Speaker 1: Oh you he is bote.
Speaker 2: It's show tied.
Speaker 1: People say good money to see this movie.
Speaker 2: When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas,
Speaker 2: hot popcorn, and no monsters in the protection booths.
Speaker 1: Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 2: Got it off. The curses we inherit are not our fault.
Speaker 1: I brought you up. I swear to God it was real. Nick.
Speaker 1: I keep coming back for you and you trying to
Speaker 1: leave me. Do you know how much that hurts?
Speaker 2: What we let them become is our responsibility.
Speaker 3: Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of The Projection Booth.
Speaker 3: I'm your host, Mike White. On this episode, I am
Speaker 3: talking with Tim Reriedle. He is the director and writer
Speaker 3: of the new film Ancestral Beasts, which just had its
Speaker 3: premiere at the Fantasia Film Festival. It is a very
Speaker 3: spooky story that was shot in Manitoba. Had a great
Speaker 3: time talking with Tim, and I hope you have a
Speaker 3: great time listening to this interview. Enjoy where'd you grow
Speaker 3: up and what's your backstor how'd you get into making movies?
Speaker 1: I grew up in the center of Canada, just north
Speaker 1: of Minneapolis, in Winnipeg, or around Winnipeg area. I spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time growing up in a rural area too.
Speaker 1: Around there. It's the homeland of my nation, the Red
Speaker 1: River may Tea. One hundred and fifty years ago my
Speaker 1: people were and my family was kicked out of there violently,
Speaker 1: and my family just kept coming back, kept coming back.
Speaker 1: A lot of my people spread all over Canada and
Speaker 1: the United States and all over the world, but not
Speaker 1: my family. So I ended up growing up exactly at
Speaker 1: the heart of where my people started. And then about
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, I left one peg and I
Speaker 1: started pursuing career opportunities outside of there and worked in
Speaker 1: making a lot of TV commercials, and I worked a
Speaker 1: lot in documentary, And yeah, it was only maybe the
Speaker 1: past five six years I returned to doing narrative films
Speaker 1: because they I found that nertive films give me the
Speaker 1: ability to do things and access audiences in a way
Speaker 1: that documentaries struggle. So documentaries you typically communicate to their head,
Speaker 1: the audience's head, the brains, and hopefully trickles down to
Speaker 1: their hearts the best ones do. But with narrative films,
Speaker 1: you can start with the heart and hope that trickles
Speaker 1: up to their brains and they start thinking, why do
Speaker 1: I feel this way? That's how that started. But my
Speaker 1: storytelling goes back to when I was a little kid
Speaker 1: growing up. I'd spend a lot of time in the
Speaker 1: country at my grandma's house, and I was like three
Speaker 1: four years old, and I would tell her stories about
Speaker 1: how there are bears outside and they can smell that
Speaker 1: there's a child in the house, and that they get
Speaker 1: hungry because they like the taste of child, and they
Speaker 1: know there's only an old lady there to protect the children,
Speaker 1: and they're stronger than an old lady. And my grandma
Speaker 1: would just get driven nuts by my stories on baking
Speaker 1: me please stop, stop, stop, And for a three or
Speaker 1: four year old, the amount of power that demonstrates is incredible.
Speaker 1: It's overwhelming because I think, well, I had this, just
Speaker 1: this idea, and it came out of my mouth and
Speaker 1: once it's my grandma's ears and into her brain and
Speaker 1: freaked her out, as if the bear was really here.
Speaker 1: I didn't conjure a bear. I'm not a bear, but
Speaker 1: she was reacting as though the bear was with us
Speaker 1: in the room. So that was my first taste of storytelling.
Speaker 1: And been into it ever since.
Speaker 3: There's so many ways to tell story, But why film.
Speaker 1: I've told stories in many different ways. Yeah, starting out,
Speaker 1: even I would do I'd record on audio cassettes with
Speaker 1: my cousin and we record bits of Indiana Jones and
Speaker 1: The Last Crusade off the VHS player or Back to
Speaker 1: the Future was a favorite of ours, record elements of that,
Speaker 1: then put ourselves in the movie and rewrite the movie
Speaker 1: with us in it. So I definitely use the audio form.
Speaker 1: I tried my best at Troy, and I'm an okay jar,
Speaker 1: but there are many people better than me. For illustration.
