“This was a school project that we just went above and beyond for,” said Mackenzie Kortus, a freshman, who with her friend, freshman Hal Lam, produced and released a 58-minute film.

“Changing Fate,” an animated movie, leads into an ancient Britannica setting. Explained by the animator, freshman Hal Lam: “The movie is about a girl who wanted to change her future because she is getting married and she doesn’t love the boy she is marrying, so she ran away from home.”

The movie is separated into five different chapters. Lam, the animator of the film, spent a multitude of hours on the movie; however, the time-span was shorter than expected.

“It took me five days to write the script and five days to make the animation…  It was a Friday and one of the chapters used a whole day… about 9 hours… what is funny is that it was just an 8-minute scene, too,” said Lam.  

When it came to the voice acting portion, both Lam and Kortus were involved.

“[Voice Acting] helped with the confidence because I do have really bad stage fright, so playing the main character in this movie was nerve-racking, but I managed to do it,” said Kortus.

“I edited a lot of the script… I voiced 4 or 5 of the characters, as well as helping scheduling and stuff like that. Hal did all the animations and did the voice overs with me,” said Kortus.

On March 8, Lam and Kortus showcased the movie to friends and family in Shawn Bogart’s room after school.

“The screening was so much fun. We had food and drinks… It was a lot of fun,” said Kortus. “We had a room full of people there. Throughout the movie everyone stayed quiet and everyone was able to pay attention to the movie so that was really nice.”

“I thought animation would be an easy way to showcase animations and stuff like that. This seemed like the best idea to showcase something cool,” said Lam.

Their Accelerated English I teacher, Bogart also can be given credit by bringing the idea of animation to Lam.

“Last semester Bogart told me I could make an animation to show the ideas of a book and I was like ‘Yes!’ and ever since then I have decided to continue,” said Lam.

Both Lam and Kortus decided that even though the process and outcome was fun, they were not interested in pursuing animation as a career. However, maybe this power duo can collaborate once more before they leave high school to give LHS another epic film.

Correction: 3/25/18

An earlier version of this story included a misspelled name. This error has since been fixed.