Episode 259: A Copper Hills High School Teacher and His Journey from the Classroom to the Cannes Film Festival

Kamiko Adcock:
I have such a passion for filmmaking and I love being able to share that with my students.

Anthony Godfrey:
Of the students in your class, are there a few who've really sparked with this and have said "Wow, I really need to pursue this"?

Kamiko Adcock:
There's just dozens of students that are dying to get on sets that just graduated, starting production companies, working on short films. It's like the passion in them has really, really grown and it’s really cool.

Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to The Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. I had a blast spending time with the teacher you were about to meet. He went from teaching students in the classroom at Copper Hills High, to capturing a coveted invite to the Cannes Film Festival in France.

On this episode of The Supercast, hear the incredible story of the film and TV broadcasting teacher, who managed to produce a short film that was so good it was accepted at Cannes, and how he uses his experience and incredible talents to teach students at Copper Hills High.

We're here with Kamiko Adcock to talk about his experience at the Cannes Film Festival. Thanks for taking some time with us.

Kamiko Adcock:
Absolutely.

Anthony Godfrey:
We want to talk about a lot of things, but I'm a huge film fan and pop culture fan, so the fact that you went to the film festival is really exciting to me. Tell me about that experience and then we'll talk a little bit about the film that got you there.

Kamiko Adcock:
Yes, I mean, you know, as like a film lover myself, it's always been… Cannes always felt like this pipe dream, like, you have to get invited to go. There's a lot of misconceptions I had about it. But it was essentially ten days of living my dream, dream life. Of rubbing shoulders with industry professionals networking with really cool people, watching films months, maybe even a year before the public actually gets to see them. All on the French Riviera with the most beautiful views. It was just like the most unbelievable thing I've ever experienced.

Anthony Godfrey:
Well, we're going to get into the details there. Tell me about your role here at Copper Hills High School, first of all, and then we'll talk about the film and your experience in Cannes.

Kamiko Adcock:
Cool. My role here at Copper Hills is I am the video production and TV broadcasting teacher. I started a couple years ago straight out from industry, so I'm an APPL candidate, alternate pathway to licensure. And, yeah, I kind of got here, and the first thing I thought with my big students was, "Let's make a feature film." So we've made two features up to this point, which is really exciting.

Anthony Godfrey:
That's awesome.

Kamiko Adcock:
They write, direct produce, edit all of it. And I just love... I have such a passion for filmmaking, and I love being able to share that with my students.

Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me about those two films. What are the titles? What are they about? What was that experience like for you working with students, making those films? Coming from industry.

Kamiko Adcock:
Yeah, so the first one last year was “Right Club”. It's around 52 minutes, and it's on YouTube. And then this year's is called “Five More Minutes”. 78 minutes long. It's a sci-fi coming of age. Think “Inception” meets “Ready Player One”.

“Right Club” was very much kind of a, "Can we do this?" And then this year was a, "Okay, we can do it. Let's go bigger and better." It's much more ambitious. And it's, you know, as you get older, you meet people that are like, "I've got this script. I've got this killer script, and I'm really excited to make it." But they never do because it's harder to get things done as you age. Like you have jobs. You're frightened to have jobs.

Anthony Godfrey:
Sure.

Kamiko Adcock:
Warner Brothers won't come beating down your door to give you millions of dollars to make something that they've never seen you make before.

Anthony Godfrey:
Right.

Kamiko Adcock:
So with the students, they have a great controlled environment, where I've worked on a couple features before. So I know, generally speaking, how the process works. I've got set deadlines to make sure that they're coming along. And with that, yeah, in nine months, they've proven that they can make stuff. It's limited, you know, filmed a lot of it's filmed at school, and some of it's filmed outside.

Anthony Godfrey:
So “Five More Minutes”, talk me through about what the timeline is. How soon was the script written? Talk us through all the stages of that and about how long it took.

Kamiko Adcock:
Brainstorming starts the first day of school, and they have until end of September to get a rough draft written. So they have at least something written. And like when it comes to screenwriting, just write.

Anthony Godfrey:
Write something, yeah.

Kamiko Adcock:
Just write. You can go and fix it.

Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah.

Kamiko Adcock:
So starting around October 15th, before we have a fall break, we do auditions. They've essentially gotten little bits of the characters. So they go through, they have auditions with the students at the school, and then they've cast the film before fall break.

Anthony Godfrey:
And that goes beyond the class. They cast outside of the class. This is the production class.

Kamiko Adcock:
Yes. We did it after school from around three o'clock to four. So nothing like super, super intense. We do the auditions in my room. They do sides in the back. So they film the auditions. They can go back and revisit them. And then by the time, like beginning of November comes, our script has been locked and finalized.

Anthony Godfrey:
And then those auditions can be included on the special edition of the DVD. The Blu-ray, second disc that, you know, includes all the actors that didn't get chosen.

