Power frames student-school relations and could be viewed as problematic for student participation. Seeking research methods that reveal the development of student-school relations furthers the understanding of everyday expressions of power and leads to reforms that would improve social relations within and beyond school walls. A project focused on the participation of students in high school video production classes to explore the shifting nature of power as the camera becomes a tool for achieving new forms of participation. The degree to which power and the styles of using, submitting, or avoiding power are revealed in an analysis of how cameras are used. Three schools with video production programs from southern California participated. Ethnographic methods, including weekly observation throughout the targeted courses and interviews with students were used to gather information. Three courses from each of the three schools were observed. Volunteers (n=26) provided video from 15 projects; 18 of the volunteers participated in short interviews, and nine of them narrated some or all of their videos. Work on the rich data generated is in its beginning stages. Overt participation in school video production demonstrates differences among schools and among groups of students based on ethnicity and gender; but to fully understand these differences a microscopic analysis is needed to distinguish how actual events come together to create the distinguishable patterns. A microanalysis begins the journey to discover the intricacies of school contexts that create differences in students. (BT)