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Film Company Shoots Movie In Adams Middle School

ADAMS, Mass. — It isn't easy for a film company to find a school to use as a set for a movie based on a shooting.

Filmmaker Jessi Shuttleworth knows that.

"We had many schools who turned us down, especially after the Newtown school tragedy. We had a school in Connecticut [lined up] but they called us back and said they simply couldn't do it," Shuttleworth said on Wednesday. "I think it is the subject."

But the town of Adams was more than willing to help.

Through the Berkshire Film Commission, Shuttleworth was put in touch with the town to use the former Adams Memorial Middle School. The Board of Selectmen approved that in May.

Not only did the town oblige but Adams Cheshire Regional School District Superintendent Kristen Gordon loaned desks and other furnishing to complete the sets and the Berkshire Film Commission did all of the casting of nearly 30 local actors for extras.

At the crack of dawn on Wednesday, Scabland Productions had the whole school to themselves to film the most important parts of the short film February.

"Everybody here was so welcoming and thankful," Shuttleworth said. "This community, they saw my heart was coming from a genuine place."

For Shuttleworth, the movie about a school shooting isn't a gimmick to capitalize on mass attention on the subject. She lived it.

When she was a child, her brother was a victim involved a school shooting and that experience had led her to writing the film more than three years ago.

The movie is about a female police officer trying to come to grips with the tragedy that she experienced as a child. (Yes, we know how it ends but we won't spoil it.)

They began at a correctional facility and then a diner on Tuesday before driving up to the Berkshires. At 1 a.m. the crew pulled into the parking lot of the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts where they slept a few hours in a dormitory room and at 5 a.m. they were preparing to shoot.

But filming in the Berkshires comes with Berkshire weather. They arrived to find it pouring rain so some of the script had to be improvised.

For example, the final shot was intended to be two children playing on the baseball field behind the school. The crew adapted and filmed the children playing with rain that dripped off the dugout roof and then playing in the mud of the base paths.

Inside of the school, they used the 27 extras and filmed the action sequences with a fake gun and blood. They used three classrooms, which were left empty and had to be decorated, and the hallway while using the gymnasium to store items.

Despite Selectmen Michael Ouellette's pitch to the crew stay longer and eat at a local restaurant, the crew ended up ordering sandwiches to go from a local shop and hit the road back to New York. On Thursday, a reduced cast will fly to Washington state for the final three days of shooting.

The movie is eyed for major film festivals and Shuttleworth hopes for the film to hit the circuit in the fall.

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