SAUSD's Amplifying Leadership Podcast

17. Bridging Creativity and Technology in Education: Eric Timmons and the Power of AI in the Arts Classroom, Part 1

• Bianca Barquin • Season 2 • Episode 4

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Eric Timmons takes us on a transformative journey through the world of educational filmmaking, revealing how authenticity and student voice are reshaping career pathways for underrepresented youth in Santa Ana.

The story begins with a pivotal moment of pedagogical humility—when students rejected Timmons' theater program, he asked why instead of doubling down. This simple act of listening launched a revolutionary approach to education that now thrives as the Saintly Film Academy CTE pathway at Santa Ana High School. The four-year program blends English language arts with progressive film production skills, creating cohorts of students who move through narrative filmmaking, episodic content creation, documentary production, and finally independent thesis films.

What distinguishes Timmons' approach is his strategic foresight about where the industry is heading. Rather than preparing students exclusively for traditional Hollywood careers, he connects them with local videographers, photographers, and marketing teams who need their digital storytelling skills immediately. The program also embraces emerging technologies like virtual production environments (the LED wall technology used in productions like The Mandalorian) and content creation for platforms that are disrupting traditional media hierarchies.

Most powerfully, Timmons addresses representation gaps head-on. Citing research showing that Latino directors are 6.5 times more likely to hire other Latinos in key creative roles, he focuses on empowering students to become decision-makers who can transform who gets to tell stories in our culture. Through partnerships with working Latino filmmakers who serve as mentors, students see people who look like them succeeding in the industry.

The results speak volumes—students are securing paid internships, starting production companies while still in school, and using their skills to elevate voices in their community through projects like "Discover DTSA" in partnership with the City of Santa Ana. As one student realized: "We can start doing this now. We don't have to wait."

Join us for this inspiring conversation about how creativity, technology, and culturally responsive teaching are creating new pathways to success that simply didn't exist before. Discover how film education is transforming not just students' futures, but potentially the future of media itself.

Visit us at our Buzzsprout site for more ways to listen, links to our social media sites and any referenced materials, and complete transcripts of our full-length episodes: https://bit.ly/SAUSDAmplifyingLeadership

Bianca Barquin:

Welcome back to SAUSD's Amplifying Leadership, the podcast, where we explore the stories, strategies and successes of those shaping the future through education and leadership. I'm your host, Bianca Barquin, and today we have an exciting episode focusing on the intersection of creativity and technology. Joining us is Eric Timmons, the innovative mind leading the Saintly Film Academy CTE pathway at Santa Ana High School, a groundbreaking program that blends English language arts and visual and performing arts. Eric brings a wealth of experience from both teaching and the entertainment industry, and today we'll be discussing his journey, the role of AI in education and the unique opportunities available to students in Santa Ana. Eric, welcome to the show.

Eric Timmons:

Thank you so much for having me.

Bianca Barquin:

We're excited to dive directly into your story. Let's start with a little background. Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your teaching and industry experience? Tell us what led you to teaching and how did your background in the entertainment industry influence your approach?

Eric Timmons:

Thank you. So I started at a small special needs school in Laguna Hills, california. It's a private school called New Vista School. It specializes in supporting students with autism, and I was instructional aid there and I started a theater program and the students hated it and they didn't want to participate in it and I didn't know why and I couldn't figure it out. And so I did something that has shaped my career ever since.

Eric Timmons:

I asked them why don't you like this class? And they said because it's embarrassing for us to stand in front of people. And I said so what could we do differently? And so they decided they wanted to make movies, and I had a theater background. I had done screenwriting and I'd made movies when I was younger. But I decided I was going to shift things and I was going to venture into making movies, and so we did. We started making movies and I had never edited a movie before, and so I quickly learned how to teach editing and the screenplays I had under control.

Eric Timmons:

And as an English teacher, I went to school and became an English teacher while I was there working as an aid, and so as I shifted into being an English teacher then I started incorporating more screenplay writing and so we had the literacy component. But then students were able to express themselves through filmmaking, and that's where I really saw the magic of what filmmaking can do in the classroom. And the biggest epiphany and turning point in my career was when we screened their movies at a local theater and seeing the parents come up with tears in their eyes saying I never thought I'd see my child do something like this, and that has also been a huge shift in my career the understanding that we have to provide parents and students the support that they need as clients. And it was a private school that I worked at and so that was the approach, and I understood at that point that I needed to think about how education wasn't serving the students that I was working with. Many of those students came from public school because they weren't getting the supports they needed.

Eric Timmons:

And then after that, I moved to Santa Ana and started Chavez, which is a continuation school in our district, alternative education school, and at Chavez I also continued meeting students who had not fit into the education system we have designed and were struggling. And again I brought screenplays to the English classroom and one of the best compliments I received was from an English student who asked why their alternative ed English class was harder than the class they had before they got to alternative ed, and that made me so proud, but it wasn't impossibly difficult they were. They were feeling that sense of achievement because they were creating a screenplay. It was just different. It required them to create new worlds, to think in a way they hadn't thought before.

