CONTINUING OUR CIFF 2021 SERIES, WE PRESENT SCOTT WESTBY AND KEVIN DOREE. SCOTT AND KEVIN’S FEATURE JONESIN’ IS HAVING ITS WORLD PREMIERE AT THE FESTIVAL. CIFF 2021 TAKES PLACE SEPTEMBER 23RD TO OCTOBER 3RD, AND CONSISTS OF A MIX OF IN-PERSON AND VIRTUAL SCREENINGS AND EVENTS.

CSIF: Tell us about yourselves. What do you do in the film industry?

SCOTT WESTBY: I like to call myself a director/writer/producer, but, as with most indie filmmakers, I kind of do it all. I own two production companies, one that I co-founded with Matt Watterworth in 2012 called Full Swing Productions. Full Swing focuses on narrative content (movies, TV). My other company, Pluto Pictures, founded just after COVID hit, is focused on branded content (commercials, etc.) and documentaries.

When we make narrative stuff, I focus on one role. I produced our Telefilm micro-budget feature In Plainview (available in Canada on Apple TV and Amazon Prime), and I directed our upcoming feature Jonesin’ (check us out at CIFF!).

With branded stuff or documentaries, I write, produce, and direct, but also am often the cinematographer, locations manager, first AD (assistant director), editor, sound editor, colourist, and animator. I love it because I’m fascinated by every aspect of the filmmaking process, so I get to develop so many skills that help me be a stronger, well-rounded filmmaker.

KEVIN DOREE: What do I do…? What would you like me to do? What I enjoy doing most, and spend the most time doing, is writing. But I’ve done some acting and some stand-in work, been a background performer. I’ve been an extras casting assistant (and, occasionally, an extras casting director). I’ve been a driver on a couple of shows. I like being on, or around, a set, in general.

CSIF: How did you get started in filmmaking? Why did you decide to become a filmmaker?

SW: I grew up acting for theatre, and I loved writing as a kid, but it all came together when I was 14. My parents gave me an old video camera for Christmas that year, and I just loved playing with it, setting it at ground level with toys and model cars and crashing them and having a ton of fun. And with most people in this industry, playing turned into a passion. I got a slightly better video camera and made a handicam fantasy feature with my friends right after high school, then went to SAIT, and met two people who would heavily influence my career: Matt Watterworth and Jason Long. Lots of stories to tell there, but the gist of it is you can’t do this alone, and they helped me get started. The creation process drew me into filmmaking initially, but I’ve since realized that my ultimate “why” is in the storytelling. Until computer-brain interfaces are mainstream, film is the ultimate storytelling medium! Although video games have gotten pretty damn good at it lately…

KD: Two events kind of set me on the path into the industry. I’d always been interested in film, always watching as many things as I could get my eyes on. But, I grew up in a small town and never really thought of ‘making movies’ as something I could be a part of. Out of the blue, one day, a friend of mine, who was helping book extras on a film shooting in town, asked if I’d like to do a day or two of background work. I thought “why not?“ and I’ve been working on shows ever since. Around the same time, my wife (at the time my girlfriend) bought me Final Draft for Christmas, and I started dabbling with screenwriting. Dabbling quickly turned into more of a mission.

CSIF: What movie inspired you to become a filmmaker?

SW: Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. I’ll be the first to admit it’s not a good movie. But I was a Star Wars kid, and it came out right as I was starting to realize one day I’d be an adult with a career. It was the first movie I saw after I realized movies were MADE BY PEOPLE! I watched The Making Of for Ep. 1, and it was surprisingly not a pretty process, lots of headaches for the whole crew. Suddenly, I knew that’s what I had to do with my life.

KD: There’s a long list I could lay out, here. So many films, in so many genres, from so many places, have been inspirations in so many ways. It might be Alien and/or Blade Runner that first made me take an interest in how filmmakers could engage in ‘world-building’, and create compelling stories in those worlds. In a completely different way, Clerks and Slacker showed me that with an interesting idea, a group of like-minded friends, and $20, maybe anyone could make a movie (ok, maybe $20,000?).

CSIF: What kinds of stories are you interested in telling?

SW: I’ve never considered myself an artist or an auteur filmmaker. I love some art films, but my tastes are definitely more along mainstream lines, so that’s the kind of stuff I like to make. That’s why Matt and I became friends, and it’s why we love Kevin Doree’s scripts so much. Broad-audience-popcorn-fare is definitely the world In Plainview and Jonesin’ play in, and it’s the area I want my career to keep growing into.

