RACHEL JOHNSON
News Assistant
Pepperdine graduates Mark Wilkins and Joel Christensen were unsure of which career path to pursue after college. Wilkins, a history major, and Christensen, an international business major, opted out of traditional jobs for their respective majors and decided to chase down a different ambition: to go on a filmmaking journey that would undoubtedly change their lives.
They have been filming everything they see as they travel through Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua. The focus of the “Down the Road” project was to “create a documentary film that captures the beauty and tragedy of Central America, and in turn, helps both North and South Americans understand one another better,” according to the mission statement.
The goal is to expose everyday injustices in hopes of converting the project into a campaign to increase awareness of the living conditions and lifestyles of Central Americans.
Specifically, Wilkins and Christensen, both now 22 years old, have been filming their travels to uncover stories, including those of poverty, child prostitution and drug trafficking, to reveal the unspoken lifestyles of the citizens in countries south of the U.S. border.
The documentary was the brainchild of Wilkins and Chris Gordon, childhood friends from Littleton, Colo. They went their separate ways for college, Wilkins to Pepperdine and Gordon to the University of Richmond.
While home in December 2005, the two friends talked about their futures. When graduation was looming near and neither knew what career path to pursue, they remembered that some of their friends had taken a road trip to Argentina after college.
“They didn’t film it, but we started thinking that it would be awesome to film something like that,” Wilkins said.
The idea was forgotten until Gordon discussed the possibility with Dave Santa Maria, a cameraman for the famous “Invisible Children” film that recounts the devastating lives of child soldiers in Africa. The two met when Santa Maria was showing a screening of the documentary at the University of Richmond. Santa Maria was so thrilled with the idea of traveling south to expose the injustices and realities of Central American life that he offered to join forces with Gordon and Wilkins. Christensen readily joined the project when Wilkins, his roommate from Pepperdine, offered him a place on the team.
Santa Maria got an offer to work with MTV and decided in the summer of 2006 that he didn’t want to participate in the “Down the Road” project. This left the three remaining group members in a search for a new cameraman.
After weeks of trying to find a fourth member, Christensen made a last ditch effort to recruit a cameraman by posting a job listing on Craigslist, a Web site where people can place offers for anything from apartments to rent, bikes to sell and, as Christensen did, jobs to perform.
The “Down the Road” team’s e-mail inbox was flooded with applications and they started conducting interviews. Cody Shirk, a junior media production major at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, came to his interview and said the opportunity was a perfect fit for him; he could gain experience in filmmaking while following a call to serve. Shirk was prepared to take a leave of absence from school if he was offered the opportunity to partake in the adventure. Within hours, Shirk was extended an offer as the new cameraman.
Team member adjustments were not over after finding a replacement cameraman, however. Wilkins said that instead of going on the trip, he felt he should remain in California and serve the team as the at-home manager. He would do behind-the-scenes work like maintaining communication with the men while they were gone, managing bank accounts and sending out mass e-mails to supporters.
The group struggled to secure funding for the trip. Because of everything the group members had to accomplish before their January departure, such as renewing passports and creating bank accounts, they didn’t start fundraising until December. After sending out letters to their friends and families, the group members managed to raise a staggering $17,000 by Jan. 15.
Through it all, they’ve remained safe and found hospitality in the most unlikely of people: A taxi driver, a mechanic and a local family, all of whom opened their homes to the team members.
They are continually filming and will return to Los Angeles April 5, to begin the post-production aspect of the project. According to Wilkins, the editing process will cost just as much or more than the trip itself, so fundraising efforts will continue indefinitely.
Wilkins said he believes that, above all, the team members are fulfilling a call to service that defies stereotypes of what college students do when they graduate.
“A lot of people in college think they need to have everything figured out when they leave,” Wilkins said. “This is an example of people following a call to go somewhere unknown and taking steps of faith.”
For Christensen, it’s simple: This adventure is just downright thrilling.
“I’m excited because it’s out of my hands and into God’s hands,” he said. “I’m privileged enough to jump on His back and just let Him take me for a ride.”
03-22-2007