A Student Plot : Ninth-Graders in Magnet Program Consider Story Lines for Movie They Will Write

A bewildering set of choices is confronting Toni Wilson’s fourth-period students at Pacoima Middle School this week as they ponder ideas for an annual script-writing project.

Do they give thumbs up to a film about teachers who turn into red-eyed zombies, or to one about a frightened girl who lives with an abusive father? Do they approve a movie about administrators who kidnap and brainwash students? Or one about a popular teen-ager who comes to grips with his homosexuality?

Those fictional tableaux now face the kids as they try to decide the story line of an original screenplay to be developed and written over the course of the first semester. The two dozen ninth-graders belong to a special English class devoted chiefly to the art of screenwriting--part of their studies in the school’s television, theater and fine arts magnet program.

The ultimate goal of the class is a night like Wednesday night, which witnessed the world premiere of the film produced by last year’s class. “Jump the Gun,” a 35-minute musical about how rumors are spawned and spread, was screened in the school auditorium before an audience that included television executives as well as administrators, faculty members, parents and students.

The latest crop of budding screenwriters in Room 31 is now busily weighing possible plots for this year’s production. This week, the students--all about 14 years old--energetically discussed the “treatments,” or screenplay synopses, each person submitted. Story lines ranged from the satirical to the serious, with a few that dealt with sophisticated social themes.

“They’re very into social issues,” Wilson said of her students, who joined the class by teacher recommendation based on writing and language skills. “We’ve talked about date rape, abortion, children of divorce, gangs.”

By week’s end, her pupils will narrow the field of treatments by half, then break into pairs to develop individual scenes from the remaining treatments over the next month. The class as a whole will adopt a final story line by November and jointly author the screenplay by winter break.

“I’m trying to incorporate the idea that’s in the industry that you have to collaborate and work collectively,” said Wilson, who has produced and directed films. But “they all want attention-- equal attention--and they’re all very talkative and dramatic.”

On Tuesday, those traits were very much in evidence as some of the more humorous treatments came under discussion.

Kelley Alves’ treatment centered on a teen-age private eye who cracks a conspiracy by administrators to brainwash students into “nice young gentlemen and ladies.”

“It was a good story, but it was so fake,” Elizabeth Sheldon commented.

“A 3-year-old would watch it,” added Farrah Lewis, with exaggerated emphasis. “Is that what you want?”

“I’m not saying it’s Hollywood material,” protested Kelley, exasperation in her voice.

The class moved on to Farrah’s story of a “new girl in town,” who schemes with the aid of a magical rock to steal a fellow student’s boyfriend. Despite some mystical machinations, the teen-age temptress is eventually thwarted, the boyfriend released and adolescent bliss triumphantly restored.

“It seems very easy to film,” volunteered one student.

But another girl disagreed: “It jumps from one scene to another.”

“That’s a very good point,” Wilson said. “You can’t jump from one scene to another without a logical transition.”

Wilson said her students need to develop an “inner eye” that goes behind the scenes of what they see in theaters and on television to understand what makes a successful screenplay work.

“They’re visual because they watch a lot of TV. But they don’t analyze. It passes through their brain, but they don’t think, ‘Why did they write it that way? Why was it filmed that way?’ ” she said.

Her students have watched an Alfred Hitchcock classic, “Rear Window,” to see how to capture filmic possibilities and true-to-life dialogue. The class will also have a chance to study a manuscript from an episode of the hit television show “Murphy Brown.”

“You don’t need to go overseas or up in space to have a decent screenplay,” she said. And besides, she said, her young charges brim with an eagerness and a lack of self-consciousness that give them a natural advantage.

“Their enthusiasm far exceeds what I taught in high school,” she said. “They’re not so much concerned about being cool as they are about letting it all hang out.”

Or as Elizabeth Sheldon explained: “In screenwriting you get to express your ideas and to write about things that are personal. I like it. It’s fun.”