Filmmakers in the Making

Rookie actor Ernesto Hernandez realized he was working in a near vacuum during the filming of “Price of Glory,” which features the San Fernando High School senior opposite Jimmy Smits.

Though the film was about a Mexican American boxer trying to extend his glory vicariously through his three Mexican American sons, Ernesto and director Carlos Avila were the only Mexican Americans on the set. Not a single gaffer, camera operator or actor represented the ethnic group that the film was about, Ernesto said.

So he approached San Fernando High’s technology coach Marco Torres, and the two of them developed an after-school digital filmmaking team that will present its works at 6 tonight at the high school during the I-Can Film Festival. The Educational Technology team has produced short films from two to 30 minutes in length on topics ranging from documentaries on their families immigrating to the United States to a comedy on doing exactly what your mother tells you to do.

The team has done more than put brown faces in front of and behind the camera. One of its first projects included making videos showing teachers how to perform computer-related tasks, such as scanning a photo into a digital image. The how-to video is featured on Apple Computer’s Web site promoting the company’s line of digital-video products.

In the eight months since the students started producing their own films, a number of compelling visual storytellers has emerged from the group of 36 students, Torres said.

“We had 10th-graders talking to grandparents and great uncles about their families’ journeys from Mexico, Central America or the Midwest to San Fernando,” Torres said. “For teenagers, this kind of dialogue doesn’t usually happen.”

*

A film produced by senior Cesar Larios to accompany an essay for his government class depicts violence shown on network television with text fading in and out in the foreground. “Children spend more time watching TV than talking to their parents,” the text reads.

Cesar became known in the tech center as something of a philosopher after he was interviewed for an Apple commercial. Asked why he chose the digital medium over presenting an oral report, Cesar said, “I don’t feel my mouth does my brain justice.”

Student filmmaker Humberto Cuentas said students who normally attend school only because they have to found themselves on campus after school and on Saturdays to watch the filmmakers at work on rainbow-colored iMacs in the tech center, dubbed the Million-Dollar Room.

“Sometimes they’re here as late as 9:30 at night,” Humberto, a senior, said. “We just get them hyped with the tech vibe, so they keep coming back to help. It’s just like what I do to hype a party, except it’s school.”

On Wednesday, Humberto previewed a portion of his film, “Different Art Forms,” in a common area at the high school. He started out with standard mixing, combining beats on two turntables. With a little help from Torres, he replaced the wheels of steel with two laptop computers and continued mixing.

“This is the kind of stuff that’s going to put San Fernando High on the map,” said Humberto, who will work as an intern this summer at Warner Bros. studios.

*

Torres agreed the program is as much about getting students excited about school as it is about learning to use the latest technology.

“Only 10 years ago, I was in high school,” Torres said. “I know students don’t just want to sit back and receive learning. They want to be active. We look at ways to incorporate social studies, math and history into one multimedia--how can we jazz it up?”

Those methods are working for technology team member and senior Sandra Leal.

“When Mr. Torres said, ‘You guys are going to start editing videos,’ I said, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t do this,’ ” said Sandra, one of the editors on Ernesto’s comic film, “Alvin’s Movie.”

A staffer from Quentin Tarantino’s Rolling Thunder production company and a Miramax executive will be among the judges at tonight’s festival, said Diana Martinez, a spokeswoman for Miramax.

“It’s so amazing to see Marco Torres do this work with the students at a school where just a while ago, there was no computer to be found,” Martinez said. “This was born out of a real need for more technology at the school and more people from that area needed in the film business.”