A pair of Oilfields High School grads, who are bubbling with ideas and developing their filmmaking skills, had an opportunity to present their vision to movie-goers last weekend.

Oilfields High School graduates Bailey Kerluke and Zoe Slusar perform as arty, preppy, foreign and skater students in the feature-length comedy they filmed this year, called "Summer School". They screed the movie at the Plaza Theatre on Dec. 13.

Zoe Slusar, 21, and Bailey Kerluke, 23, unveileded their latest accomplishment, a feature-length comedy called “Summer School”, last week in Calgary.

In the past six months Slusar and Kerluke wrote the script, set up the shots and photographed and acted in each scene, edited the footage and refined the finished movie in post-production. During the same time period they both worked at other jobs in order to finance the project.

“At this stage we’re doing it because of our passion, because we love it,” said Slusar, who lives in Black Diamond.

This month the pair put their energy into getting people into the seats of the Plaza Theatre for a free screening on Sunday, Dec. 13. Their promotions paid off. Despite record-breaking low temperatures in Calgary, approximately 150 people attended the premier of “Summer School”.

The comedy is a story of high school students from different cliques who all end up in trouble on the last day of school and have to deal with the wrath of the principal. Somebody pulled the fire alarm, but since nobody will fess up or rat out the culprit the principal decides to make them all do a project over the summer instead of assigning detention in summer school.

“Being in high school is funny and the way the groups are in high school is funny so you take that and put a clever spin on it and people laugh,” said Slusar. “We stay away from what a lot of Hollywood films do — the bathroom type of humour. We like to stick with to witty dialogue and strong, unique characters that people can connect with. Because that’s when people laugh — when it’s real.”

Slusar and Kerluke play students from four different cliques: preppy and popular, artsy alternative, skaters and foreign exchange students. They simplified the process by shooting all the scenes for each group at one time. First, they did all the scenes with the skaters. That had to come first because the skater dude’s hair was the longest and had to be cut for the other characters.

Cutting his hair was just one of many moves Kerluke and Slusar did to get into character as much as possible. They also studied Finnish in order to portray the foreign exchange students.

“Kalevi” and “Marjatta” from Finland get sucked into the fire alarm fiasco, as well. They speak Finnish for many of their scenes, with English subtitles.

To pull that off Slusar and Kerluke wrote the lines in English, used several translation websites available online, studied the accent and mannerisms through Finnish videos posted on YouTube.com and visited the Finnish society in Calgary to soak up realistic gestures and intonations.

Kerluke said getting right into character and portraying all of them honestly was key to storytelling in this film because the scenes are shot with one camera and the camera doesn’t move. All eyes and ears will be on the characters, watching every move, he said, so they had to get it right.

The pair would set up a shot, looking through the camera to make sure the lighting and alignment was right, then hit record, step into the frame and turn on the acting.

“The main thing was getting into character, then you’re ready to act,” said Kerluke.

Laughs from the audience was the evidence Slusar and Kerluke needed to know they had created characters people could connect with. However, the pair was surprised to find out the audience’s overall favourites were the artsy students and the foreign students.

“We took a vote (following the screening) and we thought we knew who their favourites would be, but that varied,” said Kerluke. “So that was a good sign, because it could have turned out that one of the groups (artsy, foreign, preppy, skaters) was badly acted.”

Kerluke and Slusar have been working on portraying characters for years. The presentation of “Summer School” on Sunday is their fourth annual screening. Each year around Christmas time the pair unveil what they have been working on.

Previous projects include short films and episodes of the ongoing series Under Exposed, which features the pair as their own exaggerated characters.

This summer they raked in several awards at the 24-hour Calgary Film Race. In a 24-hour period they created a video that won first place for audience choice, first place for online voters, best acting ensemble and first runner up for overall best film.

Zoe Slusar and Bailey Kerluke are selling DVDs of “Summer School” for $9 on their website, www.untitledonline.ca, as well as DVDs of past projects.

tneely@okotoks.greatwest.ca

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