LOS ANGELES - What do you call a kid who makes his first movie at nine years of age? Mature beyond his years? Gifted, or perhaps someone special who was born to make movies? All these descriptions fit Ruben Guevara the III. He had and still has as a current freshman at UCLA, an unquenchable desire for making movies.
Ruben showed a startling talent for making movies at a very young age and even as a two to three year old painter gave hints of his budding artistic talents and love for artistic expression. Today, in addition to being a filmmaker, Ruben is an accomplished artist. Ruben entered UCLA as an arts student based largely on his artist's portfolio.
Prior to enrolling at UCLA, he received his "advanced" film training at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA).
Ruben was recognized for his filmmaking ability by Warner Bros. He was awarded their first 'Warner Bros. Film and Television Scholarship' of $10,000 and an additional $2,500 for each of the following three years at UCLA. He is currently dorming on campus and will apply for film school at UCLA in his sophomore year. He said he would also apply to USC and NYU because they are also very good film schools, just in case it does not work out at UCLA.
The award was given to Ruben when he was a senior at Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA) in June of 2005. He said that if it were not for the award he may not have been able to attend UCLA. Warner Bros. is also trying to get him a summer job on a film that will be in production during the summer.
Michelle Crozier, Director of Corporate Responsibility for Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., said about Ruben, "He is a very creative guy and a very technical filmmaker too. He is very prolific. I received a reel from him recently of his most recent film and he is very positive for sure about what he is doing."
Warner Bros is a corporate partner with LACHSA and based on its excellent support of the school and its programs, it demonstrates a willingness help make it an ongoing success.
LACHSA is located on the campus of Cal State Los Angeles. According to Kathleen Lewinsky, Executive Director of the LACHSA Foundation, "50 states nominated their best performing arts school for consideration and LACHSA was one of the top 5 in the nation. Since the other four are back East (i.e., New York, Baltimore, Cleveland, Miami), LACHSA is known as "The Best in the West" performing arts high school. Later in this series of articles more information will be given on the special features and characteristics of LACHSA, a truly remarkable achievement of the educational system and its partners in the Los Angeles area.
His father, Ruben Guevara II, related the following about little Ruben's artistic talent, "When he was 7 years old, in the second grade, he was into the 'Goosebumps' book series and he decided to do a parody on them and he called his series, 'Skin Crawlers', based on his classmates at school. That's when I saw that he was an artist; because he took this on his own to do. It was nothing that I told him to do, nor what his teacher told him to do. He took it on his own to do it and complete it.
"He made a series of at least twelve books, sort of like comic books, 15 to 20 pages each. He illustrated and did the text for them, with a story plot, etc., and they were displayed in the school library. But that is when I saw that he was an artist because he was so determined to do this. He would be up until 1 or 2 in the morning and we didn't stop him from doing it, because he was so determined to do it at all costs. He was always getting A's in his classes. He was an honor student from the first grade."
Cristina Shallcross, his mother, recognized his talent early on, "As far back as I can remember Ruben loved to draw. By the time he could hold a crayon he started drawing. I would sit him on large sheets of butcher paper and he would draw. When we introduced him to paint it was the same thing, he would paint for hours."
"It was also in third grade that he wrote, organized and directed his first movie using all of his friends as actors, the movie was called 'Spies' (about a stolen crystal that needed to be placed back on the moon). At this time he was also experimenting with 'claymation' and stop action animation and made several very funny short films."
Ruben answered a series of questions for The Epoch Times
.ET: How did you get started in Film?
RG: I started in film actually at a really early age. My first fascination with film was when I saw the Nightmare before Christmas by Tim Burton of Disney. So I went out and I tried to do stop motion camera work by myself with toys that I had gotten. That eventually led to "claymation" and then from there I would make short little videos, and I would do the voices, and it would be basically a show I would put up for my family, almost like a puppet show, but on video with characters I would make, and little clay characters. And from that I decided to start writing actual stories and scripts. I was really interested in spy movies at the time, like James Bond, in the 3rd and 4th grade. I had seen all of the films, and so I wanted to make kind of my own thing, so I got 10 or 15 of my friends together to work on this 10 minute film about this crystal that can destroy the world and if these two sides don't get to it before a certain point in time, the world would end, pretty much.
When you're a little kid, you don't think in terms of story lines, it's the end result and the actual struggle itself. And I think that is real interesting to see how my films have developed, and what they are trying to achieve since I was at a younger age. First it was sort of to make the audience feel good about themselves, to make them feel happy. I wanted to appeal to whomever I was making the film for. But as I have grown older, my main aim now is just to shock and just alter the reactions of audiences. I always want them to feel a certain way, and mostly its done through manipulation. A lot of people don't feel that films should be about manipulation, when in fact that is the only thing it's doing, and if you can't be aware of that it's easier to just let in sink in, I guess.
ET: Could you talk a little more about your first movie?
RG: I was in the third grade. And I made my first movie very shortly after I saw this 3D animated movie, called "The Nightmare Before Christmas". I was only used to 2D animation up to that point. It was stop motion action, and it was before Pixar, Universal and other companies started doing computer aided 3D animation. It was not 3D computer animation, but just stop motion action done without a computer. And that really interested me and it seemed like something I could pull off as I created my own characters. I did not realize how difficult it actually was until I started the process. It pretty much taught me that in film whenever you are going to work on something, it's always going to take at least 3 or 4 hours longer than you originally estimated. If you think it is going to take two hours, it will take four, it usually doubles.
ET: What was your age when you made your first video?
RG: I believe I was 9 years of age.
ET: How long was your first video?
RG: I compiled a bunch of videos, I didn't do just one, that ranged from 5 to 10 minutes each.
ET: And this was all stop action motion?
RG: Usually you would press record on the camera for a few seconds, stop it, move the character a little bit, and then do that again, and then you play it back in real time.
ET: Did you do this on your own or did you get any help?
RG: Usually, I would supply the voices, and I would have my Dad do the stop motion, but I pretty much did it on my own, when I could.
ET: Did that first stop action video that you made, which was a series of videos, did you get a sense of satisfaction from completing them?
RG: Usually, I wouldn't, and I would always go back and try to fix something about it. Because there was always something that never worked. As a younger child it is harder to get a story across because we are not even capable of that ourselves. It was a different experience and I think just getting that down and just completing it gave me a sense of satisfaction. But the films themselves, there were already problems when filming, and I knew there would be problems when I was done filming. So, even in the editing process that is where you usually see your mistakes, and editing is all about covering up those mistakes, but I couldn't do that at that point because I didn't have any editing software. It was just like straight to the VCR and cutting it on the VCR and that was it.
In Part II Ruben answers questions about other movies he made.
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