{"id":1908,"date":"2013-05-07T15:42:14","date_gmt":"2013-05-07T19:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=1908"},"modified":"2013-05-14T17:12:13","modified_gmt":"2013-05-14T21:12:13","slug":"st-max-student-keeps-everyone-guessing-with-new-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/st-max-student-keeps-everyone-guessing-with-new-film\/","title":{"rendered":"St. Max student keeps everyone guessing with new film"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/p>\n

Josh Conley likes to keep everyone guessing. <\/p>\n

What, for instance, would happen if the most popular girl in school goes missing during the school\u2019s annual pep rally \u2013 and the five most likely suspects all have water-tight alibis?<\/p>\n

That is something Josh ponders in his new short film, A Guessing Game, which was unveiled Monday at Vaughan City Hall. Vaughan is the first stop in the showcase of York Region filmmakers in the annual Multimedia Film Festival of York Region, which works its way through all nine municipalities before landing back in Aurora on May 16. <\/p>\n

A Grade 12 student at St. Maximilian Kolbe Catholic High School, Josh has always exhibited a rather creative streak, whether it was working with his dad creating stoplights in their garage to trying his hand at acting. At the age of 10 or 11, he decided to put his creative skills behind the camera, taking a camcorder and filming a skit with some of his schoolmates.<\/p>\n

According to Josh, the transition from those early days working in the garage, to behind the camera to emulate the works of some of key influences such as David Fincher (Fight Club, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), happened naturally. There wasn\u2019t a single \u201caha!\u201d moment when he realised that this is what he wanted to do, but once bitten by the bug \u2013 whenever that happened to be \u2013 there was no turning back. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn front of the camera is where I can express myself, but I was never really that great at acting,\u201d he says with a chuckle. \u201cBehind the camera, I realised I could put my ideas into action and tell other people what I would like to see. I like taking something, twisting it, and manipulating it into something that tells a story, rather than just saying something on the spot and being in front of the camera.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can tell the exact story you want to tell.\u201d<\/p>\n

With a penchant for twisting something and manipulating it into place, it goes without saying that A Guessing Game has a twist ending, but to reveal it here would spoil the fun. That being said, Josh says he was very influenced by spy movies, comedies, and when the two converged, so much the better.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to focus on mystery because that is something I hadn\u2019t done before, and I liked the idea of having a big twist at the end to a classical whodunit plot,\u201d he says. \u201cLast year in our Grade 11 drama, we were all doing short plays as a final year project and we had to split into three groups, find a play on the internet, and then, within a few weeks, perform it in front of an audience. My teacher knew I was really interested in film, so I asked her if I could do a film instead of a play, she said yes and, not able to find a script or play online we actually wanted to do, we ended up writing it ourselves, inspired by Bryan Singer\u2019s The Usual Suspects.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was this same teacher, Ms. King, who encouraged the team to enter the film into the Multimedia Film Festival. Their entry, he says, represents an extensive team collaboration of people bringing their best to the table and making sure their best was reflected in the finished product. <\/p>\n

In the lead-up to the first screening, he said they were very much looking forward to meeting everyone involved with the festival, seeing everyone else\u2019s films, and sharing a love of the medium with everyone there. It will be a great experience not just for the filmmakers themselves, he said, but for all people with an interest in film that goes well beyond the latest Hollywood blockbuster.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of our classmates came together to work and collaborate on this,\u201d he says. \u201cIt is a symbol of if you work hard and bring everyone\u2019s skills together, you can make something that is really good. The point is to entertain, but for other kids my age, I hope to inspire them to make films and show that if you can get people together and work hard this is what you can do. <\/p>\n

\u201cWithout my friends, including Jamie Knox, and all the people in our drama class, we wouldn\u2019t have been able to make it. They\u2019re the ones who made it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

With a particular passion for directing and editing, Josh plans to begin working towards his degree in film studies at Ryerson University this fall.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir Josh Conley likes to keep everyone guessing. What, for instance, would happen if the most popular girl in school goes missing during the school\u2019s annual pep rally \u2013 and the five most likely suspects all have water-tight alibis? That is something Josh ponders in his new short film, A Guessing Game, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1909,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/2013-05-07-03.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-uM","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-14 17:30:48","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}