'Today' show puts Palm Springs charter school students in spotlight
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
PALM SPRINGS — The kids at G-Star School of the Arts for Motion Pictures and Broadcasting are no strangers to working in front of and behind the cameras.
The students, after all, are enrolled in a high school that has partnered with an Oscar-winning visual effects company and where over 50 feature films have been produced since the school opened in 2003 on an old water utilities plant on Congress Avenue.
But on this unusually balmy March afternoon, even savvy G-Star students are buzzing about the national exposure they're about to receive as a five-member crew from NBC's Today prepares to tape a feature on the Palm Springs charter school.
"This is pretty awesome," said Jervis Neath, a 16-year-old 10th-grader who's studying acting. "I'm going to do anything they ask me to do."
Today national correspondent Jamie Gangel recently spent the afternoon at the school's 11-acre, 110,000-square-foot campus, talking to students, visiting classes and getting a peek at the school's four-and-half story soundstage. Gangel, a 16-year NBC News veteran who has interviewed newsmakers from ballet star Mikhail Baryshnikov to President Bill Clinton, said her cousin told her about G-Star after a recent trip to Palm Beach County.
"She gets all the credit," Gangel said after a break in taping. "She came to visit the school, then sent me an e-mail saying, 'Do I have a story for you!'"
NBC said the report is scheduled to air in early April.
Greg Hauptner, the school's founder and CEO, said NBC called him late last year about featuring the school on the network's top-rated morning program.
"I was honored and thrilled at the same time," said Hauptner, a former celebrity hairstylist and tireless promoter who in 1985 dumped his 1967 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow into the Atlantic to protest the lack of artificial reef for fish. "This taping is a validation for our program."
G-Star started in 2003 with 150 students - all ninth-graders. By 2007, the school added grades 10-12. Now student enrollment is up to 885, Hauptner said, adding that number will increase to over 1,100 for the 2011-2012 school year.
Hauptner, 64, said G-Star boasts the largest movie studio in the state.
"We're bigger than Universal," Hauptner said of the studio at the Orlando theme park. "We just don't have the rides."
"This is the perfect story for Today," said Sylvie Haller, a Today producer. "The kids are getting a great education and learning all the basics, but they're also learning about the world of entertainment through some real, hands-on experience."
That was definitely the case for Sandra Figueroa, a 16-year-old 11th-grader.
Figueroa, who wants to be an entertainment lawyer, co-directored a glitzy Ferrari car commercial as NBC's cameras rolled. Figueroa shouted directions at two hunky male models (she even instructed one to be more animated), helped set up shots and handed out bottled water.
"I really loved the experience," Figueroa said. "I've never worked on anything this big."
"Sandra's hired," she shouted at one point. "She's a real thinker."
Meanwhile, Kristian Allan, a 16-year-old 10th-grader studying film production, walked around in a skin-tight green spandex suit with tiny ball-shaped objects all over it for the purpose of filming a visual effects sequence for the Ferrari commercial.
Allan said he was chosen to wear the suit because he fit the body type.
"It's a little interesting," Allan said. "It feels like a wet suit for diving. Everybody's asking me if I feel awkward or hot."
In the schoolyard, Gangel, dressed in a black blouse and matching slacks, met with four students - Jamie Kooiker and Franck Garbey, both 17, Nicholas Zounis, 15, and Figueroa - for a short interview and asked them what they loved most about G-Star.
Gangel had to ask the students to speak up, because they were nervous and speaking too softly for the cameras.
"I'm old and deaf," Gangel cracked. "Just project."
Zounis said he likes the small class sizes. Kooiker admires the teachers' dedication and how that can help her become an underwater photographer. Figueroa said the school is teaching her how to be more professional, and Garbey said the school is preparing him for the real world.
"G-Star is one of those places," Garbey said, "you will never really leave."
