By Meaghan Morton/Malakoff High School
The Malakoff High School UIL film team has made it to the second round of judging with the short film, “The Daydreamer.” The film is one of 43 that has advanced to the second round in the Division 1 Narrative section.
The film features Todd Johnson, a high school student that has vivid day dreams. In this film, Todd is always just one step away from being noticed by his true love, Riley.
“We wanted to make a character that was likeable and a story that was relatable,” said Clay Gaddis, the director of the film, “So I played around with some ideas and then one came to me during school one day.”
With the sponsorship of Karen Cook, Malakoff’s Yearbook and freshman English teacher, Gaddis directed, wrote, and edited the entire film and used students from the theatre department as characters such as the high school jock, Alex Valez (Emanuel Gonzalez); the love interest, Riley (Raylee Stearman); and the main character that is constantly in a daze, Todd Johnson (Clayton Mattingly).
“There were almost 1,000 videos submitted and our students made it into first division second round, it says a lot about the creativity and organization of our kids,” said Jessica Bentley, Malakoff’s UIL coordinator. “We are serious about building a program of success.”
The team will find out if they advance to the semi-final round in the coming weeks, followed by the State Qualifier round, where all of the state qualifying films will be shown in Austin at The Paramount Theater on February 18, 2015. The film may be watched on the Malakoff UIL Youtube channel.
