The All-American High School Film Festival is one of the largest film festivals in the nation. This festival in particular compliments high school students and their work in cinematography, as well as video editing. High school students from around the world have the opportunity to compete and showcase their talent.
Two years ago, the first Redwood High School student to attend, Josh Glass won in the “sports action highlight” category. This year, Redwood’s very own William Youngquist, ’23 is participating as a runner-up to win the “documentary” category with his Edmond Wysinger documentary.
This an opportunity for Youngquist to be scouted by colleges and universities from a diverse quantity of American film schools. He expresses, “I feel I will get a lot of inspiration… to see a lot of the nominees and it was honestly inspiring to see some of the submissions for Slick Rock as well.”
Youngquist has always had a passion for video since middle school. During his middle school years, he found excitement in editing and experimenting with different software programs, such as final cut pro.
His interest continued to grow, “I think it wasn’t until I was making projects for Ranger TV, and then I began branching out from there,” Youngquist says.
For Youngquist, making films for himself that are enjoyable to create has been a priority in his editing career, stating, “A lot of the projects I’ve made, and continue to make, is something that I’ve wanted to do.”
The subject of Youngquist’s documentary is focused on Edmond Wysinger, who was a migrant of Tulare County.
To fulfill this project, Youngquist began by looking into the case during early March. Alongside his parents, he started writing the script around that same time. He then conducted interviews during April and May, although he had already had a draft written for Slick Rock- another film festival.
Going into the process of creating the documentary, Youngquist says, “I didn’t have any pretense; there wasn’t really any other preparation, other than my step-dad giving me the idea, and I went with it”.
As he started looking further into the case of Wysinger, Youngquist’s step-dad and himself conducted a list of possible people available for interviews regarding the case.
After brainstorming and writing a solid script, Youngquist began by reaching out to his interviewees.
Brandon Gridiron, a head administrator of VUSD, was the first he reached out to. Youngquist explained the case and idea of the documentary and had also asked Redwood student, Emerson Pressley, ’22 to voice-over the documentary.
With the process of interviewing slowly coming to an end, Youngquist started adding b-roll- secondary footage.
The most fun part about editing is such a thing like adding music for him, “Finding music for this project was fun to do,” Youngquist says.
After filming interviews and editing the video clips, he then concluded that this was going to be the submission to Slick Rock.
Along the way of submission to Slick Rock, there were some difficulties. A conflict he faced was concerning possible disqualification against his documentary, as there was an image of the Civil War, which includes violent features. Despite this, he was able to revise the part and re-enter the competition, winning first place in the high school documentary division.
All of the hard work Youngquist has implemented into this documentary definitely leaves a surreal feeling, as he described, “It’s just this one idea that was given, and I pursued that. To see [the film] blossom out of what it’s become now, showing people what I’ve made which is just kind of surreal because a lot of projects I’ve made in the past were smaller projects; they weren’t really things that were publicly presented to a lot of people.”
The amount of effort and time he spent editing the film meant a lot to him, especially considering the end result.
“It feels good because I put a lot of work into this, I put a lot of effort. Not just physically, but mentally,” he expresses.
Youngquist admits to overcoming obstacles, “It was taxing and stressful… I almost deleted the project completely.”
Youngquist created an amazing documentary, and will be attending the All-American High School Film Festival in New York which takes place from October 8 to October 10.
You can watch his film here:
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