Speaker 1: I played in music for a long time and it
Speaker 1: was pretty successful at that. But for me, film always
Speaker 1: felt like the right format for me because it blended
Speaker 1: so much of what I love, so many different media
Speaker 1: types with visual and of course the audio, but even
Speaker 1: deeper than that, when you think of like illustration for
Speaker 1: video and planning shots and even how like an angle
Speaker 1: of a shot can change how person feels about the shot,
Speaker 1: or the lighting can change how person feels about the shot.
Speaker 1: There's so many tools available in film that it just
Speaker 1: it's like a buffet for me for storytelling. Tell me
Speaker 1: a little bit.
Speaker 3: About Eddie the Echo doog unleashed.
Speaker 1: So Eddie was a star surf and dog who came
Speaker 1: for the planet Checha Chihuahua to teach children about science, nature,
Speaker 1: and ecology. It was a cartoon show that I got
Speaker 1: my start on. I was about twelve years old, and
Speaker 1: my friend was part of a student advisor board to
Speaker 1: build this kid's cartoon character. Now I grew up really
Speaker 1: lower middle class. Nobody was asking me to be a
Speaker 1: part of a student advisory board. But I hustled my
Speaker 1: way in by going through the white pages to look
Speaker 1: up anything I could figure out from my friend of
Speaker 1: what this company was about in this TV series, because
Speaker 1: I wanted to be a part of it, and so
Speaker 1: I called maybe one hundred phone numbers until I finally
Speaker 1: found a person and the owner, and she was so
Speaker 1: impressed by my hustle that she was like, yeah, come
Speaker 1: on over, kid. And so when I showed up to
Speaker 1: this advisory board, it wasn't exactly what I've thought it was.
Speaker 1: All the other kids came from very affluent families and
Speaker 1: the parents a lot of their parents had helped fund
Speaker 1: this project, which I think was part of the design
Speaker 1: of this advisory board. I'm just speculating. This isn't necessarily
Speaker 1: fact for libel purposes. But I definitely wasn't that kid
Speaker 1: that had parents who could even afford to put gas
Speaker 1: in the car from week to week, let alone invest
Speaker 1: in kids' cartoon shows. So the way I tried to
Speaker 1: hang around was by outworking everybody and myself just delivering
Speaker 1: a hundred times worth of value than people could supply
Speaker 1: in money. And I hung in there. And then when
Speaker 1: I went to university, they said, hey, we'll give you
Speaker 1: a part time job writing for this show, and if
Speaker 1: you do well out of university, we'll see what happens.
Speaker 1: So I ended up writing the show. I was a
Speaker 1: director on many of the episodes, became the showrunner eventually,
Speaker 1: and I was also the voice of the cartoon dog.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I even wrote some of the music for that show.
Speaker 1: So that's Edd of the Eco Dog.
Speaker 3: And tell me a little bit about The Jackstones. I'm
Speaker 3: curious about that one as well.
Speaker 1: Okay, so The Jackstones is a documentary A shot for
Speaker 1: I convinced a charity to stop telling stories the way
Speaker 1: that their time stories, which was like advertisements for the charity,
Speaker 1: and I said, let the good work just be the
Speaker 1: advertisement for your charity. Keep your name off of it
Speaker 1: to show the success and people will find you and
Speaker 1: a group within that charity who believed in the project.
Speaker 1: Like Rob Garcia was my executive producer. He fought to
Speaker 1: get I think shoestring budget, but it was enough to
Speaker 1: get us to fly over to the Philippines. And the
Speaker 1: story we thought we were getting there was gonna be
Speaker 1: this motorcycle driving grandma who had a shotgun that she
Speaker 1: was chasing away poachers. Thought that's a cool story. But
Speaker 1: what we ended up finding there she didn't ride her
Speaker 1: motorcycle anymore. They took away her shotgun, and now the
Speaker 1: locals were dealing with poachers from a political standpoint. So
Speaker 1: instead of fabricating the story we needed to get, just
Speaker 1: decided let's just keep our ears and hearts open and
Speaker 1: see what happens, see what story comes to us. Because
Speaker 1: I'm a bit of a stickler when it comes to
Speaker 1: integrity and documentaries, I won't force anything. If I end
Speaker 1: up with the documentary that I intended to make, I'm
Speaker 1: not listening properly and I'm not doing my job properly.
