The Youth Film Mentorship Project is an exciting new initiative that will award a production package worth over $10,000 to an Alberta Peace Region production team (writer, director, producer, cinematographer, and editor between the ages of 13 and 25) as they develop, shoot, and edit their own short film in or near Grande Prairie while…
The third film in this season’s GPLT Movie Series is Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet, an award-winning documentary about a 19-year-old rock star who was robbed of his ability to play but not his ability to make music. I saw this film at the Calgary International Film Festival and loved it. A friend saw it…
The second film in this season’s GPLT Movie Series is The Intouchables, an irreverent, uplifting French comedy (English subtitles) about the friendship between Philippe, a quadriplegic millionaire, and Driss, a young offender of Senegalese descent who is hired as Philippe’s live-in caregiver. Based on a true story and propelled by Omar Sy’s charismatic performance as…
The Banff Centre recently announced a National Film Board/Banff Centre Work Study that involved working with Cam Christiansen, a filmmaker who produced, directed, and animated I Have Seen the Future which was in our 2008 festival. Applicants needed the following qualifications as quoted from the website: Education and training in digital visual effects and computer…
A friend asked me to blog about my top ten films because he wanted to watch them. I didn’t think people would have time to watch that many in a row, but here they are – my top ten picks from the last six festivals that are free to watch online: 1 from Canada, 3…
Kirsten Goruk of the Daily Herald-Tribune wrote a great article in Friday’s paper called Work continues on film shot in GP that describes the post-production crowd funding campaign for The Horizon Project on Kickstarter. With 12 days to go, Director Scott Belyea and Producer Dave Rice are hoping that the $10,110 goal will be reached because…
Monday is the submission deadline for the 2013 Reel Shorts Film Festival. Even though the submission form says that submissions must be received by 4:30 pm on Monday, there’s no need to panic if you haven’t submitted yet. Just get your screener DVD in the mail or couriered by Monday and we’ll include it in…
Exciting news! Our Shoot for Reel film has a title – The Horizon Project. After months in editing, the film has been locked and sent off to sound, music and visual effects experts by Director/Editor Scott Belyea who then turned his attention to the creation of a website and a Facebook page (check out all…
Das Tub is a delightful 4-minute short film from New Zealand that screened in the junior high package at our last fest. Director James Cunningham is the instructor of the Advanced 3D Productions course at Media Design School in Auckland and his students created 35 visual effects for this film. For a look at how they…
I am really excited about the next 2 films in the GPLT Movie Series – The Intouchables from France (French with English subtitles) on January 27 and Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet from the US on February 10. The Intouchables is a comedy based on a true story and Jason Becker is a documentary so…
Many schools in Grande Prairie will send kids home with report cards today which means many teachers will face two evenings of parent-teacher interviews next week. Special Ed is a film from our 2012 festival that the teachers on our programming team particularly enjoyed.
With Remembrance Day almost here, I’d like to share an Academy-Award winning film from Germany that we screened as part of the Oscar-Nominated Live Action package in 2009 and in the school program (both the junior high and the high school Social Studies packages) in 2010 – Toyland (Spielzeugland). It came in third in audience…
The first of this winter season’s line-up of feature films in the GPLT Movie Series is Beasts of the Southern Wild which won 4 awards at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, 2 awards at Sundance including the Grand Jury Prize (Dramatic) and the Cinematography Award, and a long list of awards at other festivals including…
FREE SCREENING! Saturday, Sept. 29 at 1:30 pm Grande Prairie Live Theatre Tour the world in 70 minutes with this package of 7 great films from Canada, the US, France, Germany, Israel, Australia and New Zealand. These docs, comedies, and dramas are suitable for school children aged 10+ and adults. Check them out now before…
