Fledgling Film Makers Preview Parks & Rec Video

By John Voket

It could be any one of dozens of interviews you might see on programs like Entertainment Tonight or Access Hollywood. The young filmmakers sit, poised and confident, as they talk about “the business,” dropping names such name as Spielberg, Shyamalan, and Scorsese.

In one moment, they are individually introspective, predicting what this crazy business they’ve chosen might have in store. In another they riff off each other, one sometimes finishing a sentence as the other trails off, grasping for a thought or obscure reference. They talk about their craft as art, dissecting the finer points of lighting, the techniques of camera placement, and the intricacies of a particular genre.

But these two aspiring filmmakers are much more likely to be found catching a flick at Edmond Town Hall than they would be promoting one at Cannes or Sundance…at least for now. And they’re probably much more accomplished at navigating the halls of Newtown High School than they might be finding their way around Hollywood.

That’s because these filmmakers go to Newtown High. And last week, Ashley LaRocque and Greg Gordon premiered their first collaborative project to a small but attentive audience at the Newtown Parks and Recreation Committee meeting.

The duo is nearly finished gathering primary footage that will be honed into their finished product, a half-hour video and DVD that will showcase the year-round programs available through the town’s Parks and Recreation Department. Besides making the short promotional video available to new residents who come to town, or those unfamiliar with the cornucopia of offering through this municipal agency, they also hope it will screen regularly on Charter’s local cable public access Channel 21.

According to Greg, he and Ashley were tapped to take on the project following their participation in Newtown High School’s Video Production Class. Using their own digital video cameras, the pair split up for primary shooting, collectively capturing numerous hours of footage at various Parks and Rec activities, camps, and facilities.

“We started out working on what we thought would be a four-season project,” Greg said. “But in the process of reviewing footage we’ve been gathering since last winter, we determined it would work best as a single video and not a separate half-hour program for each season.”

Their “trailer,” which ran about three minutes, featured quick cuts between one activity and another, each timed to crossfade along with the rhythm of a Creedence Clearwater Revival guitar loop. During quick breaks in the montage, interviews with town residents, park patrons and Parks and Rec staff members are inserted.

Greg was on hand to screen the preview and then take some input from commissioners at their most recent gathering, August 12. Their input was well received by both, they said in a subsequent interview at The Bee offices.

“[Parks and Rec Commission Chairman Lawrence Haskel] originally came to us at the end of November 2003 with the idea of putting together a video, but nobody was sure where to start,” recalled Greg. “But as we began researching what they were looking for we started going out and shooting at different parks. Now we’ll have that footage, and incorporating the input from last week’s meeting, we’ll go out and shoot another couple of hours of fall season footage. In a few weeks we’ll put it all together and start sifting through it.”

The process of deciding on what kind of finished product the commissioners were looking for took almost five months, Ashley said. “But we were on the right track, the commissioners let us do our work,” she said. “It was nice to have that room to breathe.”

Although Greg is one year behind Ashley in school, their penchant for filmmaking both started the summer before their respective freshman years.

She started out by stringing clips for existing films together as part of a project that ended up culminating in her freshman English class. He wrote, produced, directed, and starred in a project of his own design called, Stuck. (A film that he has since remade.)

Both agreed, however, that it was the editing process that provided an excellent introduction to the world of film.

Today, the students have their own idea of where they want to go in the business. Where he wants to pursue cinematography, directing, “…and maybe even acting,” she hopes to get into the production and editing end of the film process.

When discussing inspiration and influence, both credit their parents for giving them the support they needed to seriously follow their dreams. Greg said he comes from an extremely creative household where his parents, as well as an aunt and uncle, are toy inventors, and his brother is an aspiring musician.

“My brother is a great guitar player, and my parents have had great success with some of the toy lines they invented,” he said. Those toys include the Sectaurs and Boglins action figures.

“They even wrote a treatment for a film based on one of their lines of boys’ action figures,” Greg said. “But that was before I was born.”

Ashley grew up in a household anchored between her mom, a teacher in the local school system, and her dad, who works for a major league sports franchise. “My dad’s got a lot of connections, so I started really young going out and working beside producers and camera crews on the field,” she said.

While the prospect of both wielding a camera, and acting in front of one, hasn’t phased Greg from the very beginning, it didn’t take long for Ashley to learn how an understanding of the creative end of the film process could make her more successful on the business end.

“I’d love to go to work as a producer or editor at MTV or some other network,” she said. “But if I’m going to be successful in the film business, I better have a good grasp of the creative process.”

Ashley said most casual film and television consumers have no idea how involved the production process is.

“It’s so draining and time consuming,” she said. “But it’s great when the art and the business aspects come together and result in a great project — and I have to understand it all, from the budgeting, to the acting, to the lighting.”

Greg, however, is more interested in honing several of the skills he does well.

“In school, when something in the AV Department breaks, they say ‘go get Greg, he’s into all that electronic stuff.’ But don’t even ask me to program a VCR. I know how to adjust my camera, my lights, and how to run my editing system… for me it’s more about the art of the story, and the images, not all the technical stuff.”

Both of the students said they were inspired by renowned filmmaker Steven Spielberg’s work. But when they are asked about their favorite recent films, Greg answers quickly, “Mystic River — it’s a phenomenal film, so densely packed with so many literary characters.”

Ashley points to M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village. “You don’t find that kind of camera work in film today; it’s like modern Hitchcock, very classy and sophisticated.”

It’s safe to assume that there will be no head snapping plot twists in their Parks and Recreation promotional video, but a few years from now the filmmaking team of Gordon and LaRocque may look back on the experience as a valuable introduction to the real world of commercial production.

If all goes as scheduled in the editing and production process, their project will be ready to roll out in early 2005. And if either or both of these young talents realize their aspirations in the film industry, many of the folks who worked with them here during their humble beginnings in Newtown will be able to say, “We knew you when…”