North H.S. grad shoots film scenes in F.S.

A student film crew set up a shoot in the dry stream bed behind Valley Stream North High School last Saturday, the third and final day of filming for a short film written and co-directed by a graduate who chose the location based on his memories of the school.

“The nice thing about shooting on location here is that there’s always stuff here — it’s got, like, a little history,” said Daniel Ennab, 20, of Valley Stream. He stood in front of a cement embankment that had graffiti scrawled across it. “These bottles, condoms, whatever...it really just says already what I wrote.”

Ennab wrote a screenplay titled “And the Boys Go,” a 30-minute film that follows a group of college-bound friends as they spend one of their last days of summer prepping themselves for a party that doesn’t end up happening.

Producer and co-director Matt Hoff, 20, said the script highlights the way that ordinary interactions between friends end up being what give those relationships their substance. “It’s kinda like how the best times of your life with your friends aren’t these incredible parties,” Hoff said. “The best times of your life are these smaller moments that you share, and you can’t realize that until after it’s over...until much later in life.”

The shoot featured four friends, one of them played by Ennab, as they smoke weed and talk about how to respond to texts from girls. Ennab said the experience was a chance to get more comfortable in front of the camera, as he was accustomed to working behind it. He and Hoff, classmates at the School of Visual Arts, in Manhattan, have produced two other films together. This is their longest yet, and it is a personal project which they intend to use for school credit.

Their crew consisted of classmates and friends. They used equipment supplied by their school and rented what else they needed.

Besides exercising his acting chops, Ennab said the project allowed him to brush up on technical aspects of directing, like blocking — the positioning of actors in relation to the camera. He and Hoff also said that the experience taught them the value of being prepared for all aspects of a shoot, and to be able to adapt to unforeseen conditions, like weather. Their first two shoots featured a sunny sky, but with clouds predicted for their final day of filming, they were prepared to shoot in the shade where the sky wouldn’t be visible. It ended up being sunny.

The directors hoped to have a finished product by January, which they plan to post on YouTube after they show it to potential investors. Their goal is to push it to independent film festivals and turn it into a feature-length film.

“The short film is practice for the full-length project,” Hoff said. “It’s good to kind of see how things go, and assuming this all goes well, we’ll be even more prepared for a feature.”