Not only does she enjoy making films, her DVD entry (titled “A Different Place”) won the highest possible prize in the Colorado PTA State Reflections competition this year.
In addition to receiving the gold medal in the Video Production category, she won the arts competition's Mary Lou Anderson Award (the top selection in all categories) for Wyse's four-minute look at an out-of-the-way, scenic spot that's become special to her.
Although her video has no dialog or narrative, it combines a variety of scenes and filming techniques with music and occasional, brief, written words to bring out the concept of “My Favorite Place.” That was the theme judges were looking for in all the Reflections categories this year.
“I love doing videos,” Wyse said in an interview last week. “It gives me a sense of accomplishment. It's really cool.”
The place Wyse chose is located off Serpentine Drive in Manitou Springs. It's identified in her DVD as “Grafitti Falls.” The proper name is Rainbow Falls - an unofficial, park-like spot where Fountain Creek plunges dramatically down a sharp hillside beneath a Highway 24 bridge - but with the proliferation of rock scribbles and artwork there in recent years, “Grafitti Falls” might be more appropriate nowadays.
Wyse said she shot for “an hour or two,” then returned to her Macintosh computer, where she used a software program to edit the footage and work in the music.
The finished product offers some surprises. For one view, she evidently bent over backwards, to a point where the waterfall is shown upside down before it flips back to right-side up with scarcely a wobble. In another shot, near the end, she turned the camera on herself in such a way that half her face shows on one side of the screen in the foreground while on the other side, in the background, the falls are seen flowing up instead of down.
“I like to go there and think,” she said. “It's a nice mix. It's peaceful but at the same there's the chaos of life, with the grafitti and the cars passing above.”
Wyse made her first video two years ago for her grandfather's 70th birthday. She's since used a similar style - film effects with still pictures - to make videos for friends.
“It's fun what you can do with film,” Wyse said. “I really want to be an architect, but if it doesn't work out, maybe I'll try this.”
Westside Pioneer article