Lights, camera, dollies: Culver students explore filmmaking in hands-on class

“Action!” the director shouts. Actors begin performing their roles, lighting and fog from a smoke machine provide a surreptitious feeling as a boom operator captures the sound and the dolly grip captures the 90-second scene in one take.

This isn’t a scene from a Hollywood set but on the Eppley Auditorium stage as Culver Academies students learn the craft of filmmaking in a class called “Film Studies I.”   

Adam Joyce, theatre department director at the Indiana boarding school, said the best part about teaching filmmaking to high school students is that everything is new.

“When students arrive at my class, I have to teach it as though this is the first time they’ve ever picked up a camera,” he said. “The learning curve is tremendous.”

He starts the one-term class with a simple trial and error method.

“I put the camera in students’ hands on Day One and I run them through a series of exercises. Then they tell me what they think a film should look like. We then discuss the choices they’ve made, then they iterate on the process and do it differently the next time,” Joyce said.

He said he would be robbing students of an opportunity if he started the class by telling them how the masters make films.

“It’s important they have room to experiment,” he said. “They come in with a thousand ideas. Some of those ideas are possible in a class like mine. A lot of them are impossible. But I think it’s important for them to discover that on their own.”

“Film Studies” originally was a theoretical class. Students would watch films and then discuss them. The year before Joyce arrived, longtime master instructor Stacey Warren had students start making films using their iPhones and beginning-level editing tools. The change in curriculum was a huge success and laid the foundation for Joyce to build upon.

When Joyce started, Culver bought three small DSLR cameras, with three interchangeable lenses. Since then, the school has added another nine cameras and has a total of more than 40 lenses.

Joyce said it’s especially important students learn how to use lenses.

“Because when they use a lens they have to have a discernible eye for the photography, the composition of the shot,” he said.

He said when a student selects which lens to put on the camera they are participating in the creative process.

A filmmaker must have a discussion with the cinematographer, who picks the lens, and with the actors, on where they should stand, and with the grips, who operates the dollies, cranes and jibs, and the gaffe, who sets up the lights.

“That means we're modeling collaboration and leadership. The days of the auteur theory of one person doing everything are over,” Joyce said.

 

 

Culver also has added professional-level dollies and jib arms, shoulder-held rigs, handheld rigs, skates and sliders to help students make films.

“We just have an array of tools that you would expect at a graduate level filmmaking class,” Joyce said.

Joyce said the class helps teach the importance of collaboration, a valuable skill needed for a lot of professions.

“Culver is a world-class leadership academy. So leadership is embedded into everything that we do. The leadership opportunities in film are tremendous,” he said.

Students make three three- to five-minute films in the class.

Joyce said film isn’t taught at many high schools the way it is at Culver. He said that at many high schools it is either simply a club or a way to create a newscast for the school message.

“But filmmaking isn’t something that a lot of high schools have the resources to support” Joyce said.

Nwanma Udokwu ’26, who is active in theatre, said she learned a lot.

“We learned different angles and ways you can make shots beautiful that actually send us a message and then had us go do it,” she said.

She said she learned that she likes to edit film. She also learned the importance of collaborating with other students.

"I learned there are so many different aspects within a film and everyone has to do their part or it’s never going to happen,” she said.

Joyce said many students leave the class with a different perspective on films because they will never look at them in the same way again.

“Because much like in ‘The Matrix’, when he sees the coding of the universe, they'll start to see the coding of filmmaking. It will ruin the willing suspension of disbelief,” he said. “They will step outside of the world and they'll be watching and saying, ‘Wow, I really think that they should have used a different lens in this shot or moved the camera in a different way.’ ”  

James Dolan ’25 said that is true for him.

“It helps you appreciate films at a new level,” he said.

Dolan said he signed up for the class thinking it would be a class where he would be reviewing films. He was pleasantly surprised.

“As we progressed, I fell in love with editing and filmmaking,” he said. “It was such a fun experience because you get to realize how hard it is to make a movie, so you start to appreciate it a lot more. I couldn’t have asked for a better class because I enjoyed it so much.”