Lights. Camera. Talk!
Work began on the production of Muskoka Kids Saturday just outside of Orillia at Camp Couchiching in Ramara Township.
The documentary strives to answer the question: if we brought a group of young people together and provided a safe physical and emotional space for them,
what would they tell adults about childhood mental health? What would they tell us they are experiencing? What would they tell us they need?
DFF Productions, known for its Underground Orillia documentary, believe a summer camp experience could help youth open up about their needs.
“As adults, we are often trying to divine from the young folks about what we think they are experiencing and what we think they need,” said director and producer Aaron Sheedy. “It’s sometimes difficult for us to see what they actually need because they aren’t able to communicate it in a way that most adults are able to process.”
Everyone who was cast in the documentary has youth mentorship experience, summer camp experience, or is a mental health professional, he explained.
“We are hoping to be filming the experiment this fall,” Sheedy said, “but before we even start that, we wanted to have this focus group today to put the parameters around this experiment.”
Sheedy is hoping a teaser video can be created from Saturday’s shoot to give audiences some perspective on the more significant project that will be worked on during the summer and filmed in the fall.
“We want to talk about what the project will look like, what it needs to be safe, and what aspects of mental health can we explore with the time frame that we have,” he explained.
DFF Productions enjoys shooting community-based films, Sheedy says, which is what led them down the road of youth mental health in the first place. Producer Shane Morrison is a youth worker and Sheedy is a parent, a retired police officer and a former summer camp director.
“We have a boots-on-the-ground interest in childhood mental health,” he said. “We’ve seen the struggles young people have to communicate these things.”
Sheedy is on a mission to show a larger audience the concerns young people have and the impediments they face to expressing their concerns.
“I want to capture the passion of our team,” he said. “We want to capture the environment, too, because this will be a summer camp-based experience. We come from backgrounds of summer camps and we know the magic that comes from a camp where kids can really be a little more who they are.”
In his experience, Sheedy says children can show leadership skills and a more daring attitude at summer camp, which is what he wants to capture on camera.
“We want the audience to see, through this focus group, that this is the environment they are talking about,” he said. “Once we start working with the kids for the actual event, the through line will be the camp’s magic sauce.”
The results of Saturday’s focus group and production will hopefully be made available to the public sometime next month, Sheedy says. There is no current timeline for the completion of the full project.
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