filming

Bigsby and everything that the film is composed of will forever mark a moment in which youth engagement via the arts touched on subjects otherwise troubling to society. The dedication brought to set days was outstanding, the spirit of comradery created a sense of belonging that the youth responded well towards. It was evident being part of a project such as this one brought feelings of ownership and responsibility. As Bishop expressed numerous times, “This is not just my film, this is everybody’s film!”.

Youth took it upon themselves to clean up after one another, to be mindful of others around the set (specially if the individual was not part of the cast and crew). As echoed by McKnight and Kretzmann (1993), “youth can always make a significant contribution to their community. Increasing their self esteem and levels of competency. They are filled with free time, ideas and creativity, connections to places within a community, dreams and desires, peer group relationships, family relationships and most of all energy and enthusiasm” (p.30-31). The set was an outstanding place to be and had always a positive energy, one of the group’s slogans is representative of this. Any time there was a task to complete, a goal to be set, or anything alike, the saying was “It’ll be good, we’ll get it done… And then we’ll be laughing!”. The feeling of belonging was transmitted in everything everyone committed too. The engagement happening at this age helps create conscience of our surroundings, it highlights our abilities and possibilities of what can be done in the community. Thus creating a stronger civil society at an early age.

At this time, it seems as though the days were long and went by so fast, we are left with a comforting feeling of accomplishments reached as we reminisce about the lessons learned. So now, we get to eagerly wait for Kenzie to work his magic… and then we’ll be laughing!

Catalina Belalcazar
Production/Research Assistant