KD: I’m not sure any one particular “type” of storytelling interests me more than others. Although, “ordinary person dropped into seemingly extraordinary circumstances” stories are a lot of fun to try to tell. It seems, no matter what my intentions are when I start writing something new, things often swing back in that direction.

CSIF: What is the most important thing you’ve learned in your practice as a filmmaker so far?

SW: Corporate video is incredible. This is a hard pill for most filmmakers to swallow, but it’s a tremendous career boon, especially in Calgary. You get to practice your craft and have people pay you to do it, whereas you’d spend years on indie or union sets before even touching a camera. As soon as I let go of my ego and started diving into it I realized “Oh! This IS filmmaking!”. The more I grow as a narrative filmmaker, the more I realize how similar the two worlds are, and how well the skillsets translate.

Now, when I direct, I can talk to the cinematographer about lenses, codecs and LUTs. I can talk to the colourist about Power Windows. I can talk to the animator about keyframes.

When I produce, I know how long tasks take, I know how budgets and insurance and incorporation and audits work. I understand what I’m asking my crew to do throughout the whole film, because I’ve done those jobs (except script supervising, hair, makeup and dolly gripping. Mad respect to those folks).

KD: To just keep pushing forward. Nothing ever happens quickly (or if it does, you’re extremely fortunate). With the two features I’ve been lucky enough to have produced, each has taken at least six years from my starting on the script to the day production started. So, patience is a must.

CSIF: What advice do you have for other filmmakers?

SW: Everyone’s situation is so different, so I hate giving advice, but I’ve learned two very important lessons recently about patience and mentorship:

Patience: I tried way too hard early in my career to get projects made that were out of my reach. I wanted to make big movies, and I shot for the moon. In hindsight, I should have started with smaller stuff, and worked my way towards bigger stuff. My lack of patience actually ended up costing me years, and now that I’ve got my sights set on more realistic projects, I’m being more intentional about my career and steering it with more control.

Mentorship: I was too proud to ever really consider getting a mentor. I love being a mentor to new filmmakers, but I didn’t think I needed to have my own. I didn’t want to be someone’s burden, and I thought I could figure this industry out for myself. Oops.

I got a mentor this year (thanks to the Alberta Producer Accelerator Program), and after three months of weekly conversations, I got some mind-blowing lessons that would have taken me years to learn alone. I gained a perspective on this industry that I never would have gotten on my own. Now I think of a mentor as a career accelerator, like a parent guiding me as I grow up. I can’t stress enough how important this lesson was for me.

KD: Don’t give up. Work hard at what you do. Whatever it is, be it writing, working as a grip, whatever, just learn your job/craft as best you can. The whole 10,000 hours thing I guess. That and watch as many movies as you can. See what works (and what doesn’t) in other people’s movies. (Also, as a mentor of mine once said, “There’s nothing that hasn’t been done before. If you see something great, steal it, put your own twist on it and make it your own.”)

CSIF: What is the most embarrassing or funniest thing that has happened to you on set?

SW: Embarrassing: It’s 2008. Spring. I’ve just graduated from SAIT, and I start doing day-calls as a locations PA on Heartland.

Day 1: I help out prepping trucks and setting up garbage cans. Great day, great team.

Day 2: “Scott, stand on this road and don’t let anybody park here who shouldn’t be here”. Easy enough. Well this old-ass van rolls up, kicking up dust, and this girl is driving it, clearly not a “union filmmaker” in my mind. So I stop the van, tell her she can’t park in that lot. She says “But… I’m Amber Marshall”. Now I’ve never seen a frame of Heartland at this point, so I have no idea what those words mean. I get on the walkie, “someone named Amber Marshall is here to park?”. Long pause… “Yes Scott…let her pass”. It wasn’t until that night that I realized she’s the star of the show. I still cringe about this one.

Funniest: Shout out to Reamonn Joshee. He’s an incredible filmmaker and an even better actor. He plays a great character in Jonesin’. It’s everyone’s first day on set, his character is bleeding out in the back of a van, we’re rolling and I say “just do whatever Twitch would do”. So he starts freestyle rapping about how cool it is that he’s bleeding out. We moved on after one take.

