'FRESHMAN YEAR' NEW HBO DOCUMENTARY SERIES FILMED AT CHATSWORTH HIGH SCHOOL FOCUSES IN ON THE NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK.

Byline: Valerie Kuklenski Staff Writer

Freshman year. It's the best of times, it's the worst of times.

More worst than best for many. It's the year when fledgling teen-agers finally land in the big pond of high school, only to find themselves the smallest, most vulnerable fish in the food chain.

Now, imagine going through it under the close scrutiny of video cameras and microphones.

That's what happened at Chatsworth High School, when its newest students agreed to be captured for a documentary series titled ``Freshman Year,'' with the blessings of their parents, administrators and teachers.

The 14-part series, taped during the 1999-2000 school year, begins airing at 7 p.m. Friday on HBO Family, which could explain why some otherwise self-assured juniors seem as jumpy as the ninth-graders who'll hit the campus next week.

``I haven't seen any of it,'' said Jason Moss, now varsity football's 16- year-old quarterback. ``And now I've got to think what I said back then. What was I thinking? Why did I do that? Now it's out there, stuff I said about people.''

HBO Family, available only to cable households with digital equipment, came up with the concept in the summer of 1999, and about two weeks before the start of the school year signed Eamon Harrington and John Watkin of Planet Grande Productions to shoot the verite-style documentary.

``Like good producers, you say yes, and then you hang up the phone and you say, 'Oh my God, how are we going to do this?' '' Harrington recalled.

The goal

They used the Internet to make a shortlist of public schools that had a good ethnic mix and a history of welcoming camera crews on campus.

``They were looking for a school that was racially balanced, pretty balanced as far as the financial background of the kids, from rich kids to poor kids, and they wanted to have a school with a lot of varied programs, a lot of activities,'' said Dan Wyatt, who was then in his second year as principal.

They found it in Chatsworth High School, with a student body that fall of 3,400 and an incoming freshman class of 1,020. ``I hadn't been burned enough to say no,'' Wyatt said with a laugh. ``I just thought it would be good exposure for the school and for the kids.''

It didn't matter one way or the other to Harrington and Watkin that famous Chatsworth Chancellors of the past include actors Kevin Spacey, Mare Winningham, Val Kilmer and Kirk Cameron, nor that Roy Rogers and Dale Evans performed at the school's 1963 dedication, a fitting tribute for a rural North Valley campus where some students rode horses to school and tied them to posts for the day. The producers were looking for Chatsworth's present.

Within the first days of the new year, the producers settled on a core group of 20 to 25 students to follow, some because they fulfilled a character type - the jock, the nerd, the class clown, the stoner - and others who were just plain interesting anyway.

Among the show's focal points:

Justin Cassel, who both basked in the limelight of his big brother, Matt - a senior big-man-on-campus then and now USC's starting quarterback - and struggled to make his own identity.

Jamie Kim, a Korean-American girl who was elected class president despite her racist remarks and apparent lack of preparation for the job.

Josh Levine, who was accustomed to being tormented in eighth grade because of his short stature and thick glasses, but still sounded hopeful about high school: ``I thought, if anything, the seniors, juniors and sophomores would just throw us in trash cans. But they talk to us!''

Daryn Martinez, who couldn't go through cheerleading tryouts because her grade point average was below the 2.0 minimum.

Fertile ground

``Freshman Year'' arrives on the heels of several documentaries about teen-age students because high school, particularly at the beginning, is ripe with stories. ``That 13- to 14-year-old time period is truly a fulcrum in a person's life,'' Harrington said.

``American High,'' the series that originated on Fox and then moved to PBS, continues in reruns through September on KCET and KLCS. Earlier this week, PBS aired the acclaimed 1968 Frederick Wiseman documentary ``High School'' on ``POV.''

``Chain Camera,'' playing at festivals and airing next month on Cinemax, was shot by giving a camera to a high school student who used it for a week and then passed it to another kid, and so on, until it made its way through many students over a year's time.

Harrington said he and Watkin experimented with that idea only once before deciding it was better that they keep control.

``We could cover the campus stuff, but the stuff off the campus, we figured maybe they could do it better,'' Harrington said. ``So we gave (the camera) to this one guy one weekend and he came back and he had this amazing footage. These kids were all 14 years old. One of them was driving a car. There was a keg of beer on the front seat. They were all getting drunk.

``This was amazing, this footage, but it was also terrifying,'' he said. After many debates within his own company and HBO, Harrington concluded the camera without adults present may have encouraged the dangerous behavior, and he decided against using that tape or letting kids shoot more.

Moss and Cassel agreed with Harrington that it took about a week for the kids to forget about the camera crews. Moss admitted he once flipped over a large tripod during football practice because he was more focused on his receiver downfield. Another time he and Cassel confounded the cameraman by walking down a hallway together and then splitting apart, forcing him to decide quickly which one to pursue.

``After a week, you just go out and do your job and do what you have to do, and whatever happens happens,'' principal Wyatt said. ``There's too much stuff that's happening every day to worry about the camera. You just have to do your job and if the camera catches you doing something stupid, that's just the way it goes.''

Forgetting about the radio mikes clipped to their shirts was another matter. ``The last few episodes I started to loosen up,'' Cassel said, ``but at first I tried to be real careful what I said.

``My friends were saying, 'Yeah, we're going to go out and see all these girls. I want to do this with her and that with her,' and I was just like'' - his voice is a harsh whisper - `` 'Shut the hell up!' And they were like, 'What?' And then nobody wanted to sit with me.''

Harrington, father of four, said he was most surprised to see how easily average or below-average kids can slip through the cracks in large schools.

``And a lot of these kids were like robots. I didn't sense a really strong academic ambition overall at the campus,'' he said. ``Maybe it was the same when I was (in high school in 1968), but it felt to me like they were going through the motions and trying to get to the 3 o'clock bell.''

Harrington said Wyatt was warned it will be a warts-and-all presentation of his school.

Would the principal do it again? ``I'll tell you after the show airs,'' Wyatt said, laughing. ``You know what? I would, just because for that year it brought everybody together.

``No matter how it turns out, I think it'll give a real accurate view of what ninth-grade life is like, and that's what it's there for.''

``FRESHMAN YEAR''

What: Fourteen-part documentary series shot at Chatsworth High School.

Where: HBO Family.

When: 7 p.m. Fridays.

CAPTION(S):

7 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 4 -- cover -- color) A year in the life 

Chatsworth High School opens its doors to HBO Family for the documentary `Freshman Year'

(5 -- 6) What's life as a high-school freshman life? Viewers will find out - or revisit that time - Friday as HBO Family begins its documentary series featuring Chatsworth High School ninth-graders. Below, Jason Moss, left, now varsity quaterback, and principal Dan Wyatt say they can't wait to see how the series, filmed during the 1999-2000 school year, turned out.

(7) Chatsworth High School baseball player Justin Cassel, above, is one of the students featured in the documentary, which follows students as they get their feet wet in high school.

David Sprague/Staff Photographer