Filmmaking for the YouTube Generation

Amid the 35,000-strong audience at the August 30 Virgin Mobile FreeFest music festival, a squad of young filmmakers known behind scenes as "the red shirts" seemed to be everywhere at once.

There they were on their wooden press deck, interviewing Virgin founder Richard Branson. And over there, backstage with cameras trained on Blink182. But wait, there they went, rushing to the artists' lounge to catch Public Enemy before it got dark.

This team of 14 young adults ages 16 to 22 were participants in Kyocera's ALL Access film program, and they had only a few days to shoot an hour-long documentary about this free festival aimed at raising funds and awareness for youth homelessness. Split into several small teams, they covered every aspect of the event — from the social mission to the set-up to the 12 hours of concert time — with unflagging energy, learning on the fly from supervising producers.

The young videographers came from around the country, from California to Maine, and had a range of experience and diverse motivations. Lindsey Underwood, a journalism major at University of Missouri, wanted the chance to add multimedia skills to her reporting tool kit. For Mark Helenowksi, a rising freshman at Chicago's Columbia College, it was about pursuing a career in the technical side of filmmaking. Brendan Nahmias, a film major at Chapman University in Orange, California, saw this as a way to hone his skills, express his creativity and meet some of his favorite bands.

None of them could have anticipated, however, just how remarkable the experience would be, or how one of the most remarkable things about it would be an interview, not with world-famous performer, but with a girl very much like themselves.

Action!

With non-stop action from Wednesday through Sunday, all training in the program was on-the-job, and every moment was a careful technical ballet.

"You're up early, and it's a long day," said Kelley Maher, one of the supervising producers with Dreaming Tree, the Chicago-based film production company that worked with Kyocera on the project. "You're running around. You're on your feet. It is physically and intellectually demanding."

But the crew they had selected in a nationwide search was up to the task: These young people were focused, adaptable problem-solvers.

"The concert started at 11 and by 10 our original schedule was out the window" Maher said. "We did lots of juggling and made it happen." The teams learned to work together, overcoming what Maher calls the "one-man band" attitude typical of YouTube-savvy youth. By the end of the day on Sunday, "it was a machine that they had going."

With that machine whirring into action, the red shirts were propelled into the thick of things. They documented the workers setting up the stages, the bands' tour buses arriving and the audience pouring into the gate. They interviewed famous people and filmed some of their favorite musicians onstage.

"I love the long hours and the hard work," Helenowski said of his marathon day, a highlight of which was "shooting Weezer singing right into my camera." And Underwood couldn't quite believe she was speaking with Richard Branson: "I mean, not everyone gets to do that."

One moment in particular illustrated the noteworthiness of these young people's opportunity.

"My team was in the back," remembered Maher. "We were getting ready to go onto the tour bus to interview Franz Ferdinand . . . They were interviewing the tour manager. And I look up and there's a golf cart bumping along with one of our crews on the back with a camera trained on Flavor Flav [of Public Enemy]. And there we were talking to this guy who had been all over the world with amazing bands. I just thought, 'Holy cow.'"

On top of that, Weezer's sole interview of the day went to Maher's team. When the day was over, Maher said, "Everyone was on a complete high."

"It was magic," added Helenowski.

Who's Going to Tell Our Story?

But as thrilling as the bright lights were, these novice filmmakers received an equally special opportunity to gain first-hand insight into the festival's defining issue: youth homelessness.

To capture the concert's context, the students went to nearby Washington, DC, to film the city's ambiance, and in the case of one of the camera teams, to visit Sasha Bruce Youthwork, a FreeFest partner organization. One of six nonprofits from around the country that benefited from donations of money and volunteer time resulting from the festival, Sasha Bruce works to address youth homelessness in the District by providing comprehensive services to young people in need, including transitional living facilities.

The visiting team interviewed the organization's founder, Deborah Shore, as well as a formerly homeless girl currently living in the transitional facility. Meeting this young person, said Brendan Nahmias, "was literally incredible." She was, he was amazed to find, just like him.

"Homeless kids are normal kids," he reflected. "They go to school, like the same music we do, are into culture and art and sports. But they just have such a different experience. It's like nothing I've ever encountered. She told us her story of abuse, neglect, drugs, bad relationships. Anything you could imagine that could go wrong happened to this girl. She was lucky to find Sasha Bruce. She could have ended up dead on the street."

Dana Cook, the supervising producer that was with the team that day, noted the profound impact the meeting had on the students. "It really affected my crew because she was the same age and had such a different experience," she said. "When we left, they all just kind of welled up because it was really emotional to hear what she has been though — she's only 18 — and how much she was helped by the foundation."

Helenowski, for one, was shaken to learn the extent of the problem and that many homeless kids are "in disguise," pretending that everything is fine. The interview was so eye-opening that it was, he said, "the highlight of this entire experience."

Underwood concluded that the issue desperately needs more attention. Young people care that other young people are homeless, she said, "but it might not be something we're made aware of."

For his part, Nahmias plans to fix that situation; he hopes to make a half-hour film about Sasha Bruce Youthwork as part of his degree.

"Film is one of the most powerful creative media out there today, especially for the YouTube generation," he said. Today's young people are so visually oriented, that "all it takes is them seeing a few minutes of images and it will spark them to do something."

With this kind of motivational power in their hands, young filmmaker can — and should — speak out powerfully on the things they care about.

As Nahmias stated, "If youth aren't standing up for youth, then who's going to tell our story?"

Catch the red shirts' work in its premier on the Independent Film Channel, on Virgin America flights and on the ALL Access Website in October. Showing with it will be a short documentary about the making of the ALL Access documentary by Dakota Pictures, the makers of Flight of the Conchords.

Photos courtesy of, from top to bottom, Kyocera ALL Access, stock.xchng, Kyocera ALL Access and stock.xchng