Unlike most people, senior Keefer Silverstein has known his career path since he was little and has stuck with it: filming.

“I really want to do filmmaking because I think about it all the time, almost to an obsessive extent,” Keefer said.

Keefer has been creating short films ever since he was younger and plans to further develop his skills in hopes of making a career out of doing what he loves. Although his past short films aren’t his best work, he is constantly improving as he learns more about the art of filming. His interest in creating his own films has always been a very prevalent part of his life, dating back all the way to his childhood years.

“When I was really young, I would always say to my parents, “Hey guys, I have this cool idea for a movie.’ Then I’d literally just explain the [plotline] to them,” Keefer said.

Around the ages of nine and ten, Keefer began making short films using his iPod which led to him being more serious about editing and filming years later.

“I started making some really bad movies on [my iPod], but that led me to where I could be later on down the road,” Keefer said.

As the years went on, Keefer became more serious about his future as a filmmaker and began to find a specific theme that he enjoyed implementing into his movies. Keefer had started writing the script for one of his larger films during seventh grade, but he hadn’t started filming until the summer before his junior year.

“I think [that film] was one where I was definitely like, “Okay guys, this is big. It’s ambitious, and we need to take it seriously; we need to take our time with it.ai??i?? And we did,” Keefer said. “I think that was probably the one we took the most seriously and probably the first one too.”

Keefer typically stays with darker themes in his films, but he won an award for a light-hearted romantic comedy called It’s All in Your Head. The award was for best ensemble- or best cast- for his movie.

“It was a really humbling award because there were only ten, and [there were] like 40 films,” Keefer said.

A large majority of his films contain much more serious themes than the rom-com. Besides the one he won an award for, Keefer does a lot of horror and action films. Keefer also pointed out that he does quite a bit of drama as it’s hard for people at this age to take it seriously.

“I do primarily horror, delving into action because it’s really hard to pull off a lot of action at this age,” Keefer said. “So I like going into that and trying to do our absolute best and just flexing that muscle.”

For one of his much bigger projects called Survivors, he has given some credit to all the help he has received from some of his friends to act, edit, and produce alongside him, like seniors Josh Sweeney and Charlie Soucey.

“They definitely helped me bring [the script] to life,” Keefer said. “Sweeney’s acting is just incredible, and then Charlie acted as a producer as well as an editor, so he really helped bring it to life and helped me stay sane.”

The work is about how teens would survive an apocalypse and can be found on Keefer’s YouTube channel Tri-S Productions, standing for Sweeney, Soucey, and Silverstein. While there are many apocalyptic films, Keefer said this particular one is much different because it’s produced, edited, directed, and acted by actual teens.

“I think it’s a very beautiful thing that hasn’t been shown in a lot of films, especially because they’re made by adults,” Keefer said. “It’s kind of perfect in the way it is because I don’t think you would be able to get that exact perspective from an adult.”

The creation of Survivors had been a long and tiring process as described by Keefer. He had explained that it’s a long and tedious process to create a movie, and one might start despising the film by the end of its production. However, that’s also what makes the movie so amazing.

“Once you’re done despising [the film], you’ve put it all together, and you watch it all the way through, you’re like, ‘All that time spent, and all that money spent, and all that energy, and everything is all worth it.'”