On Wednesday Sept. 29th, Fresh Films held a premiere of this year’s projects.
Fresh Films was created by Kelli and Estlin Feigley. Fresh Films started out as a small production company that received a grant from a Chicago organization, After School Matters, to teach filmmaking at a high school. “We went in and after one day of film lecture, every high school student was asleep drooling on their desk,” Kelli Feigley said. “Estlin woke up the next day and said, ‘You know what, let’s make them the apprentice crew,’ and so it was born in 2002 at a Chicago public school.”
The premiere started with red carpet photoshoots and snacks in the Brunner Theatre Center lobby. Once everyone had walked the red carpet, they moved into the theatre and were welcomed by the Feigleys.
To begin the evening, KWQC Reporter Rebecca David introduced a clip from behind the scenes from the organization’s spring break camp. The spring break camp is for middle and high school students to learn about a film set and get to work on and film their own work. This year, the students at the camp worked on filming two public service announcements for Quad City organizations Closet2Closet and Food Rescue Partnership. The PSAs that the kids created will be appearing on KWQC over the next few months. Once the PSAs premiered, the students who were a part of the spring break camp came down to the stage and held a small Q and A.
The next items to premiere were trailers of movies, shows, music videos, and documentaries created by Augustana students. One of these trailers was for ‘Hello Sunshine,’ a documentary junior Augie students Haley Clebanoff and Elise Campbell contributed to over the summer in Los Angeles. “You have a mission and you go with it. It’s real world, time really is money in Hollywood,” Clebanoff said about the experience in L.A. “You’re dealing with big names and there’s a lot of professionalism so you have to put your best foot forward and make sure everything that needs to get done gets done as best as possible.”
Campbell commented about her experience working with Fresh Films in both Chicago and L.A.. “I had to creatively solve problems in high-stakes situations and lead others in the accomplishment of tasks,” Campbell said. “Through these challenges I learned and grew as a filmmaker and a person.”
After the premiere of all that had been created in Fresh Films, a filmmaking demo was given. The Feigleys called down 12 volunteers to help recreate a scene from the Fresh Film movie “Alternate Universe.” The 12 kids who volunteered were assigned different jobs on set, such as camera director or actor. This demonstration was to give a small example of how it is on not only a Fresh Films set, but a Hollywood set.
Fresh Films moved onto the Augustana campus in 2016. “It’s a small enough but large enough community where people really care and there’s a lot of support systems. As a small business, it’s really nice to have the energy and the excitement around,” Kelli Feigley said.
With the expansion to Augustana also came the creation of an entertainment media minor for Augustana students to pursue. “Basically anyone who is considering entertainment media, please try it at least,” Clebanoff said.
For students considering an entertainment media minor you can contact Kelli or Estlin Feigley at their emails: [email protected] and [email protected]. Students interested in working for Fresh Films can also reach out if they’d like to be involved with the upcoming documentary “I Am Not Disabled,” which will follow families who have students involved with the theatre department’s Penguin Project over Christmas recess.