Students attending film-crew training programs across the state, including CNM students, are participating in a collaborative project to film documentaries on renewable energy efforts in New Mexico. The short documentaries are posted on a new website,
nmecopedia.org, that is managed by CNM film instructor Jim Graebner.
The film project is being produced by the Digital Filmmaking Institute with funding from the New Mexico Film Office.
“This is a great project because it allows us to advertise the state using film crews from each location,” Graebner said.
In addition to CNM, film-crew students from Santa Fe Community College, Northern New Mexico College at El Rito, Eastern New Mexico University at Roswell and Dona Ana Branch Community College in Las Cruces are participating in the project.
The documentaries range from “Adobe Power” to “Veggie Trucks” to “Sweet Breeze,” which refer to wind turbines in House, N.M., that helped power the grid that lit up Super Bowl XLII in Arizona last February. Another documentary, which CNM students worked on, focuses on a City of Albuquerque water reclamation plant that uses waste-munching microbes and methane-capturing processes to produce electricity for the plant and save more than $2 million per year in energy costs.
The documentaries cover efforts at all levels, including some car aficionados in Las Cruces and Truth or Consequences who build their own battery-powered car engines.
The projects bring in professional editors, researchers, directors of photography, animators and others from the film industry to mentor students as they create the documentaries.
