Emily Pilloton with Studio H students CJ Robertson and Stevie Mizelle (Long Shot Factory )

This timely documentary follows two prominent designers, Emily Pilloton and Matt Miller, who created an educational studio for teens in one of North Carolina’s most rural counties. They called it Studio H, and their students completed projects that evolved from the rudimentary to the complex. The goal was to teach basic construction skills, encourage creativity, and provide examples of how to effect change. The work culminated in building a new home for, and revitalization of, the county’s farmers’ market.

This is also a straightforward film, equally showing the successes and failures of the project. The filmmakers create suspense, humor, and poignancy, all with a light hand. In the spirit of things, cameras were handed to the students, and some of the footage shot by Jamesha Thompson, who developed a new love for moviemaking, made the cut.

Throughout many subjects are investigated, and as a result some feel underdeveloped. Personal tensions between Emily and Matt are glossed over, an important conflict with the local school board goes largely unexplored, and episodes from the lives of the students feel too rare and brief.

There isn’t much time devoted to an understanding of the finer points of education either, but a recounting of a past project of Miller’s leads to the film’s finest philosophizing. Becoming the first student at his architectural school to ever actually construct his thesis design, Miller built a house in Detroit and then gave it, rent free, to a needy family. He asked only that they keep up with the insurance and utilities. The family never paid a cent. Miller, losing money on the venture, was forced to evict them, and he returned to the house some time later to find it ruined. “I think she saw it as a handout,” he says of the mother to whom he deeded the house.

Simple charity can’t be the answer, he decides; there has to be more personal stakes involved to get people to feel ownership over improving their lives. It’s an idea that many development experts are currently promoting about breaking free from poverty, and it relates to education as well, as anyone who’s ever apathetically yawned through a lecture they didn’t feel invested in can appreciate.

To their credit, Pilloton and Miller make no claim to having any kind of instructional panacea. The film illustrates the lack of easy answers to be had. Yes, it is unfortunate that students in money-strapped schools take a wide array of classes online, including, absurdly, physical education. At the same time, there are enough shots of the Studio H kids lost in their phones to suggest that even innovative lessons have a hard time cracking the teen techno bubble. The quest to motivate and engage students in their own learning is a hard one, but the rewards are great. When a student, on seeing his design brought to life, says, “It’s just amazing,” the entire enterprise feels justified.

When first promoted on Kickstarter, this film was called Studio H. The change of name was a wise choice. Yes, the new title makes a dreamy allusion, but more importantly, it begins with a conditional “if,” and a personal address, “you.” A great many conditions must be met if educational experiences like this one are to be shared with a wider array of students. Any number of documentaries may be made advancing solutions or widening the dialogue, but ultimately, as the fate of Studio H makes clear, the success or failure of educational reform depends on the will of the people involved.