Tales on Tape : Schools: A television documentary project evolves into a collective self-portrait on videotape for students at Pacific Palisades Elementary.

PACIFIC PALISADES — Amid images of laughing children, the video suddenly cuts to an empty playground where two boys sit talking quietly. “Edgar and I have been through a lot of adventures together,” a voice track laid later by one of them explains. “He always helps me whenever I need help. . . . I will miss him when he moves to Kansas. . . .

“This is Jose Morales reporting.”

The poignant segment is part of an exuberant and revealing 52-minute television documentary written and produced by a group of third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders at Pacific Palisades Elementary School.

Initially, few knew much more about television except that seeing something on TV didn’t necessarily make it true and that news and entertainment are supposed to be different. Now they are not only old hands at gain-ups (a camera technique) and strobes and sound bites, they also have a clear sense--after months of analyzing the content and technique of broadcasts in an incredible news year--of how to evaluate what they see.

It began last fall as a class exercise in critical thinking skills for the 40 children in the school’s program for gifted and talented students. The project gathered momentum, however, and was soon expanded to include children from outside the gifted program.

When it ended this month, teacher Martha Lipscomb, a former TV producer and assignment editor, found that her 50 students had created a collective self-portrait on 18 hours of videotape. It shows, from their perspective, what it’s like to grow up in a storybook Southern California suburb in the 1990s.

Now edited into marketable length, the still-untitled video may find a wider audience: Half a dozen television producers have asked to see it.

“It’s how they look at their lives,” Lipscomb said last week, noting that these youngsters’ world, at least on videotape, does not include crime, poverty, war or even broken homes. Instead, it is a world of roller-blading, baseball, dance classes, hopscotch and “hanging out,” with a bit of school work tossed in for good measure, shot from the eye level and mind-set of a 10-year-old.

One described the heady mix of fear and excitement he felt on the pitcher’s mound or acting on stage; another captured the joy of movement in gymnastics, dance and tae kwon do.

“I was surprised by the variety,” their teacher said. “The kids were very straight, honest about their feelings. I certainly would not have been as comfortable with video at their ages.”

Asked to script the highlights of their week or their most memorable moment, many chose to focus on relationships with friends, family or teachers; no fewer than four boys did segments about being pals or buddies.

Although the film begins with predictable sequences about school activities--a pizza fund-raiser, the science fair, the DARE program--it quickly segues into individual lives: There is the time Doug Phelps lost his retainer and he and his mother had to search for it in the dumpster, a confession by Phoebe Brauer’s older sister that she never used the girls’ bathroom at school because it was “too grungy,” Paul Waggoner’s and Adam Breech’s fantasy of how they’d spend a lottery win, Blanca Ortiz’s sleepy early morning bus journey from Union Avenue Elementary.

In another segment, a group of third-graders wearing paper crowns tell how they’d change the school if they were “king for a day”: A swimming pool would replace the schoolyard, there would be a candy store next door, and teachers, homework and boys would be banned. The kids would be allowed to wear hats too.

And, finally, there is the story of Edgar and Jose.

“The most important things are my friends,” Jose wrote in his script. “The only friends I’ve got are the ones in school. I like to play a lot with my friends.”

A wide shot of the yard filled with children of all races tightens to show three boys walking together, then Jose jumping rope as his friend waits his turn.

“But there is a special friend. His name is Edgar. I do different things with Edgar that I don’t do with some of my other friends. When we all went to new classrooms, I went to Mrs. S’s class. . . . But then I got changed to Mrs. Chen’s class, Room 4. There I met Edgar. We have been friends for almost a year. We have gone through a lot of adventures together.”

The scene shifts to the empty playground where they reminisce about those adventures. “Like the time both of us thought we had left our homework at home, but our homework was in our backpacks.

“Edgar is a true friend. He always helps me whenever I need help. It’s nice to know there is someone who helps you.” They walk together out of the shot.

“I will miss him. . . . “

That closing segment has brought tears to the eyes of adults who have watched the video, and the young filmmakers also think it is special.

Said fourth-grader Meredith Gilbert: “That part about Jose and Edgar was really neat.”

Lipscomb began the year by requiring her students to watch several hours of television news each week and to keep a journal of what they noticed--what story led the newscast (and why), how events were illustrated, the balance and completeness with which stories were reported, and the order in which the news of the day was presented.

“I was amazed by their sophistication in thinking,” she said. “It cut across all grades and ethnic groups. They really did a good job of observing.”

They discussed the various jobs that contribute to news coverage, videotaped Earthquake Day (parts of which are incorporated into the final film), and got to hear from and work with a host of professional volunteers: KABC cameraman Martin Orozco; ABC network reporter Judy Muller; helicopter pilot-reporter Bob Tur and his wife, photographer Marika Gerrard-Tur; KABC cameraman Scott Shulman, who is in charge of the satellite truck, and KABC Assistant News Director Jim Hattendorf. The school’s booster club provided funds to bring in Henry Mendoza, executive director of the California Chicano News Media Assn.

Mendoza, a former TV news director, visited regularly to consult on the project and paid special attention to the Latino participants (about one-fourth of the students in the gifted program at the Westside school are Latino children bused there daily from Union Avenue Elementary near downtown Los Angeles).

And last week, Mendoza was on hand to critique the finished product. His rapt listeners basked in his praise and asked him about technical problems they had encountered in attempting to tell their stories in the way they envisioned.

“It was absolutely great fun to see the tape showing them thinking,” Mendoza said. “Even if they couldn’t technically pull something off, you could see they were thinking about it and trying to get it right.”

Catching Principal Terri Arnold jumping rope was “great video,” Mendoza told them. “The interviews are excellent, the thought behind them. . . . The ‘Ghostbusters’ dance sequence (shot by special effects wizard Phil Gilbert, a fifth-grader) was absolutely brilliant.”

He said the project was valuable because “we need to catch these kids up to today’s technology. . . . And it’s infinitely harder to deal with (making a documentary) in two languages; some concepts don’t translate.”

Students could shoot their segments in any language; one girl chose to do hers in Spanish, which, although untranslated, is understood through the pictures.

As for the young filmmakers, they say they loved getting out of class to shoot and stayed after school to work on the video as well.

“The funnest and most learning part was working with the camera, learning what it did and being able to do what we did,” said cameraman Phil Gilbert, who says he may have found a career “if it pays enough.”

“It took a lot more time than there is on that tape,” he said. “I think it was worth it. But I was disappointed that we didn’t get to edit too; it would have been very fun for me to do that.”

For Jamey Dolowich, “the hardest part was walking backward to film with the camera on my shoulder.”

John Achen complained that “my shoulder hurt a lot” after holding the camera for long periods, while Paul Waggoner had trouble concentrating on what he was shooting because of outside distractions: “You have to keep both eyes open at the same time.”

Meredith Gilbert relished being a reporter: “The hardest part is getting the questions right and making sure you have all of it down. . . . But I learned that everybody makes mistakes, even professionals.”

Although few of the students said they want to be journalists when they grow up, it is a sure bet that they will never watch TV again in a mindless daze.

Said fourth-grader Cary Hubbs: “Now I look for mistakes and for what could be better.”