HOWELL – As the school year begins to wrap up, students in the Music, Video, & Production (MVP) track of the Fine & Performing Arts Magnet Program saw a shining success at local film festivals.
The MVP Program allows students as freshmen and sophomores to take part in classes with both music and production, and video production, for two years. At the end of their sophomore year, they get to choose between focusing on video or music production.
“As the students progress through the grade levels, the projects get a little more complicated and artistic. We start off with things like learning shot sizes and camera movements. In the senior year they do more experimental work, like longer-form narrative, animation, poetry. Most recently we did a noir project where the students had to work with shadow and light,” said Head Video Production teacher Scott Napolitano, whose been at Howell High School for 12 years. “We cover all different kinds of genres. With the junior and senior classes, we get to meet around one to two hours every day. By that point they’re able to stretch their creative muscles.”
FPAC Video alums John Stillwaggon and Vinny Albano (Howell ’23) join current seniors Justin Marinelli, Andre Paras and Trenton Konopack during the screening of films at Count Basie. (Photo courtesy Scott Napolitano)
During this current school year, students have scored nine wins with an additional 35 selections or nominations at 25 different film festivals. Their films have screened in eight states and six countries in 2023-2024 alone (England, Italy, Russia, Croatia, Georgia, India). These festivals include the Garden State Film Festival, the All American High School Film Festival, the Lighthouse International Film Festival, the Count Basie Breakthrough Film Festival, the Barrymore Center Film Festival and more.
At the Count Basie Breakthrough Film Festival, the following students won awards:
Justin Marinelli – Best High School Film (“The Rain Song,” with rights provided by Led Zepplin)
Andre Paras – Best Documentary (“Against All Odds: The Life Of James Wong Howe”)
Trenton Konopack – Best Sound Editing (“The Haunting of White Hill”)
Justin Marinelli – Best Editing (“Morgan and the Waves”)
In addition, they also had two alums take home the following awards:
Annie Fleisch (College division) for “Home Coming” – Best Writing, Best Ensemble Cast and Best College Film
Shannon Miller – Achievement in Animation for her work on her film “Phoenix”
Sophomores Kaitlyn Thomas, Hayden Vigdor, Emma Rodriguez, Will Alsager and Nick Rescigno after placing second in Video Production in the TSA State Competition. (Photo courtesy Scott Napolitano)
“It’s fun watching the kids’ faces when they get to go to the bigger venues and hear the reactions for the first time, because they’ve watched their project so many times that they sort of become numb to how a crowd could react,” Napolitano said.
“What makes our program special is it’s hard to point a finger at one particular project as being ‘this is our best,’ or ‘that’s the one that’s most unique,’ because they all have different styles. We cover so many different genres,” Napolitano added.
Napolitano noted one of the most interesting stories that came out of this past year was Justin Marinelli’s “The Rain Song.”
“He actually got the rights from Led Zeppelin to produce this and put it out in film festivals,” Napolitano said. “It would have been an enough of an accomplishment to just film something that looks as pretty as that, but to have gone the extra mile to get the clearance rights, that’s pretty special to see from a high school project.”
“We have one student who did a documentary about a cinematographer that has been dead since the 70s, and he kept the entire audience interested. We’ve got a horror comedy that has people laughing a couple minutes after a tragic piece. Each of them just has a different kind of feeling. I think that’s what makes it special going to see our projects, that you’re not going to see the same – you’ll get a selection,” Napolitano said.
Members of the junior and senior class at Jackson Liberty’s 2024 NJ High School Film Challenge. Andre Paras and team took home Best Editing for “The Making of ‘The Better Man’” while “Sold!” took home Best Use of Prop. (Photo courtesy Scott Napolitano)
In the past two years alone, Howell films have won 29 awards, been nominated or selected 61 additional times and have been screened in nine countries on three continents and in 12 states here in the U.S.
This year there are 10 graduating seniors in the program, with eight pursuing film or in the general entertainment or communications field in college, Napolitano said.
“It’s a credit to all of my students in the upper classman years that they’ve been able to get recognized so often for their work and in many different styles. They have to put in long hours and sometimes have to sacrifice free time and give up on typical teenage fun days so that they can be on set and work the long hours and sometimes stay up overnight to edit things for deadlines. And then have to foresight to go out into the world so that people can see it. It’s really a great joy as a teacher to hear the feedback from crowds when they talk about how wonderful they find a project to be,” Napolitano expressed.
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