Students from several Mahoning Valley school districts have discovered that they, too, can be respected actors with a message to impart in a top-quality film.

Mahoning County Juvenile Court Judge Theresa Dellick used grant funds to sponsor short films the past two years aimed at reducing youth gun violence in Youngstown, but their films shared the spotlight this year with school districts such as South Range Local Schools in southern Mahoning County.

The nonprofit OK Inc. of Twinsburg produces about five to six short films per year in the Youngstown area that feature students and adults dramatizing issues that endanger young people, ranging from bullying and drug abuse to eating disorders and sexual pressures.

The short films from the juvenile court featured youths from the Boys and Girls Clubs of Youngstown. The films give realistic depictions of the reasons some young people resort to gun violence and offer hope that such episodes can be avoided. The films have been praised by Youngstown Mayor Jamael Tito Brown and Capt. Jason Simon of the Youngstown Police Department.

But OK Inc. has also had a fruitful relationship with South Range, producing short films four years in a row for the rural district located between Canfield and Columbiana.

The films OK Inc. produced in Youngstown and at South Range were among the most acclaimed short films the company produced last year. South Range won for Best Short Film, as judged in online voting on OK’s YouTube channel, where all of the films are available for free viewing. www.youtube.com/c/OKInc

The Youngstown film “Time for a Change” won several awards also — Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Male Adult Role and Best Extras. The awards were given out Oct. 6 at the OK Inc. Friends4Friends Film Festival at the DeYor Performing Arts Center in Youngstown.

Those awards were chosen by the Friends4Friends Academy, a group of community members who preview the films before they are released.

In addition to Best Short Film, South Range won for Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress and Annual Impact Award. Its topic was self harm and suicide ideation, dramatizing how a young person might struggle with mental health issues and offering ideas for how they can get help.

OK also produced short films this year for Youngstown’s Chaney Middle School and Wilson Alternative School (which won the Best Female Adult Role Award), Salem Middle School and Mathews Junior High School in Trumbull County.

Peggy Pecchio, executive director for OK Inc., said that because of grant funding, there is no charge to school districts who participate in making short films. In addition to the school districts involved this year, Campbell, Austintown and West Branch have participated in the past. OK Inc. has a satellite office in Austintown.

Pecchio said OK Inc. works in 11 counties, but Mahoning and Cuyahoga are the ones that have most embraced the short films. They all address risk behaviors identified by the students based on what they think are the most pressing issues in their community. Working on the films builds confidence that they can make a difference in the lives of others, Pecchio said.

“Our films are shown all over the world on YouTube,” Pecchio said. “We have 450,000 subscribers. We want to start talking about these risk behaviors. We want them to know they are not alone,” she said of viewers of the films, which take nearly a year to complete.

As for the actors and others who perform and assist in the productions, Pecchio said they learn, “I do have the ability to stand up and speak about issues that are very important to us.” She said young people have said that before they became part of a film project, they may have noticed a problem like bullying, but “I never did anything about it. Or I saw a friend suffering from depression, but I didn’t know what to say to them.”

Being part of a film helped them “grow and develop in these skills,” she said.

Dominick Patterson, who won best actor for the Youngstown film “Time for a Change,” participates in speech and debate, “so the short films have helped him think about what he wants to do in life,” Pecchio said.

SOUTH RANGE FACILITATOR

John Rappach, an eighth-grade history teacher at South Range Middle School who has served as facilitator for the school district’s films the past two years, said the quality of the films is a big draw for students. When he agreed to be the go-between for the school district and OK Inc., he watched the earlier films.

“I was so impressed with the finished product. I can honestly say that people are genuinely surprised at how high quality they are. It’s legit. When you talk about script writing, camera work, just everything. It’s something to see,” he said of the films. “I think the quality is fantastic.”

Rappach described this year’s film this way: “The main character is really having a tough time in her personal life. Her parents are divorced. Her biological mother struggles with addiction, and her dad is remarried. Essentially she is having a hard time connecting. She doesn’t really belong. She carries all of the weight of her family situation, and she’s so upset by it that she is thinking that she can’t handle what is happening anymore and wants to end it.”

