Author Dr. Michael Collins took part in the annual Lewis Cass Intermediate School District Career Pathway Day for Dowagiac and Cassopolis sophomores Thursday, but he didn’t work with 10th graders on writing.

Collins sort of underscored his own point by talking about film scripts, shooting cereal commercials and good-paying jobs available in the entertainment industry.

We tagged along behind a group of 19 students — 12 females and seven males — who stated arts and communication as their preference from six pathways, which also include automotive, construction, business, agriscience and natural resources and health.

We figured that’s what journalists would sign up for if we were still in high school, so it was happenstance when the pathway spilled us out in Collins’ career classroom.

The author of nine books, Collins also wrote a screenplay.

“Three years ago someone said, ‘Hey, do you want to write a movie?’ I’d never written a movie script, but I said, ‘Sure, I’ll give it a go.’

“I came to Notre Dame on a running scholarship and was a C student the first two years, then realized I was going to be going back to Ireland, where I had two brothers killed fighting the English with the IRA, so I decided I better get educated.

“Since then, I’ve said, ‘If I’m top 10 in the world in running, why couldn’t I write a book? Why couldn’t I write a movie? Why couldn’t I be involved in making music videos?

“Why limit yourself by saying, ‘I couldn’t do that.‘ I don’t consider myself exceptional, but you only get one life to live here, so figure out what you like and be successful rather than live a life of what-ifs. My passion wasn’t computer programming.”

“You don’t want to be in school forever,” Collins continued. “Do things for yourself and use the resources of the Internet because you learn a limited amount of stuff in school.

“Computer people teach themselves (he worked at Microsoft in Washington state for 10 years), a lot of moviemakers as well. You don’t have to take a movie course to write a movie. The commercial industry and the advertising industry are growth industries inside America. We’re still the idea people.”

He brought to their attention a Web site, moviescripts.com, where they can be downloaded for free “to begin to see how many cameras are potentially used” for tight shots, zoom outs and shoulder shots.

To illustrate how to create a cereal commercial, he had sketched out his own idea for a harried family called Crunch Time, chewed with a military march cadence.

“Advertising agencies make a fortune doing small 30-second commercials,” Collins commented. “The first thing you have to figure out who your audience is,” which in the case of the famous Life cereal spot where two older boys get Mikey to try it because “he won’t eat it. He hates everything,” it tugs at their parents with cuteness.

Together, Collins and the students, working in groups of four, deconstruct the three-camera, seven shot commercial to see how its elements fit together.

A different approach might be taken to sell sugary cereals, such as cartoon critters like the cuckoo “ADD bird” which pitches Cocoa Puffs, Tony the Tiger and “great” Frosted Flakes, the silly Trix rabbit or the leprechaun who fronts “magically delicious” Lucky Charms.

Yet another approach would be adult promotions for Kellogg’s Special K, which usually feature “a pampered single woman in a bikini in the Bahamas who’s phenomenally thin because she eats it.”

His 13-page handout also includes questions which could assist in researching the target market and a “Four P’s” worksheet to classify words based on if they are examples of product, price, promotion or place.

“There are x shots inside of a commercial,” Collins said, “x shots inside a scene and so many scenes inside a movie. Every shot has to be sorted out in a movie. Camera people aren’t allowed to make decisions for the director.”

Collins also showed a music video he worked on with Faithless juxtaposing ordinary American life with war images.

“The concept is they go hand in hand. It took about six months once we handed it off.”