Picturing Success : Ten students from Pacoima film program head for the Sundance festival to mingle with industry powerbrokers.

Like other teen-agers prepping for a field trip, the students in James Gleason’s Pacoima Middle School class were growing restless one recent rainy afternoon, visibly excited about get ting out of the classroom and into the real world for some hands-on education.

And no wonder--Gleason’s students in a magnet school program for budding filmmakers leave today on what must be among the most exotic field trips for students in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

While other students are poring over textbooks in the gray light of a public school classroom this morning, Gleason, several chaperons who work in show business and 10 of his 23 teen-age students will be boarding a plane for Salt Lake City.

Final destination: the Sundance Film Festival. There, they will spend a week watching, meeting and mingling with filmmakers and powerbrokers from Hollywood and around the world who come to Sundance to watch new films, discover new talent and engage in unfettered deal-making, schmoozing and partying, all in the glittery Old West-style resort town of Park City.

And starting today, many in the industry will shed their power suits and move east for a working and skiing vacation. For the students from Gleason’s eighth-grade film production class, it will be anything but a time to relax. After raising their own travel money through candy bar sales, baby-sitting and other modest efforts, the students say they mean business. They want to learn as much as possible about movie making and hope to meet as many potential mentors as they can.

This year’s students, Gleason’s third crop to go, have an additional reason to be excited: They’ve written a script of their own and they plan to be out there “pitching it,” as they say in Hollywood. “Because we went last year, a lot of our kids got psyched up,” said Gleason, 46, a part-time scriptwriter and production expert. “They said, ‘Hey, we can do one of those.’ ”

And now they have. The script, written in committee fashion by current and former students during class time, is about a group of teens who conspire with residents of a senior citizens’ home for various adventures and good deeds. Some of the scriptwriters may be only 13 but already they have learned the cardinal rule of Hollywood: Trust no one. In other words, except to say that it’s tentatively titled “Getting Away With It,” they’re keeping mum on the details of their script, lest they be scooped.

Gleason, in fact, likens his charges to “Little Spielbergs,” because of the motivation and budding talent they have exhibited at such young ages. “Spielberg started at 16,” he said. “These kids are even younger than that.”

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The school program, formally known as the Pacoima Television, Theater and Fine Arts Magnet School, attracts students from throughout Los Angeles who compete for the chance to learn about film and television production, drama, dance, music and other creative endeavors.

Not all of Gleason’s students who are making the movie are going to Sundance, and not all of the students who are going actually are working on writing or producing the movie. Many of them have their own projects.

Gleason said he has tried to take as many students as possible each year, but had to cut the list in half this time for financial reasons. Only those with a B average or better and who worked the hardest after school made the cut, he said.

The movie’s production manager, Raina Roessle, 16, and cinematographer Karen Chow, 17, don’t attend the Pacoima magnet school, and they will stay behind. They will leave most of the pitching to the film’s would-be producer, Josh Gray-Emmer, and director, Elizabeth Eiben, both 16 and former Gleason students. Although both now attend magnet high schools, they will join Gleason’s current students on the trip.

“Hopefully, all of us will be going in ‘97, when we premiere our film,” Gray-Emmer said.

Gleason, in fact, credits Gray-Emmer with helping ensure the class’s return to Sundance this year.

A precocious film buff who already sports a Hollywood-style ponytail and earring, Gray-Emmer is the script’s most vocal and confident supporter. After attending the festival the last two years, he called Sundance officials, who invited the group back despite the festival’s growing popularity and lack of space, said Nicole Guillemet, festival managing director and the Sundance Institute’s general manager.

Gleason said the festival bills itself as a place for needy and deserving independent filmmakers. “So we said to them, ‘Who is more independent than us?’ ” he said, chuckling. “They liked that idea.”

Guillemet said Sundance is helping the kids from Pacoima as much as possible, and plans to give them free access to movie showings, a film premiere or two and perhaps even some of the nighttime parties where much of the deal-making takes place.

Unlike Gray-Emmer, who has dreams of becoming a mega-producer, most of Gleason’s students just want to learn the basics of film and video. For them, Sundance has become a place of mythical proportions, mostly because of the tales brought back by Gray-Emmer and others who have gone before them.

