To start off the new year, we’ve picked one of our most unique artists so far. Combining her passion for the arts and social justice, senior Chayse Shamleffer has been working in filmmaking since her freshman year at KO.
“I used to do photography a lot with my grandpa when I was really young,” she said, “and when I came to KO my freshman year and I took the digital filmmaking course, I realized that [filmmaking] was something I really wanted to do in the future.”
To work on her passion for social justice, Chayse loves to make documentaries. In fact, her favorite film that she created was a documentary that she finished working on this past fall. “It was focused on a girl’s powder puff league in my town and the gender inequalities and other things that they struggled with compared to the boy’s teams,” she said. Since this was a topic that she really cared about, Chayse enjoyed making this documentary while also advocating for this issue.
Although Chayse also enjoys photography, she said that filmmaking felt like the most natural art form for her to pick up. “I think that film allows me to express myself more than I am able to in other art forms,” she explained.
For inspiration, Chayse really admires the filmmaker and novelist Charlie Kaufman, who is known for movies like “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “Being John Malkovich.” “The cinematography and the storyline of [Kaufman’s] movies are all very intense, which I really like,” she said.
To continue this passion in the future, Chayse is applying to colleges for filmmaking. “Figuring out which schools have the courses that fit what I want to do in the future has been the hardest part,” she said. While Chayse needed to submit a film portfolio for each of her schools, the exact requirements are slightly different from one another, which has made the process even more difficult.
With Chayse’s talent, we know that she will go far at any school she ends up at, and they will be lucky to have her. We wish her all the best in her future endeavors!