Speaker 1: My documentary in the ents be probably different than what
Speaker 1: a clan going in. Plus, I believe that people in
Speaker 1: front of the camera should be represented by the people
Speaker 1: behind the camera as well. And I'm not Filipino. Rob's
Speaker 1: actually Filipino, but he was born in Canada. So we
Speaker 1: ended up hiring a bunch of locals, people who weren't
Speaker 1: even ever some of them were. There's an incredible film
Speaker 1: community in the Philippines, so we had some aces there,
Speaker 1: but we trained a lot of people from the village
Speaker 1: how to be a film crew, and so they found
Speaker 1: the story for us, and we just kept following the story.
Speaker 1: And what we found was political corruption and an un
Speaker 1: underdog of this village who ended up getting going up
Speaker 1: against the government to fight the corruption and to save
Speaker 1: the viability of their fishing village. And they're still thriving
Speaker 1: to the stay. So that's the story we ended up
Speaker 1: capturing on film. The people who invested or who paid
Speaker 1: for the film to get made expected us to come
Speaker 1: back with this awesome documentary about a motorcycle ride and
Speaker 1: grammar with a shotgun, and we came back with a
Speaker 1: government intrigue corruptions story about fishing rights. But it was
Speaker 1: really well received by the right communities and won a
Speaker 1: bunch of awards in the film festival circuit and helped
Speaker 1: raise a lot of awareness and money for these types
Speaker 1: of programs.
Speaker 3: One of the reasons why I was asking is because
Speaker 3: it feels like, look at your CV that you did
Speaker 3: a kind of a rough draft of that before you
Speaker 3: did the final project.
Speaker 1: Is that true? Yeah? So another one of the producers
Speaker 1: behind the project, Dave Skulis, He's a very innovative guid
Speaker 1: and was open to anything, but we had limited ability
Speaker 1: to explore the full story. We had maybe one day
Speaker 1: to shoot, one or two days to shoot, So while
Speaker 1: we were in the Philippines doing another thing for like
Speaker 1: a TV comercial type project, we ended up squeezing into
Speaker 1: production days to just go and see what the story
Speaker 1: might be and see what was happening around there. And
Speaker 1: because Dave wanted to go scuba diving. He loves scuba diving,
Speaker 1: so I think that also helped Dave convince Dave to
Speaker 1: let us go there for two days, and so we
Speaker 1: ended up scouting things out, meeting the people, and we
Speaker 1: got a very very very bare bones story of how
Speaker 1: the coral reef had gone away because of pollution and things,
Speaker 1: and the locals found a way to revitalize the coral reef.
Speaker 1: So that was the story we started telling, but it
Speaker 1: was a bunch of interviews with talking heads and stuff.
Speaker 1: What we didn't realize at the time was that because
Speaker 1: the coral reef was revitalized and brought back more fish,
Speaker 1: more fish meant more money for them, which was great,
Speaker 1: but more money for the community meant more problems because
Speaker 1: now sharks were in the water and they wanted to
Speaker 1: get a little taste of that money that was coming in.
Speaker 1: So the community ended up not being better off for
Speaker 1: everything that was happening. So that's the story we ended
Speaker 1: up getting in the full feature length documentary, but we
Speaker 1: didn't know at the time that's what we were going
Speaker 1: to get.
Speaker 3: You also did a proof of concept for this film,
Speaker 3: and you tell me how that came about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the proof of concept of this film was because
Speaker 1: everybody loved my script for Ancestral Beasts. They said, you're
Speaker 1: a documentary guy. You can't do narrative, let alone horror.
Speaker 1: And I grew up on horror. I've seen real horror
Speaker 1: across the world and understand the feelings of vulnerability. I
Speaker 1: grew up in it's in a house with chaos or
Speaker 1: I was craving protection that wasn't always there. So I'm
Speaker 1: very well acquainted with horror. So I ended up getting
Speaker 1: some money together to do a proof of concept to
Speaker 1: prove that, yes, I am equipped to direct this film
Speaker 1: that's so personal to me and my loved experience, and
Speaker 1: it worked out. Fortunately.
