We’re super excited to announce that our latest short film has received funding from Storyhive, a TELUS supported grant program. These guys have been good to us. We’re working with TELUS on a new TV show being released this summer, and they funded our LEO award winning show Playground a few years back. So a big shout out to those fine folks.
They have good taste.
We’ve got complete creative control over our sci-fi comedy ‘Unit Bryan.’ This is the story of Robin, a bored, aimless retail store employee, who is tasked with training the store’s new employee, a friendly worker robot. She couldn’t care less about it at first, but an unlikely friendship is formed between the two.
I love me a robot movie. This is actually the third film I’ve shot with a robot in it, and ironically, it’ll be the first to get released. You see, for this short, we tried something new with our robot. We went practical. Yep, real robots! Well, puppeted robots, controlled by our SPFX designer Dallas dressed in green spandex. We’ll be removing the green man of course.
“This is actually the third film I’ve shot with a robot in it, and ironically, it’ll be the first to get released.”
This process allows us to hit our deadline, in early Feb. That’s the process of removing the existence of Dallas Harvey. Harsh. Our other robot movies will take a little longer…you see, they’re pretty heavy on the CGI front, which on a low budget translates to NEED LOTS OF TIME. But hey, pretty soon, that’s a trilogy of sci-fi movies. Pretty sweet to help launch our first feature length sci-fi screenplay this spring.
We shot this film last December at Kingsgate mall, for those of you who have not been there, you’re missing out. Side note - there needs to be a sitcom written about this place and the characters it contains. We had two long night shoots (you can’t shoot in a mall during the day just before Christmas, in case you were wondering), before heading into the edit. Well, actually, I headed into a lot of food, booze and games for the holidays, but as soon as that important stuff was out the way, the edit began. Being a mockumentary, we naturally had a lot of footage, and cutting it down to ten minutes has been tough, but we’re there! Literally one frame under ten minutes. And damn am I looking forward to introducing you to our fantastic cast; Taylor Russell, Ed Witzke and Trevor Devall (who voices Bryan).
“Being a mockumentary, we naturally had a lot of footage, and cutting it down to ten minutes has been tough.”
Dave and I just locked picture…like today, an hour ago! It’s now off to our awesome sound mixer Reid, and our talented VFX team. You can catch Unit Bryan on TELUS Optik Local TV in a few weeks!