Lyons Township team goes silent for Film Festival challenge – Chicago Tribune / Doings

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.” Read More >>

by Jesse Wright
January 28, 2025