On Saturday I participated in the first day of a Blitz aimed at teaching the youth of the new Can Stage Young Company how to make a film. The Blitz program was developed to be a turnkey approach to giving youth the opportunity to express themselves through film and video.

Blitz is a three day workshop that takes filmmaking neophytes and immerses them in all of the aspects of making a film in a very intensive setting, resulting in each group producing a short film of their own. Each Blitz camp has a theme and the participants are encouraged to incorporate the theme into their films by putting it through the filter of their personal experiences.

The young adults from the Can Stage Young Company were tasked with creating films around the theme of Leadership. On our first day we discussed what leadership means to them and how it manifests itself within others, and why we even need leaders in the first place. We then broke up into four groups and went about defining the stories behind our films and working out the pre-production logistics of making them happen next weekend.

The whole process was made super enjoyable by the fantastic mix of people involved, among both the participants and the facilitators. This project was spearheaded by Ravi Jain and Natasha Mytnowych, who are working with this group of young people at Can Stage, with crazy debt owed to Kate Fraser who put all the work into developing and supporting the Blitz program over at Schools Without Borders. Together they’ve recruited a great group of support people and film mentors (which includes me) to make the execution seamless and fun. Big thanks also has to be said to The Remix Project, which has graciously provided their space for the purpose of this Blitz camp.

Next weekend we’ll be shooting and editing these films into their final masterpieces and I’m sure I’ll be back after that, completely exhausted most likely, to write about how that all plays out.