Kamiko Adcock:
So we have a BTS department, and that is part of their job, is compiling all the, you know, as historians for the film. So we have around seven episodes on CH Studios, which is our YouTube page, just documenting the process. And my friends who are filmmakers, it's like their favorite part of my program is watching the BTS and scene students.

Anthony Godfrey:
That's really cool. So when Criterion Collection re-releases it, now all that footage is available to pull in.

Kamiko Adcock:
That is the absolute dream. And then have them bring me into the Criterion closet.

Anthony Godfrey:
Oh, there you go.

Kamiko Adcock:
And pick some DVDs.

Anthony Godfrey:
There you go.

Kamiko Adcock:
That would be very cool.

Anthony Godfrey:
Perfect. We’ll aim toward that. What is it that you hope students gain from that experience over the course of the year, seeing a film go from ideas to being posted on YouTube?

Kamiko Adcock:
Man, that's a great question. My goal with the feature has always been to give them confidence and help them know if this is what they want to do. You know, if they go to college and they make some shorts, and then at 25 they make their first feature and they realize, "Oh, I hated that." Then they've kind of spent seven years of their lives, you know, running maybe towards nothing then they're going to pivot, which I pivoted, you know. We all pivot. But to help them know right now of, "Oh, I love being on set." Granted, it's five hours after school. It's not a full 12-hour day. But it gives them little bits and pieces of what does set look like? What does problem-solving look like? And problem solving is probably the next big thing, is allow them to know and to work under pressure and be able to function and solve things as the problems come on.

Anthony Godfrey:
Those who have listened to the podcast will know that I frequently mention specifically about CTE programs, how important it is for kids to have the opportunity to see what they are interested in, but also what they are not interested in for exactly the reason you stated. You don't want to spend seven years building up to something that you ultimately realize isn't for you. And so, of the students in your class, are there a few who've really sparked with this and have said, "Wow, I really need to pursue this. This needs to be what I do."

Kamiko Adcock:
Yeah, so last year, one of my students, I like to bring in friends from industry to kind of network with the students and give them contacts.

Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah.

Kamiko Adcock:
And a couple of my friends really like, they met one of my students and the student like really impressed them. So, once school got out, they invited them and said, "Hey, do you want to come PA?" which is a production assistant.

Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah.

Kamiko Adcock:
Run errands on set, get people lunch, get people food. Do you want to come PA for this 48-hour film festival we're going to do? And that's the film that got us to Cannes. And so, I had a student that graduated last year that came to Cannes with us. And last year, there was, you know, a handful like Isaac. And this year, it feels like it's quadruple quintuple. There's just dozens of students that are dying to get on sets. They've just graduated, starting production companies, working on short films. It's like the passion in them has really, really grown and it's really cool.

Anthony Godfrey:
I absolutely love that. That is so fun to hear that it's sparked and launched some kids in that direction.

Stay with us. When we come back we'll hear about Kamiko Adcock’s experience at the Cannes Film Festival and which celebrities he got to see. Stay with us.

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Anthony Godfrey:
So tell me about this film and how the 48-hour contest ended you up at Cannes.

Kamiko Adcock:
Yeah, so we've done it, I guess, so I did it the year before with my friend Jack. And it's a fun thing. 48 hours to write, outline, produce, and edit a seven-minute long max short film. You get a genre, you get a character, you get a line of dialogue, and a prop you have to use.

Anthony Godfrey:
And with all those restrictions, that way you can't just make a film in advance and then submit it and pretend you did it in 48 hours.

Kamiko Adcock:
Totally, yeah. So there's a lot of restrictions to what you can and can't do. Basically what you can do beforehand is get your actors, get your crew, and get your location. So we got this cool antique shop and we made this fun short about, I don't know if I would say it's fun actually. It's fun. It's a dark comedy fantasy about a man who's dating a ghost. The ghost is like, "All right, I want to be with you, but I'm a ghost. And so you've got to become a ghost too”, basically. And the whole short is the dialogue between them and him contemplating, "Do I want to be with this person who I love, who I've never seen, or do I kind of go my own way and continue my life?"

Anthony Godfrey:
And what's it called? Can we watch it?

Kamiko Adcock:
It's called “Sheet Talk”. We need to get it listed because with the 48-hour film festival, they basically told us, "Hey, keep it unlisted for now. We have the rights to it." So now that we just got done with Cannes, we can actually get it published. But I'll send you the link so that you can watch it and it'll be published by the time this is out.

Anthony Godfrey:
Great. “Sheet Talk”.

Kamiko Adcock:
Yep. “Sheet Talk”.

Anthony Godfrey:
Okay. So ‘Sheet Talk” got you to Cannes. Tell me about that experience. You said it was 10 days of just living your dream. Talk to me about that because I've gone to, I think it's now 21 years that I've gone in a row to Sundance. I love going to that film festival but Cannes is the granddaddy of them all. So tell me about that.

