Student’s future film project focuses on ‘small talk’
By Angie Landsverk
Area high school students learned how to make a pitch and work on a script during a Wega Arts workshop.
About a dozen students submitted pitches for this year’s Script to Screen workshop.
Wega Arts mentors chose Gavin Connell’s “Small Talk” as the winner.
“I may have danced around my home,” he said when asked what his reaction was after learning his script was chosen.
Connell is a senior at Winneconne High School.
“I got the information from my principal,” he said. “I’ve always been interested in doing creative stuff.”
Connell has been in the high school’s play and musical every year.
He plans to major in musical theater after he graduates from high school.
Participating in Script to Screen helped him “escape the real world creatively,” Connell said. “I was getting the quarantine blues.”
Wega Arts began planning the workshop last January.
Members of the nonprofit organization reached out to area drama teachers.
“The plan was to have each participant submit a ‘pitch’ or ‘treatment,’ which means a detailed description of the concept for a film,” said Kathy Fehl, of Wega Arts. “The only criteria were that the film is narrative, not documentary, and that the film is of approximately 15 minutes in duration.”
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Wega Arts switched the workshop to a virtual format.
“We decided to proceed anyway, realizing that up until the shoot, we could accomplish everything via email, Facebook and Zoom, she said.
Ian Teal contacted Liz Kruger, whom he had worked with in the skit comedy group Afterwords.
The group performed in New York City and on Martha’s Vineyard.
Kruger has built a career in Hollywood, and has been an executive producer and a writer on “Bull,” “Salvation” and now “Charmed.”
She agreed to give a talk and introduced the students to some key elements of script writing.
Wega Arts mentors
“It was amazing to see the kids’ faces light up and to have intelligent conversations with someone actually in the field. That was huge,” said Todd Mallasch, who was also a Wega Arts mentor.
Each mentor worked with a few students.
Individual sessions with each of them took place virtually, as they went from pitch to first draft.
Not all of the students completed the workshop.
In addition to Connell, those who did were Brynn Buchholz with her script “Seventeen,” Kirsten Gregory with “Night Sky,” Joe Drake with “No Peanut Butter,” Micayla Buser with “Moving On,” Tyler Schroeder with “Football” and Eric Hill with “Through the Gates of Hell.”
The mentors worked together to narrow down the scripts to four before selecting the winner.
“Any of them could have been chosen easily,” said Mallasch.
As the winner, Connell receives $250.
Max Hauser was the Wega Arts mentor who worked with Connell.
“Gavin’s ‘Small Talk’ is kind of the story about growing older and learning to let go,” he said.
Connell said he had written some screenplays before, but it had been some time since he had written one.
“It was a great thing at the right time,” he said.
Connell said his favorite part of screen writing is writing about conversations.
“I thought what if there was a short film just about a short conversation,” he said.
“Small Talk” is about a man and woman who were best friends in high school.
Now 36, they meet for coffee and revisit the past.
Connell enjoyed the collaborative process of working with Hauser.
Hauser, 26, graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh in 2017 with a degree in radio/TV/film and has been working as a professional independent filmmaker since then.
He began acting when he was a child and later got to know Fehl and Teal.
Hauser participated in many of their workshops and said they approached him to be part of Script to Screen.
“I was brought on board to film and edit it,” he said.
Wega Arts initially planned to turn the winning script into a film this year.
“After much thought and discussion, we have realized that we cannot legitimize shooting the movie under the current covid conditions,” Fehl said. “We have decided to wait till spring, when hopefully we can proceed in a normal way, and can invite the participants of the Script to Screen workshop to visit the set, and to be involved if they want to.”
Connell looks forward to when that is able to take place.
It will be another opportunity to collaborate.
“It will be fun to see how it comes together, how the actors make it come together,” he said.