Chris Kosloski would be horrified to see a movie about him in high school.
“That would be awful,” he said.
Kosloski and the other half of the film production duo that is Team Kosloski, his wife Kirsten, lucked out with a group of Sir Winston Churchill high school students who were willing to let them capture their lives on film two years ago.
After six months of following the students around, 60 hours of footage was edited down to 72 minutes and the result was Save the Drama, a documentary about the local high school’s student-run drama club.
The project started as a behind-the-scenes look of a high school production but turned into something completely different. Three months into shooting, it became clear the focus of the film had shifted.
“We were just going to focus on the play and how the kids work together to make it happen,” said Kirsten. “It wasn’t so much about the play or if people came out and how it turned out, but it was about them and their lives and how they experienced high school.”
“It became more John Hughes than High School Musical, how they handle and deal with high school and relationships with each other. I think it’s a better movie for it.”
While the play brought the students together, they all had different experiences of high school and different home lives as well.
Team Kosloski followed the teens as often as they could; they went to the mall with the students, got kicked out of the mall with them and even followed a pair on a date.
“They really let us into their lives,” Kirsten said. “They were all super comfortable with the camera and they wanted to talk. I think they just liked that somebody was listening to them and they could just be open and we weren’t judgmental.”
“We were adults in their lives but we weren’t teachers or parents so they got comfortable with us really quickly,” Kosloski said.
The teens used the arts and drama to explore themselves and Kirsten said it was great to be allowed in and get a look at it.
“These kids have crazy, complicated, complex lives and they feel things deeply,” she said. “Things affect them and they’re just trying to figure out who they are and where they’re going to go. That’s a really important time.”
The rollercoaster of emotions many teens deal with can be seen in the events leading up to the play in Save the Drama. The Kosloskis learned to be spontaneous when shooting the film, prepared to shoot around their subjects’ drama.
“We couldn’t have scripted how it ended and all the twists and turns that happened at the end,” Kosloski said.
Kosloski left a lot of footage on the cutting room floor.
With 60 hours of tape, he slowly chipped away at it. The first rough cut was four hours. He whittled it down to two and then finally down to 72 minutes.
The film focuses on about six students and although there were many more in the drama club, tough decisions were made and some great stories and characters were cut.
“We had to cut stuff we thought was great and hilarious; it just didn’t fit with the story,” said Kirsten.
After a year-and-a-half of post-production, Team Kosloski had watched the footage so many times and were so close to the project, they weren’t sure if it was good or not anymore.
They invited the stars of the film, their toughest audience, to a screening of Save the Drama and their positive reaction was enough to calm the filmmakers’ fears.
For Grade 12 student Chelsea Smith seeing her life at 15 in the film was mind-blowing.
“I loved the way they did everything. It brings back a lot of really good memories of being at Churchill, being able to see the people on film that I probably won’t be able to see every day anymore,” she said. “It makes me smile to think about the memories I had there.”
Smith now attends St. Patrick High School and said looking back at herself two years ago, she can see how she’s grown and at times, Save the Drama was hard to watch.
“Along with the good memories are some memories better left unseen, some of those came back up,” she said. “That’s the past. I’m in Grade 12. I’m in a new school. I’ve got a perfect co-op position. I have a new job. My life is going forward and I’m very happy with that. I can forget about all the things that were bad, all the drama that happened at Churchill.”
“I can close the door on that and open a new page in my life,” she added.
Smith said she was a much more timid and directionless person when she was 15 and it was interesting to see how she has changed, including the way she dressed and how she had her hair.
And although she spent a lot of time with her fellow drama club members, Smith said through watching the film she learned a lot about her peers.
Despite the film bringing back some difficult memories, Smith is still excited to bring her family and friends to view Save the Drama at the public screening Thursday, Sept. 29 at the Mary J.L. Black Library.
The film starts at 7 p.m. Admission is free. The film contains coarse language and mature subject matter.
