiration from her mom, who worked as a producer for several years before Johnston was born and filmed a documentary in 2018 called “Road to 50 Miles.” While her mother’s knowledge of film production and equipment has been helpful, Johnston’s passion was born from a love of movies and TV shows since she was in elementary school.

“In fifth grade, I made my first little film for fun. It was a LEGO stop motion animation and it was really bad, but hey, you gotta start somewhere,” Johnston said. “It’s the same today; even in ‘Life After the Storm,’ the blooper reel is much longer than the actual film.”

While Johnston wrote the script and was in charge of filming, Gaske created the score, or background music, for the film. According to Gaske, his passion for music has always paired wonderfully with Johnston’s passion for film production and Hartrum and Voiseys’ love of acting.

“I’ve loved music since I was little and listening to music with my mom and grandmother was my favorite thing to do as a kid. When I was around 7, I started taking piano lessons and once I got better at it, I began to compose my own stuff,” Gaske said. “Once [the pandemic] hit, I fell out of it until high school, when I became reinspired and remembered how much I loved making music. I started asking for music equipment as gifts and it’s developed into a hobby of mine. I am still in the learning stage of everything, but I really enjoy it.”

According to Gaske, their cast and crew have all been close friends since elementary school, and playing around and creating together has always been a big part of their lives. Their teamwork also comes in handy when it comes to submitting their work to different film festivals around California. They have had lots of success in the past, being invited to speak on large platforms about their films and getting the chance to go to Comic Con in San Diego. Last month, the group went through the submission process again and while they have gotten good news from one film festival already, there are several more that they will get a response from soon.

“One of the events ended up putting our film into a different bracket because our score was original, which really goes to show that our talents work hand in hand,” Johnston said. “It’s really exciting to get accepted into a film festival. We got a Laurel [award] on our film, and our film is being presented at WonderCon, and that’s a pretty big deal.”

Not only did the group get recognized for their hard work and talent, they also gained lots of experience in the process. Johnston emphasizes how grateful she is to her actors, who were in her backyard doing take after take until each shot was flawless.

“I love filming with these guys. They’re just so fun and our actors are amazing,” Johnston said. “It was Kaitlyn’s first time acting, and she did a great job of learning along the way. Seeing her at the beginning and at the end and all of her progress was so cool.”