Scott BelyeaScott Belyea is a Vancouver filmmaker who grew up in Grande Prairie. He directs commercials for Barbershop Films and has several feature-length scripts in development with his own production company, Marian Pictures. He will direct a feature-length thriller for Reel One Entertainment this summer.

Six of the short films Scott has written, directed, and edited have won awards during their festival tours including Children of the Dark which won the Audience Choice award and Best Film award at the 2011 Bloodshots Filmmaking Challenge. It went on to screen at many film festivals including the Toronto After Dark Film Festival where it received a glowing review from Greg Klymkiw who called it “a deeply moving post-apocalyptic thriller with superb production value, gorgeous photography and the most impressive mise-en-scene I’ve encountered in a genre short in some time.” Outside the Lines, his most recent short film, was awarded Best Peace Region Short at our 2015 festival.

Scott has developed and led a progression of training initiatives at the Reel Shorts Film Festival starting with “The Filmmaking Team in Action” workshop offered to school groups the first two years. That was expanded into a 2½-day Youth Filmmaking Challenge workshop for the 2009 festival which Scott led for four years, creating 11 short films that were hits with the fest’s audiences. They can be viewed here. It was replaced with more ambitious training programs during the fest’s production of two short films in 2012 and 2013. Scott led a 2-week internship program in July 2012 called Shoot for Reel during the production of The Horizon Project which he directed. Post-production took place in Vancouver and the film screened at festivals in Canada, the US, and Europe. During the 7-week Youth Film Mentorship Project in spring 2013, Scott mentored the winning team of Grade 11 and 12 students during the production of HB. It screened at festivals in Canada and the US, winning Best Overall Youth Short Film at the 2013 Calgary International Film Festival and the Young Filmmakers Program Competition Grand Prize at the 2013 Austin Film Festival. In the spring of 2014, Scott mentored 6 youth screenwriters during the Youth Screenplay Competition which Devon Burbank won for Julian. It screened at the 2015 fest. In 2014, Scott mentored 12 screenwriters during SCaMP (Screenplay Competition and Mentorship Program). Susie Winters won for LITTLE THAILAND which will screen during the 2016 fest. Monty Simo was also one of the mentored screenwriters and his film, LEAVING SID, will also screen during the 2016 fest.

In addition to serving on the jury, Scott will be one of the judges for the Frantic48 Film Challenge. He’ll also participate on two of the Filmmaker Insights Day panels on Sat, May 14:

  • Panel 2: Writing a Great Screenplay: The Long and Short of It
  • Panel 3: Moving on Up: Turning Short Film Success into Career Longevity