A gap year can be a way to mature, study options and develop skills and interests before jumping into college, university or a technology institute.
But for three Port Moody men a one-year sabbatical after graduating from Heritage Woods has resulted in a documentary about glaciers and could, if widely seen, rally international concern about B.C.’s diminishing ice fields.
Melt, released last month on Vimeo, has already been widely shared and is helping Kyler Dickey, Pierce Kinch and Ethan Volberg get the word out about B.C.’s melting glaciers and what the phenomenon could mean for tourism, fishing and other industries and communities.
“This is something we’ve wanted to do for a long time, it feels great to have it completed,” Volberg recently told The Tri-City News.
For these young men, the project began as a collaboration in high school but soon became an obsession, taking four years from start to completion.
When they embarked on their cross-B.C. trip in a well-stocked Delica, the trio had no idea Melt would take so long to make and involve so much work, including interviews and editing.
“I have a lot of respect for film makers now,” said Volberg who credits Heritage Woods’ grad Sophia Biedka for editing the film and enabling the trio to finish the project.
He admits that as teens they were a little over-confident about the project, for which they generated a lot of community funding and support.
But as the film tracks their progress through each community, you can see they learned a lot in the process.
Volberg said the trio took several trips to “all four corners” of the province, including a stint in Victoria where their van broke down and they had to get to interviews on skateboard, while carrying their video equipment with them.
Much of the movie is dedicated to explaining how glaciers are impacted by climate change, but there are also interesting interviews with scientists and others whose livelihoods depend on the glaciers while beautiful scenic shots, some filmed with a drone, put B.C.’s spectacular scenery on display.
Volberg said the goal of the movie is not so much to start an environmental movement but to encourage people to come up with and explore their own passion.
“It’s not trying to convince everybody to be a certain way but to encourage everybody to be the hero in their own story,” Volberg said.
Many who see Melt may find themselves wanting to venture out to B.C.’s unexplored areas to follow the tracks of these young filmmakers; others will see it as a call to action while this year’s grads might view it as inspiration for their own gap year.
