‘Parallax Dreams,’ directed by and starring Red Bank Regional’s John Tuohy, seen below at the awards ceremony.
An enigmatic short film by a Red Bank Regional sophomore, shot in and around Red Bank, was a double prize winner at a student film festival last month.
John Tuohy, a 16-year-old rising junior from Little Silver took the top prize in the Big Dreams and Silver Screens Festival held in Rahway on June 3.
His entry, entitled “Parallax Dreams,” won Best Picture as well as the award for Best Short Narrative. Some 200 films were entered in the competition by students from all over New Jersey.
Touhy’s film was selected for screening in the New Jersey Student Short Film category at the Monmouth Film Festival, scheduled for August 11 through August 13 at the Two River Theater in Red Bank.
John is an Interactive Media major in the RBR Academy of Visual & Performing Arts. He’s also president for the class of 2019, an honor roll student and runs indoor/outdoor track and cross country.
Working on the film, which concludes with a scene shot in the RBR auditorium, were several classmates. Noah Kralyevich and Jack Borkoski, student musicians, created the original music for the film. Jay Izzo, a VPA creative writing major, appears in the film, and Ashley Houck, who works with the school’s backstage crew, did theatrical lighting.
“Parallax Dreams” began as a school assignment for a music video, but Touhy expanded it by writing a narrative and extending it into a short film, according to a press release from RBR. He describes it as “an introspective piece telling a story of someone who is lost, growing up and dealing with self-identity issues. It is really up to the viewer’s interpretation of its meaning.”
Tuohy’s been A movie buff since the age of six or seven, when he was mesmerized by the practical special effects produced in the movie blockbuster “Return of the Jedi,” and began making his own movies soon after with a video camera he managed to coax from his family for Christmas. He became an early master of Windows Movie Maker software.
He also wrote, filmed, directed and produced a video about the Civil War for a history project using his friends as actors in the woods of Monmouth County, and created a stop-motion animated short entitled “Direct Impact.”
“My goal is to keep making films better and better,” he said.
As Best Picture winner, “Parallax Dreams” also will get a screening at this year’s Rahway International Film Festival, which takes place September 22-24, at the James Ward Mansion in Westfield.
