For kids whose three favourite words are "lights," "camera" and "action," there's a summer camp with spaces still available in Burnaby.
The ninth annual Telus Summer Moviemaking camp at SFU this July and August is all about giving young people the opportunity to learn what the film industry is all about.
From writing, directing, acting, and editing, to creative and leadership skills, youth ages eight to 13 in Burnaby, New West and other parts of the Lower Mainland will learn a lot in just five days, says organizer Jim Crescenzo, a Burnaby resident and teacher in the film department at Templeton Secondary School in Vancouver.
Not that it's ever difficult to teach young people about modern technology.
"Kids are so tech-savvy," he said. "Within a day, they're operating the cameras, and then they're writing and directing, and they're editing their own movies. I'm not kidding you; in a day, they've got it mastered."
Crescenzo said students learn a long list of film industry skills, including camera and software operation, story-telling, collaboration and communication, which, he notes, are useful not just in the flourishing film industry.
"These are essential skills that are so important just in life, right?"
At the end of each camp, participants can invite family and friends to come up to SFU to watch a screening of their short films, which Crescenzo says is always a lot of fun for both students and parents alike.
For Julianna Piccolo, a Grade 7 student at Aubrey Elementary School in Burnaby, the experience was definitely worth a week of summer vacation.
At the end of her camp session last summer, her group produced a film called Geek's Revenge, which won an award out of a pool of 173 other student videos.
"We started this camp just for fun, not even knowing where this could take us," she said. "Just getting so far has been an amazing feeling. I suggest this program to a lot of kids."
While the sessions are very popular and tend to fill up every year, Crescenzo said he would like to see more kids from Burnaby have the opportunity to get involved as there are usually more students registered from out of town.
For teens in high school, ages 14 to 19, the film camp takes place at Templeton school, which runs two-week sessions, offering partial and "full-ride" bursaries for atrisk or underprivileged youth.
For these participants, the cost is covered in part by sponsorship from Telus and North Shore and Mammoth Studios.
Besides Crescenzo himself, there are youth instructors at both SFU and Templeton who are graduated students of the Templeton camp who have proven technical skills and leadership abilities.
"We're doing two things," said Crescenzo. "We're helping people come to camp, and we're also helping young people by paying them to come to camp to teach other young people, if they have skills. So it's quite a nice partnership in that regard."
Matthew Kennedy, who took the summer camp each year right through high school, has been working as a counsellor at the camp for the past eight years.
He said the opportunity to learn about filmmaking was what set him on track to become a filmmaker and actor.
"It kind of made me realize it was OK to have a career in the arts as long as long as you were doing what you wanted to do, which is the most important thing," he said.
The summer filmmaking program is a joint-collaboration run by Pacific Cinematheque and Dream Big Productions at Templeton.
Registration is now open for the July and August sessions, which run from 8: 30 a.m. to 3: 30 p.m. at the Burnaby Mountain campus. Cost is $295 per student.
For more information, visit www.sfu.ca/camps/ summercamps/partnershipcamps.html.
