A Filmmaker's Watershed Productions

"What surprised me was all I had to do was say 'I'm making a film about Four Mile Run,' " and suddenly, he said, people seemed very interested in the film, as well as the stream. "I started really realizing there is magic in this; real magic in making a film about something."

The movie, released in 2002, raised interest in the stream's health. Last month, a master plan for the restoration of Four Mile Run was adopted by Arlington County and the City of Alexandria, and officials credited Eckert's film with helping make it happen.

When he finished that project, Eckert had no idea that his filmmaking career was just getting started. "After that, I had no intention of making another film," Eckert said as he sat in the tidy kitchen of his modest Falls Church home one recent morning. "I was exhausted."

He had not counted on a demand for more. "The Northern Virginia Regional Commission came to me and asked if I would do a film on the Occoquan River," he said.

Eckert had mostly financed production of the first movie with limited support from, among others, the regional commission.

This was different. It was a project someone else wanted and would pay for.

"Now I was being asked to be a filmmaker . . . and that was very frightening," Eckert recalled. But the commission's executive director, G. Mark Gibb, "was a good salesman, and he talked me into it. He was so enamored of what happened to Four Mile Run because of the film. He wanted the same thing to happen to the Occoquan."

"Dave Eckert is incredible," Gibb said, adding that the commission has continued to encourage Eckert's work and to lend some financial support. "He puts a lot of his own time and effort into it. He has the passion for this. He is good at telling a story." Gibb said the commission routinely gets requests for copies of the Occoquan film.

In 2004, the City of Falls Church asked Eckert to make a movie about community tree planting and urban forestry. "I thought, 'That's just so boring,' " Eckert said. "I mean, I'm into tree planting -- I'm a tree commissioner -- but nobody cares about that. Not to see a film. And then they talked me into it, and I started saying, 'Okay, my challenge is to try to make this interesting.'

"One has to find the hook that will grab people immediately. That's the challenge: Where is that hook?" he said.

For "Laying Down Roots," he found it in history. Some U.S. communities have long traditions of improvement through reforestation, so he linked the idea of cultural roots with actual tree roots.

A well-received film about low-impact development followed, leading the Friends of Dyke Marsh, a volunteer group, to approach Eckert. Again, tired and unfamiliar with the subject, he wasn't sure it was a project he was ready to undertake.