Students from Seneca Valley High School have produced their own films that are making their public premieres this week at the school. Among the filmmakers are seniors, from left, Kyle Jennings, Faith Kraynik, Tim Boggs, and Patrick King.

JACKSON TWP — Five students debuted their documentary films to the public Wednesday night at Seneca Valley High School.

The screening was the first of three consecutive nights in which 15 students will showcase their works.

The films are the culmination of months of work by the students, each of whom picked a topic in September and set off doing interviews, shooting and then editing final versions.

Each of the five films lasted about 15 minutes and featured an array of topics ranging from farming and urban snowboarding to martial arts and a clothing company.

Dan McKosky, the multimedia teacher at Seneca Valley who oversaw the projects, said each student had an “extremely difficult” task to complete their films in the allotted time.

That’s because each student shot about three hours of footage before cutting it down to 15 minutes, a process that took many months spread out over daily 40-minute class sessions.

“A long-term project like this requires a lot of dedication, planning and responsibility,” he said before the screenings. “I don’t think they’ve done anything on this scale before. They should be very proud.”

Senior Patrick King said he couldn’t wait for his documentary to be shown on the large screen in the auditorium.

Patrick chose a friend and fellow student as his subject, interviewing Zack Zielonka for hours about a clothing line he started.

Patrick said more than half of the time spent on interviews never made it to the final cut and that he spent at least 20 hours on editing.

The senior will attend Pennsylvania State University in the fall and intends to major in journalism.

“Skills in video production and filmmaking are great skills to have,” Patrick said. “Hopefully it gives me an edge in college.”

Bob and Peggy Zielonka were two of the several dozen spectators who came out to watch.

They came to see their son’s profile in the documentary, but they also came to support the filmmaker who spent so much time compiling it.

Bob Zielonka called film making a “viable industry” if done with the right amount of ambition.

“Maybe it could get played on YouTube and go viral,” he said. “(The films) have a lot of potential.”

Senior Faith Kraynik profiled a small plot of land in Cranberry Township owned by her grandmother. She centered the documentary around the struggle of a small farm to survive in an increasingly urban environment.

She beamed with excitement and said it felt great to see her work made public.

“It got to the point where you’d come in for 40-minute periods and just stare at the computer screen for weeks on end,” she said. “But it was all worth it.”

Senior Kyle Jennings profiled a restaurant in Pittsburgh owned by a family friend, and he hopes to integrate video production into his marketing studies at the University of Pittsburgh’s Greensburg campus.

“I’m very proud,” he said with a smile. “But I’m also happy it’s finished.”

The screenings today and Friday are at 7 p.m. in the auditorium.