DEH CHO
Thanks to the Open Sky Creative Society, students at Thomas Simpson Secondary School had the chance to learn documentary filmmaking skills from a pro, proving the arts are alive and well in the Deh Cho.

Yellowknife musician and Ice Lake Rebels co-producer Mary Caroline spent two days in Fort Simpson over the weekend to give a documentary filmmaking workshop to Fort Simpson youth. - April Hudson/NNSL file photo

Mary Caroline, who has frequented Fort Simpson in the past as a singer-songwriter and has run workshops in that capacity before, was in the school on Feb. 6 to share her filmmaking knowledge with students in Grade 9, 10 and 12. There were about 15 students per workshop.

Caroline worked on the reality television show Ice Lake Rebels, which revolves around people who live in houseboats on Great Slave Lake.

Although that is classified as reality television, Caroline said her session at Thomas Simpson was more geared toward documentary and film production in general.

"Story development was the big key of the workshop: story arcs and keeping the audience engaged by shifting emotions from positive to negative and back again, and how that's generally how people stay hooked on a show," she said. "We talked about how in film production, when you're creating your stories, you want to shift that energy back and forth."

During the workshop, students had a chance to draft their own documentary ideas. However, a hands-on follow-up session on Feb. 7 did not move forward as planned.

Caroline said the idea of running a film workshop was first sparked by a request from Yellowknife Education District No. 1.

"I thought, 'I'd love to do a workshop around film production because I've been doing quite a bit of it in the last year, and working with this TV crew from Los Angeles, learning a lot about how TV shows are made behind the scenes,'" she said.

"I approached Open Sky and asked if there would be any interest in me doing a film workshop."

She said it's difficult to compare the film workshop to songwriting workshops she has run in the communities in the past.

"I feel like the songwriting workshops I've done in the past have a product at the end, which is the song they co-write," she said.

"The workshop at Thomas Simpson was more academic, although it would have been fun to run around town and film some stuff in the context of a story arc, where you want to take the viewer and see how well they can put it to work in real life, instead of just in theory."

With her time in Fort Simpson up, Caroline said the Deh Cho is not seeing the last of her. She will return for another film workshop at Fort Liard's Echo Dene School which she said will likely take place in April.