Documentary Film Created By Heights High Student

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, OH — Grant Heineman, a rising senior at Heights High School, has been making movies since he was 12. His early forays into film, narrative shorts shot with his friends, didn't prepare him for the possibility of making a nearly 20-minute documentary film...for a grade.

During the second semester of his American Government class, Heineman was given an opportunity to escape the typical collection of tests and assignments, and instead produce a unique, relevant documentary. His teacher, Justin Hons, had asked Heineman to create films before, but he had never asked for a film of this length.

"He didn’t specify what the film would consist of. Starting in January, I had to write and think up the structure of the documentary," Heineman told Patch. "I had to develop the thesis and what I wanted to achieve."

With the election of President Donald Trump fresh in everyone's mind, Heineman decided to explore the emotional tumult hitting the Heights High student body. This was, he reasoned, a national event piercing the high school bubble.

Heineman described the pre-production process as "intense." Most of the actual filming for the documentary was accomplished between late April and the end of May. With the help of a couple friends, Heineman would drag cameras, boom mics, and whatever else was needed for the day's filming, around the school hallways.

All the extra accessories earned him and his crew a few curious glances, but there was still a monumental line of students wanting to be interviewed for the film.

"It was interesting the way it played out. I had interviewed people in the past," Heineman said. "These were 10 minute interviews and the people I interviewed weren’t just my friends. Some were friends-of-friends, people I didn’t know personally myself."

He said part of his interview process became getting to know these relative strangers, easing them into the on-camera interview, and coaxing more honest answers out of them. Of course, that means only 10 or 15 percent of his interviews were actually relevant to the documentary.

Filming wrapped at the end of May. That left approximately one month for post-production, meaning logging the footage, cutting pieces and parcels from interviews, setting the narrative tone, and then editing it all together.

"That was pretty crazy. I had some all-nighters that I had to pull," he said, noting that he also drank a lot of coffee.

The extra effort and caffeine meant Heineman could turn in a rough cut of the documentary on June 7, the final day of the school year. He added in some additional flourishes, like the credits, shortly after the 2016-2017 school year ended.

"The first semester of my government class, I enjoyed but it wasn’t anything that particularly grabbed me. It was what I was used to, work sheets, reading, tests every once in a while," he said. "When he offered the documentary project to me, I learned so much about, not necessarily the curriculum (which was basic level government), but things like time-management, working with the scope of a project where you want to put effort into every little thing. It taught me how to pick-and-choose what you want to have the most emphasis on. How to make sacrifices during a process and one that I value highly."

The final product is a tonally unique documentary, and a precocious production for a high schooler. Heinman's camera whirls around, making quick cuts, utilizes slow-motion zooms, and his crew breaks the fourth wall, announcing a directional shift in the film.

"Ever since I was 12 or 13 I’ve been really paying attention to cinema and watching as many films as possible. It had always been American films, the classics of the 20th century," he told Patch. "I was well versed in my favorite directors. Sometimes I would like Wes Anderson, or the forward momentum of an Edgar Wright. I had this amalgamation of directors and styles in my head."

That bubbling cauldron of styles was poured into his film. He said the opening scene, featuring his friend and the film's narrator Gerald Shazor was inspired by the introductory scene of Anderson's "Moonrise Kingdom".

And yes, of course, pursuing a life in the arts is Heineman's dream. He's been looking into film schools he could attend. So take note of "The New Era" by Grant Heineman now, you may see his name again.

Photo from YouTube Screenshot