An English teacher at Wharton High School hopes her screenplay class will keep kids interested in writing.
By JEFFREY S. SOLOCHEK, Times Staff Writer
Published September 4, 2005
NEW TAMPA - Kassandra Gutierrez can see the story in her mind.
The year is 2105, and the world is at war. People steal to survive. In this grimy, lawless place, one thief who goes to prison uncovers a massive government conspiracy designed to suppress outcry against its illegal war. Once released, the man tries to expose the coverup and end the war.
It's part Running Man, part Twelve Monkeys, part imagination.
And in Wharton High School's screenplay writing class, the tale also has the chance to leap to video.
"I really want to get mine into film," senior Ashley Berwanger said about her own tale, about vampires. "I love writing, and I would really love to be published."
English teacher Jennifer Bell, an avid movie buff, pushed for three years to offer this class. She operated under the notion that today's students are more likely to watch movies than read novels outside school, and if she could get them to see literature in film, she would be successful.
District language arts supervisor Elizabeth Brown was happy to approve the course, which is available in just three Florida counties. After all, she said, so many writers these days win praise for bringing their stories to the big screen, and who knows whether one of these kids might be the next Spielberg.
"We talk about audience a lot in English classes," Brown said. "In screenplay writing, these students will be writing in a very real way for an audience."
The class also pairs nicely with Bell's own passions. An amateur screenplay writer - she favors creepy fantasy of the Twilight Zone variety - Bell has taught about film as literature at Wharton, and also has regularly offered creative writing courses during her seven years there.
Many of her students, in fact, enrolled because they're fans of Bell as much as fans of film.
"As soon as she told me this class was open, I signed up for it. I love Ms. Bell," said senior Shannon Gallemore. "I never thought about screenplays. But I love movies."
Shannon and others also hoped to infuse their writings with new perspectives and ideas that come from the movie writer's point of view.
"I was really interested in this class," senior Angela Austin said. "A lot of people can actually visualize their stories like a movie. I wanted to see how I could do that" and work it into future fiction writing.
Many in the nine-week class won't steer their plot lines all the way to fruition. But some, including Shannon and Angela, have signed up for a second nine weeks with the hope of getting their original works filmed, with some help from the school's acting club and television production class.
Just a few days into school, though, the first order of business is nailing down the basics - framing, camera angles, lighting and the like - and brainstorming story ideas.
"Any idea is good," Bell announced as the students broke into teams. "I don't care how weird it is. Have you seen some of the movies out there?"
Conversation gushes, as if the students had been waiting years for this moment. They talk about zombies, rappers, the Mexican Mafia.
Shannon and her group - two seniors, a sophomore and a freshman - start with the concept of a family that looks normal on the surface but has a sadistic side that most don't see. Bouncing thoughts off one another, they increasingly focus on the daughter, who later will be named Emma Woodson, and her growth into a mass murderer.
Abused by her parents, Emma appears as an 8-year-old torturing her dolls. She matures into full killer as a teenager. After all, one teammate explains, it's when you're a teenager that everything goes wrong.
Senior Princton Brennan said he favors this type of reality-based horror.
"It's more scary when it could really happen," he said, citing the character Hannibal Lecter as an example. "He seems so normal, then he eats your face."
The teammates say that even though they didn't know each other before, their shared love of movies and writing got their creative energies flowing.
"We took a little bit of everybody's ideas and formatted them into one story," Shannon explained. "That's neat."
By December, Bell wants to see her students complete at least a few short films, perhaps for a Wharton film festival in the cafeteria. Even if that doesn't happen, she said, at the very least she hopes that her class offers an entertaining way for teens to improve their writing.
"It forces them to use the verbal skills they're supposed to be learning, but they're finding a fun way," she said. "It's more of the early childhood model, where they have fun and don't realize they're learning. ... Learning is supposed to be about discovery."
