Modern-day big-budget films spend years and millions of dollars to produce compelling stories and sequences that captivate audiences. Billings Central’s film class managed to produce a similar effect with only a few weekends to film and a tiny fraction of that budget. The 2023 film premiere event was over two hours long and included two showcase films. It also featured several smaller projects created by students throughout the 2022-23 school year. This extraordinary production was made possible by a concerted effort from the determined film class and their dedicated teacher, Shane Fairbanks.

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Shane Fairbanks

John Pender

Fairbanks said that every 30 seconds that an audience sees takes about 4 hours of work. This quickly adds up, especially considering the extra challenge of producing two films. Fortunately for Fairbanks, he was able to place more of this burden on the students this year. In the past, Fairbanks has always written or co-written scripts for his films. “This year, I had the students do more of that, and it worked out really well. They wrote great scripts. I was more of the producer role where I was making sure things were happening on schedule as much as possible,” said Fairbanks.

Fairbanks also purchased new microphones to improve the audio quality and avoid some of the issues he has encountered in the past. With the new microphones, the class did not need to replace as much dialogue during post-production. “Because of that, I was able to give more  editing responsibilities to the students. In the past, I usually spent 40 days straight just editing constantly, and this time I had them take some of that burden,” said Fairbanks. Of course, in relinquishing some of the burden of producing the films to the students, Fairbanks also surrendered some of his creative freedom. “[It was] terrifying at times. I put tremendous faith in Matthew and Andrea, knowing that they were getting the editing done and that it would be really good,” he said.

Of course, in such a large group, conflict was inevitable. “We had a large group, and they were a diverse group,” said Fairbanks. “Part of the reason we had two movies was we just couldn’t agree on a single film, so I figured let’s diversify and split it up a little bit and see where that goes.” The two groups produced two very different films. The first was called Truth by Morning and was written by Lucy Meling and Sophie Hall. The film follows six students locked in the basement of their high school who come across a mysterious message which threatens that they must “tell your truth by morning, or your lives will never be the same.” Fairbanks said, “I think we kind of pushed the envelope a little bit with Truth by Morning, because it was intended as a drama, but it did have a little bit of comedy spliced in there.”

The second film was written by Andrea Gieser. Gieser began work on the film at the end of the 2021-22 school year. “I spent a lot of late nights during school writing and writing and writing and rewriting and stuff,” said Gieser. All the Time in the World is a romantic comedy that explores the repeating lives of Miles and Vivian, two high school students trapped together in a time loop. Several unexpected twists in All the Time in the World promise to keep the audience engaged and interested.

This is the first year that the film class has produced two feature-length films. This presented several significant challenges for the class. They only had 2 weekends to film both projects, which placed severe stress on the small team of students. Additionally, as deadlines grew closer and the class had to inevitably split up and work through their scenes separately, the students were stuck working with reduced resources on a reduced crew. Sophie Hall, one of the writers of Truth by Morning, said that it was difficult for her to be sure that she and the rest of the team working on Truth by Morning were doing things correctly when Fairbanks was working on the other film, especially given that it was her first year in the film class.

Fairbanks and the upcoming film class are already quite well along in the planning phase for next year’s upcoming film, called Manbat, a laugh-out-loud parody of Batman that chronicles the adventures of Moose Cain, a high school student who believes he is a superhero. The class intends to write Manbat during the summer break. Fairbanks says that he hopes to continue to make comedies for future projects. “I used to love trying to make people cry or to try to make very dramatic films, which I think has its value too, but people want to see kids having a good time.”

While Manbat likely will primarily be shot at Central, Fairbanks hopes to incorporate other filming locations. Fairbanks said, “One thing that I saw was a consistent trend that when we film at school, it feels more like a school project. But on the projects where we filmed outside of school ground like the movie Deus Vult, they were way into it. That just made the excitement a little bit more there, because they felt like they were on a film set. I mean, when you’re crashing a truck through a wall and…watching people dive away from the truck, it’s pretty fun that they get to see that. I’d like to do more of that. Maybe not the action and the guns but just kind of move away from just high school films.”

In fact, the film class has had tighter restrictions placed on their projects in the wake of a previous film, Deus Vult. Deus Vult depicts a post-apocalyptic world in which a man becomes caught up in a struggle between a small town and an oppressive regime. BCCHS films are no longer permitted to include guns, suicide, alcohol, or extreme violence. This is in part due to the film class’s unexpectedly wide audience. “When we first made Deus Vult, I didn’t really care, because I figured our audience would be just our students. Then it expanded and it became much bigger, so we got more press attention, and releasing it at the Babcock really increased the reach, so now we have to much more considerate of who our audience is.”

This year’s premiere got away with a few of those rules. One of the short films included guns (while another jokingly mocked the restriction with a gun-free Western shootout), Truth by Morning contained 2 scenes involving or implying drug use, and both feature-length films involved scenes that were violent in nature. The film class will likely continue to bump against these rules. Fairbanks shared that he has plans to include “choreographed violence” in Manbat. However, he added that the violence would have to be comical in nature and could not involve real guns, which were used in Deus Vult.

Fairbanks said that film class is “truly a once in a lifetime experience” that teaches invaluable skills that everyone needs to be successful. He emphasized that working on a film teaches people how to work together. “When you’re working in a film, you’re working with a team of 20-40 people, and everybody has to do their job,” said Fairbanks. “You’re learning how to communicate, and you’re doing something that is fun.”