When you think of what college student films look like, you might be envisioning the stereotypes that media assigns them: comically long shoot days, a budget of about three bucks and Spielberg-sized dreams with the editing capabilities of CapCut. Distraction had the opportunity to sit down with some of the minds behind “12 Strip,” a student film made for a capstone film class at UM. The students’ passion-fueled process resulted in a professional film that greatly exceeded the expectations of an old camcorder and iMovie. Join us behind the scenes to see how these dedicated directors brought their own slice of Hollywood to Miami.
The plot of “12 Strip” follows Oliver, an introverted sophomore in high school who faces a moral dilemma when two unruly juniors ask for his help to cheat a drug test. Being caught up in this scheme forces him to choose between his values and his deep desire for true friendship.
Jordelle Beja, writer and director of “12 Strip,” had the idea for this plot.
“I went to a Catholic school in high school, and we got drug tested. People always talked about cheating on the test, but it was kind of like an urban legend that people would walk around with pee in a Ziploc bag in case they ever got drug tested,” said Beja.
While Beja said she never found herself in a drug testing predicament in high school,“12 Strip” holds a special place in her heart as a love letter to those years.After drafting the script in a screenwriting class during a prior semester, Beja kept “12 Strip” at the forefront of her mind for a while to ensure the film would eventually come to fruition. Come senior year, when Beja got to her advanced filmmaking class, she decided this would be the perfect time to give the script life.
In class, the students assembled their team, formulated their plan and began strategizing how the hell they were going to put it all together.
Pre-Production
To begin filming a movie, you don’t just wake up one day and decide to start recording scenes — there is a hefty amount of pre-production that must go into any film to make sure everything runs smoothly. And Olivia Campmany, the film’s producer, was dedicated to making sure that it all did.
In order to do anything, they needed money.
“The school gives us $400 [for CCA 451]. And that’s what they will allocate to us, and then anything else you want you have to raise yourself,” said Campmany. “So when it came to raising money, there’s one website that almost every film student uses. It’s called Indiegogo. And you create a campaign, and make a campaign video.”
Campmany compared the website to Kickstarter in the way that they were able to set tiers for donations. “If you donated $5, you got an exclusive digital poster, versus if you go to our most expensive perk, if you donated $250, you got an executive producer credit.”
As the team was sharing their site to friends and family, they didn’t want anyone feeling pressured into donating something. So, having those tiers with set “rewards” incentivizes people to donate regardless of the size.
“All the little donations add up,” said Beja.
Subsequently, the second most important necessity for filming is the actual equipment. Chances are that even the biggest film buffs at UM do not have thousands of dollars worth of equipment sitting around the dorms. Thankfully, tuition money can come in handy for cases like this.
“The biggest money saver is the fact that we have access to equipment at the school, because we had like, tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment. And it’s all free from the equipment room,” said Beja.
People and Places
Characters and settings can affect the final product drastically. Beja and Campmany wanted to make sure they chose the best they could and didn’t want to cut any corners.
Campmany was looking everywhere for potential locations they could film at. For the film primarily being set within a high school, this was not an easy task. Although attending UM granted the team access to a variety of classrooms on campus, they wanted the movie to feel authentic.
“I mean for me, I was worried about locations and budgeting because I was scared that we weren’t gonna have the money to pay for everything that we needed to pay for,” said Campmany. “When you have to shoot on campus, it doesn’t look as good. You don’t want it to look like you’re shooting a student film.”
Even though their film took place in a private Catholic school, Campmany couldn’t use local schools of a similar nature due to high renting prices and many restrictions. They finally found luck after getting in contact with someone from Miami-Dade County Public Schools and were directed to Coral Gables Senior High, situated next to Merrick Park and only 10 minutes from campus.
“I went through [their website for renting] and I added just one classroom for the two days of shooting that we were doing there, and that came to $1,000 and that was the cheapest I could get it,” said Campmany.
Having two rooms was great, but the crew needed access to multiple classrooms and hallways. Some of the school administration members helped them by getting them into extra classrooms and hallways while they were shooting. They even recruited more cast members along the way.
“When we were doing our tour of the school, [they told us to], come see the drama room. And I start talking to the teacher of the classroom, and he’s from Queens, we’re chopping it up. And he’s like ‘oh you know, my wife is actually the teacher of the drama class. Do you need any more actors?’ And I was like, ‘so funny I need as many as you could get us,’” said Campmany. “So I took the number of his wife, and she gave me six kids who were interested in shooting.”
For the lead and supporting actors, the crew wanted to find and hire professional actors who were as close to high school age as possible, rather than grabbing a few of their friends from college. To do this, they went through a website called Backstage.
“On backstage, we were able to put a casting call out, and then Jordelle did most of the organization when it came to casting,” said Campmany. “So she was reaching out to everybody, and she did all of our auditions, which are all on Zoom, and all the actors we ended up choosing were local, so we didn’t have to fly anybody out.”
It was a struggle at first. They wanted the casting to be authentic, but to achieve this, they would most likely have to go through the burdensome process of hiring minors.
“I don’t want my actors to look like ‘Riverdale’ teenagers. I want them to look like actual high schoolers,” said Beja. “But we decided to cast our lead [Jackson Greenspan] he’s a high school junior. And then another actor was a senior [Sean Aero]. He was 18 already.”
Professional Touches
With equipment, actors and scenes all established, it was finally time to start filming. Going into shoot days, this crew wanted to embody the same level of professionalism they exhibited when planning. This was not just their capstone class project — it was their serious production.
“[For shoot days] I’m buying food and making sure that everybody’s dietary restrictions are being met. And, obviously, snacks, water and caffeine,” said Campmany. “And then we also have to transport our actors. So for one of our actors, she lived 30-ish minutes away, and she would Uber back and forth. So we had to reimburse her for that.”
Especially because they rented their working locations and hired their actors, it was crucial to them that they mimicked the practice of industry standards rather than student productions.
“On student sets, sometimes it’s not the best situation because the industry standard is no more than 12 hours a day. Every six hours you need to eat something. And I want to make sure that we really uphold those standards, compared to the crazy all-nighter stuff that we do on our own projects,” said Beja.
There was an added pressure from the parents of the minor actors to uphold that standard. Who would want to send their children to be overworked by college students cramming for a deadline?
After the crew finished filming, , they entered the post-production process, where they were working on all the behind-the-scenes aspects to make the movie look and sound great a once it hits the big screen. .
“Our editor is in our class, so that was also her thesis, technically, so she cut the whole project,” said Beja.
Now, students don’t have to immediately go to these lengths to get into filmmaking. Those smaller student films have their homemade charm for a reason. If you have a story to tell, tell it.
“Take the leap. You cannot be scared of criticism, or like anything like that,” said Beja. “As long as you are passionate about what you’re working on and you have faith in your story, [it] sounds so cliche, but no matter what other people say, you’ll be fine as an artist.”
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This article was published in Distraction’s Spring 2025 print issue.
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