The Right Channel--Tuning In on a Real-Life ‘TV 101’

At first, 15-year-old Alirio Romero seemed tense as he rehearsed the questions he would ask high school junior Reyna Castro when the cameras began to roll.

“So tell me about the first day of school at Westlake,” he said, staring at the ceiling of the Castro family’s East Los Angeles apartment as if he might find the words written there. “So I hear you’re a good athlete. A good ath-lete . . . Couldn’t I just say sports?” he finally asked in exasperation.

But Romero’s self-consciousness faded as the interview moved from talk of school and sports to the Castro family’s dangerous flight from El Salvador to Los Angeles six years ago. Their means of transport across the border was the trunk of a Cadillac, with air holes punched through the metal and nine members of the family piled inside. The tab for the illegal ride: $425 apiece.

Now, Reyna Castro, 17, is a scholarship student at the Westlake School for Girls in Bel-Air--and Romero, a student at Bethune Junior High School in South-Central Los Angeles, was interviewing her for The Right Channel, a less-than-2-year-old nonprofit production company where teen-age Angelenos learn about themselves and their peers by producing documentaries.

Founded by 27-year-old Shauna Garr, a former production manager with “Wheel of Fortune,” The Right Channel seeks to improve the fortunes of a few bright and talented East and South-Central Los Angeles high schoolers by giving them a chance to become TV journalists.

This season, CBS introduced “TV 101,” a series about a high school broadcast journalism class in which the students produce their own documentaries. Months before that series made its December debut, The Right Channel, a real-life “TV 101” of sorts, was examining the lives of L.A.’s teen-age immigrants for “Coming Across,” the group’s first project.

Garr identified students for the program through a concerned teacher at Bethune whom she met through her work for “Wheel of Fortune.” The teacher selected 20 ninth-graders who she believed might benefit from a new project, since traditional teaching methods had failed to motivate them. Through application essays, interviews and impromptu screen tests, Garr selected a handful to participate. The kids have since graduated from Bethune; some went on to high school and others entered city-sponsored educational programs.

Producer Garr founded The Right Channel after doing volunteer work with children who were wards of the Los Angeles court system residing at a children’s home in Inglewood. “All they were doing was watching television, in a very passive way,” Garr said. “They didn’t seem motivated by anything. They’d been yanked around a lot, and they didn’t have a trusting bond with anyone.

“I worked in TV, and saw how these kids loved TV--but I wasn’t sure it was being used in the right way.”

All that changed, Garr said, after she got the kids involved in a documentary project in which they talked about themselves for the camera. The film will never air publicly; it became the property of the court because it contains sensitive information about family members due to stand trial. Still, the experience inspired Garr to try a similar project with urban teens.

Garr described how a boy whose mother was a cocaine addict and subjected him to frightening abuse--”she handed him a gun when he was only 2”--blossomed under the spotlight. “He went from being totally frightened and insecure to being really amazing in front of the camera,” Garr said. “All of the kids who were in that first documentary had similar stories.

“That’s what motivated me to start the company. They (the children) became really animated. By the end of the period I worked with them, they were so attached to me. Some of the kids who had told me they wanted to be rap singers before we did the documentary later said they wanted to be investigative reporters.”

Although Right Channel teens come from less dire circumstances than the children Garr first worked with, she has seen shy, giggly adolescents turn into competent interviewers. Speech therapist Judith Kaplan was one of many volunteers who donated time to The Right Channel, teaching the kids relaxation techniques and serving as voice coach. “When I’m sitting there watching, realizing how much they’ve progressed--I’m just in tears, watching Alirio,” Garr said.

The first project, “Coming Across,” a $25,000 documentary funded by corporate and private grants, is scheduled to air on public television and independent stations sometime in January. Although The Right Channel hires professionals to hold the camera, the young journalists write their own introductions and interview questions and do all the on-camera work.

Along with interviewing immigrants from Central America, Southeast Asia, Taiwan, Iran and the Soviet Union, the five student interviewers--Dorman Baltazar, Randy Reynolds, Sean Baker, Freda Zemones and Romero--introduce their segments by telling a little about themselves.

Eighteen-year-old Baltazar interviewed an Iranian youth currently living in Beverly Hills for his segment of “Coming Across.”

“The kids from other countries, the one thing they have in common is that they came here for a better life,” he said thoughtfully during a shooting break at the Castro home. “I wouldn’t want to say I had a better life than they did, but my life has been easier than theirs because I haven’t been through what they have--crossing the border, running away from war.”

Baltazar did escape a war on his own turf, however. Before getting serious about his education and The Right Channel, Baltazar, who aspires to become an Army engineer, was involved in the street drug trade.

“When I was 16, I had friends who were selling drugs, and I wanted to get a car just like they had,” Baltazar said.

“So I started hanging around with them and selling drugs; I got into that. Selling drugs, and staying out all night. My brother told my uncle, and they started talking to me about how dangerous it was, because one of my friends got killed when he was selling drugs. I sort of drifted away from it, because I didn’t want to die.”

Now that Baltazar, a high school dropout, is working with The Right Channel and has decided to complete his high school equivalency after entering the Army, getting a car is no longer so important. Along with his engineering career, Baltazar hopes to do some acting or perhaps host a talk show someday. He also would like The Right Channel to produce a documentary on black families in Los Angeles.

“My mother thinks that since I’m doing this now, I won’t have to be on the streets, hanging out with my friends, that I can stay out of trouble,” Baltazar said with a grin.

Fifteen-year-old Zemones, a top student at Los Angeles’ John C. Fremont High School, serves as narrator on “Coming Across.” She wants to attend USC or a California State university and would like to become a TV anchor. She would also like to do another Right Channel documentary--on the South Central Los Angeles neighborhood where she lives.

“I think it would be really interesting, the families,” she mused. “A lot of things come out (in the press) about gang violence--it’s bad, but it’s not that bad.

“And I’d like to get out and show how it really is. And I’m into celebrities--I’d like to do something on celebrities,” she added. “I’d like to interview Oprah Winfrey; I really like her. I watch her when I get home in time. I feel she’s a good example for me. Aside from Marcus Allen (of the Los Angeles Raiders), she’s the person I’d most like to interview.”

Along with Reyna Castro, Romero interviewed Pedro, a 14-year-old from El Salvador who crossed the border by hiding out atop a train bound for San Diego. Although Romero has decided he would rather be an actor or comedian than a broadcast journalist (“I’m not real serious, like Peter Jennings and all of them”), the Right Channel experience has made him more sympathetic to the plight of Los Angeles immigrants.

“I just want people to think when they say, ‘Why don’t they just stay in their own country?’ ” he said heatedly. “I’d like for them to go to El Salvador now and see how it is. They’d be scared, just like the people are now who want to cross the border. People are going to realize what’s really happening in other countries (through “Coming Across”). We’re doing a good job, I guess.”

The Right Channel plans to produce two documentaries per year. Garr hopes that they will be shown at schools, by neighborhood youth organizations and perhaps even at local movie theaters, and that other students will be inspired by the success of their peers. The next group of students to work with The Right Channel will be culled from high schools near the company headquarters.

Although the budget contains a salary for Garr, so far she has donated it back to the project. Her associate producer, Peggy Lavell, also works without salary, as do a number of volunteer staffers in The Right Channel’s Wilshire District headquarters.

“These kids were chosen to be the role models for the entire city,” Garr said. “For this documentary, it costs $1,000 a day to shoot. That’s too much money to spend just to help five kids. We’re expecting the effect to be far more widespread than that.”