Meet YDA Student Filmmaker Ethan Frederick

It makes sense that YDA student Ethan Frederick wanted to make a personal film about COVID-19. After all, his mother’s a nurse, his father is a teacher and his older brother had to return home from college. “There were interesting perspectives I wanted to highlight. Those were candid conversations that taught me a lot,” he said.

Ethan’s family represents the range of challenges Americans are facing in the pandemic. The Pine Creek High School senior said the summer YDA program was spent mostly on the pre-production and workshopping aspects of filmmaking. “We worked on finding and building a story!”

Then with support from YDA faculty and filmmakers, he embarked on filming entirely from home. Despite not having the live face-to-face interactions with other YDA participants, Ethan said he loved building relationships with his YDA peers. “It was a challenge but every one of us was very open about our ideas and experiences. My favorite part was creating ideas with each other. It felt really good to share stories with other people.” He said he is still in contact with people from the program online.

Ethan said he hopes to study film and ultimately become a filmmaker. “It’s a dream, really, of mine to go to California for film school,” he added, having just completed his college application to Chapman University.  “I want to be a writer, director and actor. I love everything about film.”

In general, Ethan noted YDA offers opportunities. He said, “It’s really good at helping kids, teens find stories to tell that are impactful and important. There are films about depression and abuse, important issues, that let kids have a voice. I know these opportunities are important.”