Cariboo filmmaker Trevor Mack will be shooting a new film in the Chilcotin this summer.
Mack recently raised $1,335 through crowd funding to shoot his new short film called Clouds of Autumn.
Mack says his original goal was to raise $5,000 through crowd funding for the film but he is happy to report that he has received a grant of $16,200 which he applied for in April and as a result will be cancelling the crowd funding campaign.
“We will be ending the Indiegogo campaign with a video-update on either Monday or Tuesday,” Mack said Friday. “I’d like to thank everybody who has donated not only to my new film but to everybody who helped out on my past film The Blanketing as well.”
He is planning two shooting dates for Clouds of Autumn in August and in September.
He says he is still looking for local help to find suitable props, locations and actors.
“Our locations are the Anaham (Tl’etinqox) reserve as well as Stone (Yunesit’in) reserve,” Mack says. “Right now we’re currently looking for a working truck that was made between 1960 and 1975 for us to use for a couple of scenes.”
Mack outlines the story line for Clouds of Autumn on his official facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/CloudsofAutumn
It is 1966; the last day of summer.
William and his older sister Shayl have spent their idyllic, carefree childhood on a reserve in Northern British Columbia.
Playing, fishing and exploring were their lives until Shayl is taken away to a residential school.
Each summer afterwards she returns home more jaded and distant, affecting William first-hand and their relationship with each other.
Through three summers William watches Shayl and their perfect summers decay, until his world is altered forever; she doesn’t return home.
William, confused and angry, spends the summer disassociated with the joys of his past.
Inevitably, as autumn begins he must step onto a bus that will take him to the same residential school his sister experienced.
Focusing on a young brother and sister through vignettes, the film will explore the impact of residential schools on the relationships young First Nations children have with themselves and one another, their heritage and nature itself.
As the story deepens, we recede from the lush green forests and open fields to the stagnant shacks and empty gravel roads of the reserve, writes Mack in the outline.
The tone of the film will shift with William’s perspective, and the camera itself will also experience a loss of innocence.
“I’m predicting that this film will be far bigger than my last film The Blanketing as well,” Mack says.
Meanwhile The Blanketing has been invited to be part of the Canadian Indigenous Shorts program with Spafax Canada.
Mack says this program will make The Blanketing, along with several other Indigenous shorts available for viewing on Air Canada flights during September and October.
Mack says the program reaches a potential audience of 5.4 million viewers.
In 2009, at only 17 years old, Mack started his own freelance video editing, motion graphics and videography group which was sponsored by the company ‘Steelseries’ and was sent to Dallas, Texas to shoot promotional videos for their products.
After completing one year in the Capilano University’s Motion Picture Arts Program in 2012 he decided to produce, write, and direct The Blanketing that was accepted at the 2013 imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival, the 2013 Toronto Independent Film Festival, the 2013 Red Nation Film Festival, the 2013 Vancouver Indigenous Media Arts Festival and many others.