Kevin LeStarge’s campy, clever “The Attack of The Pine Cones” took top honors today in Spy Hop’s annual 24-Hour Filmmaking Competition.

The Skyline High School senior’s winning short film was among the 20 youth-directed projects screened during the seventh annual LocoMotion Youth Film Festival, sponsored by Spy Hop Productions and the Utah State Office of Education.

LeStarge, who’s planning to major in business at LDS Business College as he pursues further training in the film-making industry, met the rigorous criteria established for the competition. Instructions for the competition were released on April 25 and young filmmakers were given just 24 hours to submit their entries. Among the criteria: the number 24 had to appear six times (yes, credits counted); the director had the option of either 24 shots or 24 seconds of music, and the line “You idiot, you have a fake thumb.” The film also had to run 3 minutes, 24 seconds, according to Jeremy Nielsen, program director for the festival.

For the competition, LeStarge recruited friends who’ve participated in personal video projects such as “Backyard Battlefields,” which he admitted are as “cheesy” as they sound. Like the cult-classic Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, LeStarge’s pine cone variation is unashamedly camp. The film is available at YouTube here.

LeStarge enjoys the creative side behind the camera. For this project, he used GarageBand for the first time to write original music. He particularly enjoys the work of M. Night Shyamalan, most well known for The Sixth Sense and who has just finished work on The Happening, a sci-fi thriller about a family escaping from a global-scale natural crisis.

The 20 films screened at the festival, selected from more than 60 entries submitted from around the nation, represented an energetic take on social issues where the young filmmakers dig at the grassroots level to confront and challenge notions of apathy and media dominance.

Of particular note was “Kick Me,” a locally produced film by several Spy Hop members, examining the profound effects of bullying from the perspective of the perpetrator as well as the victim.

Spy Hop Productions is a not-for-profit youth media arts and educational enrichment center located in the historic Art Space district of downtown Salt Lake City. It offers programs in filmmaking, interactive design, and sound engineering. Since its inception in 1999, Spy Hop has served more than 10,000 young people from all backgrounds in the Wasatch community and with the help of professional mentors, the work produced by Spy Hop’s young artists has reached a national audience in the millions.