Entrants made short videos that depicted what growing up in Malibu means to them.
By Knowles Adkisson / Staff Writer
The winners of The Malibu Times “Growing Up Malibu Youth Video Contest” are: First Place, Isabelle Anderson; Second Place, Blake Snyder and Violet Miehle of the Boys & Girls Club of Malibu; Third Place, Sam Haft; Honorable Mention, Donovan Novotny.
Entrants were to make a video no longer than 90 seconds in length that depicted their vision of what it is like to grow up in Malibu.
Isabelle Anderson, a 10th-grader at Malibu High School, offered a wide variety of Malibu landscapes in her video. Some of the scenes featured children flying a kite, skateboarding, playing in a field filled with wildflowers, driving along a canyon road and a seal sunning itself on a rock.
Anderson said she has been making many videos over the years. To make her movie, she took some of her past videos and edited them into a montage of quintessential Malibu scenes.
“I was trying to show the beauty in Malibu,” she said.
Anderson’s father is a makeup artist in the film industry, and she said she would enjoy working in movies when she gets older.
“I really enjoy it, I try to make a lot of movies like that,” she said. “And I would love to grow up and do something in the film industry.”
Blake Snyder and Violet Miehle of the Boys & Girls Club of Malibu shot a video featuring several young Malibu youth who talked about what they loved about their hometown. Snyder and Miehle also spoke on camera.
Snyder told the camera, “Everybody gets to grow up; we just get to do it here.”
Seventeen-year-old Sam Haft’s video featured a slow guitar groove that accompanied footage of palm fronds, seagulls and surfers riding waves. It also contained a neat stylistic trick, as the video began in black and white, then transformed into color with a shot of a red rose.
Donovan Novotny, a 15-year-old Malibu resident, shot a video with impressive cinematography. Set to “Home” by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Novotny’s video featured skateboarders swooping down canyon roads, twilight drives along Pacific Coast Highway and colorful sunsets on the beach.