Getting Close...
19/07/07
By JAMIE KELLY
of the Missoulian
Every year, 42 red trucks chug to life and began a million-mile journey across the planet, and bring theatrical joy to 65,000 kids across the world.
The story of the Missoula Children's Theatre is the story of the miraculous power of art, of the little red trucks that could, and for the two filmmakers who are telling it, it is an awakening all its own.
That story is unfolding in Rob Whitehair and Pam Voth's “The Little Red Truck,” a documentary about MCT's epic, heart-wrenching, dusty, frigid and monumental tours it pulls off year after year with its dedicated staff of tour-actor-directors and its fleet of red trucks.
Whitehair, an award-winning wildlife documentary filmmaker, looks up at the wall of his video studio in the couple's Rattlesnake home. The wall is packed with hard drives that contain more than 300 hours of digital, high-definition footage - an enormous 11 terabytes worth (11,000 gigabytes) - that are slowly being pored through and edited down into a 100-minute documentary about the most famous children's touring company in the world.
Whitehair sighs. “It's huge in scope, and you can really get lost pretty fast in this immensity of the Missoula Children's Theatre,” he says.
For more than a year in 2006 and 2007, Whitehair and Voth tailed MCT from coast to coast as the tour winded its way through America and Canada. Doing business as Tree and Sky Media Arts, they filmed the weeklong residencies in the hellish heat of southern Arizona, in the tundra of an Inuit village in Canada, among the stars in Hollywood, and even in Mayberry - yes, Mount Aerie, N.C., Andy Griffith's hometown which inspired his television show.
“We wanted a slice of what America is,” says Whitehair. In all, Whitehair and Voth filmed in eight different towns and cities.
Nearly two years since the project was first pitched to them by MCT, “The Little Red Truck” is in its final stages of editing. Financed by MCT, it will be completed sometime in September and will be shopped around to major film festivals, cable networks and studios for possible theatrical release.
For Whitehair, “The Little Red Truck” was a fairly radical departure from his other works, which have exclusively been wildlife documentary films. And it was, in the end, a tear-jerking, emotive journey that instilled in him a deep faith in human beings.
“As a kid, we're told that anything is possible,” he says. “It's funny, because it's something that we all should know and remember. And somewhere along the line, we've lost that. As a child, anything is possible.”
MCT's residencies are a weeklong exercise in patience, practice, parenting and production that give the children a theatrical experience most of them never get - or likely to ever get again. Whitehair and Voth wanted to capture the magic of the entire week, from the hardships and disappointments to the sheer joy of watching children get a standing ovation after the week-ending performance.
And almost invariably, says Voth, it's a life-changing experience for the kids and even their parents.
“They're just bursting with excitement,” she says. “Their parents bring them flowers, and they say, ‘I can't believe what they did in just one week.' But the kids don't know that they can't do it.”
And as much as the story is about children, it's also the story of the tour-actor-directors (TADs) hired by MCT, who spend months on the road and weave their magic in each new town they pull into. Those journeys are life-changing for them, too, says Voth.
“They love what they're doing, and it almost always brings them to tears when they start talking about how they're making a difference in these children's lives,” she says.
of the Missoulian
Every year, 42 red trucks chug to life and began a million-mile journey across the planet, and bring theatrical joy to 65,000 kids across the world.
The story of the Missoula Children's Theatre is the story of the miraculous power of art, of the little red trucks that could, and for the two filmmakers who are telling it, it is an awakening all its own.
That story is unfolding in Rob Whitehair and Pam Voth's “The Little Red Truck,” a documentary about MCT's epic, heart-wrenching, dusty, frigid and monumental tours it pulls off year after year with its dedicated staff of tour-actor-directors and its fleet of red trucks.
Whitehair, an award-winning wildlife documentary filmmaker, looks up at the wall of his video studio in the couple's Rattlesnake home. The wall is packed with hard drives that contain more than 300 hours of digital, high-definition footage - an enormous 11 terabytes worth (11,000 gigabytes) - that are slowly being pored through and edited down into a 100-minute documentary about the most famous children's touring company in the world.
Whitehair sighs. “It's huge in scope, and you can really get lost pretty fast in this immensity of the Missoula Children's Theatre,” he says.
For more than a year in 2006 and 2007, Whitehair and Voth tailed MCT from coast to coast as the tour winded its way through America and Canada. Doing business as Tree and Sky Media Arts, they filmed the weeklong residencies in the hellish heat of southern Arizona, in the tundra of an Inuit village in Canada, among the stars in Hollywood, and even in Mayberry - yes, Mount Aerie, N.C., Andy Griffith's hometown which inspired his television show.
“We wanted a slice of what America is,” says Whitehair. In all, Whitehair and Voth filmed in eight different towns and cities.
Nearly two years since the project was first pitched to them by MCT, “The Little Red Truck” is in its final stages of editing. Financed by MCT, it will be completed sometime in September and will be shopped around to major film festivals, cable networks and studios for possible theatrical release.
For Whitehair, “The Little Red Truck” was a fairly radical departure from his other works, which have exclusively been wildlife documentary films. And it was, in the end, a tear-jerking, emotive journey that instilled in him a deep faith in human beings.
“As a kid, we're told that anything is possible,” he says. “It's funny, because it's something that we all should know and remember. And somewhere along the line, we've lost that. As a child, anything is possible.”
MCT's residencies are a weeklong exercise in patience, practice, parenting and production that give the children a theatrical experience most of them never get - or likely to ever get again. Whitehair and Voth wanted to capture the magic of the entire week, from the hardships and disappointments to the sheer joy of watching children get a standing ovation after the week-ending performance.
And almost invariably, says Voth, it's a life-changing experience for the kids and even their parents.
“They're just bursting with excitement,” she says. “Their parents bring them flowers, and they say, ‘I can't believe what they did in just one week.' But the kids don't know that they can't do it.”
And as much as the story is about children, it's also the story of the tour-actor-directors (TADs) hired by MCT, who spend months on the road and weave their magic in each new town they pull into. Those journeys are life-changing for them, too, says Voth.
“They love what they're doing, and it almost always brings them to tears when they start talking about how they're making a difference in these children's lives,” she says.