Once Shaun Datta saw an orca whale up close, he was hooked. Shaun, a rising fifth-grader at Cold Spring Elementary from North Potomac, created a movie with footage of orca whales that he recorded while on a family vacation to the Pacific Northwest, British Columbia and Alaska last year. The experience has made him somewhat of an authority — both on orcas and the process of making movies.
"The first time I ever saw a whale, it was quite far away," Shaun said. "I was really disappointed at first."
That changed later, when he spotted several juvenile orcas that were still pink, and curious about the whale-watching boat. "We got closer and closer," Shaun said. He saw humpback whales on the trip, but the larger humpbacks are a more passive species than the orcas, which continued to interact with humans. The Dattas saw kayakers paddling alongside a pod of Orcas. "A fin came out from the water, and it was right near the kayakers," Shaun said. "They could touch it."
WHEN SHAUN RETURNED, he was inspired to create a documentary-style movie on orcas. "I really like them and I like animals," Shaun said, adding that he likes to work on the computer, and wanted to research why the whales’ population is dwindling.
Using Microsoft Movie Maker for a project that lasted roughly four months, Shaun took the footage he recorded while on vacation, added music, narration and a few special effects, and the result was a five-minute documentary entitled "I Wonder Why the Orcas are Disappearing: A Whale Habitat Preservation Documentary." Shaun submitted his work to the PTA Reflections Art Program, whose theme for this year’s entries was "I Wonder Why."
Shaun's vacation got him wondering about the dwindling population of the whales he’d seen. "I thought about all the different things that are going wrong," Shaun said. Contributing factors threatening the species include pollutants in their habitat and a reduced fish population.
In PTA Reflections Program, Shaun’s video won the for best film in the state’s Intermediate (late elementary school) category. On the county level, Shaun won the Excellence Film Entry in the Montgomery County Reflections PTA, and received honorable mention for photography.
Since Shaun first filmed the orcas, the Southern Resident orcas have been reclassified as an endangered species by the National Marine Fisheries Service. "It was a step in the right direction," Shaun said.
LAST MONTH, Shaun showed some of the tricks to his trade in a video he submitted to the MHz Shortz Student Film Festival, an annual event at George Washington University that features movies made by students ages 7-18. The video was shown in a non-competitive category, and those attending the film festival watched it early in the ceremony. It was entitled "Tips and Tricks for Film-Making — Using Microsoft Movie Maker to Make a Whale Preservation Documentary."
"It was a lot of fun to watch, because you put a lot of work into it and then you can see it being shown to a lot of people," Shaun said.
This summer, Shaun swims and attends math camp. He also enjoys watching animal movies, and he has a new perspective on them now. "Sometimes when I’m watching [I ask] if I was going to do that, how I was going to shoot it."
<1b>— Alex Scofield