A school is a pretty boring setting to most high school students, but in the eyes of a filmmaker, it’s a gold mine of opportunity.
The students and teacher of the Video and Film 2 class decided to grasp the opportunity this year, by making a sitcom dubbed “Planeview.”
Ideas for the series came from collaborative efforts between the students in the class and their teacher.
“The group had all these ideas for, you know, aliens, spacecrafts, and things that required a lot of special effects,” Kugler said. He believed his students were thinking too big, without realizing they were going to school every day in a movie set that most filmmakers would covet. And so, Planeview was born.
Macey Austin ‘24 felt that creating the sitcom with a cast and crew of only six people taught her a lot about both friendship and film making.
“I love that it’s such a small class because I feel very close with all of the people, and I feel like we’ve become a really strong team,” Austin said. “We understand how to have fun and make conversation with each other but also how to get work done.”
The class’s initial plan was to release two episodes a month, but because of the erratic nature of film making, they were unable to reach their goal.
“We change directors every time, and different directors go at different paces,” Austin said. “There’s a lot of coordination that goes on behind the scenes that people don’t know about.”
By enlisting a different director for each episode, every student in the class gets to step into a different role every time. However, this doesn’t mean that students are required to try every role.
“I think we wanted to give everyone the opportunity to do what they wanted to,” Austin said. “For example, I don’t really have any interest in acting, but I’d love to direct at least one episode.”
So far, the school’s response to Planeview has been overwhelmingly positive. “I enjoy looking around the room and seeing everyone’s reactions,” Austin said.
Still, as a perfectionist, Austin said it’s hard to see a meticulously produced episode air for the first time and seeing little flaws.
“That’s hard and, I mean, that’s just part of being an artist.”