Eric Timmons:

So those two experiences really defined my career. And so when the brilliant Sofia Cuevas moved into the district her district office position now she left behind the Saintly Films program which she started and I took it over. And I just was so excited for this opportunity because it's such a gorgeous facility that the district built, and it was an opportunity to take what I had been learning and developing and now put it into place with a four-year pathway. That direct line between what students can see happening at school and their future career also reaffirmed my mission and what I wanted to do with Saintly Films.

Bianca Barquin:

There's so many brilliant and inspiring things that you just said in that first question. I'm super excited. One you realize as a teacher, because you're a true reflective practitioner that what you were doing initially didn't work and instead of just thinking, oh my brilliance, I will just tweak it and create something different. You were empathetic and you were an empathetic communicator and you listened to your students, which is one of the attributes of our graduate profile that we want to exemplify, right? So you listened to them and then you adjusted and you were super responsive and you started to personalize what you were doing to really meet their needs.

Bianca Barquin:

And then fast forward to when you went to Chavez. Here you are in an alternative setting and you're with some of our most vulnerable students and you are still actually personalizing and meeting their needs and you're providing them with rigor, which is incredible, and they are actually working really hard to get through your class. You were doing things differently in a way that they hadn't encountered it before. And now let's segue into what you're doing at our flagship high school, at Santa Ana High School, which I'm super excited about, which leads me right into our next question Can you tell us more about the Santa Ana High School, saintly Film Academy, cte pathway. How are the courses structured? To prepare students for college and career and you already started talking to us a little bit about that and what's the mission of the program.

Eric Timmons:

St Lee Films. It's a four-year pathway and so it starts with ninth graders. We teach narrative filmmaking and then it goes into episodic filmmaking, like for Netflix and streaming content. Then junior year is documentary and now we've actually added a news component where they're making broadcast news once a week. And then senior year is their independent senior thesis film that they create and that's part of their senior portfolio that they submit and that's part of their senior portfolio that they submit. All four courses are aligned to an English language course and then I meet with the English teachers and we collaborate so that we're supporting those students. So the students who move through the pathway have me in their film production class and then they have their English teacher and it's the same cohort moving through all four years. And what that has allowed is for students to really move past the film production aspect and get into the storytelling, into exploration of identity, exploration of what angers them about their community, what frustrates them and what they can do as artists to shape narratives that could possibly change the world.

Eric Timmons:

And what I'm most proud of with that pathway is the three focuses that we've shifted toward. The three focuses we have now is that we're focused on how can we connect more with the community to ensure opportunities for students to move away not entirely there are some students who still will but move away somewhat from the Hollywood model of going straight to Hollywood and to focus more on what does it take to become a real estate videographer? What does it take to open up your own photography studio If you want to be a photographer? We have lots of student photographers and their own companies at school taking photos for athletes and dancers, and so how can we turn that into a career path? And so how can we turn that into a career path? What does it take to build just a network? I have a student who wants to be an orthodontist. He never wants to be a filmmaker but he's going local industry film production, but by having them in the classroom and engaged in the projects the students are creating, not guest speakers. I'm not a fan of guest speakers. I felt like when I was in high school I did not enjoy guest speakers. I pretty much checked out. It was pre-cell phones, but I probably would have been on my cell phone.

Eric Timmons:

So I think that teenagers need people to come into the classroom to work with them and the teacher through a collaboration on whatever project the student is currently on. So, for example, when students are doing their pitches, we bring in filmmakers and producers to give them sometimes brutal feedback about what needs to be adjusted. And that is a wake-up call for what life will feel like like when you go out and you needs to be adjusted, and that is a wake up call for what life will feel like like when you go out and you have to produce something. I think, going back to what I was saying earlier about my private school training and what I learned there, it's not about whether they attempted to complete something. They actually need to deliver something, a product, and it needs to be a rigorous assignment and they need to get feedback on that and they need to improve it until it reaches the level that we have set as a standard. Rather than check the box, move on. And so by bringing in professionals, I can see it in the students it elevates the work because they feel added pressure. It's not just their teacher who's going to give them a grade on the rubric and then move on right. They are getting feedback from a Hollywood producer or someone who works locally in film production.

