This October, ten students from Jenny Hardy’s HTVS/film classes went to New York City to compete in the All-American High School Film Festival. Schools from around the world competed in the competition.

Two months prior to leaving, the ten worked in preparation for the three day film and edit period they would be given while visiting the city. With challenges such as finding locations to a place they’d never been, to hiring actors in New York, the team did their best to prep for the trip. One of the hardest parts of prep work they had was the storyboard.

“The hardest work went into storyboarding the whole video, and the whole film, and making it shot by shot, planning out exactly what they [the team] wanted it to look like. That took a lot of work by our director of photography,” Hardy said.

All of the prep work paid off because the team had everything planned.

“Once we got to New York, it was easier than it could have been ‘cause we knew what we had to do.” says Hardy.

The prompt all competing schools were given was “The Art of…”. Many schools chose to do films of art thieves, heists, and revenge stories. The prompt was open to interpretation, and the Highland team decided to do a more sentimental film.

The result of all this hard work was a five minute short film titled, “The Art of Forgetting”. It follows a young woman as she walks through Central Park holding a box full of mementos from her ex-boyfriend. As she walks she passes places with memories that show the progression and eventual downfall of the relationship.

At the end of the emotion-filled film the young woman dumps the contents of the box into a lake, all except one picture of the couple together.

With this short film the team nominated with eight other teams, out of the 35 that competed. This was a major accomplishment as the team does mostly broadcasting rather than films.

“It was super cool, it was really surprising. I wasn’t expecting it but it felt really good, like all the hard work we went through to get there paid off and it was really, really rewarding,” Hardy said.

Though they didn’t win, they were very proud of their nomination and their film.