Academy ACL students present new film to theater

Colorado Springs, Colo. (KRDO) -- Academy ACL is the only k-8 school in the country with a fully integrated film program. students have to do it all. They have to write, edit, shoot, and act. Thursday night was the culmination of their hard work.

It was premiere night of their movie "No One". It was supposed to be a red carpet premiere, but thanks to COVID-19, the students had to improvise. Instead, they did a drive-by parade where each student got to soak in the spotlight.

The kids have gotten used to improvising. The students' film company: Geek Think Films, faced a unique challenge when the Coronavirus hit. The film wasn't done, so they had to wrap up shooting remotely, and that took some creative problem solving. They still got it done.

"It's really cool," says editor and producer Kaleb Whitmore. "We got the movie done through all this mess. Now we have something to show for it."

"Generally, we would just have someone go out and get the shot from the safe distance," says editor Jayden Belk. "Then it would get sent to me over email and I would put it in. There's just a lot of tedium."

"It was pretty difficult," Whitmore says. "Thank goodness we had a lot of video meetings. None of it would have gotten done if Jayden Had not been able to take the computer home and and do all the work for us that we couldn't do. He had to upload it and every so often we had to tell him what was new. We didn't have the live movie. We had what he had from a few days ago or whatever and so it was a little difficult."

"No One", which took a year to make, is about dystopian future in which being unique, talented, or different, is frowned upon.

"Everybody has to hide that true talent," says Geek Think founder Anthony Szpak. "If you show that talent and if you show that weirdness, then you are ostracized. There's a small group of kids that this kid discovers are living underground, and it is the weirdos and the misfits."

"I was so proud," says director Illiana Merrel. "I just wanted to give everyone a big hug, but I can't, obviously. I always want to hug everyone after seeing the end result because it's so perfect. It's so crazy to see what I wrote on a script a few months ago come to life. My friends that I've known for years are acting it out. It's so crazy and amazing."