Filmmaker Noah Semeria has been creating a lot of buzz lately. His work has garnered recognition in at least eight film festivals from coast to coast and some states in between. Most recently, Noah received an Emmy award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for outstanding achievement in video production. His experience includes working for a commercial studio in Los Angeles and filming on location, both nationally and internationally. Oh, and there’s one more thing: Noah accomplished all of this before his 18th birthday.
Noah, now a senior at Naperville North High School, started pursuing his craft at an early age. Crediting his middle school love of magic, he became fascinated with the concept of illusion versus reality; and film was the perfect vehicle for him to visually make that transformation. With no access to film classes, the self-taught filmmaker found an education through internet searches and YouTube. Once he developed his technical skills, Noah tackled Adobe After Effects, the industry-standard tool for video compositing, motion graphics, and animation and then signed up for a film production class at the College of DuPage.
After completing three films, Noah jumped into the festival circuit and festival organizers took notice. Locally, Noah was presented with an Award of Excellence at the After Hours Film Society’s Anim8 Student Film Festival in October of this year. Audience members were impressed with his entry, Discoveries: Awakening, a film shot in four states and two countries that, Noah said, captures the “motion of life–moments big and small, while never losing sight of the beauty.”
Using a manipulated time technique that includes speed ramping, hyper lapses, and time remapping, he created a film with rhythm and energy that influences people in a positive way. Festival judges stated, “Noah has an amazing cinematic sense that goes well beyond his years. His film demonstrates creative ability, advanced technical skills, and a great perception of time, composition, and color.”
With applications out to the top film schools in the country, Noah’s next steps are to prepare for college. In the meantime, the rest of us will wait patiently to see him add an Oscar to his collection of awards.
For more info, visit afterhoursfilmsociety.com or call (630) 534-4528.
