Going up on stage, seeing all of the people who support you, despise you, and seeing the reward you rightfully deserve. Shane Cloherty, a sophomore in Hoffman Estates High School, won first prize at Sight & Sound Film Festival sponsored by Tribeca Art College and won first prize in animation. He worked on a stop-motion animation in the topic of hero, working day and night, editing picture by picture, just to be evaluated.

“I wasn’t scared at all, if I was going to be make something, I might as well take the opportunity and submit my work,” said Cloherty. He wasn’t scared to submit his work because in the beginning of his story, he had to do this as a project for class. Kevin Beers, an art teacher at Hoffman Estates High School, wanted the students to make a film for the Summer Sight & Sound Film festival event. Typically every year, the students in the class, will submit their work in hopes of being criticized and evaluated for the best prize of them all. Free tuition, over the summer, in any subject they want to, at Tribeca Art College in downtown Chicago.

“There is no limit of who gets accepted into the festival,” said Beers. There is a high chance for people to be accepted into the film festival. “However if there are a lot of great quality films that get is submitted, they compete to even be accepted.”

However, Cloherty was gladly accepted into the Summer Sight & Sound Film festival. This gave him this wonderful opportunity to go downtown to the windy city, Chicago, the city where everything is at. In Chicago, at the Tribeca Art College, is where the Summer Sight & Sound festival is being held at. “The environment was relaxing,” said Cloherty “Everyone who was there is interesting.”

Later that day, everyone had their films shown to the audience who showed up. Then after all the films were shown, the winners were announced. Cloherty submitted to the animation section of the festival. He did a stop-motion comedy, “I felt like I was making a comedy for others, not for myself.”

There were many submissions, from the live action films, to animation, music videos, etc. But there were different categories that submission could win in. Shane was in the animation category. There was only four submissions to the animation category that Cloherty was a part of. The four submissions had two digital 2D animation and two stop-motion animation. Cloherty was one of the two stop-motion animations.

The announcements are being said, while everyone wait to see whose film won, everyone was so eager to find out. “Shane Cloherty won first place in animation,” said the announcer.

“When I found out I won first place, I was so happy!” said Cloherty. When asked why he thought he won first place Choherty said “All of the contestants did regular animation or simple stop-motion animation, But I was doing a more complex stop-motion animation, that took more work to do.”

Cloherty went to sleep happily that night, knowing he won first place of a film that he worked so hard on. For his first place victory, however, he won free tuition over the summer of 2017 to learn in any subject he wants to learn. This summer learning program is meant for teenagers like him, to further advance his knowledge in the art he is interested into. But this would typically cost a lot, especially for staying downtown Chicago, to get this kind of education over the summer. But due to this first place victory, Cholerty can get this education for free.