“What I do like is hiking. And that’s what filmmaking is. It’s a hike. It’s challenging and exhausting, and you don’t know what the terrain is going to be or necessarily even which direction you’re going in … but it sure is beautiful.” – Joss Whedon

By Mary O’KEEFE

That “beautiful” hike is something students at Crescenta Valley High School’s Cinema 5/6 class are learning as they write, produce and film their movie “Generation P.”

It seems that everyone is a critic and many will say, “I could do better” when leaving a theater, but in truth it is very few who work in the film industry and actually get the chance to find out if they could do better. That learning curve in film is the lesson for the class of instructor Diana Brown.

“This film is about an undercover cop named Joann Spencer. She is assigned to [an undercover] mission at this high school, Franklin Union High School. She is assigned to go undercover because there is this new teen trend going around called ‘peanuting,’” said Emma Kupershmidt, producer of “Generation P.”

In the film, the parents of the high school students fear this trend has something to do with a new drug; the school has a history of teen trends that have ended in tragedy. So the female undercover cop is sent in to find the truth.

The script was conceived and written by the entire class, which consists of eight people. Writing is normally a solitary act or, at the very most, done by a partnership of two, but eight … that can be challenging.

Kupershmidt was in the film class last year as well, which happened to be the first year the class was offered. In last year’s class, the film was titled “The Driver” and there were seven classmates who wrote that script.

“This year we had eight. … It was super difficult because there are contrasting ideas,” she said. “Basically we started with brain-storming sessions where we spit out bad ideas, good ideas and random thoughts.”

Typically no one knows where inspiration comes from but in this case it came from a poster in Brown’s office.

“We came up with this idea because we saw a ‘No Peanuting’ sign on our administrator’s wall,” Kupershmidt said. “Ms. Brown is allergic to peanuts.”

From that was born “Generation P.”

The script was completed on Jan. 26 and the students went into full production the week of Feb. 11. They have a budget of about $4,800, which they raised through a website for independent films. They used a Los Angeles casting website to get their actors’ submissions.

Michael Cueto and Dan Lefevre direct the film, but the entire class works together to complete it.

Last year’s “The Driver” was screened at the Alex Theatre and was recently chosen by the Los Angeles Film Awards as an official selection.

“Generation P” should be done in April and will soon after be ready to send out to competition and film expos.

  Mary Okeefe