t’s the summer of 2010. I’m slightly
more fresh-faced than I am now,
having yet to discover Beowulf. I’ve
just spent a tedious year learning
important life skills, like how to
move a 650W light without breaking
everything, so when the opportunity came up to move to Canada for
a month and move lights on a whole
other continent, I wasn’t going to
turn it down.
The project is called Locked in a
Garage Band and it’s a feature film
that raised $20,000 on a website
called Kickstarter. I met the producer, Victoria Westcott, on Twitter
and interviewed her for a podcast.
After following the project through
to Crowdfunding fruition, I asked
whether there might be room on the
set for me.
A few months later, I arrived in
Vancouver and, about five hours after that, I was in the small(ish) town
of Mission, British Columbia (coincidentally the hometown of Cherwell
favourite Carly Rae Jepsen).
Victoria was making the film with
her sister Jennifer, who is the writer
and director of the film. They are
both from Vancouver Island, which
someone tried to tell me was the
same size as Germany (it’s not) but,
logistically, it was hard for them to
get the top British Columbia actors
to go over to the island for the shoot,
so they moved production, first to
Vancouver, and then to the town of
Mission, which seems to mainly be
famous for vagrancy. For all its apparent problems with homelessness
and drug addiction, Mission turned
out to be a quaint little town which
didn’t even have a Starbucks.
I spent a few weeks (one of preproduction, two of production and
then a few days as a tourist) basically locked in the eponymous garage. It’s a single location set-up: a
group of kids who’ve just graduated
from high school get locked in their
garage when rehearsing for their
band and are forced to confront all
their issues. In order to pull this off,
however, the cast and crew had to
live through much of the plot. The
garage was like an oven, filled with
about fifteen people at any one time
and countless burning lights. That’s
where pretty much the whole film
was shot so, as you can imagine, it’s
hard for me to avoid seeing those
breeze block walls in my nightmares.
Writer, director, producer, cinematographer, actors, me – we all
lived in the house. I never knew who
I was going to be sharing my room
with (I remember waking up one
morning to have Andrew Jenkins,
the film’s leading man, informing
me that he would be wearing my
underwear today) or who I might
walk in on in the shower. Sometimes
it was the ridiculously attractive actors, at other times it was a member
of the resolutely ‘behind the camera’
crew. Whilst it was claustrophobic at
times (I occasionally had to make the
40 minute walk to the local cinema
just to get some space) on the whole
it was remarkably easy to live with.
The reason that this experience
in June 2010 comes flooding back to
me is that, last week, I attended the
Raindance Film Festival world premiere of the film, and finally got to
see what all those sweaty shooting
days turned into. The answer was a
very funny Canadian teen comedy, although that’s somewhat
missing the point of my nostalgia. In almost every shot
I could see myself (not literally, thank God) crouched off
screen serving some,
usually useless,
function. When the
rat scrambles about
behind some boxes,
I remember making
that movement with
a stick. When someone
business school letter, I
remember writing and
signing it. When a can
of Snapple mysteriously disappears between
shots, I remember
drinking it.
It’s a small contribution to a film that has
required an enormous
amount of time and
commitment from the
Westcott sisters, but, as
summer jobs go, this
must be pretty much as
good as it gets. You can
have your Deloitte internships but I’d rather
this any day. Even if you
only get to be the hand
behind a stick that’s
It’s the summer of 2010. I’m slightly more fresh-faced than I am now, having yet to discover Beowulf. I’ve just spent a tedious year learning important life skills, like how to move a 650W light without breaking everything, so when the opportunity came up to move to Canada for a month and move lights on a whole other continent, I wasn’t going to turn it down.
The project is called Locked in a Garage Band and it’s a feature film that raised $20,000 on a website called Kickstarter. I met the producer, Victoria Westcott, on Twitter and interviewed her for a podcast. After following the project through to Crowdfunding fruition, I asked whether there might be room on the set for me.
A few months later, I arrived in Vancouver and, about five hours after that, I was in the small(ish) town of Mission, British Columbia (coincidentally the hometown of Cherwell favourite Carly Rae Jepsen).
Victoria was making the film with her sister Jennifer, who is the writer and director of the film. They are both from Vancouver Island, which someone tried to tell me was the same size as Germany (it’s not) but, logistically, it was hard for them to get the top British Columbia actors to go over to the island for the shoot, so they moved production, first to Vancouver, and then to the town of Mission, which seems to mainly be famous for vagrancy. For all its apparent problems with homelessness and drug addiction, Mission turned out to be a quaint little town which didn’t even have a Starbucks.
I spent a few weeks (one of preproduction, two of production and then a few days as a tourist) basically locked in the eponymous garage. It’s a single location set-up: a group of kids who’ve just graduated from high school get locked in their garage when rehearsing for their band and are forced to confront all their issues. In order to pull this off, however, the cast and crew had to live through much of the plot. The garage was like an oven, filled with about fifteen people at any one time and countless burning lights. That’s where pretty much the whole film was shot so, as you can imagine, it’s hard for me to avoid seeing those breeze block walls in my nightmares.
Writer, director, producer, cinematographer, actors, me – we all lived in the house. I never knew who I was going to be sharing my room with (I remember waking up one morning to have Andrew Jenkins, the film’s leading man, informing me that he would be wearing my underwear today) or who I might walk in on in the shower. Sometimes it was the ridiculously attractive actors, at other times it was a member of the resolutely ‘behind the camera’ crew. Whilst it was claustrophobic at times (I occasionally had to make the 40 minute walk to the local cinema just to get some space) on the whole it was remarkably easy to live with.
The reason that this experience in June 2010 comes flooding back to me is that, last week, I attended the Raindance Film Festival world premiere of the film, and finally got to see what all those sweaty shooting days turned into. The answer was a very funny Canadian teen comedy, although that’s somewhat missing the point of my nostalgia. In almost every shot I could see myself (not literally, thank God) crouched off screen serving some, usually useless, function. When the rat scrambles about behind some boxes, I remember making that movement with a stick. When someone opens a business school letter, I remember writing and signing it. When a can of Snapple mysteriously disappears between shots, I remember drinking it.
It’s a small contribution to a film that has required an enormous amount of time and commitment from the Westcott sisters, but, as summer jobs go, this must be pretty much as good as it gets. You can have your Deloitte internships but I’d rather this any day. Even if you only get to be the hand behind a stick that’s pretending to be a rat.