“I’m so-o-o-o excited I can not wait,” squealed Tanya Leibovici, 13, of Sherman Oaks, one recent day while cutting videotape at one of the class’s film-editing bays. “Everybody who’s gone says it’s a magical place that changes your whole way of thinking and looking at movies.”

In preparation for Sundance, which runs through Jan. 29, the students have been busy trying to set up meetings with producers, directors, gaffers and grips they hope to meet there. The hands-on training provided by Gleason is evidenced by their grasp of a film-maker’s vocabulary. Many of them have had to remind potential mentors who have spoken with them only by phone that pre-festival meetings are out, since they’re still in school.

“It’s hard to believe how young they are, and many people forget,” Gleason said. “But these kids use it to their advantage, to get what they want.”

As they putter about the editing bays, however, the enthusiasm of the students gives away their youth. Their chatter is punctuated by, “That’s neat, Mr. Gleason!” and “Hey, Mr. Gleason, what’s that?”

“It’s an autofocus,” he tells them. “You’ll need it for your cutaway shots. . . . You’ll see once you get more into it.”

The students scrunch their faces, and go back to fiddling with a videotape they are cutting, making notes on the log sheets that show which parts of the tape will stay and which will end up on the editing room floor.

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In a school district known for its red tape and regimentation, Gleason’s hands-on approach may not be completely by-the-book, but it has won over not only his students, but school officials, parents and others as well.

One wall of the editing room is full of awards won by the students for class film and video projects. Last year, for instance, they swept the student film awards in the Santa Clarita-based Clarita awards, taking seven of eight category honors despite competition from many other schools from Southern California and several other states. One of their films, called “Mark,” dealt with the grown-up subjects of suicide and homosexuality.

There is even an official commendation from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, which honored Gleason last year for his “extraordinary altruism, imagination and talent, (which) are reflected in this educator’s work, which has provided hundreds of students with creative learning opportunities, motivation and encouragement.”

“I love Mr. Gleason,” said Kristyn Abbadini, 13. “He’s the best teacher. He’s not strict. He’s fun to be with, to hang around with. He’s like a friend.”

Her film partner, Steve Cigaroa, added: “He doesn’t go by the books. He’ll explain it, hands on.”

Gleason’s first class trip to Sundance two years ago occurred when his students were on a year-round track system and not in school at festival time. This year, on a different calendar system, the students will have to miss a few days of class, but Gleason said school officials and parents have been supportive. Besides, he said, students will work longer hours and learn more at the festival than they would in his classroom.

Daryl Moore, 13, of Sylmar will be the assistant camera operator on the film--which the students say they will make, whether or not they get Hollywood funding. He looks forward to going so he can meet people who have made it in the business and who can offer advice and how-to’s. But “the most fun,” he said, “is that we get to go somewhere besides school.”

Once at the festival, the students, with Gleason’s help, will look for as much as $250,000 in financial backing so they can begin production this summer. They will also be on the lookout for technical advisers and other mentors to help them rewrite the script and shepherd it through the often-torturous production process.

And some, like Gray-Emmer, say it wouldn’t hurt if they also linked up with some prominent mogul types who could put them to work once they’re out of school.

And for that, there is probably no better place than Sundance. The festival was started 14 years ago by actor / director Robert Redford as a way to promote independent filmmakers who often get overlooked or ignored by the major studios and talent agencies.

For more than a decade, Sundance remained a quaint local festival. But it has become the preeminent American film festival within the past few years, after the independent film “sex, lies and videotape” played there to rave reviews and went on to become a commercial success. The subsequent premiere of budding director and writer Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs” and later his “Pulp Fiction” cemented the festival’s stature as an event where Hollywood’s biggest players go to find hot new talent and lock up film deals with them.

Besides film screenings, there will be seminars, workshops and discussion groups for the students to attend, not to mention all the unofficial goings-on that spring up at festival time, and of course, the parties.

At Sundance, as he does at school, Gleason said he will try to keep his students from getting starry-eyed by having them focus on learning the artistic and practical aspects of filmmaking. And lest they get carried away with dreams of hitting it big with a movie before they’re even old enough to vote, there is a sign on one classroom wall for all to see. It says: “Anyone who wants to be in show business should have their head examined.”