Danbury film students win drone

A new gadget was awarded to DHS as several film students were presented with a drone. Four students in Scott Carrizzo’s film class — Tyana Ross, Trevor Ward-Willis, Gillian Brown, and Abigail Heiden prepared a winning 3-minute film for the HAN Network Fast Frights Film Festival.

This film, “Ashes Ashes,” was among seven other films created by DHS students and numerous others from various schools, and resulted in a DJI Phantom 3 drone as a first place prize. The main sponsor for this contest was Milford Photo, the company that supplied the drone.

The entire film was shot on campus and features scenes taking place in the school hallways, courtyard, and stadium. The main storyline is about a girl who puts on a ring, which results in the occurrence of strange things.

“This film was basically inspired by an antique ring that I had a while back,” Abigail Heiden, main actor, said.

Aside from winning the drone, the four students were also interviewed by the HAN Network on Dec. 11 along with nine other groups of students in a number of activities at DHS.

“We got really lucky because the first day of filming was this really creepy foggy day and after that it was really fun to put together,” said Brown during the HAN Network interview.

The students said they faced several challenges while directing this clip. “We always had to expect that everything will go wrong, like people are going to come in the hall, someone might wear different type of clothes, the bathroom scene actually took two days to film,” Brown said.

Regardless of all the obstacles faced and time devoted, the students enjoyed the contest and are looking forward to filming with the drone in the near future.

“It was so much work and for that all to pay off it’s just such a great deal, it’s just very exciting,” Heiden said.