Christopher Reed’s filmmaking students are in high school, and he holds them to high standards. “I want to think beyond the idea, ‘Oh how cute, kids with cameras. Clap your hands.’ That’s completely unacceptable as far as I’m concerned,” Mr. Reed said.

As the director of the Media Arts program at Elisabeth Irwin High School, Mr. Reed, 35, grooms ninth through 12th-graders to be future Martin Scorseses and Ken Burnses.

While the students have shown their work at high-school film festivals, the films will make their debut to the general public next week at the Apple Store in SoHo.

Mr. Reed is proud of his students’ work. “It’s not just a series of badly made high school home movies,” he said. The lineup includes documentaries, narrative fiction films, a music video, some narrative poetry shorts, and presidential campaign ads for both candidates from the past election. In “Hoops,” Stefan Holt captures the competitive and community spirit on the basketball courts of West 4th Street. Interviews with New York University students who protested during the Republican National Convention form the core of a documentary by Alex Zhang called “Protest? What Protest.” “Music In Words” is a paean to music in the city. Brunnell Velazquez reads his poem, set to footage of him playing the saxophone.

Since Mr. Reed roared into the progressive high school in TriBeCa affiliated with the Little Red School House a year and a half ago, his classes have become some of the most popular in the school. Each of his students writes and directs films while collaborating with other students on their own projects.

“The principles are the same, no matter the age of the student. They still have to learn how to write a script, tell a story. Stories are universal. They may be less mature – so you have to accept the work that’s put out – but there’s no reason to say, ‘You’re just a kid, you can’t do it.'”

The school takes arts education seriously: Students are required to choose an art course every term from a catalog that includes photography, studio art, and dance. It takes resources to produce high-quality work. “I insisted on professional-level equipment because the school wanted to be known for its film program,” Mr. Reed said. Macintosh G5s and digital cameras were bought for the students. “These tools allow the students to approach the quality of the professional,” he said.

One thing he would like to change is the percentage of young women in his classes. “This girl has just written a terrific script. I want her to publish it in the school’s literary magazine,” Mr. Reed said, “I like encouraging more young women filmmakers, because so far my classes seem to be a guy thing – maybe it’s the tech aspect. And that’s too bad, because the class isn’t all tech. I’m demanding a lot script-wise.”

Subjects covered include writing, directing, cinematography, editing, acting, and history. But the most important skill is a basic one: organization. “There’s organizing one’s thoughts and organizing a film set. The class also trains students to see images in a more critical, constructive way. Finally, it makes students aware of how commercials and films are put together. In order to be successful in the film world it’s important to understand how you are manipulated.”

Mr. Reed attended Baltimore Poly technic Prep for high school – filmmaking was not on offer there. At Harvard, he studied Russian literature and became Russian teacher at Phillips Exeter, then at Choate Rosemary Hall.

While earning his master’s at Yale in Russian film, he decided to change careers and get into show business. He enrolled at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts to pursue an M.F.A., but he couldn’t stay away from teaching for long. He returned to it the summer after his first year in film school and continued to teach teenage students for seven summers straight, first with the New York Film Academy and most recently with the School of Cinema and Performing Arts. That work helped land him the job of technical editor for the book ” Digital Filmmaking For Teens” (Thompson), published last month, as well as his job at Elisabeth Irwin High School.

His experience teaching foreign languages has proved helpful. “I make parallels all the time. I don’t see a whole lot of difference … Film is a language,” he said.

“I use this corny sentence: The shot is to the scene as the word is to the sentence. So basically, you have to teach the mechanics of a shot, just as an English teacher teaches the parts of a sentence. You have to think of a new visual language,” Mr. Reed said.

With this in mind, he spends a lot of time teaching basic shot construction, such as what is meant by a “close-up.” “The reason we all have to know this is we have to be speaking the language that everyone in this group will understand. So if I ask for a medium close-up of this person from a low angle, the cameraman is going to know what to do. That’s what you put together in order to tell a story.”

Mr. Reed is pleased with the progress of his students. “At the beginning of last year, the students in the current 11th-grade class didn’t necessarily think of themselves as filmmakers. This year they’ve responded to the challenges and demands of the film class.”

Parents and teachers often pitch in and play roles in student productions, but Mr. Reed may get the most screen time of any adult. Unsurprisingly, he’s usually cast in the role of a teacher.

In Jonathan Segal’s “Magic Fantasy Arts,” Mr. Reed plays an obnoxious, fictionalized version of himself. In the first scene, he talks about a film he did with his friend Steven Spielberg. (For the record, Mr. Reed has made several short films and documentaries that have played at film festivals – though none with Mr. Spielberg. He has also had acting roles, including a part on “Sesame Street.”)

In “Break Time,” by Alex Coles, Mr. Reed plays the evil Principal Dutchman, trying to capture three students skipping class. He wore a wig and business suit for the part, which he kept in the classroom closet so he’d be ready to film scenes. “That suit got really smelly,” he said.

One year later, Mr. Coles is working on a sequel. Mr. Reed has asked him to write out the wig.

Acting isn’t part of the job description, but Mr. Reed makes the most of his thespian talents. “If I’m on the set, I can ask, ‘What do you think about putting the camera over here? Do you have all the coverage you need?’ It’s an opportunity to teach.”

The screening of the students’ films is set for Tuesday, February 1 at 6:30 p.m., on the second floor of the Apple Store, 103 Prince St., free.