Lights, Camera, Chicken Bowl?

There is a kind of nervous anticipation in the room.

The overhead lights are off; daylight streams through far-away windows.

The subject is nervous; he feigns a false bravado, a brave face for the assault to come. He's on the spot and he knows it.

Tell the truth, or tell them what they want to hear?

His name is Bob Ensign, teacher at Newark High School and it is his turn in the “hot seat”; to go under the lights and face the tough questions. What will they want to know? About his 12 years teaching at the school? About upcoming tests? Is it true that one of the buildings on campus is haunted?

Ensign makes an attempt to keep his interrogators off-balance by reaching over his head and adjusting the boom microphone being held by senior Lauren Casey. It is supposed to be pointed at his mouth and stay just out of camera range.

And then the questioning begins.

Chicken Bowl, they want to know about their teacher's obsession with a cafeteria staple made from chicken nuggets, gravy, mashed potatoes, American cheese and corn.

The students are relentless as they drill down to the roots of Ensign's obsession and the finer points of transforming this hodgepodge of cafeteria side dishes into a comfort food delight.

As the questioning continues, it is clear that Ensign has made a serious study of this dish and that he makes certain that he is first in line each time it appears on the school's menu.

This interview is part of a larger series being collected by students in the school's documentary film class. Taught by community volunteers Mike Yearling and Reece Thompson, the semester-long course provides students with a hands-on introduction to the basic skills and technologies of modern film-making.

The class came about as a result of a film shown at the 2015 Newark FamFEST.

Mike Yearling brought a film to that event about on the Mardi Gras Indians of New Orleans which was the result of a 3-year service-learning project with students at OSU-Newark. After the screening, Yearling met with FamFEST co-director Chris Ramsey who challenged him to bring that learning opportunity to the students of Newark High School.

Accepting the challenge, Yearling partnered with Reece Thompson, owner of local production company Flicker-lit Productions.

From the beginning, Yearling and Thompson chose the documentary film as a learning model both because it eliminated the need for actors and because it is easier to tell real stories that would not otherwise be heard.

For Thompson, “documentaries are a great way to introduce narrative and cinematic techniques without having to worry too much about the nuances of advanced filmmaking aesthetics while getting students interested in relevant social and cultural messaging.”

It took about six months for the project to come together and the course was officially offered as an elective at the end of the Fall semester.

With not much time to promote the elective, the initial class was filled with a wide variety recruits, primarily from Ensign's classes. The result was a mix that he describes as being like “The Breakfast Club”--the 1985 teen comedy about a prom queen, a nerd, a jock, a freak and a rebel forced to spend a Saturday in detention. The 2016 class has a similar diversity of students, many of whom were coming together for the first time.

And like that three-decade old film, the message of the class is to build student confidence in their own perspectives and experiences.

Initially, the teachers had hoped that the students would each be able to make their own short film, but limitations of time and equipment forced them to shelve that plan in favor of a single group project.

For more than a month, the class learned about documentary films and discussed story ideas. Gradually, they focused on perceptions and preconceptions about Newark and its high school.

Reminding the school and the larger community of many positive things happening at the school took on an added importance in the light of a bleacher-clearing confrontation between opposing cheer squads during a recent away game for the basketball team.

It is a sobering experience to sit in a classroom and hear students repeat the stereotypes that exist about their school and their community. Casey is very clear that she will have to leave Newark in order to pursue her goals.

Yearling says that overlooked by these stereotypes are a lot of good students who are working hard and are being supported by a dedicated staff and administration. Having previously taught a similar class at Walnut Ridge in the Columbus City Schools system he sees many similarities and a similar gap between perception and reality.

“You go in thinking one thing,” said Yearling, “and what you learn is the exact opposite. These kids have tremendous assets and are an inspiration to me.”

Promoting school and community pride may seem like an outmoded cliché, but Yearling disagrees. He believes that so long as the stories told are detailed and the characters are authentic then the audience will invest their empathy in the story.

“As we build the story for our film,” said Yearling, “we apply the Distinctiveness Test. If we can tell the same story and just substitute a different school name, then we fail.”

The story that provides the central theme of the film is that of NHS graduate Jerri Mock who, in 1964, became the first woman to fly solo around the world.

For Lauren Casey, who herself has the goal of traveling the world as an archeologist, the choice to include Mock makes perfect sense.

“She showed us,” said Casey, “that we can dream big and follow those dreams. Who we are and what we can do, is not determined by where we come from.” She quickly added, “Not that I don't love where I come from.”

Not everyone shares such an optimistic view of the project.

For junior Alisia McDougal, the self-described class cynic, the class should be doing something other than making a generic love letter about the school. She would have preferred the class “do anything else but what's expected.” According to McDougal, the only way to really understand what Newark High School is like is to experience it.

For teacher Ensign, the process of putting the film together has been fascinating. He's watched as the students have made a series of discoveries about the form and the process. He thinks the students are more than capable of capturing the spirit of the school, celebrating its past and looking toward their collective future.

Like the Chicken Bowl, the different students have come together to make a project that is greater than the sum of its parts, but Ensign is still waiting for one final discovery: “I can't wait for them to figure out that the movie is really about them.”

Newark's Documentary Film class will continue collecting interviews and editing their still-untitled film right up to its premier at FamFEST 2016.