Ellen Tripler  By | Local,Virginia,Steve Contorno  Tripler is a
2012 master's graduate of the American University School of
Communications and a mother of two from Bethesda. Her
documentary "Dying Green" won a silver Oscar this month at the
2012 Student Academy Awards.  How did you get into filmmaking?
I studied film in undergrad, but I never pursued it because I
was living abroad and it never worked out. Then I was living in
Wisconsin, and I interned with a couple of documentary
filmmakers. It was something always in the back in mind that I
wanted to pursue. I realized I couldn't just be a mom.  "Dying
Green" is about the funeral industry's impact on the
environment, and what one South Carolina man is doing to fight
it. How did you come up with that topic?  A friend of mine gave
me a book by an environmental journalist. And it had all these
interesting stories about how people were fighting back against
the way that we have always dealt with death. We had to pitch
different story ideas in class, and I pitch