“It was all about the experience, that was sort of the greatest honor being there and getting to experience this” explained Senior Ben Hume.
“I’m actually sort of coming to terms with a lot of this stuff just now for the first time …When I think about it I think wait a minute, this is really something special that just happened. In this case, this was just something that I’m sure I’m not going to experience again,” said Hume.
This past summer Hume submitted his documentary to the Reel Spirit film competition “It was pretty easy for us to find out that kcpt was doing this…once we heard about it we knew that that it was something that I just had to do “ said Hume.
IB film teacher Karrie Smythia explained the competition “was introduced in May, there’s a lot of kids who weren’t wanting to do that because it was the last week of school. [Ben] took the time he’s one of those kids that will do the extra work it wasn’t like a class project that he had to do, it was just like hey if you want to do this for lettering points go for it and he did it on his own time having that work ethic is going to help him a lot,” said Smythia.
“Real spirit is still something that is put together by teachers. A lot of these [competitions] are still academically based, but this was the first one that I’ve been to that was sponsored by by a very very prominent figure in film. It was also something that was just, you know, the way they did it at the presentation ceremony you legitimately felt like you were Getting to be a part of something that was bigger” said Hume.
The news of winning came at just the right time for the Hume family “It was really nice because his grandpa just died about 3 weeks ago. We found out right before his Grandpa died and it was really nice to be able to tell his Grandpa about it because his Grandpa had been really supportive of his filmmaking” said Ben’s mother Julie Hume.
Hume explained the importance of his family’s encouragement throughout his development as a filmmaker “they are some of the most supportive, or probably the most supportive in terms of getting me out there and these types of opportunities for me so they’ve probably been the biggest help,” said Hume.
Humes’ Mother weighed in on getting to share this experience with her son, “It was wonderful we were really excited to talk to Ken Burns because we’ve been huge fans of him for forever..I was really excited getting to see Ben interact with him and really talk to one of his idols,” said Julie Hume.
Hume explained what it was like to meet his hero, “Burns was incredible because he was just so clearly just had this sort of passion for what he did that you don’t always get from these masters. He was still describing everything and talking about his craft in a way that You know made it clear that he was still as mystified by it and thrilled to be in this line of work as he ever was,” said Hume.
For this competition Hume submit submitted a documentary telling Mike Angels story, a close family friend to the Humes’. “I always sort of kind of wondered, but I think because I was younger kid when we were talking about this, he really didn’t want to spread too much back then I don’t blame him….Most of the stuff I put in the final cut was what I felt comfortable showing but he told me everything. In that was sort of it was a little bit traumatic I guess in a way, because you were sort of learning about this perspective on someone. It’s sort of like learning this great secret about your grandfather great-grandfather or something. It sort of causes you to reassess them in a lot of ways, although in this case I think I have so much more respect for him than I did when we started,” said Hume.
Hume explained what he has gotten from partaking in this competition. “It has given me a lot of things. This is sort of my first realization of how sort of quickly things can come as long as you allow them to happen. You know people always talk about how hard it can be to get into this kind of business but that’s really only true if you’re trying to get up to the top. If you’re just trying to sort of make a name for yourself even among some respected people all you have to do is get involved and be able to get involved and make connections,” said Hume.
