Fairview High students become award-winning filmmakers with 'Minus One'

The Fairview High media students behind the school’s first feature-length movie are now award-winning filmmakers, and they’re about to take their show on the road.

The students’ film, "Minus One," recently won two silver medals in the General Entertainment and General Student categories and a bronze medal in the General Low Budget category during the 40th annual Telly Awards.

“Silver is the top award, equal to a Golden Globe, and it is a top prestige award for us,” said 17-year-old Tanner Peterson, the film’s writer-director and a rising senior at Fairview High. “Because of our success with the Telly Awards, we’ve realized nothing is impossible, and we want to test our product to see how far it can go.” 

The Telly Awards are open to professionals, amateurs and students from across the globe, and more than 12,000 entries from all 50 states and five continents were submitted for judging this year. 

The Fairview High group’s competition included videos made for companies like Netflix, Warner Bros. and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

“For high school students to make a feature-length movie this successful is just amazing,” Fairview High School media teacher Bob King said in a prepared statement. “The vision, the commitment and the artistry is something you’d expect from full-time professionals. 

“I am so proud of these students.”

A huge project, a long road

It took a year and a half for the students behind "Minus One" to get their ideas from the page to the big screen. They celebrated their success in March with a sold-out red-carpet premiere at the Franklin Theatre, and since then, there have been other showings and more events are scheduled to follow suit, according to Peterson.

The film originally began as a television series with Peterson penning the first four 10-minute episodes in 2017. It now boasts a run time of an hour and 38 minutes and tells the story of a missing girl.

In all, about 12 students were involved with the writing, editing, directing and production of the movie. The project was the first of its kind for Fairview High, according to King, who has spent 14 years teaching at the school. At first, the team was composed of Peterson and four others, he said in a prior interview with The Tennessean.

“The rest of the group kind of formed as they went along,” he said, noting that the students would often take things bit by bit, calling in who they needed to make it work.

“Over time, it picked up electricity. People got excited. Some were watching to see what would happen before they got involved. It’s like building a campfire. The fire got hot really quick.”

Of all the students involved in the project, about half are returning to Fairview High in the fall as seniors. The other half, already high school graduates, are making plans to attend college, said Peterson, who hopes to continue his work in filmmaking with his peers next year with smaller projects.

“We definitely won’t be doing another feature. While it is a great achievement, it is exhausting and a lot of work. My hours of sleep per night average was three,” he said. “We’ve decided we really want to play with genres and short films.”

In the past, Fairview High has won bronze Telly Awards with short films.

What’s next?

After the success of the Telly Awards, Peterson and his team are now looking at the film festival circuit and they’ve drawn up a large list.

To date, the group has entered its movie for consideration in the Nashville, Atlanta, Atlanta Underground and NFFTY film festivals. Should the film be accepted and do well in Nashville, Peterson said he then wants to consider entering the South Carolina Underground, Chicago International, Big Apple, PUSH!, Dallas Independent, Slamdance, Nashville Edge and Indie Memphis film festivals as well as the Pop Indie Awards.

Nashville’s notification deadline is July 10, which is when the group will find out if the film has been accepted. The group has entered the World and Tennessee directors feature categories because the student category capped each film at 45 minutes, Peterson explained. 

“Basically, we’ve entered the professional categories,” he said. “Winning those three Telly Awards has made us confident.”

Some of the festivals on the students’ list will require a lot of travel. For example, Slamdance is held in Los Angeles, the Big Apple is in New York and NFFTY is in Seattle.

To conserve funds, the Fairview High group has decided to send one or two representatives from its core group of eight to each event with the exception of Nashville, which will be attended by all of the students in October, Peterson said.

The group is paying for travel, festival entry fees and other expenses through an account that’s funded through ticket and movie swag sales. To date, it's made about $9,700 through sponsorships, sales and donations.

“Really, for me, I just kind of want to enter everything,” Peterson said. “We’re definitely doing this because we made a movie, and we want to pull the most potential we can out of it.”

Fairview High’s "Minus One" has two new showings coming up later this summer.

The film will play at 7 p.m. Aug. 14-15 at the Roxy Theatre in Dickson. Tickets are $12 and will be sold at the door.

The group also has an Instagram account for fans to follow at OfficialMinusOne.

Reach Regional Editor Nicole Young at 615-306-3570 or nyoung@tennessean.com.