By Eighteen-year-old Cal State Long Beach film production major Stephen Boyer’s passion and dedication for making and producing films is what made his dreams become a reality.
Boyer, from Pasadena, California, has made countless short films including “Paradigm,” “Abracadabra” and “Opus.” Matt Seidner, Boyer’s best friend and producer said that the time that Boyer puts in makes him stand out. Seidner said he has seen his work ethic first hand.
“He’s such a driven person,” Seidner said. “He always tries to learn new things and gain more experience and I can tell because his film IQ is amazing.”
On the night of Oct. 6, 2013 at the All-American Film Festival in New York, Boyer said he was caught off guard when his short film Paradigm won first place for best overall film.
The hard work and commitment that Boyer said he has put in, finally came to fruition.
“Surreal and unexpected,” Boyer said about his experience at the film festival. “It was the best weekend of my life, it was amazing.”
Seidner said he thought that Boyer was going to win something because of all the hints the staff was giving them.
“We figured that he would win something because we were getting little hints from people who worked for the festival,” Seidner said. “After he won the award for Best Comedy we both honestly thought that was it but then he won the award for Best Overall film.”
Boyer’s mother, Loriann Boyer, said she saw what he wanted to do at a very early age.
“He studied every movie when he was 11 years old. He would film toys with his dad’s camera,” she said.
Brian Claypool, who has known Boyer since he was 10 years old, said he was not shocked that he had got first place.
“I was not surprised at all,” Claypool said. “The film was amazing. He is in a league of his own.”
Boyer said he stands out with his ability to do multiple things like produce, write, direct and act.
He said that there was a time when one of the actors cancelled on the short film Opus.
“The lead actor for Opus had a tragic death the night before they were going to film,” Lorrain Boyer said. “Stephen spent the whole night studying the lead actors role and performed it well.”
Claypool said he thinks Boyer will be very successful at a young age.
“Stephen will be an accomplished film producer and director at a young age much like Michael Bay,” Claypool said.
After getting rejected from every top college University of Southern California, University of California, Los Angeles and Chapman University, Boyer said he was devastated and caught him off guard. Boyer’s dream of potentially getting into a top university came crashing down.
Getting rejected from USC was devastating but he said it was not going to stop him from achieving his goals.
“It was humbling,” Boyer said. “It definitely hurt but it wasn’t the end of the line. That wasn’t the end goal I was sad for a few weeks but I got over it.”
He said he was determined to stay positive and not let him it affect him. He got accepted to CSULB and said he is very up beat
“Going to [CSULB] is not a bad thing, I think its really good school,” Boyer said.
Next month is the All-American Film Festival and Stephen Boyer said he looks forward to going back as judge and guest speaker.
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