The Therapist, a film made by an NHS student, was released after years of preparation

A brown paper bag, a curtained room in a basement and a video camera don’t seem like things that would belong together, but for Connor Keaney, these things have consumed the last two years of his life.

     Keaney is a senior at NHS who wishes to inspire others with his filmmaking. His film, The Therapist, comes out on September 20, 2015. It is almost nine minutes long, and people can watch it on the movie’s YouTube channel, “The Therapist Movie.”

“I paint a picture of the whole movie in my head before I actually write it in a script,” Keaney said. “Since I’m a writer and a director, I don’t have to worry about stepping on anybody’s toes with my ideas.”

Filmmaking is something that Keaney says he is experienced in, but it was a little different this time around.

“This was my first big short production, so I had to play with a lot of new things,” Keaney said. “I’ve never worked with makeup before so I had to find a makeup artist. I had to find actors, find sound people and find camera people after I found the producer, Zach Nielsen.”

Keaney also says he has experimented with using white noise, the fuzz that occurs after a microphone is turned on, for the first time.

Keaney had many other people on set with him: 2015 graduate Zach Nielsen, junior Andrew Garton, 2014 graduate Austin Garton, 2015 graduate Kylie Miller, 2015 graduate Blake Robinson, and 2015 graduate Jacob Sharkey. As soon as he acquired the necessary equipment and a camera, he began filming.

Filming the movie took three days. Each day consisted of nine and a half hours of shooting. Each night he would put the shots he took from filming and put them in a folder on his computer. Once production was done, he started editing.

Some teenagers Keaney’s age would find spending so much time on a project grueling and laborious, but Keaney says this is his passion.

“He goes home after school and just writes and tweaks,” Jordan Yaney, a junior and a friend of Keaney’s since the seventh grade, said. “He maps out the story lines of his characters and he is constantly planning for the movie,”

     Keaney describes The Therapist as, “A social commentary on particular injustices and terrible, horrifying happenings underneath the skin of American society represented in a character called The Therapist.”

The film is very complex in its ideas, but Keaney says he at least wants the audience to take away the main message of the film.

“Ultimately, the message of the film is love,” Keaney said. “That’s because to me, the message of life, the meaning of life, is love. There’s really no point [to me] otherwise.”

     Keaney says he hopes that like him, other people will use their art to be genuine and to make a connection with the audience. He says hopes to change the lack of integrity in the film industry. He wants to affect his audience with The Therapist.

Yaney says that he’s never seen a high school aged kid so devoted to what he does. “Keaney is so devoted because he wholeheartedly believes in what he’s creating.”

     “I’m nervous about releasing The Therapist, but I believe so strongly in the ideas that it represents that I’m willing to put it out no matter what,” Keaney said.

     Although Keaney is only in high school, he is very enthusiastic about what he does. The idea of The Therapist has a lot of potential to affect students because it is made by a student.