Speaker 3: Did that have something to do with con.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it did. I made this proof of concept
Speaker 1: and my goal, my highest goal, would have been if
Speaker 1: this proof of concept would have got screened at the
Speaker 1: BANF Media World Conference. It's international conference where a lot
Speaker 1: of the TV producers in the world gather to see
Speaker 1: Canada and the world's offerings for television for the upcoming year.
Speaker 1: And so they have a special Indigenous Screen Summit and
Speaker 1: I attended that in twenty twenty four and I was
Speaker 1: blown away by the quality of Indigenous storytelling that had
Speaker 1: been happening. It was quite the inspiration for me to
Speaker 1: be bold enough to try to tell my own story.
Speaker 1: So I thought, if this proof of concept could get
Speaker 1: shown at the twenty twenty five Indigenous Screen Summit and
Speaker 1: I can pitch this project, that would be the dream.
Speaker 1: And oh my goodness, maybe, just maybe it'll get Somebody's
Speaker 1: at ten and then I sent it around to a
Speaker 1: bunch of people a bunch of places, and had a
Speaker 1: lot of conversations and within I shot it in January,
Speaker 1: and by February March, somewhere around there, I get an
Speaker 1: email from the Frontiers, people who have their platform at
Speaker 1: the can Film Festival during the can Film Fest, when
Speaker 1: they asked me if I wanted to screen my proof
Speaker 1: of concept during the can Film Festival, and I just
Speaker 1: couldn't believe it. I thought it was a joke. These
Speaker 1: things don't happen to me. I'm a person on the
Speaker 1: fringes of this film industry. I'm not an insider, but
Speaker 1: you don't say no to those kinds of opportunities. So
Speaker 1: I just said yes and tried to do my best,
Speaker 1: and then Variety magazines started covering it, and that opened
Speaker 1: up this whole other world of perception of success about
Speaker 1: the project, and so I just kept riding that wave.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately in Canada, because I wasn't making money off of
Speaker 1: any of this yet. But fortunately in Canada we have
Speaker 1: great government support systems, especially the Indigenous Screen Office, who
Speaker 1: helps pay for people like myself and mikers like myself
Speaker 1: to travel around to take on these opportunities. But wasn't
Speaker 1: for them, I wouldn't have been able to pay to
Speaker 1: fly to the can Film Festival and get an apartment
Speaker 1: or a hotel during the can Film Festival and survive
Speaker 1: and stuff. But thankfully I was able to do that
Speaker 1: with that support, and it's just opened up all these
Speaker 1: incredible doors and my whole career is a whole different
Speaker 1: trajectory as of today because of that little proof of
Speaker 1: concept and because of the support I got from these
Speaker 1: people who wanted to let me try to make the
Speaker 1: most of these opportunities and see where they go. And
Speaker 1: you and I are talking now just before the world
Speaker 1: premiere of the feature of It, one of the world's largest,
Speaker 1: most prestigious genre festivals. It's incredible.
Speaker 3: Now, the government of Canada hasn't always been so nice
Speaker 3: to Indigenous people. Tell me a little bit more about
Speaker 3: the sixty Scoop and how that kind of informs your
Speaker 3: main character.
Speaker 1: So the sixties Scoop was a program put in place
Speaker 1: by the Government of Canada thinking that many Indigenous families
Speaker 1: were ill equipped to care for their own children, so
Speaker 1: they would look for reasons to take the children away
Speaker 1: from the parents. And put them in white households, and
Speaker 1: so there are a lot of stories of what kind
Speaker 1: of abuse and loss of culture existed. And so I
Speaker 1: can speak firsthand that my mom and her sisters and
Speaker 1: brothers were sixty scoop kids, and my mom didn't get
Speaker 1: put into a good foster home. She was put in
Speaker 1: to some of the worst I'd ever heard of. And
Speaker 1: it's funny as a kid, you desensitized to it because
Speaker 1: it comes from your mom. You think that this is
Speaker 1: just basic stuff. So I used to do. I used
Speaker 1: did not really have much compassion for my mom. It
Speaker 1: was just like, oh God, she's flipping out again, and
Speaker 1: why is this great? Now I'm in trouble, or it's
Speaker 1: going to be a horrible time in the house for
Speaker 1: the next week. And so that's the effect that as
Speaker 1: on people, and the cascading effect of that of like
Speaker 1: my mom not having a support of it being recognized
Speaker 1: as a crime against a population of people. She was
Speaker 1: forced to deal with that all by herself, and then
Speaker 1: not even having your own kids compassion because there wasn't
Speaker 1: back then a word for sixty scoop or borderline personality disorder,
Speaker 1: which is what she was diagnosed with. Later on in life,
Speaker 1: so she got zero support over all that, even at home.
