I
everyone deserves their voice to be heard.
♪ [inspirational]
♪ ♪
Reel Start's
to change their world through
and their lives through film.
They're exposed to career paths
and they get a chance to write a story, a script
with a professional screenwriter
about social issues that matter to them.
And then they get to produce and actually make a short film.
Are you serious right now?
Hey, hey, what's going on?
This gentleman was entering the premises,
moved his hands a little too quickly to his pocket --
This gentleman is my student's father.
And that's fine. But he wasn't listening to me.
Were you listening to him?
♪ [dramatic]
We were just talking on the phone one day about
how lucky I was, how fortunate I was, Seth and I
to go to Point Grey High School in Vancouver, B.C.,
where they filmed movies and TV shows.
We would see
and we just saw this happening, saw the craft service table
and people chatting and then hurriedly filming.
And we were like, that looks good.
I wouldn't mind that job.
And especially the craft service table.
I wish that was like a full on joke, but it's not.
Like, seeing that giant table of food and then
someone telling me that's free if you work here.
But yeah, and Adrienne is an educator who works with
kids from all sorts of places.
And those kids, she would always tell me,
do not get the opportunities that every other kid gets.
And so we're just trying to help bridge that gap.
Girl:
We're not connected with anyone in the film industry, really.
We're just like students in high school and
some of us are serious about getting into it.
And I feel like
kids like us to do that.
You know, there are so many young kids that
also wrote these amazing films.
I feel like they would have never been able to do that.
That can never happen. I can never be an actress.
I can never be a director. I can never be a producer.
It's unrealistic.
But now that I'm learning that it's not just
those three, four, five professions, it's like
a multitude. It's more realistic.
We do a one day shoot
and the kids are there all day and they can choose
who they want to shadow.
So they can shadow the director. And it always starts the same.
The day one of class all the kids are like,
I want to follow the actors.
And then by the time they get to set,
no one wants to follow the actors because
they want to do stuff and they don't realize that the actors
spend a lot of time sitting in trailers
just waiting to come out, practicing alone,
and they get there and as they meet the professionals,
they see, like, I'm really into the makeup area,
I want to do that.
[students' voices]
My name's Billy.
And I'm Lilly.
Hi, I'm Ethan Coleman. I'm new here.
Oh, we know. We... read your file.
It took a long time.
Oh, cool.
Evan:
we finish the film.
This year COVID obviously threw a wrench in everything and
our films are filmed live action on a one day shoot.
So we pivoted to animation.
For the animated film,
that's not what we were planning at all.
Like, we actually finished the script
for a live action film.
We finished the script and then they were like,
we cannot do the live action film.
We're going to have to do animated because it's COVID now.
I was actually really annoyed because at first I was,
I really wanted to see what goes on behind the scenes,
like, how you film somebody or
how many takes take place or whatever.
So I was actually kind of,
I was feeling really down about it.
But after the -- we started with the animators and everything,
it all really kind of just came together.
So, like, I obviously got excited about it again
and now I'm really excited about it.
Sydney:
it was more exciting because I realized
we could do literally anything with animation.
We don't really have any limits.
The cool thing was if Jonah Hill could talk to us,
it opened up, like, we had all these
L.A. people talking to our Toronto students.
It's been such a hard year
that I'm glad that we've stuck through it
and the students have stuck through it.
And when they look back, like,
I really think that this will be a positive memory
for their COVID experience.
With technology, life's moving so quickly
that hearing everyone's voice,
especially these young people's voices, now matters because
the moment's going to be gone before we know it.
No matter who you are, no matter what age, gender,
I feel like everyone has a story to tell.
That's a wrap!
[cheering]
♪ ♪