There is more to be said about the short film “Color Blind” than is said in the film itself.
It’s a fairly straightforward plot — a girl and boy meet and, suddenly, their black and white world bursts into color. But it’s also a silent film and it was made in 11 days and it was made by high school students from Lyons Township High School so, in a way, it says a lot.
The film was one of 11 silent shorts that debuted last week at the Student Silent Film Festival at the Tivoli Theater in Downers Grove, an annual event since 2017.
Bill Allen, a festival organizer, said this year’s screening was the biggest since the pandemic briefly shuttered the world. Dozens of people turned out, buying tickets and popcorn and sodas — just like any other film festival.
It featured filmmakers from high schools throughout the suburbs and it gave students, both in front of the camera and behind it, a taste of what it’s like to get their work on the big screen. And it provided them with an original soundtrack, too. As the movies rolled on, Derek Berg, founder of the Clarendon Hills Music Academy, performed along beside them, matching the beats of the movie with synthesized scores.
“If you were to pay professional composers to do that, you would be paying around $400 an hour. And that’s like a bargain deal,” Allen told the crowd. “The fact that we’re able to do this and have it in this historic, renovated theater is just amazing for us.”
Allen should know, he’s a veteran of the Chicago television and movie industry and these days he teaches television and movies at Lyons Township.
His students already knew the night was special. None of the handful of LTHS students behind “Color Blind” were first-time filmmakers — they’re taking a media class and they’re involved in afterschool TV Club activities, too — but they had never worked together on such short notice to tell a silent story. The evening celebrated not only the short movie, but their collaboration and the things most people in the audience would ever know anything about.
Like, for instance, silent movies aren’t very silent.
Without microphones to capture sound, the actors, the crew and anybody in earshot can say anything they like as loudly as they like.
“It wasn’t quiet,” said LTHS’ Eva Eggerding, the one of the young people who finds romance in “Color Blind.”
“We had a lot of bloopers,” said Claudio Rodriguez, cast as the boy. Or, they would have been, had the film had sound.
Eggerding added, without sound, laughter and jokes didn’t matter as much.
“Some of the stuff used in the film were bloopers,” she said.
But beyond that, a lack of sound proved to be a challenge at times. Eggerding had acted, but never without dialog, so she said she needed to make sure she didn’t look silly. Frederick Markus, the director and editor, was in charge of drawing the line between acting and overacting. But even then, the lack of microphones was helpful.
“I had to make sure the facial reactions were obvious, but not too in your face,” he said. “But then, mid-scene, you could give direction, so that helped.”
Finding a new way to tell a story was part of the assignment, Allen said. And in a medium such as film, which has incorporated sound for the better part of a century, it can be hard to figure out what makes an interesting, comprehensive series of silent moving images.
“They don’t have any crutches to lean on using dialogue, voiceovers, sound effects or music to set the mood or tell the story,” said Allen. “In the silent film, it all has to be done with the shots, compositions, angles, lighting, camera movements, actors expressions and so forth.
He said even in movies that have portions without dialog, there’s usually music or other ambient sounds to help illustrate the action on screen. All the sound helps to tell a story, not just the words.
“Most high school media programs don’t produce a lot of silent films, so this project was definitely a challenge, especially for students in this generation who are saturated with media of all sorts,” he said. “I think that over the years, this film festival made students focus on the visual storytelling; their shots, lighting, locations, wardrobe, props, and the expressions of their actors all had to be on point. More emphasis on the visual components and less reliance on dialogue, sound effects and music. It pushed students out of familiar territory and challenged them, which is always good in my opinion.”
At the end of the evening, three schools walked away with the top prizes — in no particular order: Oak Forest High with “Unpredicted,” Lake Forest with “Between the Panels” and Nequa Valley High with “Friendzone,” which also took home the audience choice award.
Jesse Wright is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
