FOLEY, Ala. — Countless buses roll in and out of Foley Middle School, but last week a bus filled with a flat screen TV, air conditioning and a staff from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts parked in front of the school and hasn’t left yet.

A group of students were selected to spend time on the bus, but it wasn't for a field trip, but rather to learn about film production.

FMS was selected as one of only 10 schools across the nation to be a part of the program called On Location: Spotlight on Your Community. The On Location bus serves as a classroom for the students to learn about all the stages of video production. The students put what they’ve learned into motion and create a documentary about a local artist. For this class, their subject is Eastern Shore native Ricky Trione, who has worked with the students previously on art projects.

Making the project even more unique are both the students and the subject themselves, as the students are ESL students and Trione is blind.

“We help each other,” Trione said. “I’m real interested in learning Spanish, so when we are doing art together I’ll ask them what the Spanish word for certain colors is. We talk about things in Spanish so they are helping me and I’m helping them see how a blind person can see colors with their mind and their hearts. We overcome obstacles together. These students are so bright and some pick up the language and culture so quickly.”

The students spend the bulk of their time with Kennedy Center instructors, developing storytelling and interviewing skills.

“We spend our time a large part of our time in preproduction,” Kennedy Center Theater Teaching Artist Shannon Huneryager said. “We make sure they have a story. In that story they have aspects of their subject’s life that is an intersection between their relationship with the community, their art and the person themself.”

The students will spend an entire day in Fairhope filming Trione.

“They want to see me throw a cast net,” he said. “They want to get some shots of me on the water’s edge and maybe feeling a shell and see what inspires me.”

After a morning of filming the students will return to Foley to film Trione doing demonstrations and conduct an interview.

For FMS principal Branton Bailey, having the program at his school is quite an honor.

“I was driving home from a conference in Birmingham when I got the call,” Bailey said. “I immediately called our assistant superintendent. We were excited. Anything we can do to get Foley in the spotlight is great, especially when its so positive like this. It’s an honor to be selected as one of the schools.”

The experience has been most beneficial to the students as teachers have reported seeing them come out of their shells and focus more on the project.

“We always have fun with the kids,” Kennedy Center Media Teaching Artist Lauren Madow said. “The kids enjoy it. The post-production is really challenging. It’s a lot of sitting in front of a computer, staring and thinking abstractly. It’s intense and teachers say they can’t believe how focused the kids are. I’m not even aware that they are focused, it just feels natural to be working as a team.”

Averaging about 1,000 miles of driving every other weekend, the staff from the Kennedy Center has already traveled to South Carolina, Florida, Philadelphia and Michigan and will continue on to Missouri and Texas before concluding the program.

While the staff can’t stay until the film is finished, they do leave behind a digital media package to help the production along. The package includes a computer, editing software, camera and sound equipment; all of the equipment the students used on the bus itself.

“A lot of magic happens on that bus,” Terry Wilhite of Baldwin County Board of Education said.

And a little of that magic happened at Foley Middle School, too.