Speaker 1: And so it's only been in the past maybe decade
Speaker 1: that the government of Canadas start to recognize it and
Speaker 1: communication about it has start to spread, but it's still
Speaker 1: not something that people understand very well. And it's happened
Speaker 1: across the world. There's the Stolen Children in Australia, and
Speaker 1: I think New Zealand has a phrase for that too,
Speaker 1: But you look at any indigenous population in the world
Speaker 1: and there's probably a similar story. But yeah, for me,
Speaker 1: my mom passed away in the beginning of twenty twenty
Speaker 1: and I wanted to look back at my life and
Speaker 1: my relationship with her more compassionately, and so so I
Speaker 1: had to reframe things to realize that she wasn't just
Speaker 1: the perpetrator of chaos and stability in the house and
Speaker 1: in my life. This was actually happening to her, probably
Speaker 1: even worse than us in those moments. And so I
Speaker 1: ended up learning about borderline personality disorder. And with that
Speaker 1: is when you're a child and the people are supposed
Speaker 1: to protect you aren't available to protect you or don't
Speaker 1: protect you, you develop an inner protector inside of yourself
Speaker 1: and we all do it to certain degrees. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you've got something like that in your own life too,
Speaker 1: but with borderline personality disorder, the abuse is so severe
Speaker 1: that your protector is dysregulated and goes to extremes and
Speaker 1: sees many things as a slight or as that threat
Speaker 1: and lashes out and attacks, but also texts you as
Speaker 1: an individual as well. So once I understood that, I
Speaker 1: was like, oh shit, this was exactly my mom and
Speaker 1: what she was struggling with, and so I wanted to
Speaker 1: tell that story, and it wouldn't work as a documentary
Speaker 1: because to me in the household, it felt like there's
Speaker 1: a creature looking in the shadows, so you never know
Speaker 1: exactly what's going to trigger it to attack. And when
Speaker 1: I think about that and how that feels and how
Speaker 1: I want audiences to feel that way, it's a horror film,
Speaker 1: and the horror genre gives great opportunity to tell these
Speaker 1: complex emotional stories in a way that people can feel,
Speaker 1: so that they can better understand.
Speaker 3: Tell me a little bit more about how that informs
Speaker 3: the film itself, because I love when genering films actually
Speaker 3: have so much more meaning than just oh, there's a
Speaker 3: big scary monster.
Speaker 1: I approached this film Ancestral Beasts as though it was
Speaker 1: a documentary. I did a lot of research because I
Speaker 1: don't hold the exclusive rights to Indigenous intergenerational trauma, nor
Speaker 1: do I own the exclusive rights to severe mental health disorders.
Speaker 1: So I worked with a lot of different knowledge keepers
Speaker 1: and experts in mental health and my Indigenous elders and
Speaker 1: my community to understand, really understand what it is and
Speaker 1: how it affects us, and how it manifests in the
Speaker 1: world and in our daily lives, and what triggers it,
Speaker 1: what stigmas do we have to face, and how do
Speaker 1: we overcome them? And when I had that all sorted out,
Speaker 1: I laid it out as a timeline of ideas. And
Speaker 1: so this film is like my thesis that follows a plot,
Speaker 1: but each plot point is showing a different point where
Speaker 1: a person is trying hard to find healing, and what
Speaker 1: are the obstacles in the way of the healing, and
Speaker 1: which of them are internal and which of them are external,
Speaker 1: and who's putting these obstacles in the way, and who's
Speaker 1: helping them overcome them, and what's at risk. Ultimately, when
Speaker 1: I took that approach, I was able to then find
Speaker 1: a narrative thread that I could use my own lived
Speaker 1: experience and stores from my mom and other people within
Speaker 1: my community to weave through. So it was one coherence
Speaker 1: caricature arc. And then the beauty of the genre is
Speaker 1: that I could take an idea that's very internal, and
Speaker 1: I could depict it through horror tropes like the Old
Speaker 1: House in the woods, you know, and the family legacy
Speaker 1: of trauma and you know, things hiding in the shadows
Speaker 1: and supernatural creatures and intrigue and all those great horror
Speaker 1: tropes that have been really played out, but I could
Speaker 1: take them and provide something new because I thinly cover
Speaker 1: my plot with a horror story in tropes that people recognize,
Speaker 1: but it's anchored to something completely new in a novel
Speaker 1: way of showing a character arc play out. That's how
Speaker 1: I did it, and that was my intention all along.
