Video Productions students hosted the annual Halloween Film Fest on Friday, Oct. 31 during seminar.

The films viewed were “Ignore the Noise,” “Horror Movie Cliches,” “Go to Sleep,” “Serial” and “The Playmate 2.”

No winner was declared due to the technical difficulties, but they hope to have a winner chosen on Monday, Nov. 3.

Video Productions advisor Cindy Swartz describes the process behind creating the films for the Halloween Film Fest.

“Everyone writes a script and we chose the top five scripts for our film fest,” Swartz said. “Once those scripts are selected, the writers become the directors of their own production team. Then the directors decide who they want based on the characters in their script. We have progress meetings throughout so I can follow the students and see where they are along each progress point. Then they have a rough draft they turn in, we critique them in class, they read it and then they are ready for the Halloween Film Fest.”

A portion of the proceeds for the Halloween Film Fest went to the ACCESS House, a program that helps teach special needs students important skills for living independently. Students paid $1 in advance for tickets and $2 at the door and nearly 300 students attended the event.

Junior Dani Stompoly said there was a wide variety of film ideas.

“[I like] all the ideas [in Video Productions] because everyone has some really interesting ideas. Some are not that great, but others are really cool,” Stompoly said. “It’s just a really entertaining class, plus we get to do really fun stuff like [the Halloween Film Fest] where we can raise awareness for the Access House.”

Swartz said that the students learn important skills they can use later in life from the Halloween Film Fest.

“Putting on the films really helps the students in their production teams,” Swartz said. “It really helps with communication, creativity, collaboration, leadership, teamwork and then of course preparing for their film fest competition.”