She called a help hotline, and a woman played by South Range High School student Addie Sell gives her good advice and a kind, supportive ear, and her help makes a difference, Rappach said.

Brooke Neilsen played the part of the struggling girl. Neilsen, who had roles in South Range films the past four years, won Best Actress this year, and Sell was winner of the Best Supporting Actress Award at the film festival.

“The film is called “I’m Here For You,” and what our character learns is there are a lot of people in her life she can legitimately count on,” Rappach said. “Even when her life is falling apart, she is able to take the mature step of reaching out to this hotline and saying ‘I’m not OK.’ She is also in therapy, so she has a therapist who listens to her and tries to communicate that he is there for her,” he said.

Rappach said a key scene is when the character’s friend reaches out to her to say, “‘Hey, you really don’t seem to be OK, and I want you to know that no matter what you are going through, you can count on me.’ I think to an extent, her biological father is doing his best to be there for her, but he also has a new wife, and she has kids who she brings to the marriage, so he is torn.

“To me the message is no matter how bleak things are, there are people who love us and want us to be OK,” Rappach said. “We just have to be willing to reach out and let them know we are hurting. Sometimes people bury it. They might be embarrassed by it. It’s tough. When you reach out to someone like that, you are vulnerable. For some people, I think those vulnerabilities are really scary.”

Rappach said within a few days of South Range’s film being posted on the OK Inc. YouTube channel earlier this month, it already had gotten 5,000 views.

“Last year our film was about bullying, and had over 122,000 views. If you are able to reach thousands of kids or thousands or adults, I think that alone has power, just discussing things they might not ordinarily be willing to discuss,” he said.

Pecchio noted that Neilsen and Patterson not only acted in their films, they sang original songs for them, and both performed their songs live during the film festival earlier this month.

In this nine-minute film, OK Inc. leaned on the expertise of Vince Brancaccio, chief executive officer of the Help Network of Northeast Ohio, to make sure the information about suicide ideation and self-harm was the best it could be, Pecchio said. Brancaccio, who was also in the film, “guided us through the process of making the film because we want to make sure we were not doing or saying anything that would be harmful to a person who sees it online or sees it in a classroom where we show it,” Pecchio said.

NEILSEN

In an interview, Neilsen said she has always liked to sing and act, so when the school district asked students to come to a meeting about the film project four years ago, she went. She found the process of students selecting a topic for the film with help from OK Inc. also interesting.

Neilsen, now a student at John Carroll University, said she had a little trepidation when the group decided to tackle mental health. She wondered “how it was going to be perceived by people and if we would be able to do justice to the topic of” mental health.”

But the results of the film have made her proud, she said. “Seeing the comments after the film was posted and even talking to people at John Carroll and saying ‘Thank you so much for that,'” she said.

“I think (mental health) is such a silenced topic that people are uncomfortable or struggle to talk about,” Neilson said. The film succeeds in “bringing awareness and showing people that you are not alone and there are people there for you. I am just so glad we were able to get that point across.”

Brooke’s father, Scott Neilsen, played Brooke’s father in the film. He said it was an easy decision to get involved.

“Anything Brooke does, I usually walk side by side with her. Brooke had a very decorated speech career at South Range, state qualifier, won a ton of awards. And I was invested in that from a dad perspective,” he said. “It was very easy to make the transition from being part of her speech and debate career to her role in the films.”

Brooke said during the four years in the films, she has not always portrayed a character in crisis. In one film, she has played a “mean” character. In last year’s film, she played a girl who bullied someone and then time traveled back to the 1990s, when her character was the victim of bullying.

“Especially in that film and over the years, I have been able to get a taste of being shy or more of a bully, a bystander or a really big lead” role in the film. “It’s kept me on my toes to act in a different way.”

FOR HELP

Anyone needing mental health help should contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988.

erunyan@vindy.com