It was a math exam lorded over by a stern substitute teacher that sparked the whole thing.
During the test Imogen Pohl dropped her pencil, and when she tried to retrieve it she got lambasted by the sub. She was told she couldn’t leave her desk, so she spent the rest of the class concocting schemes to get her precious pencil back.
Not long after, some less-than-literary friends asked her to write a script for them, and drawing from that experience she penned the script that eventually became the short film HB. Because she was a “relatively organized person,” she also agreed to produce it.
She had no idea what she was getting into.
Pohl, who at the time was a 16-year-old high school student, had no experience in film. In fact, she had to take to the internet for script-writing guidance (and still didn’t quite get it right). But she dove in, accepting the challenge of organizing a 40-person crew—most with little to no filmmaking experience.
Pohl speaks quickly and with enthusiasm, and even when recalling the difficult parts of producing HB it sounds like she’s griping through a giant grin. In an interview Sept. 11 she recalled the experience.
“It was really difficult to orchestrate 40 people. I didn’t think it was going to be that bad. Originally I cried; I just hated it.”
In the beginning she even hated the film. It was “cruddy,” she thought; there were continuity errors; the lighting looked weird.
She still remembers sitting at the Austin Film Festival wondering “why the hell am I even here?” But then HB won Best International Youth Film, and her perspective changed.
HB also made a splash at several other festivals, and its success even landed Pohl tickets to Austin, where she had the chance to rub shoulders with Hollywood bigwigs like Vince Gilligan and Susan Sarandon.
Before long she was even pitching ideas (one network is keen on her idea for an online series made specially for hearing impaired children) and selling scripts online.
But despite her newfound love of film, Pohl said she still isn’t sure she wants to pursue filmmaking full-time.
“I like film, but I would do it as more of a hobby. I don’t think I would want it to be the main thing in my life,” she said. “I pretty much just write.”
The girl with the boundless imagination, who used to wow her mother with elaborate stories, continues to jot down ideas whenever they pop up in her brain. And while she might not put all her chips into the film industry, she said movie scripts are still a great way to share her ideas with the world.
“It’s not like this book is going to get published. But if you write it as a script than you can actually see it, and then it’s probably going to happen,” she said. “If you film something and even just the cast and crew see it, well at least someone saw it. Whereas if you write something and no one buys it it’s kind of depressing.”
To check out HB, head to the Jasper Short Film Festival Sept. 27 at the Chaba Theatre.
Trevor Nichols
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