OUR STORY
How did a group of creatives, most of whom had never been involved in film, decide they could just make a movie?
Like any good film worth note and acclaim it begun with a fake movie poster.
I’ll back up and explain everything.
A few years ago we started a weekly open door art hang at the Cumberland studio. Casual creative time together. On any given Monday evening there could have been 3 to 20 creative souls tinkering away down various avenues of their imagination. Scattered throughout the room there might be a handful drawing or crafting at the big table, a sewing machine tickering on a side table, a couple people jamming in the corner, someone on the couch writing a story, someone spray foaming a mirror on the floor.
One night I convinced everyone to open up the tickle trunk and adorn themselves in table cloths, curtains, masks and headpieces to make surreal costumes for a photoshoot. That evolved and continued into an ongoing photography project called Children of the Greylands. About a year or so ago we did one of those dress up photoshoots for a poster to promote a post apocalyptic themed event one of us was organizing. I made the poster in the style of an old movie poster. It looked like a movie we might like to see. Which prompted the obvious question, ‘should we make a trailer for this fake movie poster?’ Which prompted brainstorming a story, which led to a script, at some point Scott Bell, our cinematographer, messaged me to say, ‘if you’re really going to make a film I want in.’ And so on and so forth we built this team and vision until, here we are, knee deep in production of an hour long pilot episode for a sci fi series about a post apocalyptic world without dreams.
And it all started with a fake movie poster.
One of the goals of this project is be able to empower, uplift and showcase artists in our community as a collective to make something so much more than the sum of its parts. There’s a subtle delicate dance to casting and holding a vision enough to make something cohesive and uniform but also allow free creative expression. It’s building the playground but not dictating the games to be played. It really is the joys of my soul to smash a bunch of creative and talented folks together around one idea or vision and see what kind of beauty, magic and mischief can be incepted. Happens to be this collective amalgamation has birthed something very wonderful.
So far we’ve done this with virtually no budget, a few thousand from a fundraiser event we put on and an incubator micro grant from comox valley arts. We’re trying to raise the funds to complete this project but like most creatives, making the art is the part we know how to do, getting the money is an annoying inconvenience that we loath and don’t understand. It is however…reality. Always looking for help and direction in that field. Regardless we move forward, we create, shoestring and slowly.