Our Call for Entries opened on September 15 and will close at 4:30 pm on Monday, December 17. Guidelines and submission form can be found on our Submit page. We don’t charge a submission fee and we pay screening fees for selected films. For our 2012 fest, we received 250 submissions from 34 countries and…
The interns spent Thursday and Friday (Days 10 and 11) in the GPRC Mac lab editing footage from the first two days of shooting. Director Scott Belyea demonstrates his editing techniques to Chris Beauchamp (left) and Mike Bourree (right). The screen in the background shows what’s on his monitor. In the meantime, I took 7…
Tuesday – the last day of shooting. We start at noon because we’ll be staying late to get the night shots. Cyril Cook (Soldier) stands in the long grass ready to approach the bus in the first scene of the day. Director Scott Belyea talks to the Soldiers about the next shot. By late afternoon,…
Monday – the start of Week 2 of Shoot for Reel and Day 5 of shooting. Amazingly, all the actors came back for more scenes in a black bus on a hot summer day. Their dedication astounds me. I know they’re looking forward to seeing the bus get bloodied up in its second transformation. From…
Sunday was overcast with rain showers moving through the area – not good for the aerial shots from the helicopter that Scott and Scooter want to get today. While Scooter and Ryan take the 5-ton Whites truck to the farm where the helicopter is stored so they can get the camera set up, Scott phones…
Saturday, July 14 (Day 6 of Shoot for Reel; Day 4 of shooting) starts at 9 am at the “circus”, the farmer’s field we’re using as base camp for the remainder of shooting. There were lots of cow patties so a person had to watch where they were walking. Sunburns were a common sight after…
The entrance of the transformed bus in its first big scene. Travis Fowler plays the Bus Driver. Everyone had masks on and the camera was wrapped in plastic for the shots with the bus entering the depot because of all the movie dust blown around by giant fans. Director Scott Belyea, in a rare quiet…
In addition to other scenes, most of the opening sequence was shot today. A lot of the actors were involved so the old adage of “hurry up and wait” applied as they waited for the dolly shot to be set up. Tennyson D’Onofrio (Son) had a tennis ball to toss around. He participated in the…
Day 1 of shooting! The Art Department headed by Joelle Lawton arrived at our depot location at 7:00 am, the crew and some of the actors arrived at 8:00 am, and all but a few of the remaining actors arrived at 9:00 am. We wrapped up shooting at 10:30 pm – a long first day,…
Since a bus plays a critical role in our short film, it was almost the first thing that Scott (director) and Dave (producer) lined up when they arrived in Grande Prairie on June 25th. Not only did they find one that we’d be able to use for the week of shooting, but it wasn’t going…
Day 1 was all about expecting the unexpected. The schedule had shown Day 1 would be spent in a second-floor classroom learning camera and gear. Then the guys decided it made more sense to take the interns out to the gear than haul the gear up to the classroom. While dressed for an air-conditioned classroom,…
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…
Every June I go to Toronto for the Worldwide Short Film Festival to pick films for next year’s fest, but this year’s trip was extra special because Scott Belyea and Scooter Corkle were there with their film Children of the Dark which screened in the The Night Shift program Saturday at 11:30 pm. It was…
Scott Belyea, Scooter Corkle, and Michael Bourree have done an amazing job again this year leading the Youth Filmmaking Challenge workshops which showcase the filmmaking talents of the junior high and high school students who participated. In only 2½ days, they created these films which we premiered in the Best of the Fest film package.…
Shoot for Reel is a 2-week filmmaking internship training program that we’re offering July 9-20 in collaboration with Grande Prairie Regional College. Ten interns will assist in the shooting and editing of a short film under the direction of award-winning Vancouver filmmaker Scott Belyea who grew up in Grande Prairie. The interns will learn how…
The best way to get a sense of what a film is like is by watching the trailer. While almost all feature films have a trailer, most short films don’t, but the following shorts in our program do, so here they are in alphabetical order. As can be seen, there is a wide variety in…
For a pdf of our 56-page program, click here. For a printable pdf of our schedule, click here.
