Director Scott Belyea and Producer Dave Rice from Vancouver have been here for 2 weeks prepping for it. Michael Bourree has been working with them finding locations. The other guys from Vancouver – Scooter Corkle, Blair Dykes, Matt Reed, and Ryan Skeete – arrived today along with a 5-ton truck full of gear. We have a fantastic script. Eleven interns have been chosen, seven of whom are 16-22 years old, and 36 actors have been cast, several of them in their teens including the lead. Shoot for Reel, the idea that Scott and I came up with a year and a half ago to provide 2-week internship positions on a real film shoot, starts tomorrow!
Scott, Scooter, and Mike have led 11 Youth Filmmaking Challenge workshops and the teens under their mentorship have made 11 student films. This will be the first film the Reel Shorts Film Festival will produce that isn’t a student film. It is an innovative project – a collaboration between GPRC (Grande Prairie Regional College), our festival which is a production of GPLT (Grande Prairie Live Theatre), and Ricebrain Media, Scott’s and Dave’s production company. Few film festivals in the world produce films. By July 20th, we’ll be one of them.
Scott has come up with a terrific story. A teenage boy and his father try to survive in a post-apocalyptic world after a deadly biological outbreak. They join a busload of people headed for a city in the safe zone, but on the way one of the passengers falls victim to the disease. Trapped in the middle of nowhere, is there any way for them to escape?
Shoot for Reel is the next step towards creating a filmmaking community in the Peace Region. Step 1 was creating a film festival that brings the world’s best short films to Grande Prairie. Step 2 was developing the Youth Filmmaking Challenge workshops. And now we start step 3 – wish us luck!
