MUSCATINE, Iowa — Gabriella Garrido felt like a movie star when her face flickered on the big screen at the IMAX theater.

Her shoulder-length, black hair tucked under a black cap, Gabriella, 13, of Muscatine, portrayed a sister of Peter Pan who pretends to be her fairy tale brother while he is on vacation. She was one of a dozen local students who participated in the Quad City libraries’ second annual Teen Film Festival and Red Carpet Screening.

“We had the most kids out of all the libraries turn in movies, and I’m really proud of that,” said Tina Miksch, teen librarian at the Musser Public Library in Muscatine.

The festival featured each of the students’ film productions on the big screen at the IMAX theater in Davenport, where the audience cast votes for their favorites. Twenty-two teenagers from the Quad City area submitted 12 films for the festival.

Garrido’s film, “Movie of Coolness,” won in the Best Soundtrack category.

“We did not expect that,” Garrido said. “From the beginning, we decided we want music on it — a lot of music.”

Garrido, who is home-schooled, said she had learned of the film festival two weeks in advance from a flier at Musser Public Library.

“I thought it would be a great thing for me and my friends because we like to do those kinds of things,” Garrido said. “We tried to work very hard to get it done because we were very excited about it.”

She checked out books on making movies and collaborated with friends on a concept. At sleepovers, they came up with the idea of a “dramatic and almost scary idea for Peter Pan” that was also “a little bit silly.”

“Peter Pan is actually his sister pretending to be him while he was on vacation,” Garrido said.

Garrido’s production team consisted of her sister, Suzy, 11; Rhiannon Moore, 12, of Wilton; and Kaitlyn Martin, 12, of Muscatine.

“It’d be like midnight and we’d say, ‘What about this?’ And we’d all be like, ‘Yeah!’ and just talking fast and trying to get it all down,” Garrido said.

Garrido borrowed a video camera from a friend and filmed the production in Muscatine. They found old outfits by rummaging through her closets.

They edited the film using Microsoft MovieMaker, which Garrido said was the hardest part. “It was just a lot of stuff to do,” she said.

Finding all the music was the next most difficult task, Garrido said, because the girls wanted to set a mood with each of the songs they selected. “It was a struggle to find the right song.”

She selected songs by various artists from her collection of MP3s.

Their final product was viewed by about 150 people at the IMAX theater.

“The big thing was (to have) our face huge on the screen at the IMAX. That’s not something that happens everyday,” Garrido said. “It was like a dream come true.”

She said she and her friends had fun with the entire experience. They dressed up for the red carpet and behaved like celebrities.

Hostage released

While this year’s film festival was a new experience for Garrido, another Muscatine teenager is no stranger to the camera.

Steven Bieber, 16, a sophomore at Muscatine High School, has a relatively extensive resumè for a young film maker. Many of his productions are posted on YouTube (tagged stevenbfilms) as spoofs of scary movies, and The New Strand Film Festival.

For the Teen Film Festival, Bieber, along with Anjel Niaves, 16, and her brother, Nasien, 13, both of Muscatine, created a movie trailer based on the book, “Hostage,” by by Willo Davis Roberts.

“We picked this book because Anjel knew it really well and it wasn’t over the top,” Bieber said. “It was something we could do.”

The film uses dramatic music and suspenseful scenes in showing a girl abducted from home after school.

Bieber has seen his movies on the big screen before when he entered them into festivals, but “this was the first time on the IMAX, which was monstrous,” he said.

The film won the Best Drama category at the festival.

“I thought it came together really well for doing it so quickly,” Bieber said. “We’re not a humongous movie crew. We don’t have millions of dollars for this project.”

The film was shot at Anjel and Nasien’s home.

“We didn’t win any of the big awards, but it was a lot of fun,” he said, adding that his favorite part was “just getting to see the reaction from other people that us kids did this.”

Bieber’s interest in film making started two years ago when he met a cinematography student at a summer camp at the University of Iowa.

“I really want to become a director,” he said. “I like being something that everyone else isn’t. I like being unique,”

His style, he said, is keeping things simple. “I try to stay away from all the flashy transitions.”

Gangster film wraps

Justin Coleman, 18, is a senior at Louisa-Muscatine High School. He shelves books at the Musser Public Library, where he learned of the film festival.

“Me and my friends always make movies and stuff for school, so we thought it would be good to get some publicity,” he said.

Coleman’s project, “Writing the Godfather” was based on “The Godfather” movie. Coleman’s film opens on author Mario Puzo narrating as he is handwriting the scene.

“It was pretty much his thought process as he was writing it,” Justin said. “We read the chapter from “The Godfather” out loud  … and then revised it different ways; they’d kill Vito Corleone in the street.”

Like Bieber, Coleman is no stranger to film making. He has seven films, most of them  posted on YouTube.

Helping him with the production were Eric Bonnichsen, 18, of Columbus Junction, Bobby Young, 18, of Muscatine, and Skyler Browning, 18, of Grandview.

It took an hour to film the movie on a street in Letts, and three more hours to edit using Final Cut Pro software.

On the red carpet

The Red Carpet Screening was a new experience for the young filmmakers.

“It was pretty neat actually,” Coleman said. “We got to walk the red carpet in front of everybody.”

Coleman’s film won the Best Stunt Work category. Anjel Niaves ducks behind chairs and tries to escape up a stairs into her room. She is later bound in a chair with her hands tied behind her back, but manages to write the word “hostage” on the wall behind her before her captors place her in the trunk of their vehicle.

Coleman said he plans to go to Muscatine Community College next year, then transfer to

the University of Iowa to study film and broadcast production.

Muscatine film maker Sarah Stogdill, 12, won the best screenplay category for her production, “Goodnight Moon: Revisited,” an adaptation of the children’s story Margaret Wise Brown.

Stogdill declined to be interviewed.