By Nathan Duke
Staff Writer

Taylor Antisdel of New Boston practices his directing technique on the suit of armor that resides in his front hall. The Trinity High School senior made a six-minute film that will be shown at the New York Independent Film Festival beginning April 28. The film, titled “The Signature,” centers around a group of friends going to the army recruitment center to sign up for the draft and includes footage of the war in Iraq. (Nathan Duke Photo)

Trinity High School student Taylor Antisdel never realized, until recently, how much impact a small piece of paper could have on his life.

The 18-year-old senior, who lives in New Boston, recently had his six-minute short film, “The Signature,” accepted into the New York Independent Film Festival, which will run from April 28 through May 8 at the CC Village East Cinemas in Greenwich Village. His film mixes actual footage of the war in Iraq with three friends’ solemn drive to an army recruitment center to sign the registration paper when one of them turns 18. The idea for the film came about when he and his friends actually had to legally sign the paper when they came of age.

“It’s something that scares me,” he said. “By signing a piece of paper, I could sign my life away to go fight in a country I don’t know anything about. It’s funny how a piece of paper could mean so much.”

Athough this is his first film to be viewed by an audience of this magnitude at a festival, Antisdel has been making films for nearly a decade with his mini-DV camera. His love for movies began at an early age through exposure by his parents to films that most people his age rarely see.

Not as supportive of his film career was the recruitment office where he actually filmed his friend showing up to sign the paper.

“The recruiter’s office would not let us film,” he said. “They gave us a real hard time about it. I got my (slip) in the mail, so I signed it and filmed it at home.”

Antisdel compensated for the lack of cooperation with the recruiters by filming the drive to the center and his actor friend Pat Cronin approaching it, then cutting away to a close-up of his signing his own slip at home. The young filmmaker also compensated for the lack of a large crew and equipment by attaching his digital camera to the ceiling of his car with a suction cup, rubber bands and duct tape.

“We were strapped for cash and didn’t want to use a (camera) mount,” he said. “But the camera never fell down, so we got lucky.”

The light is left on in the car to illuminate Cronin – the character signing up at the center – in the back seat while Antisdel and friend Tom Crenshaw are barely in view up front. As the characters take part in an adlibbed conversation about the war in Iraq, small boxes of news footage from the front lines appear all over the screen, and then disappear. Antisdel decided that, rather than script the film, he wanted to make the conversation feel more genuine. This propelled him to take part in an actual discussion while the camera rolled.

Antisdel shot the film on a rainy night and added in music by the band Explosions in the Sky, whose music was also heard in the movie “Friday Night Lights,” to add to the ambiance. The song he chose as background music is the appropriately- titled “Our Last Days as Children.”

Currently, Antisdel is taking a few film courses at Trinity High School, including an independent study where he produces his own small budget films. He has applied to Hofstra University as a film major and is in the process of applying to New York Film Academy. He hopes to one day work as a screenwriter or director and, perhaps, make the move to California.

Already, he is off to a good start – he can write, direct and edit his own films and get accepted to a film festival for a film with a $30 budget. He and his mother, Lynn Paulus, are currently in the process of trying to market the film to enable it to play on opening night at the festival.

Antisdel realizes that it often takes a while for Hollywood to come knocking at the door, which is why he also works as a supervisor in an aftercare program, working with children ages 6 to 11 at Northwest Elementary School in Manchester during the week.

“I’m thinking about getting a minor in education if my aspirations to be a filmmaker don’t work out,” he said. “I’d like to be able to teach kids film theory or film production.”