Bottled Up

79-year-old Ron builds a portable recycling plant to combat one of the earth's greatest pollutants: the plastic bottle.

Watch the video

Length30:00

GenreDocumentary

Pitch video

Synopsis

Ron Ryde has spent much of his nearly eight decades travelling to the poorest parts of our planet. During that time he noticed two issues affecting nearly every place he visited: a lack of employment opportunities for women, and endless waste stemming from one of the most notorious pollutants on the planet: plastic bottles. From his workshop in Penticton, and with the help of some friends, Ron sets out to assemble a fully-functioning, portable recycling plant. His goal? To deliver these DIY facilities to women in the poorest communities in Canada and beyond in order to provide a viable business opportunity, while also combatting the issue of plastic waste.

Interview Roster

Dr. Grant Bogyo

Dr. Grant works closely with Ron on the project, while also having a number of interesting side-projects. He is well connected to local First Nations communities through his outreach relating to mental health and wellbeing. Dr. Grant is vey well known in the community for his many humanitarian efforts, including: driving an donated ambulance 6,500km to a community in Honduras, and recently hand delivering primary care medication to the Children's Hospital in Caracas, Venezuela in 2017. As a fellow world traveler and community hero, Dr. Bogyo will be assisting Ron in the completion of the plant

Ron Ryde

Ron will be the primary person in our documentary. At 79, Ron has the energy of someone much younger - and he uses that energy to help others in his community of Penticton and beyond. A classic car enthusiast, humanitarian and inventor, Ron is the perfect candidate to share his story and his latest project - a portable plastic recycling plant. With the help of his six friends, all seniors, they are setting out to help poor women in Canada and around the world to address issues relating to unemployment and pollution. He is an amazing person, and undoubtedly a local hero.

Ron's Friends: Morley McDonald Mike Strogin Bliss Thompson Leo Fenema Lyle Gabrielson

Ron has the support of a number of friends working on this project. All of them are around his age, and have a shared background in mechanics and/or humanitarian work. They're passionate about the project just like Ron, and are all residents of Penticton. Unfortunately, I do not have a photo of them all together at this time, but this shows three of them working on the machine.

Production Design

Penticton is very much a lake country. Fresh water will play a role in a documentary focusing on a machine designed to recycle plastic water bottles. Skaha Lake, a place I live close to, will prove a perfect backdrop to our story.

This is a sample video I shot of my friend (with his permission to use). I really like long lenses, and I think there's a lot of great interview shots with shallow focus that will "pop" with the wise, older faces of our subjects. I would aim for a somewhat cinematic interview style. We have a Black Magic Cinema camera, which is capable of creating some really beautiful images.

The nature of this project is very much a hand-on and industrial experience. The imagery of a group of seniors working with their hands to assemble a complex, heavy and very mechanical tool will be a chance to add some 'grit' to the doc. These gentlemen are car mechanics and tradesman, and there's a lot of potential for some great shots of the factory, and the hands-on assembly of the recycling plant.