Nyla Bishop, a sophomore at Homewood-Flossmoor High School, dreams of being a filmmaker. She got lots of encouragement at the Disney Dream Academy March 22-26.
Nyla was one of 100 high school students selected for the program at DisneyWorld. The motivational program is designed to offer students the guidance they can use to bring their dreams to fruition.
In her application, Nyla outlined her work thus far and her desires to take her ideas to the next level.
For one segment of the dream academy, she was one of six students interested in film who got to meet with representatives of Rodriguez Bros Media. The filmmakers showed the students several of their works and outlined the process entailed in making videos. Bishop said she knew them from a music video they did for rapper Ice-T.
“I came back with a stronger passion and motivation to keep going with my dreams because the whole point was to encourage us to keep going, don’t listen to people who are telling you that you can’t do it,” Nyla said. “I definitely have a stronger passion to keep going.”
The 16-year-old said, “My next step after my Disney experience is to build my portfolio up. I’ve been writing a lot of screenplays” that are coming of age stories. She’s ready to put the work into three productions over the summer.
“I like to produce it myself. I’m definitely a person who likes to do it all by myself. I write it, I pick the actors, I film it myself and I edit it myself,” Nyla said.
Mickey Mouse during her time at the Disney Dream Academy. (Provided photo)
Since about fourth grade, Nyla has been making videos – first on her iPad and now on equipment at H-F where she’s with Viking TV and in the second year of H-F’s film class. Her last major film project for school was a documentary about her uncle who gave up an art career to take care of his family. She said the hardest part of the project was working on “the story on how the documentary would move. That took the longest, like maybe two to three weeks. And then the interviews took about a week and I edited the final draft in three days.”
Nyla takes her passion for the arts into other areas. She’s taking a photography class and since summer 2021 she’s been helping with theater productions at H-F either on the sound board or the light board. For a 2022 production she was stage manager.
In college Nyla will major in film and minor in technical theater.
She rounds out her H-F classes with geometry, chemistry, English and Mandarin Chinese as her foreign language.
Nyla is the daughter of Tanisha and David Cannon of Flossmoor.