‘Silent Orbit’: Redwood Films Out of This World Blockbuster!

By: Ella Chan & Aiden Lupian

Video: Silent Orbit

On Wednesday evening, December 4, Monache High School hosted their 4th annual Porterville Film Festival! This competition was available to enter for all students in Tulare County to submit their work.

Over in Mr. William Henshaw’s Advanced Film class, Jesus Rivera-Lopez, ‘25, Hannah Johnson, ‘25, Lily Seargeant, ‘25, and Tanner Hoffman, ‘25, came together to submit a Sci-fi film. Their project was titled Silent Orbit. A dystopian sci-fi taking place on a spaceship where a crew is trapped due to an AI platform trying to take over with the main character in this film sought to stop it.

“There were about 20 other schools and a little over 100 videos. I’m certain it’s all over the valley,” Hoffman says. Their film ended up placing 2nd, with El Diamante High School placing 1st. 

“There’s judges who score it, and then over there at the film festival they show others’ [films] the audience can actually vote on to see which one the audience chose,” Rivera says. However, their film placement was based on judges scores not the audience. 

Although they all mutually hoped to place first, they were proud of their work. Johnson says, “This year we got second place, which was kind of disappointing, but at the same time we were going up against El D who is really good with videos.” 

As for the process of the film, it was a tedious process that took many days to complete. Rivera says, “[The film process] was tedious, it took a lot of days, a lot of failed attempts. But we regrouped a lot and we ended up making the project with teamwork.” 

Their team consisted of Rivera writing the script and directing the film, Seargeant as the actress/protagonist, Johnson as an editor, and Hoffman as another editor. 

Hours went into this project, “So shooting it, there was like 6 film days. Each day was like 5 hours, so like 30 hours maybe and that’s not even editing. [Editing took] even more, probably like 10 more hours! I edited some of it, but I didn’t edit most of it. Hannah Johnson edited most of it.” They ended up filming in someone’s garage, and their editing process took place during their first-period advanced film class. 

“It took hours, every single class period I had I was editing, tons of revisions, tons of rough cuts and stuff to make it what it is,” Johnson says. 

“The process of making the film was kind of stressful! We ended until maybe 11 or 12 at night,” Sergeant says. “It was hard, but I got the lines pretty easily. I like acting, it’s like my favorite thing to do.” She enjoys acting so much that she would hope to continue doing acting outside of high school. 

Through the team’s trials and errors and many hours of filming and editing, they’ve each individually come a long way and have improved their skills.

“There’s a lot of trials, a lot of failures, I know now how to think more about it before instead of free-balling everything,” Rivera says. Seargeant mutually agreed with this, saying she believed that their teamwork had room for improvement, but nonetheless, “I’m glad how we put it together.” 

Johnson adds that she was able to pick up film skills with tools such as green screens and sound design which, “that I hadn’t done before.”

Throughout the film, Seargeant gained confidence within her skills. “I picked up a lot more eye contact,” she adds, “especially not looking at the camera as well, because that’s a very vital part.”

This film festival is a great opportunity for all those involved in video who want to put their skills in the spotlight. And the team highly encourages those who find themselves wondering to go for it.  

Seargeant’s experience with acting through this film has inspired her and hopes it can do the same for others.

“Push yourself, pursue what you want to do because you never know how far it’s going to get. They pushed me to do it, and I didn’t think it was going to get that far, especially 2nd place, so I’m actually pretty happy that they did that!”

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