Alvarado ISD doesn’t necessarily hope to discover another Oliver Stone or Clint Eastwood during its inaugural Tri-County Film Festival for students of Johnson, Hood and Somervell counties.

It does hope to nurture the talents of multimedia prodigies in four genres: drama, documentary, comedy and public service.

Entries cannot exceed 10 minutes  in length and be G-rated for public consumption. Entry deadline is April 30. Beyond that, students are asked to let their consciences, and imaginations, be their guides.

The festival is the brainchild of district technology director Julie Holland and Tracy Shea, Alvarado High School’s multimedia and video technology teacher.

“Tracy has a lot of students who are very interested in film,” Holland said Friday. “She wants to encourage them and give them an outlet for their talents. Students in Tarrant, Dallas and Ellis counties probably have more opportunities like this than students in more rural areas. We decided to start with Johnson County. Then we looked at areas around us to see who might be a good fit.

“We are just at the point of sending the information out, so we haven’t gotten responses yet. We hope we’re going to have really good participation. We’ve done some things like [waiving the] entry fee to encourage any student who lives in the three counties and who wants to participate. That includes private school students and home-school students.

“We’re hoping there are students out there who like to make short films at home and don’t even do it as part of a school project and who are interested in this because we know we have students who are.”

They’re pretty sure this will be a poplar project.

“There are so many kids involved in film-making now,” Holland said. “You can get a video recorder for $50, and you can use software that comes on any computer. And it’s easy. Used to be, you had to have a $1,200 video recorder and $300 software. Anybody can do it.”

At the Cannes Film Festival, producers drop millions of dollars before they screen their pride and joy. At Alvarado, the cost may be closer to $20.

It doesn’t cost much anymore to make a short film, good or bad.

“As a matter of fact, we had a senior at the high school who created a video for us that we’ve submitted to a contest,” Holland said. “He filmed it with nothing but his compact digital camera, and the video is fantastic.”

Holland and Shea didn’t pattern the festival after anyone else’s.

“We already had the basic ideas of what we wanted to do,” Holland said. “Then we looked at some others for ideas. We haven’t formally talked to anyone at the other schools about this.”

The festival founders hope for at least 12 entries in each genre.

“If we got a dozen in each genre in the first year of the festival, I think we’d be happy with that,” Holland said.

More Alvarado entries are expected initially.

“I know we have students here who are interested,” Holland said. “But we haven’t gotten official entries from them yet.”

The genres are self-explanatory. Detailed entry and judging criteria is posted at the school Web site.

“Students can go and see exactly what the judges will be looking for,” Holland said. “That’s out there up front. They’re going to be looking for creativity, technical — whether the audio is clear, whether the students used a variety of angles, whether the lighting was good.”

Like professional film festivals, awards will be given.

“We’ll have trophies in recognition of winners, and we plan to publicize the winning videos on our Web site for everybody to see,” Holland said. “What we are also going to do is have a film festival night on May 17 at the high school. We’ll have screening rooms for each genre, so people can come early, before the awards presentation, and go into different rooms and watch the entries.”

Qualified judges will oversee entries, Holland said.

“One is a professor of film at the University of North Texas, and another is Hillary Russell, a producer for WFAA.”

“Students will submit their videos to us on a disc, either CD or DVD,” Holland said. “The requirements are on the Web page. We’ll have a link under ‘Quick Links’ at www.alvaradoisd.net. There’s an electronic entry form we want people to fill out so we’ll know how many entries to expect. Then they will physically fill out an entry form and include it with their disc.

“We’re also encouraging them to design movie posters to go along with their videos. The student can design it or have another student design it. They can work in teams of up to four students.”