Two Chapman University graduates and former classmates have had their work celebrated as part of the 33 shorts that make up this year’s 25th annual Fine Cut Festival, all of which were broadcasted on PBS SoCal. Fine Cut, is a festival that showcases the latest and greatest in student films from universities across Southern California, while offering them resources to help them continue their careers. Class of ‘23 graduates and broadcast journalism and documentary majors, Hunter Naho’oikaika’s and Brianna Rebecca Schatt produced their respective shorts — “Seeing with Hawaiian Eyes” and “When Beverly Met Reita” — as class projects in their senior year.

“Seeing with Hawaiian Eyes” follows an indigenous farm and the family that operates it, attempting to preserve their Native Hawaiian culture. “When Beverly Met Reita” follows a former actress and “the queen of wallpaper” who befriends a young woman 60 years younger than her. Both Naho’oikaika’s and Schatt’s shorts aired together on Sept. 25 as part of the festival’s “Her Next Era” package of shorts.

Naho’oikaika has always wanted a platform to uplift and share stories from her community - which has stayed true all the way to her studies at Chapman. Beyond that, she’s sought to tell more stories of the indigenous experience — specifically, stories that mirror her own experience as a native Hawaiian, which she sees a notable lack of. She found the subjects of her short via a Google search and reached out to them. With that, she was off to the races.

Like Naho’oikaika, Schatt was looking for character driven stories when she found the kernel that would become her short film.

“And I ended up coming across this Los Angeles Times author, and I really liked her writing style, so I was clicking through her page, and seeing what other types of articles she's written, and then this one headline stood out to me right away,” Schatt said. “It said, ‘She’s 86. She’s 28. (They love their hang time as the wallpaper queens of Los Angeles.)’ And I was like, oh my god, I'm hooked.”

The next day, she found the phone number of and called Reita Green, the subject of the article. She met Reita and her friend Beverly, who’s friendship the article chronicled. 

Schatt described the feeling she experienced after finding the story she wanted for her short. The weight of bringing these real life stories to the screen subsided as she spent time with her subjects. She grew so close with Reita and Beverly that she got a text from Beverly welcoming her into their family. 

“It felt like, ‘okay, they've welcomed me into their lives. They're trusting me with everything they have to share.’ And so that broke down a lot of the walls in terms of feeling confident to share it,” Schatt said.

Naho’oikaika found a similar release in the work of molding her short and getting to know her subjects. She’d initially struggled with the idea of telling a story set in her own community because she wasn’t sure she was fit to tell it, particularly in a brief format.

“...I didn't know if I was enough to tell the story. You know, I'm not farming every day. I'm not doing a lot of the cultural practices that Hawaiians do every day,” she said. “And so am I Hawaiian enough to be telling this documentary, to be sharing this perspective?”

Both filmmakers experienced a commonality in shaving down all the knowledge and anecdotes they’d accumulated into a 15-minute short package. They both spoke about the challenges of condensing and cutting to preserve the spirit of the larger film. Brianna found solace in the advice of her parents in regards to what to cut from the film. Both remarked on how vital the class they produced the shorts for and the small collaborative group was in shaping what they made and how their classmates’ feedback helped them.

“We would watch all of our cuts and give very in depth feedback, and that helped tremendously,” Schatt told The Panther. “So really, everyone had really different perspectives and good eyes to catch things.” Naho’oikaika found valuable counsel but also honesty from her classmates as she found the shape of her short. She described how that environment that included clarity within criticism helped her grasp every step she took that got her closer to her short’s  finish line.

“We all connected and bonded with each other, it helped the process through and through,” she said. “Because they could be honest, (they) can give me clear criticism and feedback without it feeling like, ‘Okay, now I have to redo my whole story.’ Like, no, they were always coming from a place of ‘I think it could be better if we do this or this.’”

The only audience tougher than their own documentary classmates was the subjects of their work, who, fortunately, were both highly complimentary of the two graduates’  respective work. Rita and Beverly both came to Schatt’s shorts’ premiere at Chapman and got a standing ovation at the end, and were showered with adoration and requests for photos.  

PBS SoCal’s Senior Director of Production and Fine Cut executive producer Angela Boisvert faces a persistent challenge in expanding Fine Cut’s scope. Boisvert saw the need for short films from a greater range of schools within the series.

“I was looking to see, ‘how do we get more schools and expand the program to as many schools as possible that have really great film programs that aren't always those ones that sit in your top ten?’” Boisvert said.

Since Boisvert started working as a part of the Fine Cut series, the breadth of submissions and where they come from has become much greater than before. In addition to the inclusion of those additional schools, Fine Cut started to integrate prizes and forms of support as a more integral part of the program. Some of those partners are still with them today supporting young independent filmmakers.

“And the thinking was, ‘let's try to find stuff to help them with their next film… help them keep going.’ Don't just do a student film and think, you know, that's it, because ‘I don't have the resources that the school has,’” Boisvert said. 

As for Schatt and Naho’oikaika and what’s keeping them going creatively, Schatt is looking to focus on more stories, like Beverly and Reita’s, that empower women. She’s currently working in unscripted storytelling at a talent agency and immersing herself in a world where she gets to learn from professionals everyday. 

Naho’oikaika maintains an unshakable creative fire she believes will never falter, and seeks to tell stories no matter the format for the rest of her life. She’s looking to tell stories that speak to her as a person rather than solely as a creative, and she’s still on the lookout for the right one. 

You can catch both Naho’oikaika’s and Schatt’s shorts via streaming on the PBS SoCal website and on the free PBS app, along with the rest of this year’s Fine Cut slate.