Senior heads to film festival

Kristoffer Wigley, 17, has come a long way since the Lego movies.

The Corona del Mar High School senior has been making short films since he was 8, using the popular block toys in stop-motion animations.

“They were pretty cheesy,” Wigley admitted. “One minute a dude’s walking by a giant Lego dinosaur, and suddenly he’s riding it and everything.”

But now, the self-taught filmmaker has had his cinematic short “Something Missing” picked for the 2008 Tall Grass Film Festival this weekend in Wichita, Kan., where Wigley will hold a question-and-answer session and hopes to meet other young filmmakers.

In the two-minute comic short, Wigley finds his own legs running away from him, but has some problems catching them when he’s just a torso.

The fledgling director fiddles around with high-end editing software Final Cut Pro and comes up with ideas from there, he said.

Many examples of the finished product are on his website, web.mac.com/kriswigley, though “Something Missing” has been taken off for now because of the festival.

“I film myself playing the guitar and putting fire in it,” he said. “I put a show on my website, with me flying around and fighting a giant rat.”

Wigley, who said he loves visual effects and has gotten inspiration from “behind the scenes” documentaries on DVDs like Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings,” spent an entire summer as a lifeguard at Wild Rivers to afford his editing and visual effects gear.

“I worked all summer just to buy Final Cut Pro and my computer,” he said. “My parents didn’t want to spend the money.”

Those who have watched Wigley say they noticed a passion and talent for editing in Wigley years ago.

“He actually did some really intense editing on the spot for our company when we were doing a presentation for BYU digital,” said family friend Summer Bailey.

“He came in and did this huge presentation and we got the deal. They loved Kris working at it.”

Outside of schoolwork and filmmaking, Wigley swims on his school swim team, is a Newport Beach lifeguard during the summer, and he said he likes to surf and bodyboard.

But the movies are his passion, and, he hopes, his future: Wigley is applying to film schools for next year.

“Something Missing” debuts in Wichita Sunday, as part of the Joel Fein High School Filmmakers Program.

MICHAEL ALEXANDER may be reached at (714) 966-4618 or at michael.alexander@latimes.com.