With New Class, Teens Learn to Make Music Videos With the Help of a Rock Band

At a time when songs can be downloaded in seconds and video-editing software usually comes standard, it's no wonder the tech-savvy teens of the world are pumping out homemade music videos of dubious legality at a rapid clip.

But for 10 kids at Brookline Access Television, it's not going to be quite that easy.

"We're essentially breaking down the songwriting process and breaking down the various components of pop music and rock music and illustrating that it's not rocket science," said Adam Ezra, a Boston-based musician who is kicking of a first-of-its-kind program at BATV next week. "When you want to learn how a frog works, you dissect a frog – and we do the same with rock."

Over the last year, Ezra has spent his limited time off from touring with his band, the Adam Ezra Group, teaching young teenagers at camps and middle schools how to build songs from scratch starting with an idea or a feeling. But this is the first time his students will take the process one step further, translating their own song into a music video and producing it in a professional studio.

The program is the last in a series of summer workshops offered for the first time this year at BATV's new 10,000-square-foot studio space, which opened last January in the Unified Arts Building at Brookline High School. Krissie Jankowski, BATV's education coordinator, said the new dual educational and community studios, along with the supporting editing equipment, computer labs and performance space, has allowed BATV to take on initiatives that never would have been possible at the old cramped studios at the Old Lincoln School.

"We've been trying to think outside the box here and get more people in to the space," she said.

Jankowski reached out to Ezra after learning about the workshops he has developed over the last two years to teach kids, often with no experience or interest in music, how to build a pop and rocks songs. Ezra said he starts by asking his students what idea or story they want to tell and how their song should feel, then hands them over to members own band, who go from bass to guitar to drums to find the sounds and rhythms the kids are looking for.

The idea, Ezra said, is to show kids they have the tools to put together a song, even if they don't know how to play all the instruments yet.

"All kids connect with music on some level," Ezra said from a hotel in Pittsburgh, where his band was playing this week. "It's always been a frustration that music programs are getting cut and arts programs are getting cut, and the result is that often times people grow up thinking that they're not musical, which I think is crap."

Students in BATV's program will the write their song with members of the Adam Ezra Group over the course of a four-hour session next Monday, then return to the studio the following day to records the song. The class will spend the rest of the week developing a storyboard, shooting footage, editing on computers and, finally, deputing the music video at a viewing party in the BATV theatre. The video will also be shown on BATV's channel 3.

Ezra said his band will stick around after the song is written to appear in any shots the students want, but he said he'd rather step aside and let the kids be in the spotlight at that point.

"This is a really new and a really cool component we've never done in a workshop before," he said. "I just think it's awesome and I can't wait to do it."

BATV is still enrolling students for the music video program, which costs $50 and will run from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Aug. 9 through 13. For more information, contact Krissie Jankowski at 617-731-8566.