It’s too bad that Tyler Hale, 17, doesn’t return to Wynne High School for his senior year until Aug. 18. If he were back in class this week, he’d have something to brag about to his fellow Yellowjackets in the self-proclaimed “City with a Smile” in southeast Arkansas.

He could say: “Hey, my movie’s online today!”

Out of thousands of applicants nationwide, Hale was one of 11 teenagers chosen to go to New Orleans this summer to create a short film as part of the annual Samsung Mobile Fresh Films project for beginning moviemakers.

The film produced by Hale’s team, “Listening to Fireflies,” can be viewed beginning at 3 p.m. today at www.fresh-films.com. Click here to go to the site. The film will remain online through Wednesday.

“Fireflies” is one of three shorts in the Fresh Films drama category. It is competing against works by teams of student filmmakers from Dallas and Salt Lake City.

Three student “action hero” films will be online the following week, Aug. 7-13. Three student comedies will be up for viewing Aug. 14-20.

Visitors to the Fresh Films Web site are asked to vote on their favorite in each category. Those three winners will compete online Aug. 21-27; the top overall film will be screened at the American Film Institute’s prestigious AFI Fest in Hollywood, Oct. 30-Nov. 9, with the student filmmakers in attendance, courtesy of Samsung Mobile.

Hale, the son of Thomas and Shirley Hale of Wynne, Ark., applied for the Fresh Films initiative after visiting the Web site in April. He learned he was accepted in May, and he was in New Orleans the last week of June to participate in what was essentially a hands-on boot camp in independent digital film production.

“I’m a movie buff, a film buff,” Hale said.

He said he was a “Star Wars” fan like everybody else his age, but “there are really three movies that got me interested — ‘The Godfather,’ ‘The Graduate’ and ‘Taxi Driver.’ I saw those and I was just overwhelmed by how magnificent those films were.”

Hale said he had little experience with a video camera before New Orleans. “I wanted to see how it all worked. I was just interested in the process, what went into making a movie.”

Plus, he said he was glad to get to go New Orleans, “because if I’m going to go anywhere, I’m going where the food is.”

The Fresh Films contest teams the teen beginners with college interns and adult supervisors from Dreaming Tree Films in Chicago, the professional production company that coordinates the project, which is now in its third year.

“They learn how to work the equipment,” said Alana Bardauskis, marketing manager for Dreaming Tree Films. “They learn how to hold the boom mike, handle the lights and so on.

“No experience is required. All they have to have is passion and interest in making a film.”

Hale said life on a film crew is more hard work than glamor. “Cord wrangler, that is one of the toughest jobs you’ll ever have, believe me.”

In addition to shooting the film, the teens picked the cast, interviewing actors who responded to auditions arranged by Dreaming Tree. The lead adult character in “Listening to Fireflies” is played by veteran New Orleans actor Lance E. Nichols, who has appeared in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and will be seen later this year in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” with Brad Pitt.

The shorts are produced from scripts chosen earlier in the year in a Fresh Films contest for “emerging writers.” “Listening to Fireflies” was written by Jessica Bolluyt. The film — which actually was shot outside New Orleans, in Covington, La. — tells the story of a quiet little boy who is reunited with the father he hasn’t seen in 10 years.

Said Bardauskis: “What emerges at the end of the week (of shooting), we think, is a pretty authentic representation of the teams involved. We want to give them as much creative responsibility as they deserve. A lot of times people don’t give teens the credit they deserve, they say they’re lazy or apathetic, but these teens get the job done.”

—John Beifuss: 529-2394