How girls learn to take the lead in their own lives by making movies by Christina L. Barber
Daily Hampshire Gazette, March 3-4, 2001
The film's title: "The Haunted Slumber Party." Setting: An old Victorian house in Holyoke. Director: Nancy Fletcher, local entrepreneur, PR pro and one-time comedy-improv-troupe performer. Cast: A dozen hyperactive preteen girls from inner city Holyoke. Time frame: 24 hours. Script: None.
Sound improbable? Well. The no budget "Haunted Slumber Party," which was inspired in part by the low-budget "Blair Witch Project," does, in fact, exist. True to its genre, the film includes pillow fights, flashlight games, blood-curdling screams, strange noises and ghostly images. But its starts are of the unlikeliest sort.
All those giggly inner-city girls attend the after-school program at Girls Inc. of Holyoke, a nonprofit organization whose mission includes building girls' confidence. Ninety-five percent of the girls who take advantage of the after-school program are Latina and 85 percent of them come from low-income homes. Such statistics interested Nancy Fletcher, who says her life's passion is girls' self-esteem.
"When people have low expectations of us, then we think we can't do it, and then we don't, because that's the gate," she says. "But if others - adults, models, mentors - have high expectations, then that affects our self-concept, and then that affects what we do."Raising the bar
Fletcher, 54, is a former girls' camp counselor and Mount Holyoke College alumna who served for a time as that college's director of public relations. "Being at Mount Holyoke, you were in an atmosphere where you were expected to excel," Fletcher says. "And when there is the expectation, you fill it. ....So I'm kind of creating a little microcosm of that. I'm saying, 'We expect you to be able to produce a movie.' And they will live up to that expectation."
Fletcher is creating that microcosm with ACT NOW!, an improvisation movie company that she founded last year and runs out of her Belchertown home. The company's format compresses the movie making process-from brainstorming and casting to shooting, editing and screening-into a stunningly short 24-hour period. More importantly, however, it shows girls how to play the lead in their own lives.
The 20-minute "Haunted Slumber Party," made almost exactly one year ago, was the company's pilot project. Fletcher plans to work with Girls Inc. again this spring, and she has applied for a grant from the Women's Fund of Western Massachusetts to bring her program to pregnant and parenting teens in Berkshire County.
In the future, Fletcher says, she'll target metropolitan areas within a two-hour radius of the Pioneer Valley. She hopes to bring ACT NOW! to schools and prisons, girls' camps and leadership programs, the Girl Scouts and the YWCA. In the meantime, she has been engaging in all the behind-the-scenes minutia associated with getting a fledgling nonprofit like ACT NOW! off the ground.
She has applied for tax-exempt status, started constructing a Web sit (www.actnow-online.org), set her prices (as low as $1,500 and as high as $9,000 depending on the number of participants, the scope of the project and other factors) and established a so-called "E-visory Board," which consists of more than 30 females from around the country who advise her via e-mail on how to reach girls and boost their self-esteem. Nerves yield to confidence
On a recent afternoon, four of the young "stars" of "The Haunted Slumber Party" took a break from snack time at Girls Inc., to reflect on their film debut. "We were like, 'Ohmigod, we're gonna be in a movie! We're gonna be in a movie!" recalled 11-year-old Samantha Caballero.
But while the prospect of making a movie excited Caballero, it terrified 12-year-old Yessenia Fernandez, who appeared in two scenes set in the backseat of a car. "I've never been in a movie, so I was scared," Fernandez said. "When I was in the first scene in the car, I was embarrassed and shy because I had to speak out loud." Even Caballero found herself tongue-tied. The sight of a camera made her sweat, and she got so nervous before one take that she forgot what she was going to say. That scene had to be re-shot, she said.
As the girls got used the format, however, their nervous laughter gave way to a fresh confidence. "After that, I understood; I wasn't scared anymore," Fernandez said. Caballero, too, overcame her fears. "I forgot about the camera," she said. "I didn't look at it. I thought it was not there."
After wrapping "The Haunted Slumber Party," the girls screened it for their family members. Eleven-year-old Alicia Ortiz invited her mother, father and brother. "They thought it was cool to make a video at my age," Ortiz said. So cool, in fact, that they took her to McDonald's afterward to celebrate.
Among other things, Ortiz said, the moviemaking experience revealed her sense of humor. " I learned that I can do things that I never thought I can do," said Ortiz, who wants to be a lawyer when she grows up.
Her friend, Christina Cruz, who is also 11, wants to be a doctor. ACT NOW! "showed me a lot," Cruz said. "I didn't really know how I was inside. I didn't really care about that. The movie gave me a time to express myself. It showed me that a lot of people like me if I express myself more.
