PRESS RELEASE

Palo Alto Teens Create Picture Perfect,

a Short Film Supporting Healthy Relationships Education 

 

The Palo Alto Teen Arts Council FilmLab project shows what can happen when a city’s youth arts infrastructure, schools, and film professionals come together to support teens through meaningful creative work 

 

PALO ALTO, Calif., April 2026 —

The Palo Alto Teen Arts Council FilmLab has completed Picture Perfect, a 19-minute short drama created by local teens for PAUSD’s Healthy Relationships & Consent Workshops. 

 

Commissioned by Palo Alto Children’s Theatre, a program of the City of Palo Alto’s Community Services Department, in partnership with the Paly RISE (Palo Alto High School’s Responsive, Inclusive, Safe Environment) Student Task Force for PAUSD’s Healthy Relationships & Consent Workshops, Picture Perfect was created to spark conversation around communication, boundaries, emotional safety, and the pressure many teens feel to appear flawless even when they are struggling.

 

The film grew out of a larger goal: to give Palo Alto teens a low-pressure but meaningful place to belong, take creative risks, and make something that could serve other young people for years to come.

 

It was also made possible by Palo Alto’s unusually robust civic arts ecosystem, where the City, Children’s Theatre, community centers, schools, and youth programs have built real structures to support young people not only as students, but as artists and collaborators.

 

Created through the inaugural Teen Arts Council (“TAC”) FilmLab, which launched in August 2025, Picture Perfect was developed over 10 months by local high-school aged teens, most of whom had no prior filmmaking experience.

 

Meeting weekly at Palo Alto Children’s Theatre and Lucie Stern Community Center, students developed the story, shaped the script, cast actors, scouted locations, built sets, crewed the production, and carried the film through post- production.

 

From its earliest sessions, one theme kept surfacing in the room: perfection. As teens talked honestly about life in Palo Alto, many described intense pressure to excel, perform, and make the most of every opportunity. FilmLab was intentionally designed as a space where that pressure could be set down without lowering the level of dedication applied to the work. There were no applications, no grades, and no homework. Instead, adults carried the pressure of the process so teens could explore, fail safely, and still work toward something with real artistic and public stakes.

 

Film Logline: When a picture-perfect teen couple hides a violent secret beneath their polished prom smiles, they must each decide whether to keep performing or finally tell the truth about who they are.

 

In Picture Perfect, two teens raised to believe perfection equals love begin to confront the damage hidden beneath their polished lives. The girl’s mother teaches her to hide every flaw; the boy’s family teaches him to bury his feelings. When their relationship turns toxic, a forced promposal becomes a public performance of everything wrong in their world. Only when a younger sibling reflects the truth back to them do they begin to see a way out. On the night that should define them, they choose honesty instead.

 

 “FilmLab is not just a youth project, but proof of what can happen when a community builds substantive support around teens and trusts them with serious work,” said Marieke Gaboury, Director of Theatre Operations for the City of Palo Alto.

 

FilmLab, part of the Palo Alto Teen Arts Council (a Children’s Theatre initiative), was co-created with  P.J. Palmer, filmmaker, producer, and founder of (twenty)2 films, in collaboration with TAC youth project lead and the film’s director, Brendan Giang. Project mentor Palmer designed the lab to function not as a classroom exercise, but as a real collaborative production environment.

 

“The goal of FilmLab was never to give these young people a watered-down student film experience,” said Palmer. “We built it to function like a real production, with real standards, real collaboration, and real accountability, but without adding academic pressure to their lives. The adults carried the weight of the structure so the teens could explore, fail, grow, and tell the truth. That’s what they responded to.”

 

Palmer, who traveled weekly from Los Angeles to lead the lab in person, said consistency was a key part of the model.

 

“Showing up mattered,” he said. “When adults keep showing up, it sends a message: this work matters, and you matter. The teens felt that. They met it with real commitment, real passion, and real care for one another.”

 

The film was directed by Brendan Giang, a nationally award-winning student filmmaker, and produced through (twenty)2 films in Los Angeles and New York in partnership with TAC FilmLab. While Giang directed the film, Picture Perfect was developed collectively, with FilmLab participants contributing to story development, writing, visual design, production planning, and on-set execution.

“This film is our response to the pressure we’ve watched and felt as teenagers living in Palo Alto to present a flawless life while quietly carrying pain, silence, and family patterns underneath,” said Giang. “What makes this project special is not just the film itself, but the people behind it. We were trusted with something real, and we built it together.”