New to this year’s fest – our $40 Films, Fossils & Fun package for families. Contact the GPLT Box Office to purchase this great package deal! It includes 4 ticket vouchers (2 adults and 2 students) to a film package of your choice (value $30) as well as a family day pass to the Eastlink…
Los Angeles filmmaker and screenwriting consultant Michelle Steffes will teach 2 screenwriting workshops during the festival – a 2-day feature screenwriting workshop called Clubbing Inspiration ($125) on Thursday and Friday, May 3-4 from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, and a 2-hour workshop called Writing Your Short Film ($25) at 2:00 pm on Saturday, May 5th. …
GPLT’s Movie Series, the winter series of feature films affiliated with the Reel Shorts Film Festival, has saved the best for last as this year’s season ends on Sunday with the Oscar-nominated Canadian drama Monsieur Lazhar. In addition to winning accolades internationally, this heartwarming French-language (English subtitled) PG-rated film won 6 Genie Awards for Best Film,…
“We love short shorts.” It was fest team member Adrian Tanasichuk who came up with this catchy theme for our 2012 festival. And it was fest team member, photographer and designer Chris Beauchamp of Beauchamp Creative who came up with the visual concept and poster design. Assisted on the photo shoot by fest team member…
If you loved the Oscar-nominated documentary Food Inc which we screened as part of the GPLT Movie Series on Sept. 27, 2009, you will love Pink Ribbons, Inc which is now playing at the Jan Cinema in Grande Prairie. What Food Inc did for food, Pink Ribbons, Inc does for the pink ribbon campaigns that…
Next up in the GPLT Movie Series, the winter series of feature films affiliated with the Reel Shorts Film Festival, is Le Havre, a PG-rated French-language film (with English subtitles) that blends deadpan, ironic humour with social commentary. Marcel Marx (André Wilms) is an aging bohemian artist who works as a shoeshiner in the French…
Good music is such an important part of a good film, but when the music exists before the film is shot, does that make it a music video? This was a distinction that one filmmaker made to me when I referred to her submission as a music video. She said that it wasn’t a music…
For the 13th year, Jodi and Jason Henry of Valhalla Pure Outfitters will be bringing the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour to Grande Prairie at 7 pm on Sunday and Monday, January 15-16 at the Douglas J. Cardinal Theatre at Grande Prairie Regional College. Each night has a different line-up of films and it’s…
Next up in the GPLT Movie Series, the winter series of feature films affiliated with the Reel Shorts Film Festival, is The Whistleblower, a 14A-rated political thriller starring Rachel Weisz as Kathy Bolkovac. Based on the true story of Bolkovac’s experiences as a peacekeeper in post-war Bosnia, she discovers that her United Nations colleagues are…
With Christmas less than a week away, I’d like to share my favorite film from the 289 we’ve screened over the first 5 years of the fest. It’s from Belgium, 14 minutes long, and it was the first Oscar-nominated film that we had as an Official Selection. It was 2008, and the film is Tanghi…
With our submission deadline of December 15 less than 2 weeks away, the number of short films I’ve looked at since our last fest has just passed the 500 mark and we’ve received over 100 submissions so far from 26 different countries! As can be seen from these numbers and from reading my Film Selection…
Next up in the GPLT Movie Series, a winter series of feature films affiliated with the Reel Shorts Film Festival, is Starbuck, a heartwarming comedy from Quebec (French with English subtitles). Screening at 7:00 pm on Sunday, Nov 27 at Second Street Theatre (tickets $10; students $5), it’s a “sparkling crowd-pleaser” (Chris Knight, National Post)…
Traditional storytelling using one particular medium may soon be overtaken by transmedia storytelling which Henry Jenkins defines as “a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes it own unique contribution to the unfolding…
The easiest way to illustrate why filmmaking is the most collaborative art form is to look at one of my favorite films from past festivals: The Passenger. It’s a 7-minute short that was entirely self-funded and self-produced, as well as written, designed, modelled, textured, illuminated, animated, composed, recorded, mixed, edited, and directed by Chris Jones. …
With Halloween over, Christmas is right around the corner. For Star Wars fans, what could be better than the Blu-ray set Star Wars: The Complete Saga? Some changes have been made to the original movies which has infuriated die-hard fans, but the special features (deleted scenes, featurettes, spoofs and docs) have made it a huge…
Most people can rattle off a long list of famous actors, a much shorter list of famous directors, but maybe only a few producers.  What does a producer do, particularly when it comes to making films in Canada? Apparently, even producers can have a difficult time answering that question as can be seen in Anneli…
The beautifully animated One Rat Short from our 2007 festival won several awards at other festivals including Best Animated Short Film at the 2007 Cleveland International Film Festival. Written and directed by Alex Weil, it was the first short film produced by Charlex, the New York-based digital design and production studio he founded. At 9…
I’m excited to announce that submissions are now being accepted for the 6th Reel Shorts Film Festival. The submission deadline is 4:30 pm on Thursday, December 15. Details can be found on our Submit page. What can filmmakers expect from our festival? It is to be expected that programmers are a little biased about their…
Of the 16 National Film Board films we’ve shared with audiences over the course of our first 5 film festivals, the one that screened at our first festival Mar 23-25, 2007 was the most critically acclaimed, winning the Academy Award that year for Best Animated Short. Torill Kove wrote, directed, and produced THE DANISH POET, a…