Junior Braylon Kochera’s film “Deadline to Deadline” was accepted into the Omaha Film Festival and will premiere on March 11. 

“It’s always gratifying to know that there are other people out there, professionals who look at your students’ work and think, yeah, this is it,” journalism teacher Aaron Stueve said. “I was super excited.”

Stueve said Kochera approached him at the beginning of the school year about creating a single film from three existing short pieces.

“It actually started as three separate films, then he put them together into one longer piece, and then, made a few changes, and that elevated it,” Stueve said.

Kochera decided to combine all three short pieces because he wanted to highlight every aspect that goes into making videos, newspapers, and yearbooks. 

“You can’t just highlight one of them,” Kochera said. “You can if it’s more short form, but if you really want to highlight all of them and make sure everything is recognized, you have to put it into one whole because you can’t just have 1/3 of it.”

Kochera asked close friends that contribute to the Thunderbeat to help him with parts of his film.

“The biggest challenge I’d have to say, was getting in contact with the other branches of the Thunderbeat that I’m not in,” Kochera said.

Stueve said Kochera had his own classes to attend which made this part difficult. 

“The most challenging part of managing this film was probably just getting him into all three classes when he needed to be there,” Stueve said.

Stueve said Kochera is very talented and is excited to see the places he goes from here.

“Honestly, he’s really good at filmmaking, a good actor, and a good storyteller,” Stueve said. “Really, the sky’s the limit for this kid.”

Stueve said he believes that anybody can achieve what Braylon Kochera has. 

“Get out your phones and your iPads and just start making movies,” Stueve said.