This year at the North Appalachian Film Collective (NAFCo) film festival, junior Marc Stoufer III submitted one of his films and ended up winning a first-place award for his film.
“I decided to submit it after I finished making the film [because] I’m like ‘Oh hey this is good, I could submit this to a festival’ and so the deadline was that day so I submitted it,” Stoufer said.
Exit Stage Right, Stoufer’s film, is about the issues that go along with putting a film together while undergoing the struggles of COVID- 19.
“We were in a very unique position and I felt like I could tell a story that not many others could. It was clear that everybody really loved what they were doing and that we all had something we wanted to impart on the audience about the importance of theatre. My job was just to display that in as entertaining a way as I could,” Stoufer said.
Like many kids, Stoufer grew up watching movies and feeling inspired by the film. But unlike most, he quickly got to work trying to create his own film and see what he could do to impact the lives around him.
“I grew up watching Disney movies and eventually when I was about eight, I realized people actually make these, they don’t just appear. I was just really interested in learning how films are made and then I thought I could do it too at some point in my life,” Stoufer said.
Stoufer began putting his ideas to work. Although he admits that he started out pretty rocky, he didn’t let that stop him from continuing to do well and work hard to eventually win an award for one of his works.
“Eventually it went from ‘I can do that when I’m older to ‘I’ll do it now.’ So I started writing my first film the summer after 5th grade. And it was terrible but I kept making things, and now a lot better apparently,” Stoufer said.
After becoming interested in film, Stoufer was always looking for ways to improve and become the best he could.
“It wasn’t until later that I would start looking into how I could make films, even if they weren’t as filled with explosions and top-notch CGI. Once I decided to actually start making my own films, it was honestly just a lot of YouTube videos and trial and error until I stumbled across my own unique style and vision,” Stoufer said.
It’s always been important to Stoufer to put his work out there even if nothing comes out of it, at the very least he did all he could, and if he did his best that’s all that matters.
“There’s a line or a playwright by William Miranda and he said ‘Writing and telling stories is knowing an idea in my head and if I don’t write this down, it’s going to stay there, but I have the ability to take this idea and bring it to life, to show people things that otherwise wouldn’t exist and think that its something like I have an idea I don’t know if it’s gonna be good I just want to try it and put something out there,” said Stoufer.