Eric Timmons:

The next part that we're focused on is technology. So technology is changing in the film industry. Technology is changing in our world rapidly. As you know, I was a member of the ICC and it's yeah, it's clear that we need to start thinking about what are the signals that are happening around us, and so, with students in class, we are looking at what skills can they develop as far as virtual production goes, virtual production is like the Mandalorian, where you have the LED screen on set and so students, instead of having a set piece behind them, they have an LED wall and it can be changed and adjusted and the camera follows them. And so think of, like a weather report You're watching the weather and if the camera were to move, the background wouldn't move, it would be static, right, the static image. With virtual production, there are trackers on the camera and the wall, so it actually tracks the camera's movement, so the background moves with them, which means you need to design a full, like a video game, a full landscape that can be moved around and adjust the lighting, and all of that's on Unreal Engine. So we are shifting toward Unreal Engine training, we're shifting toward virtual production, and that goes back again to my start at the private school is I see the writing on the wall.

Eric Timmons:

Hollywood is people are losing jobs, and so if students do want to pursue this, they need to at least understand at a basic level a foundational level how to work on a virtual set. They may not be the person who's designing the background, but they need to at least understand how virtual set functions. The other thing, too, is that I was in a conversation with an executive producer from Warner Brothers, and he's executive producer for several car shows and he's had to lay off 70 people because Warner Brothers is just moving away from car television. The industry is shifting. They're going to YouTube. Students are watching YouTube, students are watching TikTok, instagram, and so we need to start teaching that content as well. How do you create that content? How do you meet the market demands so that you can compete in a changing market?

Eric Timmons:

That being said, and what's kind of wonderful about that is that the big word for 2025 is gatekeepers. Right, they're like the students always say don't stop being a gatekeeper, mr Timmons like if I try to stop them from something. But that's a wonderful idea is that you know we have, we've moved away from the gatekeepers, because a lot of those gatekeepers are actually controlling access. And that's my third point is to bring students up to provide access. There was a study that was done by McKinsey that so, okay, above the line and below the line in Hollywood is so you have. Above the line are the people who are the creators behind it, the people like the writers, the directors, the producers and casting directors and then lead actors. The below the line is everybody else who basically brings the production to life. The below the line is everybody else who basically brings the production to life. So if the director is white they found McKinsey this last year it is a 4% chance that there will be above the line, latinos on the set. If that director is Latino, or showrunner too, if the director or showrunner is Latino, it's a 26% chance there will be Latinos above the line. That's what McKinsey found.

Eric Timmons:

So representation matters and giving students access to the table where the decisions are made is imperative if they're going to be successful and we're going to start changing the narrative, and so I want to elevate their voices. But I want to empower them to elevate their voices. I want them to see that the stories that they have heard within their families have value and haven't been told, and that they exist and will excite the market. It's not just about representation for the sake of representation. It's also, too, that we're bored with the same stories over and over again. We've seen them so many times, and so by bringing in unique perspectives and hearing those stories, it can really so many times. And so by bringing in unique perspectives and hearing those stories, it can really shape the world. And so those are the three things that we're working on to really make sure that the students are ready for a pretty uncertain future.

Bianca Barquin:

You know, it makes me deeply think about the ICC and the work that we're doing. Everything you're talking about, eric, is you applying, without even formalized training, strategic foresight. Right, you're forecasting and really deeply looking at those drivers and signals of where the industry is going and you're making sure that our students have not only the knowledge but the skills and the dispositions that they're going to need in the future and you're giving them an opportunity or a chance. I think it's amazing. There is a line when I was looking at your LinkedIn and I can't remember the exact wording or I would bring it up, but it's something about almost amplifying the voices of emerging storytellers, something around right. So it's kind of resonating. Do you remember exactly what it is? I think it-.

Eric Timmons:

What I wrote on there no, it's been so long. Yes, it is amplifying the voices and that is an empowerment right Is to make sure that they are heard, to make sure that they have the access to the networks, that they're in the rooms, to meet people who can give them that access. We live in a very wealthy county and in South Orange County I mean a lot of those students going to Chapman go to Chapman and their parents will pay $30,000 for their film at Chapman. So I mean the majority of our students don't have access to that and so for them to meet people and see people working in those career paths and being able to see that this is something they can do.

Eric Timmons:

And again, I mean going back to my earlier statistic, I try to get Latino representation in the classroom for filmmakers and I've been fairly successful. What I love about that is just to see how the students change when they see someone. They see that's me, that could be me. We have Maria Alanis, who she actually just wrapped on the new Captain America. She just wrapped on that movie, but she's worked with our students extensively and sometimes I will say you know, I want you to talk to Maria, because I feel like that's a conversation they need to have, because I didn't grow up in their household.

Bianca Barquin:

And they need to have that access to someone who understands and hearing her present and she was so articulate, telling her story and then having the ability to interview her afterwards and just ask her questions. Lorene and I were just picking her brain and her talking about the impact that you had in her walking away and going to the next level in her life, just saying, wow, this has really profoundly changed who I am, she said. It made me recognize who I really am and to be not afraid to express it, and I just think that was a beautiful thing. It makes me think about all of the students that are actually in your class and I remember being at the Neurodiversity Fair to mention it again. There were some students who were there. You didn't even have to provide them with direction and I'm watching them edit and coach and mentor interviewers who were interviewing teachers that were there, and community partners, so your students become really self-sufficient as they move through the years with you. Is that?

