By Nicole Fitzgerald
The Whistler Film Festival is more than just an armchair
experience of traveling through amazing independent films. The festival has
become a conduit for both emerging and established filmmakers to connect with
leading industry professionals, to learn the secrets of the trade and to make
the contacts to move a script to screen.
While the Whistler community enjoys the screenings,
filmmakers now trekking in from all over Western Canada gather for the
networking, the more than $32,000 in awards given and the workshops led by the
industry’s best.
There is no red velvet barricade. Instead the festival acts
more as an industry backdoor with an open-for-business sign — a cinematic
hub where filmmakers find inspiration and the means to project vision into
reel-ity.
Sometimes the inspiration comes from sitting in front of a
screen, other times from being in front of an industry panel.
“We aspire to celebrate and promote the filmmaking community
in Canada, but within a wider international context,” said festival programmer
Bill Evans. “We focus on new Canadian films with the Borsos Award (which
showcases) a wide spectrum of film that represents current trends in the
international filmmaking community.”
International distribution and sales is one of the hot
topics at the festival’s Whistler Filmmaker Forum, a four-day industry event,
which provides Canadian producers with the tools necessary to compete in the
national and international film marketplace. Forum participants have the
opportunity to forge strategic partnerships with broadcasters, sales agents and
distributors in seminars, networking meetings, workshops and pitch forums
exploring all aspects of the industry beast, from script writing and directing
to production funding and distribution.
“It’s not geared towards amateurs,” said festival director
Shauna Hardy Mishaw. “The whole goal of what we are doing with the forum is to
facilitate a very interactive and positive business environment for filmmakers.
We want to see them make deals.”
Sometimes networking takes place in
social soirées, other times in a formal setting where the creative meets the
practical. A new addition this year, DOC Talk hosts “speed dating” between
producers and networks over the weekend. Pitch Fest West is the granddaddy of
them all, showcasing 10 documentary filmmakers who will pitch their projects to
a roundtable of Canadian and International broadcasters. Industry heavyweights
joining the roundtable include representatives from CBC, Sundance Channel, Life
Network, National Geographic Channel and PBS, just to name a few.
The forum lineup is the equivalent of a feature-film,
reducing this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival networking forum to
little more than a preview trailer.
Great things come in small packages. Hardy Mishaw aims to
keep the Whistler Film Festival the intimate gathering the mountain town
inspired, so filmmakers can continue to bump into contacts along the Village
Stroll in between screenings rather than get lost in the gridlocked rush hour
of film festivals such as the Toronto International Film Festival, where
filmmakers fall through the red carpet cracks.
Echoes of a festival contact
0pt;
font-family:Times'>Maybe that is why James Upton, despite attending the
Vancouver International Film Festival for three years, didn’t land his first
big break until he headed north of the city lights to a town more famous for
its great outdoors than its culture.
While the festival sparks connections, how a
filmmaker/producer follows through and what they bring to that connection
determines whether that initial meeting is going to spread like wildfire or
fade to black with the festival’s closing credits.
Talking with Upton, co-founder of Talelight Films, the level
of professionalism and organization for his young production company was
clearly evident; He explained the company’s mandate and current and future film
projects with the polish of a press release.
It was this cross every “t” and dot every “i"
dedication that closed a film deal this year. However, even with all the talent
and dedication in the world, conquering the film industry beast requires more
than a quality product, it requires contacts with the right people and being in
the right place at the right time.
And thanks to the Whistler Film Festival, all three
components — talent, contact and timing — came together, resulting
in Talelight Films landing a three-feature-film contract with Montreal-based
Equinoxe Films.
“I thought it would be a fantastic opportunity to meet
like-minded filmmakers, sales agents and distributors,” Upton said of coming to
the Whistler Film Festival last year. “What an incredible environment to host a
festival where independent film can be celebrated in a relaxed, but
professional atmosphere.”
Upton approached Michael Mosca, senior vice-president of
Equinoxe Films, after attending one of the filmmaker forum discussion panels
last year. Business cards were exchanged and Upton arranged a meeting the next
day to discuss his company and a short film Talelight was currently in
post-production with called
Echoes of an Epic
.
Mosca was impressed with the film’s backing as well as
Talelight’s well-stocked script library, penned by Upton’s business partner
Jeff Richards. And a month and a half later, Mosca flew from Montreal to
Vancouver to close the three-film deal.
Richards’s Notes From A Life, a psychological drama about a
woman forced to confront her father as both man and artist, is the first of
three scripts to be produced for theatrical distribution, home entertainment
and television.
Past Equinoxe Film box office successes included
Un
dimanche a Kigali,
The
Passion of the Christ
,
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
and
Mambo Italiano
.
“I think these trade forums are extremely valuable,” Upton
said. “I would encourage anyone who is considering attending to be very
proactive when it comes to initiating relationships with people that you would
like to work with in the future, but also to be well prepared once you make
that initial contact.”
Echoes of an Epic screens at the Whistler Film Festival
prior to Sarah Polley’s Away From Her on Saturday, Dec. 2 at 9:30 p.m. at
Village 8 Cinemas.
