Wow! I made a documentary film! And, we had an avatar themed exhibition. How do the two relate? Well, you’re about to find out!

We started this project with a movie. The movie was Avatar (2009), which was apparently the second highest grossing film of all time behind Gone with the Wind (1939), and I had never watched it. We watched the movie as a class, while extracting the themes present in the movie. Themes the class extracted were corporate greed, racism, colonial exploitation, militarism, virtual reality and environmental destruction.

We then individually chose themes that we were interested in, for our short documentary films. I chose environmental destruction/ sustainability. Then I had to specify what area of environmental sustainability I was going to be focusing on. I had a few ideas in the topic of humans depending on natural resources, to sustain the economy, and not the nature.

Now, how exactly was I going to make a documentary film about sustainability? Documentary films are usually specific, factual, and concern public matters. What better way to get people’s perspectives on the topic, then by reaching out to experts in the community! Yep, that’s right, we were going to have interview people, about our chosen topic.

I pitched my ideas to my teachers, and then asked them if they could point me in the direction of finding an Indegenous’ interviewee that knew about the field of my topic. This took me quite a while to find, and then set up an interview with. Although some decided to interview a classmate, teacher or family member, I was really hoping to interview an expert in the field or in the community. I reached out to an organization called The Last Stand For Forests via email and got in touch with an Indegenous woman named Ojistoh Henhawke.

I came up with some questions to ask her in the interview. I made sure to come up with some introductory questions, central questions and call to action questions. Since she doesn’t Iive close by, we set up a zoom call time for the interview. We had organized a time, and I was all set with my questions all prepared, and then my interviewee didn’t join the call that night. I think this was a learning curve for me; it goes to show how you’ve got to be resilient to setbacks, in school projects and whatever life will throw at you in your future.

I recovered by re-contacting my interviewee, and they responded later that evening, saying they were busy with life (which happens), and they completely forgot about our scheduled meeting. I accepted the past and we scheduled our zoom meeting for the next day, same time. This time the interview worked out well; Ojistoh’s answers and perspectives were really interesting and she spoke about our real life society old-growth logging issue. I was one day more prepared for my interview, but I was also a couple days behind my peers, who had already started editing their interview footage and adding B-roll (background footage) to it.

I had the idea to also interview someone who had or still worked in the B.C. Forestry industry to get multiple perspectives on the topic. It wasn’t necessary to interview more than one person, but I chose to. I got in contact with a retired B.C. growth and yield forester, named Jack Louie, through family friends of ours. I asked him different questions, more specific to his practice. One interesting part of this project was hearing the differences and similarities between both of the Indegenous’ perspective and the forester perspective. Even their language and tone towards the topic helps tell their side of the story. For example a difference in chosen language was that the retired forester preferred to call it harvesting, or cultivating of old Growth trees, instead of using a negative, harsh word like destruction of old growth forests. A similarity in their perspectives was one of the need for more sustainable forestry industry practices; harvesting second growth forests or tree farm trees instead of taking down the ones that have been here for 200+ years. There is also a need for more good people in B.C’s forestry industry, right now there are a lot of people that see the wealth, the monetary gain of destroying these lands, instead of having a passion for perpetual, and sustainable forestry with the public.

Throughout those weeks of early December 2022, I was capturing b-roll footage of old growth, giant cedars on my dog walks, often in the rain, to overlay when playing the interviews.

The next step after having my interviews, the b-roll footage, and all my essential information, was to actually create the documentary film. Not as easy as one would think! If you’re a PLP student reading this, or if I were to do this project again, I would say to plan for plenty of extra editing time. By completing my interviews a few days later than most of my peers, my video production was pushed back a little, and so I was walking on a thin rope to being finished by the due date.

I worked all day, and well into the night, because I had little time after school for homework, and was constantly having something to do, somewhere to be. With exhibition prep starting and my video still not finished, this was stressful time of year.

Overall, I’m really pleased with how my documentary turned out. For what it’s worth, it was worth all the while. I put in a lot of my own time into making this video, and it’s not at the standard that I’d love it to be at, but I had to remind myself that it wasn’t a movie. It had to quick, educational and snappy. If the videos could’ve been longer, I woul’ve loved to add more pieces of my interview with the retired forester, because I thought he had some very important light to bring to the topic. I would’ve also added more b-roll to make it more interesting for my viewers, my audience. Again I needed to remind myself, this is not my film career, this is my first documentary film.

Please, please, please, check out my final video! It’s on YouTube, so you can share it with your friends, family and peers, to bring more attention to the topic of the destruction of old growth forests in B.C, and the need for a more sustainable forestry economy. Be part of the change!

This is how I answered our driving question : “ What does James Cameron’s fantasy world of Avatar reveal about our own society?”. Humans have big impacts on the environment. Sometimes they are willing to go to the extent of completely destroying ecosystems and important old growth forests, for the sake of the economy, greed, and natural resources within the forest. Jame’s Cameron’s avatar does a good job a depicting what is going on in real life, what the humans are destroying just to get some unobtainium in the ground. They destroy these massive trees, that connect the people to the land and their ancestors. James Cameron’s avatar pulls on your heartstrings and emotions, encouraging or inspiring people to take action toward protecting the old growth forest of our society.

Presenting my video at the 2022 Avatar Winter Exhibition, was a lot of fun. I thought it was a good way to premiere our documentary films, and reflect on the deeper meanings of Avatar’s connection to our society, to he public. Although members of the community did not stare in my viewing box and watch the entire video, most of them just liked hearing me talk about the topic, the issue, and the consequences it’s having. For me this way a good way to wrap up this project, and connect with the audience. I felt comfortable and somewhat of an expert on my topic, which made it easier for audience members to react, and respond to my communications. I was surprised to have presented to some who feel very one-sided to the topic.

Here’s my friend Kira and I with our viewing boxes:

PLP celebrated having made it through another year, and another successful winter exhibition by going to watch Avatar 2: The Way Of The Water in theatres, the day of it’s release!! Although it explored many of the same real-world themes as the first movie, it took us into another magical world, defying the extremities of animation technology once again. Thanks again for reading this post!