Showcase

Hello, my name is Vinh Le and I am a senior at Los Altos High School and Freestyle Academy. Currently, I am studying film at Freestyle Academy, and have made the decision to minor in film during my years in community college. Throughout my years at freestyle, I’ve learned a lot about myself as a filmmaker. Through Mr. Taylors, teachings, I was not only able to grasp the basics of using a camera but I was able to develop and understand storytelling techniques that set the foundation for a good film.

My love for filmmaking started even before Freestyle Academy, dating all the way back to when I was in 8th grade. I was making montage edits up until my sophomore year in high school until Covid happened. During the lockdown, I was isolated from many of my friends. This meant that I was not able to create my summer videos anymore. The lockdown was a lot for me. Not only did it sorta take filmmaking away from me, but it also kind of turned me into an introvert. But then came freestyle, and freestyle and filmmaking, it gave me an opportunity to work with other people. This collaboration sets the difference between a really good film and a mediocre film. Film-making has really opened my eyes during the production stages and showed me how much collaboration really goes into making a really good movie.

In other filmmaking, I enjoy working out and lifting weights. I plan on majoring in kinesiology, as I began to grow a passion for fitness and health during the beginning of my senior year.

Senior Narrative: Absconded

This was definitely the most mentally fatiguing project so far at freestyle, which had students write a full-screen play, produced, direct, and edit a whole short film ( with the help of others of course ). Throughout the timeline of this project, there were many ups and downs, but it was a great learning experience for me as a filmmaker. The number one thing i learned during the shoot of the movie is organization and preparation. The number of times that Reed and I had to go reshoot scenes because the shot look bad or we were missing coverage was ridiculous. Even during the production phase, we found out that our whole 3rd act didn’t work. This was the biggest obstacle that I and reed had to overcome, and it meant that we weren’t able to use most of the footage that we shot. But even though that Reed and I managed to pull through and create a film with an ending that works. This showed me that there is always a way to make a good movie no matter what. You just have to be creative and work around things. For me, I love the depth of field, and how implementing really tight shots of the subject creates the feeling of intimacy with the audience. I love good-looking shots where the subject is separated from the foreground, which is why I opt to use the 50mm for mostly ALL my shots. This story follows a car robber’s ( Gus ) journey through the night after realizing that he is not the only one in the car. I really wanted to focus more on Character development when writing.

Video Essay :

For the video essay project, we were tasked to create a video describing our identity and who we are. For me i wanted t0 to explore the idea of Procrastination and how some people view it in a wrong way, but i wanted to explore it with a more positive approach. Of course, too much procrastination is always going to be a bad thing no matter how you look at it. But sometimes, when procrastination is done sparingly, it can be beneficial to the person. A person who takes a mind break every once in a while when studying is always going to perform better than a person who studies continuously with no break. It is always easy to be hard yourself when studying, so giving your mind an opportunity to relax would ultimately make you perform better

What I learned

Being freestyle, I was able to learn about myself, and the people around me. We are all different, all with unique skills that set us apart from each other. For me, it was hard to find out who I was, and what I wanted to become in the future. but after my time at Freestyle, I made the decision to minor in film and carry out this passion that I have for filmmaking. It was a great opportunity working with the equipment and people at freestyle, and it was a great opportunity to learn and develop new filmmaking techniques. I know for certain that what I learn from freestyle will carry on to other aspects of my life as well no matter if it’s a film or just life in general. You always need to be ambitious at what you’re doing and be ready to take risks, because you’ll never know if that project that you scrapped 5 months ago could have been the next award-winning film of the year.