Youth filmmakers manage to pull through with a $20K documentary about adapting during Covid-195/17/2021 By Heather P., Silvana S., and Kristina L
Two teens are currently working on an amazing documentary to tell you all about people’s lives as they learn to adapt and deal with the effects of the coronavirus. Caelan Bell, 14, and Eli Smart, 16, are exploring the lives of various Calgarians by documenting their experiences during the pandemic. The film, Adaptation in the Impoverished City, follows the paths of people from different walks of life as they learn to adapt to and deal with the effects of COVID-19 in their daily lives. The teens, along with AWCS youth program coordinator Kim Firmston, received a $20,000 grant in order to film the documentary from Telus STORYHIVE, a program dedicated to funding and supporting storytellers across B.C. and Alberta. “$20,000 goes way quicker than you would think it would for a documentary," says Bell. The film features several Calgary pandemic heroes: Wakefield Brewster is a poet/ masseuse, Em Williamson who is a teaching assistant/university graduate/minimum wage worker, teacher John Williamson and nurse Leah Patmore. Marie-France Gurrette was assigned as their STORYHIVE mentor from the National Screen Institute (NSI). Adaptation in the Impoverished City will be shown on Telus Optik TV in September and hopefully in film festivals, We interviewed Caelen Bell about the project just after the editing wrapped up. Q: What is the movie about? A: Adaptation in the Impoverished City is a documentary following a bunch of people during the whole Covid-19 pandemic and their own experiences, including our own experiences, mine, Eli’s and Kristina Lanuza’s. It also covers what kind of takeaway we can have from a kind of horrible experience and how we can adapt during the pandemic. Q: How did two young filmmakers end up making this film? A: Kim (Firmston) sent us an email about the STORYHIVE grant, which is a filmmaking program run by Telus to give independent filmmakers funding for new projects. This time it was the local heroes documentary edition… A little while later, about a week before the submission date, Eli asked me if I wanted to do it. I said sure, not realizing it takes a lot of work making a documentary. We spent about a week with just me, Kim and Eli making the proposal and shockingly we actually got it. I was really impressed and surprised that STORYHIVE would give it to teenagers, so good on them. Q: How did you get the idea for this project? A: Eli approached me with a pretty good idea ... but we spent a lot of time developing the idea. We had a crazy storyboard that we originally made to plan it out. There was so much stuff we didn't do because it would have been so much work. But also when they say local heroes edition, a lot of people you can talk to stand out, especially during a global pandemic. Q: What is it like being a filmmaker? A: Not exactly what I expected. It’s definitely, I’m going to guess, a very different experience when you doing a creative project compared to a documentary. There’s a surprising amount of paperwork involved and I didn’t do a big chunk of the paperwork, that was mostly Kim’s job. … getting permission for lots of different location, you have all of them them listed, you have to have insurance for different items like cameras, because cameras are expensive. As much as there were a lot of things you’d expect - the shoot days are a lot of fun, operating different equipment like cameras and microphones and editing - there’s definitely a lot of stuff that people don’t talk about and probably because it’s mostly paperwork and not the most interesting thing to talk about. Q: What was the most challenging part of making this film? A: That's a tough one… The toughest part was having enough footage and stuff. My advice is to anyone else making a documentary film is to have way more than you could ever need entirely in your entire life. Because you’ll get back and you are going to realize some of it is a little out of focus or something like that and you’ll end up being short. But we ended up making it through. Read more Zed News YYC articles: News Arts Podcasts
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By Silvana Sabzevari
On Wednesday May 26 there will be a total lunar eclipse on a full moon. Total lunar eclipses are also sometimes called Blood Moons because of the reddish orange glow the moon takes on during the eclipse, when the sun passes behind it. On the night of the eclipse when the full moon will be closest to the Earth, it will appear larger than average. This is the first Lunar Eclipse since January 2019. The map below that shows which regions in the world have a total eclipse or partial eclipse. Alberta is in the three darkest zone, which means we will only miss two parts of the eclipse. In order to watch the eclipse wake up 2:45 a.m. and go to bed at 5:26 a.m. But don't look directly at it - use special protective eye wear to keep your eyes safe. Note that sunglasses don't count. Whenever there is an eclipse, a few weeks later the opposite eclipse will happen so Calgary is in for a solar eclipse on June 11. |
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December 2022
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