Cameras are rolling at Yellow Door Film Academy

One is a horror film, another takes on addictions to gambling and alcohol. Both films are in the early stages of planning and are being overseen by instructors Carter Vahrmeyer and Eden Kennedy at Yellow Door Theatre Project’s new Goettler Family Foundation Film Academy. 

Yellow Door founder and artistic producer Andorlie Hillstrom threw open the doors of their Line 2 studio for a ribbon cutting to officially open the academy, though the 14 students involved have been attending every Friday night for more than a month.

The open house was held to formally and publicly recognize the financial support of the Goettler Family Foundation. 

The new Goettler Family Foundation Film Academy is designed as a two-year program for students up to age 17, with sessions held every Friday night between September and May from 7 to 8:30 p.m.

“We first supported Yellow Door in 2020, during COVID,” Lauren Goettler explained. “When we saw Red Letter Day (the original film by Lezlie Wade that the Goettlers helped fund), we thought it was so good, so we wanted to keep going. The next year we did a play (another Lezlie Wade original called Nobody’s Children). These are such great kids and the energy they have when they come together has to be seen to be believed.”

Niagara College graduate Vahrmeyer has been impressed with that energy, as well as the willingness to learn he has seen from the kids, who cover a range of ages. 

“It’s cool seeing how the younger ones are learning from some of the older ones as they work in teams,” Vahrmeyer told The Local. “The kids are really enjoying it.”

Before breaking off into their two groups, Vahrmeyer and Kennedy start each Friday night session with a PowerPoint presentation, teaching them the technological basics that go into film production. The lesson this particular evening was on sound equipment. Students were able to get their hands on some microphones they had never seen before. 

Following previous lessons on scripting, storyboarding and story arc creation, Vahrmeyer and Kennedy have allowed the young participants to move on to create their own collective visions.

“They have complete creative control,” Vahrmeyer says. “One group already has their script done, the other is nearly done. Eden and I help guide each group, help push them to get their ideas down. They are very creative kids and the ideas fly out pretty fast. We try to rein them in a bit.”

Maggie Forsyth is grateful for the opportunity to participate in the film academy. 

“My parents (David Forsyth and Shannon O’Connor) both work in film,” said the 16-year-old. “I have wanted to work in film, specifically animation, since I was a kid.”

The horror film her group is working on will be shot in the basement at the Line 2 studio. 

“It is a really scary looking basement,” she laughed. “We didn’t even know there was a basement there.”

One of the students in Forsyth’s group is Marina Tumanova Martinak.  

“We’re calling it The Basement Guy,” said Martinak. “The plot is that there’s someone cleaning here, they hear a noise and they go to investigate. The creature down there is stalking them. They get freaked out by the paranormal happenings and run outside to the car, but the creature comes up behind them.”

Eva-Odile Beausoleil is in the other group that is working on a film with a surprisingly complicated and very mature theme.

“Our movie is about a businessman who has a gambling and alcohol addiction,” said the 11-year-old. “He finds a suitcase full of money, and puts it all on a poker game and loses it. But he unknowingly stole the money from a man, and he flees to another country, where he conquers his addictions.”

Beausoleil said the idea came to her and her fellow students in a brainstorming session when someone shouted out “gambling man.” That stuck, and they created their story around the phrase. 

The Ecole elementaire catholique Saint-Antoine student has been involved with Yellow Door for around five years, having appeared in The Little Mermaid, Shrek and Mary Poppins. She also has a role in the December production of Newsies, to be performed at the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre. 

All three students display an impressive level of maturity and are extremely busy young people, juggling the demands of schoolwork, other Yellow Door classes and the Friday night film academy sessions. 

“A lot of these kids are part of the theatre program as well,” Vahrmeyer told The Local. “They have a really good understanding about how humans work. They’re pretty mature for their age in how they see the world.”

Vahrmeyer says he brings a lot of what he studied in Niagara College’s cinematography and film/television production program to the Yellow Door academy. 

“Definitely the technical aspects and how things are really supposed to be done,” he says, “comes from what I learned there. I used to make my own films long before that. A program like this would have been very helpful for me when I was their age.”

Forsyth added that she has learned so much already in a few short weeks, and gives a lot of credit to both Vahrmeyer and Kennedy.

“Eden is so patient,” says Forsyth. “She is lovely, and really helpful. She knows a lot and she’s really amazing. This is such a great program.”