Hitting play and capturing cinematic shots, the Doppelgänger Film Festival announced its winners. Sarah Rojas, Jessie Li, Grace Ramirez, Charlene Kim, Andres Romero-Serpas, Owen Ma, Jessica Leung, Sean Gabriel Pornan, Saturday Rojas and Chris Hsieh were chosen as film winners for their respective sections.

The fourteenth annual Doppelgänger Film Festival was held for the purpose of opening scholarships and creative opportunities for students. Eye Opener – REACH For Mental Health Scholarships gave a $500 scholarship as a prize for the winners of their section. 

Senior Jessica Leung took home first place in the animation section for her animation film, “Blue Hour.” After preparing for her film conceptually, she spent the rest of the time hand-drawing each of the frames afterwards.

“It was back in January when I started the storyboarding process to figure out the composition of each scene and how one sequence led to another,” Leung said via Instagram. “I then drew all the backgrounds for the film. February and a few days of March were spent drawing the individual frames and editing it all together.”

Her film was a project in her animation class, although she had some personal interest in partaking in the event too. It was inspired by the television series “Gravity Falls” and its paranormal world.

Her film was about a highschool student who found an old camera in a thrift shop. During a time called “blue hour,” where the sun is in such a place where everything appears blue, he can see paranormality through the camera lens. The student goes around meeting the apparitions who still linger in his small town.

“For this film I drew upon my love for ‘Gravity Falls,’” Leung said. “Unlike many fantasy adventure stories where the main character gets transported to another world, ‘Gravity Falls’ brought paranormal occurrences into the everyday. I wanted to do something like where this old film camera opens the eyes of the main character to the supernatural things happening right inside his town.” 

While Leung worked solo, junior Owen Ma worked with a group of five other people for the short film, “Influencer.” He was inspired by “Instagram,” a music video by DEAN. 

“My film was about a social outcast who became obsessed with an internet influencer and eventually descending into madness,” Ma said. “I wanted to enter this competition because I had entered last year, but didn’t win anything. So I felt like I improved my skills this year and wanted to compete for the trophy.”

During the event, nominated videos were shown one by one live. After each section was announced and all of the nominations were finished, they would announce the winner of that section and move on. 

“I had to wait a while until my film was played, but I enjoyed watching the other submissions,” Ma said. “[I would] definitely enter again. I already have ideas for a project I would want to create and enter for next year’s festival.”