Ten years ago, a high school student moved into a dorm with three weeks to make a movie and left with a dream of filmmaking. Now Christian Whittemore is turning his experience into a documentary debuting at the Nashville Film Festival.
Whittemore spent the summer before his senior year living in a Middle Tennessee State University dorm for three weeks. He attended Governor’s School as a student and counselor studying film.
He said the experience can be jarring as a 17-year-old high school kid having to make a film and show it in three weeks. The same rules apply whether students have held a camera before or not. Whittemore said the experience is hard, forcing those in the program to make creative choices and regulate their emotions.
Whittemore returned to Franklin High School that fall, but he didn’t forget that summer. Instead, he used it and his experience with cameras and film work to create “Captain Franklin,” an eight-episode web series about a masked vigilante protecting the halls of his school. The first episode won an award from the Tennessee High School Press Association, and the series finale was a special hour-long production that premiered at Franklin Theatre.
“I learned so much about running a film set, and all of this knowledge just grew,” Whittemore said. “It just reinforced things even more, from putting things together from Governor’s School to, ‘I’m going to apply to film college.’”
Now, a little over 10 years and many advertisement editing gigs later, Whittemore still hasn’t forgotten his time at the program. He now makes the trip back to Murfreesboro every year to teach the program that changed his life, and he’s made a documentary about it.
Whittemore said he became an educator through making this film, and he’s enjoyed returning to his roots to support small projects. We were helping and answering questions, and they can go the distance even without experience, he said.
“Getting to watch these kids do it is the coolest part of my year coming back to watch them make something and show it off,” he said.
The documentary, titled “Little Hollywood, Tennessee,” is about a real group of 24 teenagers Whittemore worked with in Governor’s School finding themselves in this “School of Rock” type of reality. Whittemore compared Dewey’s and his students to the instructors in GSTFA. Instructors give students the experience they have by bonding with others, said Whittemore. It’s equal parts comedic and entertaining as it is raw and dramatic, he said.
He was heavily inspired by the dynamics, policies and leadership concepts portrayed in another documentary, “Boys State,” that premiered at Sundance in 2020. Whittemore saw the film and thought of Governor’s School and created a similar concept, but also built on it with other topics.
“It illustrates this coming-of-age, the first taste of adulthood in these programs,” said Whittemore, “experiencing a life-or-death program and having to do it without a safety net.”He said he wanted it to appeal to Governor’s School students, but also to a niche audience.
Whittemore will come full circle this Sunday. “Little Hollywood, Tennessee,” is making its sold-out big-screen debut September 26 at 2:30 p.m. at Regal Green Hills during the prestigious Nashville Film Festival.