M.I.A.: Missing in Alberta

As you may have noticed, I’ve been rather absent from the Abattoir as of late. And, as mentioned in Gary’s much-appreciated birthday post, I was back in Alberta recently shooting a short film, called Fallow (specifics on what it’s about below), so between May/June pre-production in my off hours on that, the ten days of madness in Alberta (three of which were shooting days) and the last week playing catch up during production at the magazine, spare time has been harder to find than a one-legged sasquatch.
A few folks have asked about the project, so I’ll give you the rundown. Back in the late ‘90s I made my first short – a pretty rough-around-the-edges black and white 16mm thing – through FAVA (the Film and Video Arts Society of Alberta), an artist collective in my home city of Edmonton. There I met Colin Landry; we discovered that we worked well together and went on to make a bunch of shot-on-video comedy stuff, some of which won awards at film festivals, including Audience Choice, Best Director(s), etc. Before I moved to Toronto in ’05, we won a grant through FAVA to make a short film, had trouble securing a location, and sat on it for a few years. When I moved out here I reconnected with another former Edmontonian who we’d made some shorts with back in the day, one Brenton Bentz, who was a producer on Rod’s shorts, and who is married to Monica, who he met before I moved out here (a nice coincidence).

Anyhow, Brenton wanted to work together and brought on his buddy Jason Pichonsky (a.k.a. J.P.), another really talented filmmaker formerly from Edmonton, now living in Toronto, and who also worked on Rod’s shorts. J.P. came onboard as our Director of Photography. After a couple of false starts, the fates aligned and we figured out there was exactly one weekend the entire year we were all available to return to Alberta to make the film, so we jumped on it, woefully short on prep time.
Once in Edmonton, Colin’s apartment became a place to crash and a makeshift office for the production. The ten days in Big Alta were undoubtedly the busiest of my life, as we traded sleep for extra time to get ready to shoot. It really did feel like living an entire month in ten days. I’ve never pushed myself that hard creatively or physically. You really do learn a lot about yourself and what you’re capable of.
Like true fools, Colin and I decided to jump back into filmmaking by actually shooting on Super-16mm, choosing multiple indoor and outdoor locations and relying on the intermittent prairie weather to co-operate. Among the challenges we faced were last-minute location changes (thanks to a surprise road closure and repaving project), flipped shooting days (thanks to rain) and complete shortage of available crew and equipment (thanks to two other features, two concerts and a video shoot going on at the same time). For example, when we were able to rent a crane, we couldn’t find anyone rated to actually operated, so that got nixed.

But we overcame all this thanks to the absolutely amazing cast and crew we did eventually amass (thanks in major part to Production Manager and Jack-of-all-trades David Bates). I’m talking about a lot of people going way beyond reasonable expectations to help realize this thing – volunteering to work long, hard hours, and many of them had never met us. If anyone’s thinking of shooting in Alberta, I highly recommend it because the industry may be a lot smaller out there but the talent pool is unreal. We couldn’t have been happier, and as such, it may have been a high-pressure shoot but it was fun as hell. I could and should go on about the great people who got onboard but I’ll leave it at a huge thanks and move on.
As time permits, we’ll get a site up about the film and throw up some pics and info. The post process for the film will be fairly slow due to the logistics of two filmmakers living at different ends of the country but we’ll get it done.

Now, about that film. As mentioned, it’s called Fallow; we shot it on Super-16mm film; it’ll be about 10-12 minutes long when completed; and the plan is to enter it in festivals if all goes well. We’ve had huge support for it, not just in Alberta, but here in Toronto, from local actors helping us do a reading (including Tal: thanks, Tal!), friends in Vancouver helping with post, and from the Rue Crew themselves, with Marco and Rod advising on a variety of things, Gary doing special effects sketches, Monica helping with those readings, and so on. The guys at Toronto’s Gaslight Studios effects house (Land of the Dead, Silent Hill, 300, Demonology of Desire) even built an amazing prop and a killer prosthetic for us. Again, thanks to you all.
In terms of funding, Fallow was made with the aforementioned FAVA grant, which was partially in cash and partially in equipment rentals, dough from our new executive producers: my mom and her husband Lars, plus my aunt and uncle, from some of my personal savings, as well as Colin’s credit card. By hook or by crook, as they say…

Story-wise, I don’t want to give away too much yet, but think prairie gothic with an air of Lovecraft, a touch of the Mothman Prophecies, and a shade of the Wicker Man. There is gore but it’s not a gore film, and the goal when we fleshed out the story was to craft a mythology anchored in an isolated stretch of farmland. As you can see, I’ve included a few non-spoiler stills from the shoot.
I’ve got many more stories to tell and Colin and I have another short script set in this same world on the burner (not literally, that would, like, start a fire), so hopefully we can take what we’ve learned and do this again. It was a great team and I loved it!
So here’s to hard work, good friends, good times and horror films.

[Photos courtesy of the extremely talented Mark J. Chalifoux]