Jefferson High School Students Hit the Red Carpet for Student-Made Safety Film

The Dr. Matthew Prophet Education Center, the rather staid home to Portland Public Schools administrative staff, had a very different look on Monday evening when it hosted the world premiere of "The Return of Emergetron."

The red carpet event was in celebration of a new film starring students - and for students - about the many emergency scenarios they might encounter in a typical school year.

The film was the brainchild of Bee Sloan, training coordinator for PPS's Emergency Management and Security department. Late last year, she was tasked with making a training video for middle and high school students covering the actions they would be asked to take in either a drill or a real emergency for six possible scenarios: evacuate, earthquake, shelter-in- place, team response, secure-the-perimeter, and/or lockdown.

Sloan's first thought was, "The kids aren't going to get anything out of the traditional training video. They'll be bored stiff." So she started dreaming up a possible script that would be unique enough to hold young people's attention. A self-described geek, she originally envisioned a story inspired by the Chronicles of Narnia, but then, on the day before Christmas Eve, came a twist worthy of Alfred Hitchcock.

She struck up a conversation with a stranger in a deli, only to find out that the man was Dan Coffey, the head of theater at Jefferson High School.

"I explained to him what I wanted to do," Sloan said. "I wanted a compelling video that kids would like, and he wanted to rejuvenate the Jefferson Theater program. By the time we left the deli, he pretty much had the cast figured out and some possible make-up looks. I sent him my script and he rewrote it, making it very much better in the process, and we started filming after the holidays."

The basic story goes a little like this: Wix, a new hire for the fictional Time Management Institute, is trained in how to salvage public school emergency action drills, which have been sabotaged by the arch-villain, Emergetron. Over the course of the film, Wix learns how to deal with emergencies and becomes more and more of a leader and a valued part of the team.

The student members of the cast - Jefferson juniors Mekai Sillah, Taliyah Pratt, Montreal Brazile, Charlotte Saari, and Nalaya Thompson, and senior Ava Jones - filmed the scenes over the course of six days over and two terms, a process that involved a lot of patience and Subway sandwiches.

Sillah, who plays Ian in the film, said the experience of acting in a short movie was unique and fun. "It was definitely something new and it was cool to learn about the whole learning process and the way scenes are done because on-screen acting is a lot different than theater, which I normally do."

The film is a PPS product from start to finish. Not only was it filmed onsite at Jefferson with students, teachers, and staff filling in as extras, but it features a 2012 performance of "The Lamentations of Jeremiah" by the Cleveland High School choir and a soundtrack by 2012 Cleveland graduate Robin Stevens.

It's Sloan's hope that "The Return of Emergetron" reminds young people of their own potential for knowledge, resilience, courage, and wisdom in the face of emergencies. She also hopes that the movie's imaginative take on emergency response sticks with students long after the credits have rolled.

"Performing arts plays right into cutting edge learning theory, which tells us that the more avenues into the brain, the more likely it is that you will remember the material," Sloan said. "So this video includes music; humor; a story; characters and locations that the audience will connect to; material that you read and hear multiple times; and action. And this is an empowering way to tell a story."

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