SDSS grads’ film, When The Party’s Over, wins big at Forest City and Ontario youth film festivals

Pictured from left are Emelia Auster (video-conferenced in from Scotland), Peer Wahlquist and Rowan Watson, who pays Polly in When The Party’s Over, at the Forest City Youth Film Festival screening and awards ceremony in London Oct. 28. The student film won best narrative at that film festival and, later, the Ontario Youth Film Festival on Nov. 13.

Student filmmakers and former Stratford District Secondary School (SDSS) students Peer Wahlquist and Emelia Auster had their moment in the limelight recently after the film they made with their friends and fellow BearCast film club members in Grade 12 took Best Narrative at two youth film festivals.

Directed by Wahlquist and written by Auster, When The Party’s Over is about a group of friends who, during an unexplained apocalyptic event, decide they want to spend the last day of their lives partying together at one of their houses. The film was shot in February over the course of one 12-hour day inside a friend’s house in Stratford, with their friends and fellow film-club members serving as actors and crew.

Wahlquist edited and submitted the film for consideration at the Forest City Youth Film Festival in London, where it took home Best Narrative on Oct. 28. While Auster, who is now attending the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, couldn’t attend the screening and awards ceremony in-person, Wahlquist, now a film studies student at Sheridan College in Oakville, made the trip to London and video conferenced Auster in so the pair could experience the event together.

After winning at the London youth film festival, the film was then entered into the Ontario Youth Film Festival, where it won the top prize in the same category during a virtual screening and awards ceremony on Nov. 13.

“It was very fulfilling for me, personally, because it was something we’d been gearing this film towards for a long time,” Wahlquist said. “I had decent prospects for the Forest City festival, even though I was really nervous the day of, but I had no idea how we were going to perform at the Ontario Youth Film Festival since last year, there was a very strong film that won. And there were some very strong films this year as well, so I wasn’t sure how we were going to perform, but we ended up sweeping the top narrative category, which is very exciting.”

“I am surprised and very happy, but I’m mostly very proud of our team because they put so much into it and we really could not have done any of it without all of our friends who put so much time and patience into us and this project,” Auster added.

While the provincial screening and awards ceremony was entirely virtual, Wahlquist said he enjoyed having the opportunity to watch his and Auster’s film the way it should be watched, on the big screen at the Forest City Youth Film Festival. Not only was it a thrill to watch their work with the best high-school filmmakers in the area, but Wahlquist said it was particularly gratifying to hear it in high-fidelity surround sound and watch it in high dynamic range (HDR).

“We had these cameras that could shoot it in HDR, so we did it in HDR, and then I did a lot with the (sound) mixing as well,” he said. “This was my first time mixing a film on industry standard software and I asked my friend, who’s an audio engineer, to kind of help me out with how I should mix this as professionally as I can. So, to finally be able to actually hear my mix in a space that can support the high fidelity that it is was really exciting for me. There’s so much low rumble in the film; that really enhanced it in my opinion. This was how it was supposed to be watched.”

Both Auster and Wahlquist said they also had the opportunity to learn from the work of their fellow filmmakers, both from the immediate region and from across the province. Specifically, the pair noted the differences between filming a project featuring a large ensemble cast like theirs’ and projects featuring smaller casts.

“The main difference between our piece and the others in the competition is that we were very privileged to have a pre-existing team of so many people,” Auster said. “We were in a very different style of production because we knew we had a much bigger crew to work with, so I think that’s ultimately what was able to set us apart – because, you know, the power of friendship.

“What I thought was very cool about (the films from the Ontario Youth Film Festival) was a lot of them shot on location; one of them shot at Times Square. Often, when I’m starting to work on a project, I think about and I talk with Peer about what we can feasibly do as we are often working within constraints. Our piece is set in one house because we knew that was what we had, but it’s interesting to think about how much further we could go.”

Both Auster and Wahlquist have taken their film festival wins as encouragement to begin work on a new film they hope to shoot with their friends when they come back to Stratford for the summer next year.