OKC teenager Ella Janes has already been making films for a decade, with no plans to stop

Although she's just 17, Ella Janes already has been making movies for a decade.

"I started as a filmmaker when I was 7 years old. I directed a short film with my friends. It was a YouTube parody of a mermaid TV show, and it ended up blowing up on YouTube with 2.8 million views," she recalled. "From there, I started learning Adobe Premiere Pro and editing and the whole nine yards of filmmaking."

Born in Los Angeles, Janes is the daughter of filmmakers Richard and Amy Janes, who moved to Oklahoma City in 2018 to co-found Green Pastures Studio and the Oklahoma Film and Television Academy.

"I'm very fortunate: I get to use the studio and I get to work with a lot of their students on my films. It's given me this automatic in at a lot of places, and it allows me to represent young people everywhere in film," she said.

OKC teenager becoming a mainstay on Oklahoma film festival circuit

In 2019, the teenager made her official directorial debut, "Code Red," in OKC, and the following year, at age 14, Janes became the youngest filmmaker ever accepted into the deadCenter Film Festival with the 14-minute drama.

She returned to the state's largest film festival with "The First 280 Honest Words of My Life," which went on to receive a silver medal at the prestigious YoungArts competition, won Best Experimental at the All-American High School Film Festival and earned her a New Talent Award at the National Film Festival for Talented Youth.

Along with serving as a juror for the high school short films for this year's deadCenter, Janes worked on two projects that were selected for the 2023 festival: She and Julian Felix Aaronson co-wrote, co-directed and co-starred in the four-minute black-and-white "Cut Scenes from a Love Story," and she produced and edited, with Aaronson, "The External-Internal Monologue of an Interdependent Insomniac." A seven-minute tale of a sleep-deprived teenager, which Aaronson directed, wrote and starred in, the latter was named Best Okie Short at the OKC fest in June, making the pair among the youngest winners in deadCenter history.

Before she starts her senior year this month at Classen School of Advanced Studies at Northeast, Janes is taking part in the ninth annual FLY Film Festival Aug. 4-5 at the Gaslight Theatre in downtown Enid. Her short drama "A Woman and an Envelope," about a sexual assault victim who becomes the key witness in her own case, is showing at 4:45 p.m. Aug. 4 at the Enid fest.

The teen talked with The Oklahoman about building her film career, her upcoming projects and more behind the scenes at deadCenter:

Q: What makes filmmaking your thing?

Janes: I've always been very, very passionate about telling stories in general. I used to put on plays with my friends in first grade and mumble lines to them to repeat after me. I've always been a storyteller. ... So, it was a natural path to take on filmmaking and to start exploring different ways I could tell a story and make an audience feel different emotions, represent underrepresented communities and represent stories that I feel like deserve to be told and deserve to have an audience.

Q: Is it important to you to tell stories about young people that are authentic?

Janes: Oh, completely. ... I can talk like a young person, because I am a young person; I can experience this as a young person, because I am a young person. So, I have an advantage as well as a responsibility to tell those stories of young people, to represent my community of young people that isn't always represented correctly. ... It's my privilege, really, to be able to share those stories and sometimes correct stereotypes.

Q: I understand you got to go to New York this summer to receive an award?

Janes: Yes. I went to New York to receive a Scholastic Art and Writing gold medal for a film I directed last year that played at deadCenter called 'The First 280 Honest Words of My Life.' And I got to receive that award at Carnegie Hall, which was really an incredible experience.

Q: Do you feel like you've found opportunities as a young filmmaker in Oklahoma that you wouldn't have found otherwise?

Janes: I think there are a lot of opportunities in Oklahoma for young people to get into the film industry. ... I definitely have opportunities here I never would have had in L.A. ... L.A. is very different. It doesn't quite have the openness to new things, the openness to change and the openness to young people.

Q: Do you have a message for those people who don't take you seriously because you're so young?

Janes: I feel like if you think that, it's on you and your closemindedness. I think young people have always had a really unique take on life in general, because they're so new to it.

And I think a fresh set of eyes never hurts — and I think that's exactly what I am and what my fellow young filmmakers are. And I challenge anyone who thinks that to just watch the films. ...

I think there is a new generation of film coming ... and young filmmakers are really working their hardest to bring diverse communities together and share experiences.

Q: How have you found your community of fellow young filmmakers?

Janes: I met a lot of young filmmakers at the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute for film. I met a lot of people through the deadCenter University programs ... as well as just putting things out there on Instagram and saying that 'I need someone who can curl hair,' 'I need someone who will be able to drive a car,' different things like that. It's all just about really making yourself known as a person and known for what you love, for your passion for filmmaking. And people tend to come to you naturally.

Q: What other film projects are you working on?

Janes: I'm in the middle of editing a short film that's a proof of concept for feature. It's called 'Happiness in the Palm of her Hand,' and it's about my mother.

Then, I am also in the process of editing and producing this other project called 'The Overlock's Dilemma' ... and I'm also writing a feature film that I hope to shoot next summer.

Q: Are you hoping to make filmmaking your career?

Janes: Filmmaking is literally my life. I love filmmaking, and it will always be a part of my life. And I definitely plan on being a filmmaker when I'm older, (a) director specifically. I love telling people what to do; I love bossing people around. (laughs). So, I don't see any of that changing.

ENID'S FLY FILM FESTIVAL

• When and where: Aug. 4-5, Gaslight Theatre, 221 N Independence, Enid.

• Ella Janes' "A Woman and an Envelope" screening: 4:45 p.m. Aug. 4.

• Information: https://www.facebook.com/flyfilmfestival

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Meet the OKC teen becoming a mainstay on Oklahoma's film fest circuit