Inspired by the success of former Marblehead High student Wyatt Foley’s movie “Currently a Paperboy,” Marblehead Film Club has finished writing a script for a movie it hopes to show at the Warwick this fall.
According to junior and MFC co-president Matías Watts Cruz, the concept behind the movie is: “Four high school students get together to make a movie, and it’s all going well until one person’s ambition derails the group’s relationships and the movie itself.”
Junior and co-president Quinn Sheib emphasized that this movie’s plot should not come to fruition with his team since they each have different passions. Quinn mentioned his passions lie within the technical side, like camera work and editing. Matías’ passion is the storytelling and writing aspect of film, and junior and secretary Cameron Gibson is passionate about directing.
“What inspired us to take this on is that we’re all super interested in film,” Cameron said. “We all came about that in our own respective ways, but I think especially these two (Matías and Quinn) worked on ‘Currently a Paperboy,’ which is the last production that was made by the film club, but I guess it’s just been a combination of our passions… just kind of wanting to make something that is our own and wanting to be able to express our love for the art.”
He added that his road to discovering his passions was a bit “unorthodox.”
“I had a football injury, and I couldn’t play sports from then on, but I realized I had a lot of passion for other things,” Cameron said. “We made a project for film studies (class), and they (film club) reviewed it in their Google Classroom, like Wyatt, and they would talk about it, and it just kind of piqued my interest, and then I started attending.”
Matías said the movie within the movie will be an 1890s period piece, “so we’ll be able to have fun with costumes, props, all that, and we can have a period piece without it being the whole movie.” He added that the movie is appropriate for all ages, from young kids to seniors, and he hopes the whole Marblehead community will come out and watch the movie once it’s done.
Matías said the script took almost two years to be finalized, but it’s now finished, and the team is now moving toward pre-production tasks such as scouting filming locations and buying costumes and props.
“We’ve all been trying to make the story as good as possible, which is the reason it’s taken so ridiculously long, but we want to make it so there’s a meaning that we’re imbuing, and hopefully we can leave people feeling something,” Matías said. “All of us are dedicated to the story because that’s the basis of all of it.
“It’s the foundation because no matter how good we do in filming, in editing, with our camera, no matter how good the actors do, if the story isn’t there, it all falls flat, right? So we really want to dial in on making the story as good as we possibly can and then we’re going to go forth with production.”
Cameron said he hopes this movie is a launching pad for each of them to pursue filmmaking as a career and go to film school after graduating next summer.
“I hope that we’re all successful one day, and we can look back on this like ‘That was the first step into what we all want.’ That’s what I’m hoping for,” he said, adding that he would like to one day be a director in the indie film industry. “I’d like to make things that are impactful, and I want to be proud of what I’ve done. When I look back on things, I want to make sure that I’m happy with what I’ve done and what I’ve achieved, and being a director is certainly one of the things I’d like to achieve.”
When thinking about the impact that this movie will have, Quinn noted that it’s not just the filmmakers who will be impacted.
“I think doing what Wyatt did for me and Matías for other kids and seeing like you can do this and you can make a film in high school and hopefully play it in theaters, and I just hope to kind of put that impact on other kids,” he said.
