Film camp aims to stoke teens' telling ambitions

DURHAM -- One recent Monday afternoon, participants in a new program discussed the film they'd just watched and its cinematic techniques.

"The Horse Boy" documented a family's journey to Mongolia to seek help for a severely autistic 4-year-old child.

Instructor Todd Tinkham noted that the film included more closeups of the child as it progressed. The boy also looked directly at the camera, which he hadn't done before.

Mario Daye, who just graduated from Southern High School, observed that every time the parents thought their son was improving, he suffered a setback. That pattern appears in fiction films too, Tinkham replied.

Daye noted that he'd learned something else from the movie.

"I honestly didn't know reindeers were real," he said.

"I'm not sure they fly, though," another instructor, Nic Beery, teased.

Jokes aside, what Beery and Tinkham are doing with Daye and five other teenagers is experimental, much like the journey in "The Horse Boy."

Their new program is called Full Frame Documentary Camp. The summer camp, a pilot project of the acclaimed Durham Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, could open many doors for students.

"These kids, in five weeks' time, could definitely work as production assistants on a professional shoot," Tinkham said. "They won't know everything, but they'll know all the basic equipment and how it fits together."

Pros meet students

Beery produces documentaries, corporate films and commercials. Tinkham is working on his first feature-length documentary, "Dispersed," about energy production; he recently completed his first full-length fiction movie, "Southland of the Heart," which he is shopping to film festivals.

Rising senior Mariah Brooks has worked on Southern High School's newspaper, the Spartan Scoop.

"I thought it would be different, because I usually like taking pictures, but I never thought about filming," she said about the camp. Documentaries about politics and war usually bore her, but "The Horse Boy" was intriguing because of its focus on one family. "It's more personal."

Time for action

Daye, who plans to become a U.S. Air Force reservist this summer, wants to be an actor. He joined the summer camp with the hope that understanding film techniques would help his career.

Despite having little previous interest in documentaries, by midday, Daye had become fascinated by the medium's potential.

"The fact that you made something that could probably touch other people's lives, and everybody could view something that you wouldn't think of viewing - that's the best thing about documentaries," Daye said.

He'll soon get to put his newfound knowledge into action. The six students, who were selected to represent a variety of personal backgrounds and academic levels, will produce a short documentary movie by late July. (See box for details.)

A vocational program

If the Full Frame Documentary Camp is deemed successful, it may spawn regular courses. The camp is the brainchild of Deirdre Haj, executive director of the Full Frame festival. She hopes that this summer program will evolve into a vocational program offered by Durham Public Schools at the Holton Career and Resource Center.

One of Haj's inspirations is a Hollywood, Calif., nonprofit called Streetlights, which trains "economically or socially disadvantaged" minority students to be production assistants.

"That's where (they) find the young kid that's willing to work and not make a lot of money who eventually becomes a part of their team," Haj said. "I'd like them to come from Durham."

Teaching storytelling

Another model for Haj is Adobe Youth Voices, an initiative sponsored by San Jose software maker Adobe Systems that teaches teenagers from "underserved communities" to tell true stories using video, pictures, audio and animation. Surveys show that 91 percent of participants in that program want to continue their education after high school, the foundation says.

Miguel Salinas is senior manager of Adobe Youth Voices, which has helped train more than 20,000 teenagers in 30 nations.

The program re-engages young people in school "by asking them what they care about and making that learning experience relevant to them," Salinas said.

"Once you give young people a microphone and the empowerment to express themselves about the things that they care about, amazing things happen," Salinas said.