When junior Whitney Butler began making videos in the sixth grade with friends, she just did it for fun not realizing her hobby could turn into a possible career and even land her a national award.

Butler received an email from the LA Film and Script Festival, to which she had entered a narrative short. This was the first time entering any type of film competition and she said she was happy to find out she had won an award for her film “Isolated,” which now has 597 views on YouTube.

“It is an honorable mention. The actual winners are called the best and then there is an honorable mention for every best award, so basically we got second,” Butler said. “There was only 26 winners out of a 170 something.”

She said the video was originally inspired by the “Hunger Games” movie. The actress in the video short was Butler’s friend junior Lexi Baltzey, who attends Parkview High School.

“It had to be less than 40 minutes. My friend [Lexi] and me also think of video ideas,” Butler said. “I was thinking of doing like a Hunger Games-type idea where she has to survive, and she was like that is way too close to the movie and we just talked about it for like two hours and wrote everything down in December. Then we finished filming in February.”

The filming process took several hours as Butler and Baltzey set up equipment, relocated for different shots and deal with freezing weather conditions.

“It probably took three hours to film because when she was lying in the snow; she kept getting really, really cold and shaking so we had to warm her up,” Butler said. “The shed part took maybe two hours, and then it took about two days to edit.”

The two girls did all of the makeup, filming and editing themselves.

“We were going to buy fake blood, but we couldn’t find any so we just looked up a recipe,” she said. “Lexi goes to Parkview and she is taking makeup classes so she knew how to do her own makeup.”

Butler said the thing most people do not understand is what she calls the “movie magic.” Her suicide awareness video, Butler’s most recent, until Isolated, contained such magic. She uses a high definition camera along with reflectors and other equipment totaling nearly $4,000.

“The suicide awareness original clips were so much different than what we edited it to be. So I guess the movie magic is it’s so different once you edit it,” Butler said “People were wondering how we got it all black, but we just hung up brown sheets. Some people thought we were in a special room, but we were just in like my bathroom.”

Her mother, testing coordinator Evelyn Butler, said Butler’s real interest in filming first started in middle school when we she decided to join the yearbook staff.

“I think how it started was through photography. Her cousin is a film major from Baylor. Her cousin was doing photography mainly and so that triggered Whitney to think about getting onto yearbook so she could be a photographer,” Evelyn Butler said. “When she started taking pictures, she saw that she had some talent. Then she wanted to start doing some videos so we bought her a small video camera.”

Butler said she finds filming more interesting than photography though she enjoys both.

“Lexi and I have made videos since we were in sixth grade so we just kind of developed into making short films,” she said. “I liked moving stuff better than still photos. I can work with it more.”

After hearing about Butler placing in LA Film and Script, her parents were hesitant about going to the awards ceremony.

“We really didn’t think we were going to go because of the expense, but once we started hearing more about it and what they were going to do, they were going to have a question and answer season for film makers,” Evelyn Butler said. “We thought okay maybe we do need to go.”

Evelyn Butler said the factor that really won her over was the connections Whitney Butler may make and her passion for film.

“We don’t know whom she will meet. She is going this summer to UCLA film school for a week. That was part of the reason she entered, you know, for the connections,” Evelyn Butler said. “If this were just a passing phase, no we wouldn’t be going. But that is what she wants to do.”

The Butler family leaves Friday 19 and flies to LA to receive the award for “Isolated.”

“Isolated,” “Suicide Awareness” and more of Butler’s videos can be viewed on her YouTube channel WhitneyBlair77.