Echoes of an Epic
, a two-time Leo-nominated film, follows the story of an
artist who becomes all consumed in his obsession with art, which both exalts
and destroys him — something all filmmakers can attest to as they invest
blood, sweat and tears. That was true in the literal sense for filmmaker Ken
Hegan, whose dedication to his craft led to him taking one for the team when a
hockey player slammed into the makeshift camera rigging with Hegan behind the
lens. But all was well; the camera was left unharmed.
Commissioning filmmakers to chop up credit cards
Voice of Treason
producer Ken Hegan stands in the kitchen of his Vancouver
home looking at an envelope stamped with an automatic approved credit rating
for a new credit card. The application form spells film funding, but his wife
swore divorce if he funded a film off a credit card again. He already maxed out
his credit when she agreed to let him write about their wedding, enabling
the crafty freelance journalist to orchestrate a $32,000 wedding without
spending a dime.
So when Hegan sat down to watch his friend Tracy Smith’s
Whistler
Stories
debut at
the Whistler Film Festival last year, he saw more than a filmmaking opportunity
presented to him. The wily scribbler saw a means to expand the $5,000 Whistler
Stories filmmaking grant to a $50,000 in-value production while at the same
time ensuring a happy marriage for years to come.
Whistler Stories awards four independent B.C. filmmakers
grant money to produce a five-minute short film every year, leading up to the
2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. With media attention turning to the
resort in 2010, festival organizers wanted to ensure the B.C. community had a
voice in contributing the stories they wanted shared around the world. The
funding also provided an opportunity for filmmakers to take their talents to
the next level.
Co-writer John Meadow’s idea to produce a film based on the
theme that “every day is the gold medal game” was what first spurred
Voice
of Treason’s
Heart of Whistler
. However, the opportunity to produce a calling-card
that would show to more than 1,400 people at the festival’s opening gala lent
fuel to the creative fires already stoked by coffee and takeout pizza.
“Short films are not money makers; they are career
builders,” Hegan said. “It gives us a chance to flex our short story-telling
muscles and have some cash. The Whistler Film Festival’s generosity really made
this happen.”
The festival presented the opportunity and Hegan ran with
it, or rather rollerbladed with camera in hand barreling down the Valley Trail.
However, the
Heart of Whistler
will beat long after the festival’s rolling credits. Hegan
said he owes it to all those involved to ensure the film is shown to as many
people as possible. The Internet, cell phone downloads and more festival
screenings are in the works. Hegan has already received an invite to submit the
film to the HBO-sponsored comedy film festival in Aspen.
Hegan has long had his eye on a career as a feature film
director, and short films are door openers to the vocation. Based on two other
short films on his resume, Hegan was recently recruited to write and produce
four scripts for a new documentary for the TVtropolis network.
Even with $5,000 in hand, the indie spirit burned bright for
the freelance journalist whose works have been seen in Rolling Stone, GQ and
the Globe and Mail. He transformed the set budget into a $50,000 production,
drawing on his promotional freelance writing talents exercised in his wedding,
as well as industry friends volunteering their time, businesses lending
equipment and supplies, and the generosity of the Whistler community.
“Our film is ambitious,” Hagen said. “There are so many
action scenes. We have a stunt coordinator. We wanted a helicopter to show off
Whistler and all its summer glory with big, epic
Braveheart
-inspiring music.”
From a half a million dollar crane to a makeshift ice dolly
fashioned from plywood planks with five pucks nailed to the bottom; from a
local bar hockey team to a professional stunt person; from cameras operators
propelled on rollerblades to directors riding in a helicopter; the independent
filmmaking community is alive and well in
The Heart of Whistler
— and most importantly, well
fed thanks to Boston Pizza in Whistler.
The fast and fun comedic tale of a bored Whistler banquet
server thrust into a life-or-death race to deliver a frozen heart to a waiting
transplant patient will come to life at the opening gala Thursday, Nov. 30 at 8
p.m. at the Telus Conference Centre.
Many Whistlerites will see aspects of themselves or the
people they know as they follow the main character, a top-ranking Aussie
athlete moonlighting in the food and beverage industry, who finds her inner
Olympic spirit even in the most ringed out of circumstances.
“It’s sort of
Run Lola Run
meets
Raiders of the Lost Arc
,” Hagen explained. “She is dubious
about the Olympics, but over the course of the journey she has all these
obstacles and she finds her inner Olympian.”
Mind you, she has to navigate her way through mocked Olympic
sports to get there, but she does so just the same, just as Hegan hopes the
audience will as well.
The Whistler Stories filmmaker outreach program isn’t the
festival program fattening filmmakers’ wallets in an effort to encourage
Canadian filmmaking. The festival awards more than $34,000 in cash/prizes, including
the top accolade, the $15,000 Best New Canadian Feature Film Borsos award and a
$5,000 development prize for the Best Script Award.
“People are coming from farther and farther a field,” Evans
said. “We are offering something that is not being offered anywhere else
— or at least not in Western Canada.”
“We are fun and business,” Hardy explained. “The festival is
the fun part of it where we really have the opportunity to celebrate film
showing some of the best films in the world… The forums are about business;
getting the film industry here. It’s always leading edge. It’s always focused
on evolution. We’ve always tried to be at the forefront…. We’ve obviously had
some really challenging times, but we’ve got our feet on solid ground now.
We’ve got a reputation in the industry. The buzz is out there. People are
psyched.”
For a festival schedule, visit www.whistlerfilmfestival.com.