Eric Timmons:

accurate. Yeah, that's the goal is. I want them to be able to walk onto a professional set. And in fact, another great compliment is oftentimes they'll go and they'll do their first film production class in college and they'll text me or call me and say I was so bored because they know everything already. So but I tell them, you know, be open to it and learn. You know you can learn new things, and a lot of those teachers have lots of experience to share. But definitely that's the goal is for them to be independent, self-sufficient and to take pride in their work. That was something that I was told over and over when I worked at Navista School, and here was I didn't want people to watch the movies and say this is good for a kid's movie. I wanted to say this is a good movie.

Bianca Barquin:

This is a good story, and so we always aim for that. Love it, Okay. Next question being so close to the movie capital of the world, what partnerships, internships or unique opportunities are available to students in Santa Ana in particular?

Eric Timmons:

So I'm excited to announce that we just helped a student from last year. He graduated last year. He landed a job with the Humble Company, a sustainable dental care product from Sweden, and so I had met the CEO for North America and he was looking for a graphic designer and someone who had some film experience and video experience for online marketing, and so I recommended Sam, and so they gave him some challenging work to turn in and it was really interesting. He'll probably kill me for sharing this, but it was really interesting because he submitted the work the first time and they gave it back and said no, you're giving us what you think we want, like, we want to see what you can create, and I love that moment, and I learned from that moment that that's something that our industry partners are looking for. They want that fresh perspective. They want that exciting teenage voice to compete online. They're not looking for something that someone my age could produce. You know, they want something new students. But I'm so excited for him. He has a six-month paid internship with them that could turn into a full-time career. He's going to be traveling to trade shows, he's going to be meeting executives from Google and all kinds of places, so I'm just so, so thrilled with that. We also have internships. Right now we're doing another exciting project called Discover DTSA. It's something that I created with Logan Crow, who runs the Frida Cinema, and we're working with the city of Santa Ana to get paid internships for the students, but they're working to interview business owners and artists in the downtown Santa Ana area to amplify their voices and to support economic development for the city, and so in that case, you have students who have learned this craft in the classroom now taking it out into the community and using it to improve their community and to help other artists raise their voices through a means of communication, through the internet or through social media that they're not that comfortable with right, and they don't really know what's cool right, and so our students can help them develop those things, and it's been really exciting so far. We also then, through that that's the thing I'm discovering that I wish I had learned when I was younger was that when you meet one person, then that leads you to an event where you meet more people, and then that leads you to an event where you meet more people, and I keep telling the students that and they keep seeing it firsthand. So with that interview then we were invited to the professional photographers of Orange County. They had a meeting and so now they want to offer memberships to our students to be part of. You know a handful of students and these are like Newport Beach, laguna Beach million dollar studios. These are people who've been photographers, for they said it was a collection of maybe 300 years of experience in that room. I mean it's just an incredible opportunity for them to start to work now and that that was something.

Eric Timmons:

Over the summer I did a summer internship. That was the first time where I ran an internship. With that internship we did a podcast to kind of like reflect on the process. And I remember that day we were sitting together and doing the podcast and one of the students it just as they're kind of just talking it dawns on him. He's like we can start doing this now, you guys. And another student goes yeah, yeah, I mean like we're practicing and then when we graduate from college then we'll you know we'll get careers. And he goes no, we can start doing this now. We have the skills we have. Mr Timmons will give us the gear to borrow Like we, and we can make money and then save up to buy our own gear. We can start a production company now. We don't have to wait.

Eric Timmons:

It was so cool and it inspired me too. I was like that's so true, you don't have to wait, you have the skills right now. And this is the skill, as you know, everybody wants. Like as we're recording this podcast, as you're, you know, looking on social media sometime, like you know, we'll probably all go look at social media after we get off of here, right, like we're all on it. So, and we don't all necessarily know how to do it effectively, right, and we're trying to figure it out, we're trying to learn, but we're just so busy. They know they have the skills, so they, once they learn how to shoot cinematic film and how to color grade and how to add music that complements the story, they can do all that and make money and build a production company.

Bianca Barquin:

Think about all the incredible things that they're actually learning. They're learning that their stories matter, that their authenticity, their voice actually matters, and then you're equipping them with all of these technical skills and fostering their creativity. I mean, it's just amazing.

Eric Timmons:

Hey there, Amplifiers. Join us next Friday for part two of our conversation with Eric Timmons to hear how he uses AI to transform his filmmaking classroom student experience. See you then.