Fern Creek High School students make silver screen debut with movie filmed in Louisville
For senior AJ Hampton, like many, hearing the term "student film" evoked images of a low-quality film produced in a backyard.
But something different happened earlier this year when Hampton and other students from Fern Creek High School came together with media teacher T'Shombi Basemore. She spent months filming scenes around Louisville with the same equipment one might find on a Hollywood movie set, all of it coming together in a feature-length film that not only is getting a red carpet premiere but is also making appearances at some of the country's biggest independent film festivals.
"A Perfect Blemish" — the story of a high school girl coping with the death of her boyfriend and giving love another try — was co-written and directed by Basemore, but everything else from cinematography to editing was handled by students.
The movie, which has already been shown at several film festivals, will premiere at Louisville's International Festival of Film Thursday.
The story is not based on true events, but Basemore said he took inspiration from his students on how the film's characters would react to the situations portrayed in the movie.
"We wanted to go inside of a teenage mind of like, you know, how they deal with the ups and downs and still trying to go to school," Basemore said. "we took that (loosing her boyfriend in a car accident) and took the moods that they would have after that to go ahead and be able to storyline."
Basing his decisions almost purely from daily interactions with his students, Basemore chose most of his cast and crew from the classroom, including his co-writer, Joseph Shrewsberry, who recently graduated from the school. Seeing his students every day gave him a better insight into the characters they would play, Basemore said.
Sophomore Collin Skaggs, one of the film's cinematographers, said he liked the experience because it allowed him to put things he learned in class to use for a finished project.
"Being able to utilize like parts you learn in class and adopt roles that you may not be familiar with,” Skaggs said. “Just being able to see your work in action I think it creates like, more of a positive mindset of ‘I can do this’ other than like, ‘I've never done this before. I don't know what I'm doing.’”
The production has also inspired what the students want to do when they graduate high school. Although not all of them want to work in the film industry after graduation, the film inspired them to work on something creative.
“I'm working on a manga that's like, I'm drawing the story and writing the story and I want to publish it,” Zachary Burkhart, one of the main characters in the film, said. “So, film helps me ... understand better framing and character writing and stuff like that.”
Basemore said the students do this “for the love of the craft” since they are not being paid or getting graded for their time and work. But the students believe that Basemore was “the glue that (held) it together,” Burkhart said.
“He made sure it wasn't just the students making Mr. Basemore’s movie — it was ... our movie," Skaggs said. "It was all of our ... independent voice and choice [for] what got put in and what got scrapped and just how in general it was made.”
The movie was developed from March until the week before the school year ended and was shot around Fern Creek and parts of downtown Louisville. Basemore said even the music was composed by Louisville musicians for the film.
The red carpet premiere for the movie was in July and it has been accepted into many film festivals, including the Black Film Fest ATL that took place in September.
Basemore said he hopes the film gets picked up by a major distributor, but if not, he will release it on Amazon Prime and other streaming services.
Watch "A Perfect Blemish" trailer
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: A Perfect Blemish celebrates with teen cast, crew as movie debuts
