LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A former member of the WDRB family turned in his editor hat to become a media teacher at Fern Creek High School and directed the award-winning film "A Perfect Blemish." 

Former WDRB editor T'Shombi Basemore stopped by WDRB Mornings on Monday, along with Jamie Monico, one of the students who worked on the film, to talk about its success. 

"A Perfect Blemish" focuses on a girl who loses her boyfriend in a car crash and her attempts to move on with her life. Fern Creek students produced, shot and starred in the film, directed by Basemore. 

"The way this ended up coming together was one of my students who had already graduated, we got together in class talking out ideas for if we were ever going to do a film," he said. "Because we do something at school called the Fern Creek Film Club. We did this back before COVID had hit. And we entered a short film and got accepted into a film festival. And I said 'Next time, let's try to go ahead and do a full feature.'"

Basemore said students were excited about the idea and he suggested that the students become the focus of the film. 

"I wanted this to be something they could really relate to and took control of," Basemore said. "(Jamie Monico) and I ended up writing the film together mainly because I really needed a teenager's presence to make sure of all of the jargon and everything because they don't like we used to talk back in the day."

Basemore said it took about three weeks to get the script written. 

"We got out a 100-page script, knocked it down to about 90," he said. "And then we started filming in March and got it done right before everyone left for graduation."

Monico said working on the film was a dream come true. 

"It was definitely something different," Monico said. "Being able to really put our skills out there that we've learned for the past like three years, being able to finally go behind the camera, behind the computer, and start editing, and actually start producing something big — it was just really amazing. It was definitely a big jump, and we're really happy we were able to do it."

The film received recognition during the Louisville International Festival of Film event in October, and has been accepted to several other festivals. 

"It started in Atlanta," Basemore said. "We played in Atlanta, Arizona, Indianapolis. Two of those were international."

"It feels real good, because I saw the list we were going up against ... and we were going against some films that had some well-known names in it, and we ended up beating them out. So that's the big thing that I'm really happy about. On the whole entire production I used three editors -- all high school, all the way up to the senior level. Everybody was like, 'hey who did you get to do your drone shots? Who did you guys hire out for that?' That was one of our students."

Once the movie finishes its festival run, Basemore said it will be released on Amazon Prime and Tubi. That should happen sometime in March. 

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