Edutopia - February/March 2008 - (Page 21) said, ‘Listen—they’re still going to draw, paint, make 3-D objects, and learn about balance and color mixing. The only thing that I’m going to do differently is I’m going to use moviemaking as the subject matter.’” That difference has made a huge impact. In a system where, as Bycznski notes, “art is the low man on the totem pole when it’s time for budgets to be cut,” the class has held its own. BHSFX has accepted paid gigs and collaborative projects that run the gamut from costuming for the high school’s production of Godzilla Meets Las Vegas to dozens of hand-carved tiki masks for a local restaurant’s patio decor. The longer students participate, the more advanced their project requirements become, and the vast majority stick around for multiple years. In fact, says Bycznski, “I haven’t had a kid sign up for the class, take it, and not take it again if they were eligible to.” Naysayers might assume this has something to do with the morbid attraction of designing electric chairs and bloody eyeballs. But the students are the first to defend their trade. Although “kids wouldn’t want to join the class if we were sculpting fairies,” scoffs senior Amanda See, both she and classmate Melanie Kenzig are well aware of the myriad skills involved. Taking a project from start to finish, particularly when there’s more at stake than a letter grade, is no simple task. “We’re definitely learning problem solving from this class,” says Kenzig. “There’s always a situation where you have to say, ‘Well, what can I do to fix the problem?’” Plus, this kind of stuff comes with the territory. “Visual effects is usually blood and gore,” offers See. “I mean, sometimes somebody wants a bigger nose; we’ve done stuff like that, too.” Project Makes Perfect The class’s local notoriety stretches from holiday floats to movie theater displays (most recently to promote the movies House of Wax and X-Men III). Students have constructed props and creatures for such independent films as The Substitute Student, The Cardinal and the Wrath of the Warthog, and Crops, a recent award winner at Ohio’s Broken Lamp Film Festival. Classwork also includes the simple mechanics required for animatronics (a hand drill–powered electric chair, for instance), and even filmmaking of their own (a series of shorts is available for viewing on YouTube, and one group won a Gold Key from the 2000 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards for their short film Project Cobra Strike). Though many assignments are paid for, and the district supports the class as best it can, funding still comes largely from grants, donations, and a basic $30 yearly fee for student participants. Still, the more visibility, the better, says Bycznski, whether or not projects come with a paycheck. “Early on, every time I said that we were a high school art class, that was the last we heard of people,” he says. “But now I think that as we’re starting to build some steam, we’re able to get some of those projects.” Fun with Fantasy: BHSFX students pose in front of their very own “radioactive spray chamber,” a ventilated room they spiffed up with found objects. EDUTOPIA.ORG EDUTOPIA 21 http://EDUTOPIA.ORG
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