Students get taste of filmmaking at week-long camp

CHRIS BAXTER / The Observer FILM CURRICULUM COORDINATOR Tim Mustoe guides Ascension School students, from top, Tim Jaca, Erin Turner and Abby Turner through the editing process of their videos at the Eastern Oregon University media center.

Just ask Arely Torres of La Grande.

Arely was a member of a film camp conducted recently by the Ascension School Camp in Cove and the Oregon Writing Project at EOU.

“There was no smiling, no laughing, no giggling, no looking at the camera,’’ the La Grande youth said Thursday.

Arely was one of 24 students who attended the camp. The youths shot their footage in the Cove area and on Thursday morning did their editing in the media arts lab at EOU.

The students displayed impressive zeal and initiative in the process.

“They took over everything. The editing and special effects ... They worked like a real film crew,’’ said Jerry Marshall, a film team leader.

Marshall is a student at EOU where he is president of Eastern’s film club.

“It was great working with them. They were so interested and excited.’’

All the students at the camp will be entering grades six, seven, eight or nine this fall. Most were from La Grande, Bend and Ontario.

The films the students made, in addition to the horror movie titled “Spirits,’’ were about:

• an “undercover sleep-over.’’ In the film a boy tries to steal something from a group of girls in a sleepover by portraying himself as a girl.

• a video game machine that pulls in a player. In this film, “Game Over,’’ a video game reaches out and pulls in the boy playing it. The boy must win a game of Pac Man to get his freedom. He loses and as a result must participate in a magic tea party video game and later fight “Stars Wars’’ villain, Darth Vader.

Some of the youths attending the camp are now interested in pursuing careers in filmmaking because of their experience this week. Kyra Halls of La Grande is among them. She said one reason is she found herself fascinated with the stop motion animation technique she learned about at camp.

Desyray McManus of Bend speaks like she will never forget about what she learned about the art of scriptwriting.

“Nothing is written, it is rewritten,’’ she said.

She was repeating a phrase introduced to her by Marshall. The EOU student credits the phrase “Nothing is written, it is rewritten,’’ to the famed British comedy entertainer Sid Field.

EOU English professor Cori Brewster, the camp’s director, was impressed by how willing the students in the camp were to take chances and express the creativity they felt.

“They are not afraid. If they have an idea they say it,’’ Brewster said. “They were involved in every phase of their project.’’

Brewster was assisted at the camp by EOU graduates Tim Mustoe and Andrew Creasy and Eastern students Skyler Walrath, Dillon Lucher and Scott Nearing.

The camp was organized with the help of Brewster and fellow EOU faculty member Nancy Knowles, an English and writing professor who is director of the Oregon Writing Project at Eastern; media arts professor Kevin Roy; and music professor Peter Wordelman.

The camp ran June 20-25. The students viewed their short movies together on Thursday.

“They were so excited,’’ Brewster said. “They far exceeded their expectations in what they could accomplish.”