Film Festival Q&As 2023: Haley Ward

Film: Vengeance

Grade: 11th

What is the premise of your film?

A long-standing high school friend group deals with drama, as high schoolers can be careless with their comments. During this quarrel, one of them sadly passes away. Trying to deal with the tragic loss of a friend, the girls turn on each other while trying to figure out this unexplainable occurrence. You’ll get to see how far they will go to figure this out and to get their friend vengeance.

Without spoiling, what should the audience expect to see?

The audience should definitely expect to see a lot of drama.

How did your group come up with the idea for your film?

We decided we wanted to do a drama early on because we felt that’s what teenagers, including us, enjoy seeing. As we were brainstorming ideas, we decided we could try to base it on the movie Heathers and add a couple of our own twists.

What has the planning and filming process looked like?

It has been a long process. We started back in first semester by coming up with ideas. Once we liked an idea, we had to come up with a plot that would have a true theme and teach the audience something. Once that was decided, we created the screenplay. This was due as our first-semester midterm exam. Second semester came around and it was time for filming. We planned out each filming date day-by-day and included who we needed there, the scenes we were going to film, and what props were required. We finished our filming before spring break, and once we came back, we edited the movie until the day it was due.

What’s been your favorite part about creating Vengeance?

My favorite part about creating this film would have to be how in charge of it we were. Mr. Manders gave us the control to figure out what we’re doing, when we’re doing it, etc. It makes you that much prouder because so much more work goes into it when the assignment is open-ended and it can go in so many directions.

How did you choose the actors/actresses?

The actors have to be students from FHC, so we figured it would be easiest if we were all in it so we don’t have to pull other students out of class if we wanted to film during the school day. The only actor not in our film group was senior Justin Baehr, who was willing to be in our film because his first hour wasn’t too important, and he would be a help behind the camera as a crew member since he is in PM FX.

What’s one word to describe your film?

Climactic.