Cowpoke classroom

“Nobody look at the camera,” Joe Robinson reminded his actors as they prepared for the first take of the afternoon. It was natural to steal a glance ? most of the cast members had never been filmed before ? but “The Perils of Penelope” had just an hour and a half to finish shooting, and the director wanted the scene to be as natural as possible.

In a packed classroom at Newport Harbor High School, a dozen young cast members got in position for the opening scene of their movie. Six cowboys sat playing cards around a barroom table, cap pistols ready in their pockets; a group of women gossiped at the tables behind them; the tavern owner stood mopping the counter. Robinson started by panning his camera slowly around the room, and then the story began.

It took a few flubs to get the opening lines down ? and a few minutes for the actors to completely ignore the camera ? but the cast never had to start over from scratch. Robinson, a history teacher at Newport Harbor, worked like a professional cameraman, capturing tiny moments to edit together. Without much rest between takes, the actors often recited their lines numerous times, adding just a little more spark, a little more toughness, a little more diction.

“I see your 50, and I raise you 100,” a cast member said early on, playing one of the tough gauchos around the card table. Robinson stopped him, then stopped him again, telling him to speak louder and bite off the last part of the sentence. Before long, the line turned from a soft mumble into “I see your 50 ? and I raise you 100.”

The actors in Robinson’s classroom were learning how to make a movie Hollywood-style, complete with close-ups and tracking shots. At the same time, they were learning history ? in the most interactive way. Their American history class had arrived at the Great Depression, when many Americans escaped to the movies to forget poverty, and Robinson brought the period alive by casting the students in an old-fashioned, 1930s-style melodrama.

Could modern students understand the charm that Hollywood had in the age of bread lines and Prohibition? Junior Miguel Lugo, who played the hero in “Penelope,” had an idea.

“It was brand new, and there was a famous actor,” Miguel, 18, said after shooting ended. “I think his name was Charles Chaplin.”

“The Perils of Penelope,” which runs about 10 minutes, would never have existed without a family connection. Robinson, a Newport Harbor instructor since 1969, was preparing to film an hour-long Western drama with his art history students, and he had converted his classroom into a makeshift saloon, complete with swinging doors and bottles along the shelves.

Meanwhile, Robinson’s son, Gary, who started teaching at Newport Harbor this year, was leading his English-learner students through a unit on the Depression and wanted to do a hands-on exercise. His father offered the Western movie set and even penned a short script to go with it.

“The Perils of Penelope” ? which borrows its title from a silent classic, “The Perils of Pauline” ? features every Western cliche in the book, including the white-hat-wearing hero, the black-hat-wearing villains and the damsel in distress. Those cliches are part of American folklore, however, and that was the Robinsons’ aim in starting the project.

“I wanted them to get access to the idea of the movies and what it meant to people during that time,” Gary Robinson said. “We told them how it was a release from all the troubles.”

It’s 1897, and Penelope, the beloved owner of a dusty watering hole, finds herself besieged by a gang of bandits who threaten to take over her store unless she comes up with enough money for the mortgage. With the help of her beloved clients, Penelope garners the cash ? only to be kidnapped and held ransom by the thugs, who want to control the gold mines surrounding her business.

Enter the brave Roland Heartthrob, played by Miguel, a wandering crusader for justice.

“I’ve just come to town to see if someone needs my help,” he declares upon entering the bar, and proceeds to outdraw the head villain, save the day and take Penelope’s hand in marriage.

“It’s the good guy and the bad guy,” Joe Robinson explained. “The good guy wears white and the bad guy wears black. It’s how movies used to be.”

Gary Robinson’s students, who peopled the cast, belong to a sheltered American history class that involves English-learner instruction. The film project was a first for many of them, and some said being an actor was tougher than they’d expected.

“It’s hard,” Miguel said. “I thought it was easy, but then it was hard. You have to do it over and over again, and sometimes it doesn’t come out the way you’d like.”

Sophomore Hugo Salgado, 15, who played the sheriff in “Penelope,” said it was difficult not to be self-conscious under lights and a boom microphone.

“The hardest thing was that everybody’s watching you,” he said. “You get nervous.”

Still, Robinson’s students were happy to line up for the movie project, bringing Western costumes from home and voting their classmates into acting roles. To get acquainted with Depression-era cinema, the students viewed Chaplin movies in class and even exhumed 1927’s “The Jazz Singer,” the first Hollywood talkie.

On Friday afternoon, the cast regrouped to overdub their voices onto the soundtrack, strengthening the bits that the audio didn’t pick up. Eventually, Joe Robinson plans to convert the videotape to DVDs and present one to every student in the class.

Given many of the cast members’ backgrounds, Robinson said it was the least he could do. Earlier this year, he visited the history class to teach the students how to film on digital cameras and discovered their enthusiasm for moviemaking.

“I noticed maybe half the class were asking if they could get DVD copies of the practice thing they had done,” Robinson said. “I realized this is the first time most of them have done any of this.”PHOTOS BY JAMIE FLANAGAN / DAILY PILOTJoe Robinson directs Newport Harbor High School students in his U.S. history class’ project to make a Depression-era Western. dpt.11-western-1-jf-CPhotoInfoHM1PR3CA20060411ixj7lnncJAMIE FLANAGAN / DAILY PILOT(LA)Joe Robinson films students acting in a card game scene in his U.S. history class’ movie. dpt.11-western-3-jf-CPhotoInfoHM1PR3GP20060411ixj7n5nc(LA)Miguel Lugo, in the camera display, plays the hero in a film for his history class. dpt.11-western-2-jf-CPhotoInfoHM1PR3DA20060411ixj7mfncPHOTOS BY JAMIE FLANAGAN / DAILY PILOT(LA)Joe Robinson directs Newport Harbor High School students in his U.S. history class’ project to make a Depression-era Western.