NC offers a variety of clubs and classes to help students acquire an idea of different career paths that might interest them, and give them a head start on their search for a future occupation before they enter college. For NC senior Feron Ali, film and television production strikes an overwhelming importance in his life and inspires him to create meaningful work for his fellow peers and teachers to enjoy. With this inspiration in mind, Ali takes part in his lifelong dream to create a short film and express his talent in filming. Ali named the film Faceless It follows two young detectives on their quest to find the killer. 

He entered his film into the Cobb County Film Festival, an event where filmmakers in the Cobb area submit short films they created to get displayed in hopes of winning the contest.  Ali submitted his film faceless to showcase it to a wider audience and to participate in an event surrounded by people with similar interests and views as him. 

“Before the contest even started, we wanted a serious approach to our film. We had an idea way back before the contest even started and just kinda built off of it. I’m excited to be making this film because it’s always been one of my goals to complete some sort of project that I can be proud of before I left high school” Ali said.

He also spoke passionately about his aspirations to make a movie, and now he finally came together with his NC peers to make a film of his own.

“I learned how to cut pieces of clips and clean up the audio on my own, but color correction, green screening, effects, and other things I learned from taking audio/film at school,” Ali said.

He learned about audio/video class at NC taught by Daniel Knode, but he already understood what it took to make a film and an idea of how to edit. When he took the audio/video class, he achieved a better understanding of the technical process in making a movie.

“My favorite film of all time is Inception. Something about how the movie was written and how the actors all really appreciated their characters respective role, [drew my attention] Inception was a movie I really  studied because so many different camera angles, props, and machinery were used to make the film possible, ” Ali said.

The beginning of Faceless displays the first murder: a young teenager gets chased into the woods by the killer, becoming the first victim, and soon after the first murder took place the killer strikes again and murders one of the witnesses who gave out some vital information helping the detectives to get closer to uncovering the identity of the killer. 

Ali uses his knowledge and skill with filming to edit the movie in a way to make it flow smoothly. He made sure to shoot different shots for different scenes to make the shot more dramatic, and connect with viewers by making them feel the mood of the scene.He also included a little background information on the characters in the film so that viewers could understand the film better and go along with the plot of the film with a smooth understanding of what was happening.

The film did not make it to the film festival, however Ali and his team did a great job of fitting well-made content into such a short amount of time . Overall viewers saw the film as an intense and suspenseful piece that included lots of twists and cliffhangers that made the film feel interesting keeping the audience drawn in and leaving them filled with anticipation for what could happen next.

Hopefully in the future NC students will see Ali make new productions and excel with his future films, and take us along in his journey and allow us to witness how he improves and succeeds with his future films.