LOS ANGELES - What do you call a kid who makes his first movie at nine years of age? Mature beyond his years? Gifted, or perhaps someone special who was born to make movies? All these descriptions fit Ruben Guevara the III. He had as a child and still has, as a current UCLA freshman, an unquenchable desire for making movies.
Ruben was recognized by Warner Bros. for his filmmaking ability. He was awarded their first 'Warner Bros. Film and Television Scholarship' of $10,000 and an additional $2,500 for each of the following three years at UCLA. He is currently "dorming" on campus and will apply for film school at UCLA in his sophomore year.
The award was given to Ruben when he was a senior at Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA) in June of 2005. He said that if it were not for the award he may not have been able to attend UCLA. Warner Bros. is also trying to get him a summer job on a film that will be in production during the summer.
Michelle Crozier, Director of Corporate Responsibility for Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., said about Ruben, "He is a very creative guy and a very technical filmmaker too. He is very prolific. I received a reel from him recently of his most recent film and he is very positive for sure about what he is doing."
LACHSA is located on the campus of Cal State Los Angeles. According to Kathleen Lewinsky, Executive Director of the LACHSA Foundation, "50 states nominated their best performing arts school for consideration and LACHSA was one of the top 5 in the nation.
Since the other four are back East (i.e., New York, Baltimore, Cleveland, Miami), LACHSA is known as "The Best in the West" performing arts high school.
This exceptional high school is a truly remarkable achievement of the educational system and its partners in the Los Angeles area.
Last week in Part I we covered the early artistic accomplishments of Ruben as a young child.
Ruben Continues Answering Questions about his Film-making:
ET: Can you give an overview from 9 years of age when you made your first videos and the videos and films you made before you started at UCLA?
RG: I actually hadn't worked in very many different styles but the genres were always different, it was always live action films. I really didn't get into the animation field because it actually took so long. And I didn't think that I would be able to accomplish as much with those short animation films. So after I did live action for the first time with my friends I decided to keep on making them a little bit larger with more complex story lines.
Then there was another film that I did. Well, until that point, I hadn't really worked on very much after the fifth grade when I had done my "Spies" film.
In seventh grade I made sort of a farce about this one child that came from Mexico to the United States and he was learning about American culture and just how vapid Americans are, and it was supposed to be an extra credit film for my Spanish class and it just turned into a longer story, but it was all straight forward comedy, and there wasn't anything else much to it.
Then after that point in ninth grade, I worked on a script over my summer in eighth grade and in ninth grade I made this film called "McClure Tunnel". And it was about a hit man, again played by children, so there wasn't any substantial dramatic weight there. It was all about children, it was all about me actually, and I starred in it. And I got my friends to film it and act in it with me.
There were about 25 kids in all who ended up working on the film. So it was a lot of people to keep track of and to deal with. But I got that underway and it was about this hit man who realizes that he had created a mistake when he wanted more money because it led to all these other debts. It was just one of those clichéd gangster, drama films. I just wanted to get that style out of my system, before I went on to anything more dramatic.
Being in high school really inspired me to write my next film. Because there were so many things that happened in high school that I wanted to put in a film, but wasn't really sure how. Because I think film in a lot of ways is like just living life and filtering out all the boring moments.
And that is sort of what I wanted to do with this movie. I wanted all the exciting highlights of my high school life and put it in there in a way that was still subtly connected, while not just being a recount of Ruben's life. But just certain events that happened while I was in high school, and it was about these three kids, and one of the kid's girl friends gets raped at a party, and it was actually one of the friends, and then in slow progression all three find out about it.
I actually made so many films; it will take a long time talking about them. That was my fourth. The fifth one that I did was actually a comedy about the supreme court because in my government class we were talking about how sometimes Supreme Court justices can be swayed by corporations and funding, not necessarily directly to them, but by a political campaign. Usually corporations will aid a political leader.
In the film, these mutants take over the Supreme Court Justices' bodies and they start making all these crazy decisions in the court and everything in the judicial system gets turned upside down. And there are these detectives that are trying to figure out what is going on, before the entire Supreme Court turns into mutants. The tagline to the film is "Save Democracy May 2006". It was an AP government midterm that I did with my friend to make a video poking fun at the Supreme Court. So that was one of the projects I did.
Another noteworthy project I did was about my two film teachers. One was actually my television teacher, and the other was my film teacher. Ron Walsh is my film teacher and Norman Cohen is my television teacher. And they have an awkward relationship because they don't like each other too much but they still have to display a level of friendship.
The same friend that I worked with on the Supreme Court film helped me on this one. It centered on these two teachers who tried to fight to the death to take over department chair of the film program at my high school. We also included our teachers and some of our fellow students in the film and it was really great light comedy that ultimately had a lot of action in it, and was so much fun to work on.
If assignments are given out, it is a challenge to me, it's not like a regular home work assignment. I would have the attitude of now let's see what I can do with this and how I can work my films. And I think that is a great feeling to have in high school and early on.
ET: How were your films received in high school?
RG: The students loved them and thought they were great. My school has this end of the year film festival called Moon Dance and that is where I got most of the audience reaction.
I also had a screening over the summer of my senior year. I actually rented out a venue in East Los Angeles and brought in a screen and was able to display in large format all the movies I ever made. And most of the actors in these films showed up, so it was a pretty good turnout.
I recently made a two disk DVD set of my work that I am sending out to the actors and others that were not able to make it.
ET: Did you receive any recognition for the films you made?
RG: Yes. Warner Brothers had a young filmmaker's competition for $10,000 to whatever school you wanted to attend. Altogether it is around $17,500 total and it made it possible for me to attend UCLA.
Warner Bros. is also providing me the opportunity to work as a production assistant during the summer to work on a film or do television work. This summer will be the first time for me to work as a production assistant.