PORT TOWNSEND — A college student who grew up in Chimacum returned this week to film a movie portraying the divergent paths young people can take after high school.

“The film is about how people develop differently,” said Tristan Stoch, 20, about “Clarity,” which he wrote and is directing.

“There are kids that I played baseball with who turned out OK and some others who wound up on meth, and you wonder how that happens, how some kids turn out OK and some don’t.”

The story line uses one of the drug-addicted youths as a central character.

Stoch is a film student at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Ore., and is submitting the 20-minute film as his senior project, which is due in May.

May is also the deadline for submissions to the Port Townsend Film Festival, and Stoch plans to submit it for consideration to be shown at this year’s festival in September.

Stoch, 20, is a 2008 graduate of Chimacum High School.

On Wednesday, he shot several scenes in Fort Worden State Park and at Lands End, a viewpoint on the north face of the Quimper Peninsula “where kids used to go to smoke weed in my day and probably still do.”

Other filming locations are near Port Hadlock and Chimacum, where Stoch has borrowed friends’ homes to use as sets.

Many of the locations, especially the spectacular Lands End, will be familiar to locals, but Stoch does not plan to use location names in the film.

“I don’t want this to be set in ‘Port Townsend’ because the message is universal,” he said.

All of the actors and crew are volunteers, and Stoch picked up several local young people to help out with the production after he visited Jefferson Community School to talk about the project.

One of those is Brendan LaBrie, a student who has worked as a journalist and covered the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver.

LaBrie said he was grateful for the opportunity to observe the set and said the process is quite different from news video.

Stoch has borrowed camera gear from the college and is editing the project using Apple’s Final Cut software for personal computers.

Stoch said the software has allowed him to do some tricky things.

“There are parts in the script where the character uses the ‘fourth wall’ and addresses the audience directly,” he said.

“With Final Cut, I’ve been able to stop motion in the background as the character continues to move.”

Stoch thinks he was born at the right time, when technology has placed movie-making power in the hands of those with ample talent and little money.

“These days, the most important thing is the quality of your idea,” he said.

“We are looking at a new age of filmmaking where anyone can make a decent movie and can carry these ideas to fruition.”

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Jefferson County Reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or charlie.bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.