‘Batman Starts,’ a film directed by Palisades High students Max Groel and Harry Keenan, was just one of 33 entries selected from 180 submissions for the Fifth Annual Santa Monica Teen Film Festival. The triumph came when their film took three of the top honors, including Best of the Fest (overall winner), best live action and the Saturday Audience Choice award. For their efforts, they received three trophies and $400 at the awards ceremony in the Santa Monica Library auditorium on June 20. According to PaliHi film instructor Kerry Feltham, the six boys involved with the movie are still trying to figure out how to divide the prizes. The nine-minute film, which can be viewed on YouTube under ‘Wangypong The Movie,’ was an assignment for their Film 2 class under Feltham, who in addition to being an accredited high school teacher is also a Directors Guild of America director. ’Any technique we covered [in the last two years], they used and used successfully,’ said Feltham, a Pacific Palisades resident. ’Batman Starts’ begins as a tongue-in-cheek look at crime in Pacific Palisades, which Batman, played with great aplomb by PaliHi senior Dane Majors (son of actor Lee Majors), keeps in check. As the film progresses, the actors get into a fight and Groel and Keenan are left trying to salvage their movie after an actor takes his camera and the Batman cape he has loaned to the production and goes home. Junior John Frohman provides a brilliant take as the ‘Joker’ and Shane Ciacci is a natural as an actor who comes to audition as a replacement. Zeus Lehel rounds out the cast with his assertive opinions. Unlike a studio film, no one was paid, and props, like the rubber shovel, were borrowed. But like many studio films, ‘Batman Starts’ faced a screening deadline and needed to be completed by PaliHi finals week (June 21-24). With all of the cast in almost every scene, scheduling a shoot became a nightmare because someone always had another commitment. As finals week approached, studying for other courses became a priority. Groel and Keenan wanted to reshoot a different ending (‘another minute of something that made more sense,’ Groel said) but there wasn’t time. Keenan edited all seven scenes, each of which required about two hours a day for three to four days. Feltham, who worked at MGM, Warner Brothers and Paramount (associate producer of ‘Shogun’), and won the 1983 Cannes Jury Prize for his short film, teaches students ‘the basics and the grammar of film’ in his first-year film class. Students make a music video, a two-to-three-minute action short, a documentary and a six-minute drama. In Film 2, which Groel and Keenan completed in June, Feltham teaches additional techniques. ‘I give them the nuts and bolts and basic stuff and let them go,’ he said of his second-year students. Once Feltham saw their completed film, he entered it in the Santa Monica Festival and the Mill Valley Film Festival. Groel and Keenan, who began their film careers by making videos of skateboarders, started collaborating in eighth grade at Paul Revere under the name Wangypong. ’We wanted a name for our productions,’ Groel said, ‘so I asked my dad for an idea and he gave me a slang dictionary.’ After finding the name wangy (which means smelly) and pong (cane), he combined them together and got Keenan’s approval. Now a senior, Keenan recently attended a performing arts camp at UCLA with Majors, and is attending a similar camp at Pepperdine with Groel and Frohman through the end of July. ’I don’t want to do general academics in college,’ Keenan said. ‘Cal Arts Film School is my first choice.’ His parents are Liz and Peter (a producer with Backyard Productions). Groel, whose parents are Palisadians Penny and Rick (a television writer), is a senior and hopes to attend a liberal arts college back East. ‘I want the opportunity to try a lot of different things before I decide my career and focus,’ he said. Majors moved from Detroit to the Palisades three years ago with his parents, Karen Velez and Lee Majors. He learned to surf and is a member of the PaliHi surf team. ‘I’m thinking of film and acting, but I am just going to see,’ he said. Lehel, a senior, plays lacrosse and is on the surf team. He moved to the Palisades from London three years ago with his director/cinematographer father Jason and mom Cassy. ’I’m thinking about Cal State Humboldt; they have a good film department,’ Lehel said. ‘I see what my dad does for a living and it’s kind of fun.’ Frohman, who lives in West Los Angeles, would like to go straight into show business, but his father Clayton, a screenwriter, wants him to go to college before making that decision. His mother is Andrea. And Feltham? He wishes he could offer Film 3 at PaliHi.
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