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Uxbridge teen is making movie magic

SARAH DEA / TORSTAR NEWS SERVICE

Uxbridge teen is making movie magicJZachary Wilkins, Jake Wilkinson, Kelly Setter, high school students from Aurora, Newmarket, Barrie

and Orillia are being given the opportunity to "waste" their summer making short films about ways to

live in the Lake Simcoe watershed while reducing their impact on the environment. The W.A.S.T.E.

(We Are Saving The Environment) film project is being spearheaded by Ladies of the Lake, the LakeSimcoe Region Conservation Authority and the Windfall Ecology Centre and provides cameras, sound

equipment and editing software to the students.

About 80 students, including Serena Morcinek, use Lake Simcoe as backdrop for films exploring whatit means to live in harmony with nature

Aug 03, 2009 - 04:30 AM

Kenyon Wallace 

 NORTH DURHAM -- The lovers sit hand in hand on a picnic table while the green glow of the polluted lake reflects off the glass eyepieces of their gas masks.

Romance is palpable as they move closer to kiss, only to discover they will have to take off their masksto touch lips, exposing themselves to the toxic air.

"And ... cut!" yells 14-year-old Jake Wilkinson. "Thanks everyone. That was beautiful."

A flurry of energy erupts as crew members check the cameras and microphones and start to set up the

next scene. It looks like a regular film set, except that the whole production is run by teenagers.

Jake consults the script with his co-writers, Lea Sanders, 15, Connor Buott, 15, and Serena Morcinek,14. Today they are filming a scene on the south shore of Lake Simcoe in Georgina for their short film

about a movie director named Russell who is knocked unconscious by a boom microphone. He awakesin a dream world where the environment is so polluted that no one can survive without wearing gasmasks.

"Usually when people think of pollution, they just think of how it's bad for the environment. We're

trying to show that it's not just the environment being affected, it's people," said Jake, a student at

Huron Heights Secondary School in Newmarket.

Jake and his co-writers are among 80 students participating this summer in the W.A.S.T.E. (We AreSaving The Environment) Film School. The school, funded primarily by provincial grants, is a joint

 project of the Ladies of the Lake Conservation Association, the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation

Authority and the Windfall Ecology Centre, a non-profit organization providing environmental

solutions to homes and businesses."We hope the films stimulate turning points around the Lake Simcoe watershed where people can

envisage new possibilities about how they can live," says Hilary Van Welter of Windfall, who founded

W.A.S.T.E. with Annabel Slaight, one of the co-founders of Ladies of the Lake.

Ms. Van Welter and Ms. Slaight came up with the idea two years ago while planning Where WatersMeet, a conference about new ways of living in the watershed taking place this November in Orillia.

They wanted a tool to illustrate what it means to "live in harmony with nature and create a sustainable

future for our kids."

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"We thought film would be a great vehicle, especially for kids in their teenage years when they're in

their highest transformational periods and questioning everything," says Ms. Van Welter.

Lake Simcoe's size presented a challenge, as Ms. Van Welter and Ms. Slaight wanted the film school to

 be open to kids living on all shores of the lake. So instead of making the kids come to them, they wentto the kids.

They bought a 1986 Fleetwood Bounder motor home, covered it in W.A.S.T.E. logos, retrofitted it with

solar panels and computers for editing the films, and hit the road. They also hired a professional

filmmaker, Paul Davis, to teach the kids how to write, shoot and edit.

Each school session consists of two-week stops in Georgina, Orillia, Newmarket and Barrie. The filmswill be screened in the early fall at local outdoor venues and online.

Back on the Georgina shoreline, Morcinek, a student at Uxbridge Secondary School, brings a shot into

focus on the viewfinder of a professional-grade video camera. She's about to film a pivotal scene in her 

seven-minute film where the protagonist, Russell, realizes what the future holds if humanity doesn'tclean up the environment now.

Between takes, she says she hopes her film makes people realize that even if they don't live on Lake

Simcoe, their actions, such as using chemicals on their lawns, can affect the water."It's important to make people aware of what they're doing," she says.

Buott, a Newmarket High School student, knows the changes taking place in the lake all too well. The

Keswick resident, who has lived on the lake his whole life, says weeds in Cook's Bay have "exploded"in the last 15 years because of runoff from farmer's fields containing phosphorus, a popular fertilizer.

"I used to go fishing a lot with my dad and we would catch all sorts of fish. Now we don't really catch

anything," he laments.

As someone directly affected by the changes, Buott hopes that if viewers take anything away after viewing the films, it's this: "We're not going to realize what we have until it's gone. Once it's gone, it's

going to be a lot more difficult to get it back than we think it's going to be."

Visit www.wastefilms.ca for more information.