WARSAW (AP) — A documentary featuring local students preparing for life after high school has been picked up for distribution by Paramount Vantage for $1 million after its showing at the Sundance Film Festival.

"American Teen," from director Nanette Burstein, was a crowd favorite. It follows four Warsaw High School seniors.

The film was called "one of the bright spots in a weekend of disappointing films" by the Hollywood Reporter on Thursday.

The documentary was filmed at the school and in the city halfway between South Bend and Fort Wayne over 10 months in 2005 and 2006, according to Jennifer Shepherd, the school's assistant principal.

Shepherd said she and other school officials were initially apprehensive about allowing the film to be made there.

"But I did some research on the director and listened to what they had to say," she said. "I was kind of instrumental in getting school board approval. I was hoping I wouldn't have to get a new job when all was said and done."

Burstein has described her third documentary as being about the pressures 17-year-olds face from peers trying to figure out who they are and making important decisions about their future while being ill-informed or facing parental pressure to be a certain way.

"It was never going to be about Warsaw as a town," Shepherd said. "It was never going to be about our high school."

Thousands of hours of footage were ultimately boiled down to about 90 minutes, Shepherd says. She attended the premiere in Park City, Utah, and says she loved the film.

Shepherd believes some of the reviews have been misleading.

"Some articles refer to the sex in the film," she said. "There's no sex in it. There are no drugs in it. From the get go, (Burstein) said it was not going to be about sex, drugs and alcohol. She was true to her word."

The film's lead subjects, Megan Krizmanich, Colin Clemens, Hannah Bailey and Jake Tusing are the toast of the festival, Shepherd says. They are all enrolled in colleges, she said.

"By Monday and Tuesday, people were talking about them when they saw them walk down the street together," she says.

Shepherd says there is behavior in the film that the stars are embarrassed to see revisited on screen. But that's sort of the point.

"That's who they were in high school," she said. "All I would say is that I've seen all of them mature and change. That's what high school's about. That's where you make the mistakes you learn from."

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Information from: The Journal Gazette, http://www.journalgazette.net