theHumm: Why Pakistan out of the many disasters in many places? And then, why did Jason feel the need to make the switch from syringes to cameras?

Michelle Skanes: He showed up at my place of work and told me that he was going to Pakistan in five days. I said “What?!” He told me that he had applied to the Canadian Relief Foundation and they wanted him to go to Pakistan as part of the emergency relief team and he wanted to go. So, I said “Go.” Then he told me we needed to raise about $5000 to cover his expenses! So, we did that. People were unbelievably generous. At that time, we were living in Ottawa and Jason was working as a paramedic in Almonte, Carleton Place, Smiths Falls and Perth. We had donations of medicine, school books etc., as well as money.
Jason went to Pakistan for three weeks and he returned just before Christmas. It was a pretty devastating experience for him in many ways because it was such a disaster. It was complete chaos. And the effect on kids really struck him hard. But while he was there people were asking him to take pictures. At first he said he didn’t want to spend time taking photos, he was there to take care of these people. Their response was that they wanted him to take the pictures back home with him to let the rest of the world know what was going on.

Was this other aid workers? Or the people he was working with directly?

People who had lost legs were sitting in the emergency room or in the clinic asking him to do this. So, he did take a few pictures while he was there.
Then when he came back it was Christmas time, and our indulgent Christmas was really difficult for him. I mean in Pakistan, kids were playing with tires if they were lucky! If they had parents, a place to live… It upset him. He wanted to do something more.
So we started this company and we went to Pakistan. We didn’t follow all of the rules. We didn’t do all of the research we should have. But, that chaos kind of works for us. And that’s how we got to where we are. We’re a small team — three of us started the company and six of us went to Pakistan three months after that. We didn’t know all of the answers, and we made things up as we went along.

Why did you choose documentary film, as opposed to other ways of raising awareness?

We didn’t get into documentaries because we had any experience. I’ve done theatre, I’ve done business, I’ve taught up north, but I don’t have a background in documentary film. We figured that a film was the best way to capture the attention of the largest number of people. We want to get people talking. The whole aspect of the media’s coverage of the earthquake was an issue too, because the message that was going out was that it was getting better, but it really wasn’t. The later pictures were not being shown. Generally, we see the four or five acute days of the emergency and then it falls off the map. It allows people to put it at the back of their minds or forget about it. We thought it was important enough that people should still remember. Eighty thousand people died, just like that.
We have what we think is a solid documentary. If we do nothing more, then we’ll feel completely fulfilled in our efforts. But the potential is to reach a small percentage of the world’s population and to have those people each make a little bit of a difference. That can add up to something huge.
A lot of people are going to ask us at the end of this film, what is it that we want them to do. We just want them to think about what they’ve seen, think about how their choices affect the world, how their choices affect their community, and so on. Hopefully, there are enough questions in the film that people will leave having internalized a little bit of that and will ask themselves those questions when they go home.
The whole goal of this is for people to take ownership of the way the world is. Do things in your own community. It’s not about going to Pakistan.

That’s an interesting approach — encouraging people to respond in more than one way. You’re really aiming at creating an attitudinal shift.

That’s what we need. It’s not just the money that people give to food banks or send overseas. People have to start to think a different way and care about the people around them. That was one of the things that had a big impact on me in Pakistan. I realized how we live in comparison to the rest of the world and I’ve traveled a lot so I’ve seen a lot. It was really devastating to see how these people got left.

When I read the travel diary on your website, one of the things that struck me was at the end when you were back in Islamabad and you’re only 50 kilometres from the disaster site and everything is normal.

Completely normal, it could have been Toronto.
These things fall out of the news easily. Of course it’s easy to understand because there are so many disasters and bad things to talk about. But I think it’s important that we don’t forget. There is enough in the world to go around for everybody if we’re all just a little more generous. And not just with our money. With our time, our attitudes, our openness, all of those things.

It was clear from reading the Pakistan diary on your website that being there and talking to people was a real emotional roller-coaster. Could you describe how you felt while you were there and what impact that had on your film?

The emotional roller-coaster started when we got into the thick of things, into the epicentre of the earthquake, and we saw the devastation. We saw, six months later, little tiny kids living in tents who had lost their limbs, their parents or their whole family. We were introduced to many, many orphans. Many badly injured kids. We talked to kids six months after the quake who may not be alive now because of the severity of their injuries and the treatment that they didn’t get, for whatever reason.
We hadn’t scripted or planned our filming, which, apparently, is a huge mistake in this industry. You should have a bit more of a plan than we did. But we really had to be very flexible, because we didn’t know what we were going to come up against. We ended up staying in the United Nations compound, which was great. They were very generous and really, really supportive of this project.
When we first got there we had more structured questions for people. Towards the end, we really tried to get their stories. Sometimes we didn’t expect it. One time, we were sitting around the U.N. compound and a worker who we’d been talking to for three weeks sat down and started telling his story. We were due to leave at that point, and I just cried and cried, and I said, “I still don’t get it.” It was so monumental to try to understand and internalize. I couldn’t begin to feel what they feel. You could look into kids’ eyes and see that they’ve lived a thousand lifetimes.

How can people find out about screenings of the film?

We don’t have anything scheduled right now. We did present at the University of London in England on Feb. 21. Hopefully that event will help us capture more of an international audience. People interested in seeing what’s coming up can visit our website for more information.