Reflection

Reflection

In 11th grade, I founded a community recycling initiative called The Bottle Project. Through running this project, my friend Robin and I saw firsthand how plastic pollution was affecting our beautiful coastal city. We decided to create this short film as a way of sending a message to the public about a problem— plastic pollution, disposable water bottles especially— but more importantly, a potential solution for this problem.

The media is inundated with bad news; it seems like new estimates of the amount of plastic in the ocean come out each year. While this is important to know, I wanted my film to be more positive than negative, and imbue the audience with a sense of optimism. This is where my idea of creating a narrative film came into play, a film about two water bottles that enlist the help of a human boy to achieve their dreams of being recycled. The production was both incredibly fun and incredibly frustrating, considering we had to go out and connect with the managers of the landfill and recycling facility in order to shoot even the briefest of scenes there.

But we never gave up, because we wanted to see our vision realized, and in the end, we have succeeded. Danny began as a piece of litter floating in the ocean, but by the end, he was part of Owen’s new backpack. We hope that this metamorphosis can inspire everyone who sees the film to do their part in keeping our waterways clean.