When sixth-grader Julia Thomas heard a new media after school program was coming to Dartmouth Middle School she knew right away she wanted to join.

“I’ve been doing theater since I was 4, and this kind of stuff I love to do,” she said. “I kind of thought this would be really fun, and it was.”

Surrounded by lights, a camera, TV monitors and editing equipment, 12 middle schoolers created videos about after school programs, edited clips for a Halloween film festival and also interviewed the middle school’s principal, Peter Rossi.

Rossi, who helped organize the club, said he thinks a lot of kids are “passionate” about making films.

“They’ve been able to match their passion with a great opportunity,” he added.

Much of the equipment the students use comes from Dartmouth High School’s studio, which went through some upgrades over the past four years and no longer needed the equipment, including the camera the middle school students use.

The program, which began this year, was started by Robert Perrotti, the high school’s lead business, innovation and technology teacher, who said it’s his goal to get younger students involved in film making.

“Most kids come in and their only experience with film and recording videos is with their devices,” Perrotti said. “They don’t realize that it takes a lot more than that.”

Seventh-grader Andrew Owen joined the program because he was interested in starting a YouTube channel and wanted to learn how to edit videos.

“I feel like in the future, I could make good movies if I wanted to,” he said.

When sixth-grader Eva Doyle joined the program, she thought she’d be working on computers and playing video games, but she instead found herself editing videos, interviewing people and reading off cue cards.

“We got to do so many things and we got to build friendships and … got to talk to lots of people,” she said.

Producing videos involved writing scripts, brainstorming show segments, learning how to operate the camera and using editing software.

While Doyle said the work was similar to homework she said it’s “way more fun” because it’s not an assignment.

“You can make up anything that you want. You can be creative. You can mess up lines, but you can be very creative,” she said.

The kids never made up stories for their show, but this didn’t mean they didn’t do any acting.

“There was one time I had to be really sarcastic, and I had to go, ‘This is a really, really, really, really, really, super duper important question,’ and then I asked what his favorite color was,” Thomas said.

The program starts back up in February, and already students are planning what to film next, including a game show where they would talk with people from the after school programs.

“I had the idea that we … get one person from each after school program … and then we bring them here, and then we do it like, ‘Hey, you're on DMS game show where we're going to test your brain and we're going to see who's the best after school program,’” Doyle said.

At the moment the program is only an after school program, but Perrotti said he hoped that it could be turned into a curriculum during the school day.

“I know a lot of kids have been incredibly excited about this opportunity,” Perrotti said. “I think it’s only going to grow.”