Kamiko Adcock:
It is like, so Cannes is headquartered kind of like right by the beach. There's what they call the Croisette, and it's got this massive 2,500-seat auditorium called the Grand Lumiére, which is ginormous. So that's where I watched Francis Ford Coppola's "Megalopolis," his new--

Anthony Godfrey:
You've seen it.

Kamiko Adcock:
I've seen it. We could chat about it.

Anthony Godfrey:
Wow.

Kamiko Adcock:
It is. Yeah. It's quite the experience. And then they have the Lumiére and the Agnés Varda Theater with two massive convention halls behind it, and that's where the film marketplace is. So sellers, film sellers, film buyers can go back there and just making deals. I have a friend who works at Angel Studios, and he was there for about a week, and that's all he was doing was meeting with distributors where I got to do a little bit of both, and I got to watch a lot of films, and it's elegant.

After 6 o'clock p.m. at the Grand Lumiére Theater, you have to wear a tuxedo to all the films showing. So we got into the “Horizon” premiere, had to wear a tuxedo for that. We wore a tuxedo for our own, and we tried to get into another theater, but like if you're not in gala attire, they won't let you in. So that was cool. We all bought tuxedos because it was cheaper to buy them than to just rent for 14 days.

Anthony Godfrey:
My gala attire is lacking, so I really could not have joined you. So tell me about the experience of showing your--did you show your film there?

Kamiko Adcock:
We did. So there's the main two, three big theaters. There's the Riviera, which is one of the convention floors, and the Palais, which is a big convention floor that also has screenings. So we got a little screening room that they gave to the 48-hour film project to display our shorts. It was the Wednesday after we got there, so we'd already kind of been there for a week. And it was great. Like it was probably a 70-seat screening room, and to be able to watch our short with the best of the best festivals, you know, I think a lot of--I tell my students, it's like it's very easy to look in your neighborhood to see who's the best at filmmaking. And I know this sounds cliché, but the best is internationally. Like you're not just looking at your neighbor. You got to look at people in Hong Kong. You got to look at people in South Africa, in Africa, you know. And it was really gratifying to see that we were some of the best.

Anthony Godfrey:
And even though there's global competition, that unique idiosyncratic personal project can really shine if it hits just the right mark. So you were there for two weeks. How many movies would you say you saw? I think we saw 13 of the screenings.

Anthony Godfrey:
And did you get a pass as part of the fact that you were screening, or did you have to pay for that pass on top of that?

Kamiko Adcock:
We got two passes, so my friend who's the director got one of them. And then the writer and me, the producer, we flipped a coin best out of five, and he won the other free pass, so I paid for mine.

Anthony Godfrey:
Anyone in particular that you were really excited to either talk with or just spot from across the theater?

Kamiko Adcock:
There was one person, George Lucas, got an honorary Palme d’or at Cannes. And like, Star Wars is the reason I love movies. And so we waited in line for four hours to... So essentially you can get tickets for the screenings at that 7 a.m. when it opens to book your screenings, or you can wait in like a wait list line to see if you'll get it. It's pretty successful.

Anthony Godfrey:
Same thing with Sundance, yeah.

Kamiko Adcock:
Yeah, so we waited four hours in line with our passes to see him, and so I got to see George Lucas talk about filmmaking for an hour and a half.

Anthony Godfrey:
That is insane. That is so crazy that you got to see that.

Kamiko Adcock:
Probably the coolest experience I've maybe ever had. Filmmaking-wise, probably the best experience I've ever had.

Anthony Godfrey:
That is amazing.

Kamiko Adcock:
And he was... It was funny. He talked about Star Wars for a little bit, but he spent the majority of his time talking about American Graffiti and THX 1138.

Anthony Godfrey:
Those are the ones that really taught him a lot about filmmaking.

Kamiko Adcock:
Yeah, and he was... Francis Ford Coppola's PA on his old, old films when he was starting.

Anthony Godfrey:
Wow, yeah.

Kamiko Adcock:
So it was crazy to hear him refer to Steven Spielberg as Steve, or Martin Scorsese as Marty, because… You know, and that was great. And then we got to... We waited in line to get into Kevin Costner's “Horizon”, because we have some friends that are in it, so we really wanted to see the premiere. And we walked the red carpet. About 20 feet away from us was Michelle Yeoh from...

Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah, wow.

Kamiko Adcock:
“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “Anything Everywhere All At Once”

Anthony Godfrey:
Wow.

Kamiko Adcock:
And that was really cool.

Anthony Godfrey:
That's fantastic. Well, it's a real pleasure talking with you, and I'm thrilled that you're here at Copper Hills giving this experience to these students. Bringing that industry knowledge and really sparking something in students that they didn't realize was there. Thank you very much.

Kamiko Adcock:
I love it, thank you.

Anthony Godfrey:
Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Supercast. Remember, education is the most important thing you'll do today. We'll see you out there.