KD: This isn’t technically something that happened on set, but it’s right up there embarrassment- wise. I had been doing a lot of background days on the CBC show Heartland. One day, that show’s extras casting director asked me if I could work a particular day. Naturally, I said yes, without actually verifying that the day was a Heartland day. The night before, she called to tell me where to catch the bus to set. That seemed odd since I’d always driven myself to set. Turns out, I hadn’t agreed to a day on Heartland, I had agreed to dress head-to-toe in bright white clothing to ‘play’ a sperm in a documentary called The Great Sperm Race. Got a bit blind-sided, there.

CSIF: Tell us about your most recent project.

SW: Jonesin’ is a feature film that we shot in 2018, financed in part by the Calgary Film Centre’s Project Lab. It’s Full Swing’s second feature, my directorial debut, and the world premiere is happening at CIFF this year.

Jonesin’ is a crime comedy about small town country boy Deke Jones, who’s just passing through town and stops at the wrong bar at the wrong time to take a leak. It turns out this particular bar is a favourite haunt of a gang leader, and Deke arrives just as a competing gang shows up to kidnap said leader. Well, these gang members aren’t super sharp, and they kidnap Deke, mistaking him for this kingpin. Deke manages to escape, but now he’s stuck in the big city, way out of his depth, somehow caught in the middle of a criminal underworld feud.

My creative vision for Jonesin’  was to imagine the movie Guy Ritchie would have made with the script for The Big Lebowski.

It’s funny, it’s dark, and I’m just so incredibly proud of it. The whole crew really got behind this story, and so many people went WAY above and beyond to make this movie as awesome as it is. Can’t wait to share it with the world.

KD: Well, the second feature I’ve had produced by my good friends at Full Swing Productions, Scott Westby and Matt Watterworth, a crime-comedy Jonesin’ will be premiering at this year’s Calgary International Film Festival. Though I have nothing else “officially” in development at the moment, I’m always putting scripts out into the world, trying to drum up interest. So, hopefully, feature number three is in my not-too-distant future.

CSIF: Any final thoughts/words regarding filmmaking/being a filmmaker in Calgary?

SW: Bad News: Calgary is tough. It’s not a major production centre like Vancouver or Toronto, so Calgary filmmakers really have to be entrepreneurial and drive their own careers. That can be really hard if you need financial stability in your life. Hence my half-career in corporate video. And while we have world-class locations and incredible crews, Calgary isn’t really on the global radar as a source of talent. Nobody is going to pluck you out of obscurity and hand you a golden opportunity. The world is too small and the global competition is too fierce. So breaking out here is even harder than finding stability. If reading this breaks your spirit, congratulations! You’re one step closer to being a filmmaker!

Good News: Our obstacles are also our opportunity. Calgary is a small pond that’s about to blow up. There’s a lot of potential here and we have all of the ingredients a major production hub needs: production volumes, infrastructure and political support are all growing quickly. My vision, as it has always been, is to create my own career here. That means doing my part to help the industry grow to a place where it can sustain what I want to do. I feel like the filmmakers that stay here share that spirit. If reading this gets you pumped, congratulations! You’ll fit right in here!

KD: I think filmmakers in Calgary, these days, have more opportunities than ever. The industry here is booming. We’re as busy, this year, as we’ve been in years (maybe ever?). Between the opportunities right here, and the possibilities that you can tap into out in our ever-shrinking world, there’s plenty of reason for optimism.

CSIF: What is a film that you wish you made and why?

SW: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. It has been in my top 3 since it came out. I watch it and I’m captivated, I’m awe-struck… and I’m damn jealous that I’ll never be talented enough to make a movie like that.

KD: Double Indemnity (1944 – Billy Wilder). One of those movies I was talking about earlier, where ordinary people find themselves in extraordinary situations (here, of their own making). A story well-told with some of the best snappy, rapid-fire dialogue you’ll ever hear. Wilder could work in any genre and his films stand up, to this day. How great would it be to have your work be seen, 75+ later, and still appreciated.

CSIF: What is your favourite movie?

SW: The Lord of the Rings (yes, it’s just one movie. Discard anyone who tells you otherwise)

KD: In the Mood for Love (2001 – Wong Kar-Wai). It’s so beautiful and it makes me exquisitely sad.

CSIF: What is your favourite movie snack?

SW: Popcorn, obviously.

KD: I’m not a big snacker… but I will often partake in a good cup of coffee (weird answer, I know)

Instagram: @scott.westby & @kjdoree

Twitter: @SWestby

Facebook: Scott Westby

Website: fullswingproductions.com & plutopictures.ca