ELY- The start of the Ely Film Festival on Friday, Feb. 9, was 20 minutes late because of projection problems, and that nearly prevented the showing of a film short that a group of local student film makers had come to see. They breathed a sigh of relief when the festival director decided the show, including the short ones, must go on.
The short began, delivering a perfect parody of the plot memes and “found footage” style of the famous 1999 Blair Witch Project. The audience in the sold-out theater loved it, roaring in laughter at the well-done parody and excellent timing. The short was “Haunting at the Mines.” It was created by four students at Vermilion Country School in Tower.
“They went off on their own and filmed the entire thing on their cell phones,” said Karin Schmidt, the VCS teacher who accompanied the four film makers and seven other students, grades 7 through 10, for the Indigenous Student Day programming on Feb. 9 at the Ely Film Festival.
The short takes place in the Soudan Mine State Park. “It took one day to make it,” said Landon Wellander, one of the four film makers. “It’s about what happens in this abandoned mine with paranormal activity.”
“The students then met with Jacob White,” Schmidt explained. “Jacob helped with the editing and putting it together.”
White is a professional film maker who taught a class during the first quarter of the 2023-24 school year at VCS. White is also the festival director and founder of the Ely Film Festival.
The other three film makers of “Haunting at the Mines” are Bentley Crego, Logan Kainz, and Marcus Drake. All four were part of the class that White taught this fall.
The short is indeed short. “It’s only a few minutes,” Drake said, “like a minute and 40 seconds or something close to that … It was fun to make.”
“I took the class because it was an opportunity I might not have otherwise,” said Wellander.
The short was one of two shown before the sold-out “One with the Whale,” which was part of the designated programming for the Indigenous Student Day, a day of films by or about Native Americans. “Haunting at the Mines” was also included in the “Sinister Shorts” at the film festival, according to Drake. The other short which followed “Haunting at the Mine” on Friday morning was also made by local students, as part of the video production club of the Ely Community Resource. That short is covered on page 7 of this edition.
Six schools, including Vermilion Country School, were part of the second annual Indigenous Student Day, which was organized by educator and Ely Film Festival Program Director Ryan Bajan. The students viewed several films and were treated to a catered lunch.