Los Gatos, Saratoga high school teens among winners of short film contest
Students from Los Gatos and Saratoga high schools cleaned up in the EmPower Silicon Valley Short Film Competition sponsored by Silicon Valley Clean Energy.
The Sunnyvale-based green energy aggregator asked local students to make films that illustrate how individuals and communities can combat climate change.
The competition awarded $20,000 in scholarships to high school students across Silicon Valley for showcasing clean energy futures and solutions that will help combat climate change. The student filmmakers from Los Gatos and Saratoga were among the entrants who won honorable mention awards of $2,000 each.
“We were impressed by the ingenuity and diversity of the submitted films. Representing the next generation, youth make up a core component of the SVCE mission to combat climate change and ensure a clean energy future. The students' visions of this future were inspiring and uplifting,” said SVCE CEO Girish Balachandran.
LGHS students Om Shastri, Julio Casal and Macha Karpov wrote, filmed and edited “Silicon Valley's Clean Future,” which explores how the government could invest in green initiatives and sustainability efforts.
“We've always been really passionate about clean energy and global warming, and we've never really been able to do anything about it. This was an opportunity where we could do something we really enjoy doing,” Julio said. “We worked really hard on the video, and we were pretty hopeful. … When we got the (award), it was a big surprise and we were all really excited!”
The students, who will all be seniors in the fall, said they drew inspiration from how the government responded during the pandemic.
“Through the pandemic, through the stimulus checks and other governmental policies, we kind of tied that into our video about how the government can fuel the new technologies, and we also brought in electric vehicles and electric infrastructure, so we talked about how maybe spending a portion of the stimulus checks into green infrastructure would stimulate long-term growth over short-term growth,” Om said.
The students filmed nearly all the footage in the four-minute video, including a drone shot of a wind farm and a flyby over Los Gatos High School.
“It was so windy, and we only had a phone for a microphone,” Macha said. “So we had to figure out, how are we going to film with the wind? We tried putting the microphone through a shirt so the wind couldn't get through, but it was just kind of frustrating because we kept having to refilm and refilm everything until we got it right.”
Maia Shama, Kai Otsuka and George Hu, incoming juniors at Saratoga High, won for their film “Monarch Butterfly Effect,” which shows the impact of climate change on monarch butterflies and grey whales.
The group went to a climate change fair in Santa Cruz before working on the project and were inspired by how heavily monarchs have been affected by climate change.
“Last spring, my family and I went to Pismo Beach, and there's a place there where the monarch butterflies come to gather, and they had the statistics on how many came in the previous years,” Maia said. “This year, it was astonishing how (few butterflies) showed up this year. It was really heartbreaking.”
Monarch butterfly populations have declined over the past 20 years due to climate change and other factors like habitat loss and degradation, pesticide exposure and overwintering sites.
George said working on the project helped him see the full picture of climate change.
“We kind of see the numbers and we don't see the whole impact of what's happening,” he said. “When you put things into perspective, it's kind of jarring.”
“Our history teacher, one of his favorite things to say is, `You have to go out there and be the change,'” Maia said. “Everyone sort of knows what the issue is, but nobody does anything about it. So that's what's important about making films like this, showing that we do have interest in this, and we do have ideas.”
George and Kai heard that their film won an honorable mention when they were in their honors chemistry class and texted Maia , who was in gym class at the time.
“I got the email and I was already at the class, and I see George and I start running over to him like, `Oh my god, we actually got it!'” Kai said.
The competition was part of SVCE education initiatives designed to support and engage youth in the community.
This is the second year the SVCE has hosted the competition, and 26 student films were submitted. They were judged by a panel of SVCE board members, youth, community leaders and film industry professionals.