The Management Consulting Group

Inspired by the grim statistic “fifty percent of America’s teachers quit within their first three years,” the independent film “Chalk” is a clever mock documentary about novice high school teachers and a newly promoted assistant principal as they struggle with their chosen careers. An insecure history teacher, an abrasive female gym coach, a self-promoting philosophy instructor, and a former teacher out of her element as a strict administrative disciplinarian, laugh and cry their way through the school year.

Austin, Texas-based writer-director-producer Mike Akel uses a mixture of professional actors and real students (from some of the classes he has taught) to take a quirky inside look at teachers. His two hand-held cameras might be hiding behind a bookshelf to eavesdrop on an intimate conversation between two friends or peeking through a partially closed door during outrageous student-teacher interactions.

In a Q&A session after the screening — which attracted dozens of teachers to Central Florida’s Enzian Theater — Akel and actor Chris Mass (also an off-screen teacher) fielded questions about this unusual style of filmmaking.

“As a real-life teacher, I did day-to-day research,” Akel says. “As for the shooting style, I wanted viewers to feel like they’re right there and the only way to capture this is to use hand-held cameras and let the actors improvise most of the lines to produce a visceral, frenetic feel.”

Although teachers in the audience griped about classes of 30 or more students, “Chalk” depicts sparsely populated classrooms and hallways. Acknowledging that this one element might lack authenticity, Akel revealed that the students in “Chalk” are real students with no acting experience who gave up a month of their summer to work on this low-budget film.

So if the onscreen teachers can’t handle classes of only 8-10 students while real teachers juggle dozens at a time — well — that’s just part of the fun.

When the brazen gym coach develops a romantic interest in the introverted history teacher, Akel wastes little screen time waiting for the relationship to blossom. An amusing dream sequence lets the audience know in no uncertain terms that beneath his shy exterior, the history teacher returns her feelings.

“The dream sequence has different pacing to show that it’s a dream,” Mass says. “But we also wanted to establish that the feelings are real. We thought the sequence helped move the romance along a little bit. Actually the scene started as just some funny improvising that we decided to use later on.”

Mass shares the screen with fellow actors Janelle Schremmer, Troy Schremmer, and Shannon Haragan. A SomeDaySoon Production, “Chalk” is screening at film festivals around the country. Your assignment: Watch for it to open at a theater near you. Teachers (and all former students everywhere) should love it.

Screened March 29, 2006
Florida Film Festival
East Coast Premiere

Copyright 2006 Leslie Halpern

Central Florida entertainment writer Leslie Halpern is the author of more than 1,300 articles in trade and consumer magazines. She wrote the books “Reel Romance. The Lovers’ Guide to the 100 Best Date Movies” (Taylor Trade Publishing), which reviews date movies for couples and suggests romantic ideas inspired by these films, and “Dreams on Film: The Cinematic Struggle Between Art and Science” (McFarland & Company), an analysis of representations of sleeping and dreaming in the movies. Both books are available at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. Visit her website at http://home.cfl.rr.com/lesliehalpern/leslie_halpern.htm.