NW Democrat-Gazette

The Next Generation

Screenwriting workshops target teen voices

LARA JO HIGHTOWER

The Arkansas Cinema Society is giving teens a chance to make their creative voices heard through two youth screenwriting labs offered in Helena and Springdale. The Springdale lab, which will take place at the Teen Action Support Center at The Center on Emma Avenue, will run from Oct. 11 through Nov. 5, and the organization is accepting applications from youth ages 15 to 19 until Sept. 24.

“We have had such an incredible experience with the filmmaking lab for teen girls,” says Rachel Norris-Wilson, ACS’ director of education, of previous workshops the organization has offered to teens. “They all pitch their ideas, and those ideas come from very personal spaces. It allows them to have an opportunity to express themselves emotionally. Youth in general — I was a high school science teacher for a long time before coming on to ACS full time — they don’t always have a space where their voice can be heard, and they don’t always have a space to express their emotions. Screenwriting allows you to do that, allows you to pick a moment in time — and it could be your story or someone else’s story, or even a story that you heard from a friend — but it does allow students the space to kind of work through the emotions that they’re feeling right now in their lives, and to work through experiences in their past.

“Part of the power of filmmaking is being able to connect our humanity, and screenwriting does that so beautifully,” she adds. “It has such an incredible power to connect all of us to one another, which is one of the reasons I personally love film.”

Writer and producer Amber Lindley will be heading up the Northwest Arkansas class. Lindley has written and produced feature-length and short film scripts, with notable credits including “The Sower,” which won an Audience Choice award at the Bentonville Film Challenge.

“[Teenagers] are passionate, and they have an honesty to them and an honesty that they put in their writing that I think we as adults sometimes guard against,” says Lindley. “Students have an innocence that allows them to pour all of that emotion out in the writing, and it’s very refreshing.”

The ACS’ mission statement says the organization hopes to foster filmmaking in Arkansas “by supporting filmmakers, festivals, theaters and young people interested in filmmaking throughout the state.” Norris-Wilson says the organization is serious about bringing young people into the conversation.

“I think that it’s really easy for someone as they’re going through high school and even into college to lose faith in their ability to become a filmmaker without having seen someone their own age doing it,” she says. “I think part of the power of what we’re doing at ACS is allowing students to see it in order to imagine that they can actually be it. We truly believe that all voices should be heard and all stories should be heard, and by giving students a moment to feel empowered to write their story down, it gives them the ability to have their voices heard. It gives them a push at saying, ‘I can do the writing part, what else could I do? Could I be a director? Could I be a cinematographer or a producer or work in the lighting department?’”

The organization has, in the past, offered popular filmmaking labs for teen girls, and Norris-Wilson says the plan is to expand the roster of classes to include other potential jobs in filmmaking — like lighting, sound mixing, special effects and makeup.

“All of these things are incredible artistic, creative spaces and really lucrative jobs, and one of the things we want to do is make sure everyone understands that there’s so much you can do in filmmaking,” she says.

Springdale

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2021-09-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-09-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://edition.nwaonline.com/article/284507231495323

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