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A home grown film project is giving a new Moose Jaw recording company a chance to branch out.
Brunswick Productions, headed by Larry Heisler and Lori Dean, has taken on the recording of the theme song for a Saskatchewan film project aimed at reaching young children and teenagers, and helping them cope with some of the tougher issues of youth.
"Basically it's about teenagers and kids growing up," said Heisler, of the film called Unknown Wounds. "It shows the kind of things that some kids can go through."
Heisler and Dean, who have typically recorded local demo projects, took on the recording project despite their lack of a permanent studio. They found an old vacant building downtown that they converted into a temporary studio for the recording session on Sunday. The musicians came from Liberty and Craik to let Heisler to his thing.
 "Getting a chance to do that was pretty good for us," said Heisler who also had a role in the film. "All the actors are local, from (around) Regina. Being on the set I got to see a lot of good talent. It showcased some good talent that we've got coming up in Saskatchewan."
Unknown Wounds, was written, directed and produced by Kim Ehman of Craik. Ehman, an actor and mother of four, describes herself as the kind of person who likes "to include everybody".
She said the idea for the initial project came to her after the Columbine and Taber school shootings. Her aversion to seeing people singled out for their differences made her act. "I thought, there's got to be something I can do". That's when Ehman began running a program in the Craik School that later inspired her to write Unknown Wounds. She started working with drama students by teaching them some concepts of method acting, which involved internalizing a role to better portray it. "I wanted them to act out something that was as real as they could make it". she explained.
When the students understood the technique, she developed a presentation she called Seven Scenes. She gathered the students in the gym and asked them to think about attitude, and what constitutes a positive or negative attitude. She had the drama students act out different school-based scenarios, one with a negative outcome, then the same situation with a positive one, and asked them how they felt and where they felt it. "The whole message is to think with your heart, not with your head".
After some positive feedback from the presentation, she was encouraged to develop more scenarios aimed at the older students. That's when she envisioned the larger project she now calls, "Eh, man. Let's make a Difference!" which encompasses Seven Scenes and Unknown Wounds.
Ehman returned to Craik and filmed Seven Scenes with the students she had been working with and wrote the script for the more serious story in Unknown Wounds.
Through her connections in the Saskatchewan acting community, Ehman was able to find a film student to help her film the piece and she gathered actors to mount the film. The filming is now complete and other than the editing, the recording is one of the final steps of the project that is entirely Saskatchewan made. "The band wrote this song about a year ago and it's just the final touch. It's just the final touch to the whole thing," said Ehman.
Ehman hopes to complete the project by the end of January, and take the films on the road, not put them into circulation alone. "I want to get to as many schools as I can to make the presentation," she explained, saying that the two films together convey the full message she wants to express.
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