Lights, camera, action! A team of Bethel students is hosting auditions for “Fear the Fog,” a short film by Jayden Jordan created for the Hollywood Comes to Hampton film competition. If you are interested in being a professional actor or working in the film industry, now is your chance to collaborate with real industry actors and experts. 

Hollywood Comes to Hampton is a film competition hosted by professional actors Jacob Young and Trent Garrett, which began this past fall. Since October, a team of Bethel students have been script writing and planning their entry, a short film titled “Fear the Fog.” 

Miya Sumpter, the competition coordinator, hosts meetings on Zoom every Tuesday and at the library every Wednesday for the Bethel team. At these meetings, students break up into groups based on their roles, which range from hair and makeup design to light and art direction.

According to Sumpter, preliminary production is going very well, and Bethel’s team is making excellent progress. The script’s main writer, Jayden Jordan, will have a say in many of the filming, directing, and producing decisions moving forward. 

“For our school, Jayden Jordan is the person that wrote the script, and so he has a lot of creative influence on how the movie goes,” Sumpter stated. “This is…Jayden’s opportunity to shine and possibly receive an IMDB credit for the script.”

The key to the Bethel team’s success so far has been organization.  Ms. Sumpter explained that each team role is important, and they were created and assigned by professionals helping with the short film. 

“Trent Garrett gave us a list of positions that he would want us to fill to help with the actual production of the movie,” Sumpter revealed. 

According to the competition’s sponsors, Garrett and Young, this project means a lot not just to the students, but also the professionals helping them.

“[We want to show] that a career in entertainment is 100% achievable,” Young explained. “We want to take the disconnect that [students feel when they think] ‘we don’t live in New York or Hollywood’.”

With filming about to begin this June, the Bethel team is reaching out to invite you to join them in the next phase of the competition: filming and production. This phase begins in June, and participating students will get to shoot at spine-chilling locations. Once filming is complete, the team will have access to real Hollywood special effects to create a more eerie atmosphere. 

After “Fear the Fog” is complete, the Hampton community will have the chance to view each high school’s film, and viewers will decide which school goes onto the next round of competition: the National Film Fest. 

Interested yet? You can click this link to begin the audition process to act in the film, or help out with another aspect of production. All applications are due by no later than May 9th, so do not miss out on this once in a lifetime opportunity!