 

Production took place over two weekends at locations throughout Palo Alto, including the Palo Alto High School campus, Lucie Stern Community Center, and Palo Alto Children’s Theatre, reflecting the depth of local institutional support behind the project. Some locations were practical and others were built from scratch. Children’s Theatre program participants might be able to spot where lab members built a bedroom inside of the dance studio at the theatre. Students filled crew roles across departments while working alongside professional mentors and industry collaborators.

 

The seriousness of the work drew a corresponding response from film professionals in Palo Alto, Los Angeles, and New York. Discounted and donated goods and services were provided by collaborators including Rebel Sun Grip & Electric and New York Pizza in Palo Alto, with additional support from Company 3 in Los Angeles, Real Actors Lab in Los Angeles, and Full English Post in New York.

 

Organizers said the students arrived curious, prepared, and deeply invested in the storytelling, and that the process never felt like a simulation of filmmaking, but the real thing.  The  response from industry partners mattered not only because it elevated the film, but because it showed teens that their work was being taken seriously by professionals beyond their own community.

Picture Perfect will be submitted to film festivals worldwide. In addition to its festival life, the film is intended to become a core educational resource for PAUSD’s Healthy Relationships & Consent Workshops, with the goal of being shown to incoming Palo Alto High School freshmen in the years ahead.

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The broader success of FilmLab, organizers say, lies not only in the film, but in what the process made possible: joy, belonging, trust, and a chance for teens to create something honest, professionally crafted, and lasting together.

 

About TAC FilmLab

 

TAC FilmLab is a hands-on filmmaking program created through the Palo Alto Teen Arts Council, an initiative of the Palo Alto Children’s Theatre. Co-created by filmmaker P.J. Palmer, in collaboration with  TAC youth project lead Brendan Giang, FilmLab was designed for local high school students to develop, write, cast, produce, and complete a short film from scratch while working at a professional standard alongside experienced mentors and industry collaborators.

 

Launched in the 2025-2026 season, the inaugural FilmLab brought together teens, many with no prior film experience, for a 10-month creative process rooted in collaboration, accountability, and real-world production practice. The program is free to participants and was created to give young artists a place to belong, take creative risks, build meaningful skills, and tell stories that matter to their community.

 

2025-2026 TAC FilmLab Participants:

 

Claire Barbier, Courtney Bond, Leilani Chen, Sophie Gassend, Brendan Giang, Stella Guo, Dhruv Gupta, Amir Gutelzon, Noa Johnson, Katya Kuykendall, Kinnera, Liv Madhani, Hailey Matta, Nathan Picardo, Ailey Prior, Neel Satyavolu, Allison Seo, Leah Telyaz, Julia Walsh, Raeya Wohlmorantz, August Wong, Ami Yamaguchi, Caitlin Yoffie, Katherine Zaner, Serena Zhang

 

About Palo Alto Teen Arts Council:

 

The Children’s Theatre’s Teen Arts Council is a free, teen-led program in Palo Alto dedicated to creating spaces and events where high school students can express themselves through visual art, fashion, poetry, music, comedy, film, and more. 

 

About Paly RISE:

 

Paly RISE (Palo Alto High School’s Responsive, Inclusive, Safe Environment) is a student-led task force dedicated to making Palo Alto High School and the broader community more consent- conscious and less tolerant of sexual misconduct through prevention-based education, dialogue, and advocacy.

 

About (twenty)2 films:

 

(twenty)2 films is a bi-coastal production company founded by filmmaker P.J. Palmer, developing narrative and commercial work across film and branded storytelling. On Picture Perfect, the company provided professional production infrastructure and industry support for the FilmLab.

 

About Palo Alto Children’s Theatre:

 

Palo Alto Children’s Theatre, led by Artistic Director Judge Luckey, is a City of Palo Alto arts education program dedicated to giving children and teens opportunities to create, perform, and connect through the arts. Through classes, camps, productions, and youth programs such as the Teen Arts Council and TAC FilmLab, it provides young people a place to build skills, confidence, creativity, and community. Children’s Theatre programs serve more than 50,000 community members each year.

 

Children’s Theatre Media Contact:

Marieke Gaboury

Director of Theatre Operations, Palo Alto Children’s Theatre, City of Palo Alto’s Community Services Department | marieke.gaboury@paloalto.gov | 650-456-4930.