On April 20th, 1999, there was the first major school shooting at Columbine high school in Colorado.  This event shook the nation and caused Chet and Fletch to ask the question, “what can we do?”

Three days later they approached a local high school and asked if the students there wouldn’t mind writing an essay about the event.  Several of the student’s responses stated that they were thinking about doing something violent as well.  This sent chills down the spines of Chet and Fletch.  They knew they had to do something… but what?

They decided to start an educational program for students based on the only thing they knew how to do… making movies.

While Chet worked his way up through the ranks at DreamWorks SKG, Fletch met with a few high schools and invited students to participate in what they thought would more of an experiment than anything else.  The test was to see if filmmaking made any difference at all in the lives of students.

Fletch took a year off from making movies and opened up a small office where he taught students the craft of filmmaking.  Having learned it by being on set, he began by simply making movies with them.  “We must have made something around 20 or 30 movies that first year with the students”, Fletch recalls.

The Hollywood Reporter described the lot as the Next Next Generation.

It didn’t take long before the word began to leak out that there was a working filmmaking course for students.  Educational partners began to spring up starting with the state of Utah who adopted the Sneak On The Lot curriculum as their official filmmaking course.

Student Television Network (STN) was next, engaging the Lot to host and judge their film competition.

Skills USA, the largest high school competition in the country came next.  Chet and Fletch have judged the Digital Cinema competition for several years and recently have been offered the chair position for the entire competition.