Moose Jaw Times-Herald: Giving youth a place to showcase their emotions

Weeklong drama camp focused on how to act in front of a camera

Camp instructor Leon Willey shows a video of actors'
auditions to his students at the Acting For the Camera
weeklong arts camp at Riverview Collegiate.
Times-Herald photo by Lisa Goudy

By Lisa Goudy


Initially, 13-year-old Katie Rolfe didn’t want to attend the Acting For the Camera weeklong arts camp that occurred during the recent Labour Day long weekend.

But when someone came to her door and said that her school, Westmount Elementary School, had sponsored her to go, she decided to give it a try.

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“Basically I’m teaching them the skill of how to act in front of a camera so that what ends up happening is that they’re allowing themselves to be quieter, simpler, just allowing emotions to come through and it’s hard, especially when you’re only 11, 12 years old. It’s less about acting out than it is of acting in and within a confine of a frame of a camera and getting them used to a camera has been really interesting. They’ve been really quite good at it, which is lovely,” said Leon Willey, camp instructor and professional actor.

“Kids don’t have already all the baggage or the stuff that you’re supposed to do in front of a camera already. They don’t have any of that yet. So they’re really raw. So you tell them to just allow certain emotions to come through. It’s what you want to see and you put a camera on them and it’s heartbreakingly honest. It’s great. It’s exactly what you want,” he said.

Camp instructor Leon Willey talks about the process of auditioning for a movie at the Acting For the Camera weeklong arts camp at Riverview Collegiate.
Times-Herald photo by Lisa Goudy

Daniel Arens, 15, said they had been doing a lot of different acting activities.

“(We’ve been) doing like a bunch of acting type stuff, learning things about acting and what’s important about acting like emotions. You have to show emotion on camera,” said Arens. “You’re learning about the acting skills like some of the physical stuff you need to do, like moving arms, moving your body types of things. It helps on the acting type stuff pretty much.”

Willey said he hopes the students will take away a lot from the camp.

“I think for a lot of students that aren’t immediately drawn to a competitive sport or immediately drawn to an academic or even working with hands. I mean, SIAST there’s lovely programs that people eventually go through school and end up there, also university and I always think that artists are sort of a unique breed of people and I think everyone has a little bit of artist in them. I’m not ever going to assume that all of my students will become dramatic actors or film stars or performers of any kind, but what I will happen is I think that they’ll be able to take what they learn from this and apply it into their regular life and I think it’ll make them a more emotionally aware person. That’s what I hope anyway.”