Film crews invade Rainy River

Ken Johnston

Move over Tinseltown, the movie making crews have arrived in Rainy River.
If you have wondered what has been going on around town in the past couple of weeks when several locations were taken over by what appeared to be film crews, you are not alone.
Students from Rainy River High School’s Communication Technology program have been busy wrapping up their semester by actively making movies in and around Rainy River.
Teacher Dan Mack said that the entire process began at the beginning of the year when students began the very same process the big Hollywood studios use to make movies. “They used the fishbowl technique or in other words held a brainstorming session,” explained Mack.
The ideas were then fit into a format and script writing began. Groups of up to five students wrote the scripts. In some cases one student would write one scene.
Once done the groups of five had to sell their script to the rest of the 32 students in the class. “It was like trying to get the studios to buy your story,” said Mack. The class then voted on three scripts to actually make into movies. That is where the groups have arrived in the past week or so.
Students have commandeered people’s homes, local businesses and even the hospital to shoot footage. Once all the footage is shot the students return to the classroom where they use state of the art digital editing equipment to finish their product.
Mack said that each movie will be about 15-30 minutes long, even though the students may have shot several hours of footage. The last time this program was offered at RRHS (two years ago) they showed the movies to the entire school. Mack said that if they are done in time they may do that again this year.
In addition to the movie producing aspects of the course the students also learned how to retouch photographs and some animation.