Vancouver Filmmakers Gun for VIFF Glory
With supply flooding the market, it’s harder than ever for wannabe filmmakers to catch their big break, but a lucky few just might find it at this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival.
When disturbed, the aspiring filmmakers tucked in a windowless editing suite at Vancouver Film School bear a striking resemblance to a colony of startled bats. From the door where I stand, midway through a tour of the downtown campus, a slice of daylight casts panic across three wan faces, fuelling a frenzied exchange of nervous glances. There’s more to the discomfort than the simple exposure to sunlight: They’re busted.
“Oh, I see you guys found a way back in,” says John Pozer, my guide and a senior instructor in the film production program at VFS. Given the array of keys and swipe cards required to negotiate the warren-like complex and access its countless computer monitors, high-tech screening rooms and other state-of-the-art equipment, it’s clear that Pozer doesn’t take trespassing lightly. These guys, he explains, graduated from the program last week and by now should have flown the coop. But he lets it slide, this time. A bit of reticence upon venturing into the real world is only natural, after all, even though Pozer is convinced the former students will land on their feet.
“Today’s graduates are really ready for the film industry,” he tells me confidently, striding across Hastings Street to continue the tour of VFS’s six downtown buildings. Over the past year the grads have gone through filmmaking boot camp. They’ve taken turns producing, shooting, directing and editing several short films, practiced pitch sessions and assembled festival packages. The program culminates with a screening at the prestigious Vancity Theatre, home of the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF), a few blocks away. But in an industry where supply will forever outstrip demand, the question of when (or if) they’ll wind up screening films there again is the big unknown.
Like the hundreds who graduate each year from local film schools, Gary Hawes, 33, had no problem finding consistent work in Vancouver’s film sector. “I work in the American service industry,” he says matter-of-factly. “That’s how I make my money. That’s my career.”
Hawes is typical of local film school grads. According to the Vancouver Economic Development Commission, the sector creates 36,000 full-time-equivalent jobs in Metro Vancouver, 60 per cent of them on big-budget Hollywood films. However, being a hired hand on American movie sets wasn’t what Hawes had in mind when he enrolled at VFS. It was the late ’90s and Hawes was high on success stories such as that of Kevin Smith, the American VFS dropout whose canon of indie cult hits is the stuff of film school legend.
At 21, Hawes graduated with the goal of directing his first feature by 27, following in the footsteps of his idols, Orson Welles, Steven Spielberg and Bryan Singer. “Twenty-seven was the age where some of my heroes had made films,” he explains over coffee in a Kitsilano café. “So I put this unrealistic pressure on myself.”
What Hawes hadn’t factored into the equation was an important common denominator he did not share with his high-profile heroes. “You realize, Well, I’m not in the same situation as them. First of all, I’m Canadian and we don’t have the access to Hollywood. If I lived in Iowa I’d just move to L.A., but you can’t really do that.”
What he could do in Hollywood North, however, is build a successful career as an assistant director on blockbusters such as Fantastic Four, X-men 2 and 3 and Juno, to name a few. Hawes has done well by it. He makes a decent living, enough to comfortably get married and climb the property ladder on Vancouver’s desirable west side. Crossing over from the world of Hollywood to Canadian film, however, is a much riskier endeavour.
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