Torrey Pines High School Students Launch Comedic High School Mockumentary “Last Period”

L to R: Lucas Goodman, Jacquelyn Morales, Kion Heidari, Emmy Farese, Josh Guicherit w/Meg Farinsky

Ermana Productions, led by Torrey Pines High School Seniors Ivy Gong and Michelle Zhao, recently launched “Last Period”, an 18 episode comedy mockumentary about the shenanigans of five high schoolers in a “last period” (hence the name) “Office Aide” class together. The series pilot “The Beginning” premiered on YOUTUBE August 28, 2015 and the second episode “The Golden Apple” followed on August 29th. Additional episodes, approximately every two weeks, will extend throughout the 2015-2016 school year on YOUTUBE and the Ermana Productions website. Each episode relates to the trials and tribulations that the students are experiencing at that time in their lives.

The webseries was filmed over two weeks this past summer with a minimal budget at two locations, UCSD in La Jolla and Torrey Pines High School in San Diego. The series production team, cast and crew included students from Torrey Pines High School, Canyon Crest Academy (CCA) Westview High School, Mira Costa College, Mount Everest Academy  and University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB).

“Last Period” was written, produced, directed & edited by Ivy Gong and Michelle Zhao. The principal cast includes Emmy Farese-CCA, Lucas Goodman -Westview, Joshua Guicherit-UCSB, Kion Heidari-CCA, (who also wrote the original music), and Jacquelyn Morales -Torrey Pines).

According to Ivy Gong “We’ve always felt that many of the high school comedies we’ve seen inaccurately portray the extraordinary experience of high school; the portrayals are amusing and entertaining, but not completely relatable.  We wanted to capture the struggles and successes of typical high schoolers and that was a huge impetus for the production of Last Period”.

Gong and Zhao found a passion in film production once they realized they didn’t identify with the many AP STEM classes they had taken over the years. Because Torrey Pines High School has been amazingly supportive of artistic endeavors, they followed their interests despite the lack of Asian females present in the entertainment industry. They chose the name “Ermana Productions” last year when embarking on a web design company because “hermana” means “sister” in Spanish and that reflects their close bond. They chased their opportunity by recruiting a cast, finding locations, writing scripts, accomplishing everything needed to make the production a reality.

Zhao states, “The difficulties we faced were so different from our academic difficulties with getting good grades and test scores – they were real. Likewise the overwhelming sense of accomplishment at the end of each day of filming among our cast and crew was incomparable to the satisfaction of getting a good grade on a test”. Gong agreeing with Zhao added “We learned so much from this production; it was both a technical and personal education. It was inspiring to see our actors and crew members put in hours of their time to make this production come to life. All of the hard work and responsibility that everyone took on reinforced our certainty of our love for film and entertainment. For that we couldn’t be prouder and more excited for everyone to see what our team accomplished”.

For more information contact ermanaproductions@gmail.com or find them on Facebook or YouTube.

CONTACT:
Susan Farese
SJF Communications
408-398-5940
sjfcommunications@gmail.com