Shooting Back: Teenage Videographers

For over 20 years, innovative and exciting video production programs across the country have challenged teenagers to pick up their camcorders and create their own video movies. Now teen videographers, with their own TV shows, video contests and distributors, are the hottest thing going. But you won't see any remakes of MTV here. These kids are a sophisticated bunch, using video to explore the issues of the day and tell their own stories as part of the growing trend of teen-made video.

Not Your Average School Assignment
Going beyond the standard school video projects of taping the school play, teens like Karla Medrano, 17, are exploring videomaking in the classroom through intensive video courses in school. At Episcopal High School in Houston, Texas, Karla is a member of ETV, the school's video production crew, which creates a student-produced video magazine shown in a school-wide assembly. Each 20-minute episode is entirely student-written, shot and edited. In the past, students have produced experimental pieces on the environment, documentaries on the local music scene and narrative projects dealing with important teen issues like relationships, drugs, drunk driving and AIDS.

"When I first started taking video class," say Karla, "I thought it would be so hard. But when I picked up the camera and started coming up with ideas, I discovered that it was more fun than anything else I had ever done! I …