Speaker 1: I wanted to tell about seventy percent of the story
Speaker 1: but make it look like I was telling one hundred
Speaker 1: percent of the story to the audience, so that the
Speaker 1: audience could offer thirty percent of the story themselves and
Speaker 1: make more personal and relatable to them. So I don't
Speaker 1: know about you and you were watching it, how what
Speaker 1: you could relate to or what assumptions that you made
Speaker 1: just subconsciously because of your own lived experience in this world.
Speaker 1: But I'm actually really interested in knowing that. But any
Speaker 1: to answer your question, that's how I went about putting
Speaker 1: the story together where a person could, on the surface
Speaker 1: make it sound like, oh, it's another horror film about trauma,
Speaker 1: and it's a cabin in the woods story. Yippie, We've
Speaker 1: seen this a million times. But that's the trick of it.
Speaker 1: You just barely have to scratch the surface, and there's
Speaker 1: so much more to it.
Speaker 3: Tell me about the making of it. How did it
Speaker 3: all come together for you? And how was it a
Speaker 3: fun experience? Because I've heard people describe making an independent
Speaker 3: film like waging a war.
Speaker 1: I always compared making a film an independent film to
Speaker 1: rolling a boulder up a mountain. Not to play on
Speaker 1: your love of the myth of Sisyphus, but that's exactly
Speaker 1: how I describe it, and that's what this definitely was.
Speaker 1: Nobody was pushing that boulder up the mountain but me.
Speaker 1: But I was so determined to get that boulder up
Speaker 1: the mountain that people took notice and were willing to
Speaker 1: come alongside me and say, oh, you know what, I've
Speaker 1: pushed this boulder up the mountain before a few just
Speaker 1: go this path is so that path you might have
Speaker 1: an easier way and or feeling weak at certain times,
Speaker 1: people are like, Okay, let me give you a shoulder
Speaker 1: to lean on for a second. The making of the film, though,
Speaker 1: went by as excruciating as it was, in some ways,
Speaker 1: it went by incredibly fast. I wrote the first draft
Speaker 1: of the film December ninth, twenty twenty four, and by
Speaker 1: December ninth, twenty twenty five, we were right in the
Speaker 1: middle of our twenty day production. I think we were
Speaker 1: on day ten of twenty of shooting the film. Having
Speaker 1: the can Film Festival and support from the Indigenous Filmmaker Fellowship,
Speaker 1: the Whistler Film Festival, and Caplana University's a Digitous Digital
Speaker 1: Accelerator program, just different groups like that really helped me
Speaker 1: move quickly. But yeah, getting everything together for a low
Speaker 1: budget and such an ambitious project in a way that
Speaker 1: I was so determined to tell my way because I'm
Speaker 1: walking a fine line. If I do fall into the
Speaker 1: typical horror tropes, it's not going to work. I had
Speaker 1: to be very, very honest to the mental health aspect
Speaker 1: of the story, and the stigma aspect of the story,
Speaker 1: the rural Manitoba aspect of the story, and really the
Speaker 1: uniqueness of growing up in that place with those kinds
Speaker 1: of struggles. All that stuff had to be very specific,
Speaker 1: and it sounds a commercial poison to people who've been
Speaker 1: doing this for thirty thirty five years in the industry
Speaker 1: and think they know what's best. But we were a
Speaker 1: scrappy team. I cast mainly people from my nation and
Speaker 1: for the broader indigous community, most of the crew was
Speaker 1: Indigenous and hadn't had the opportunities to fully take on
Speaker 1: the kind of key roles that they were in for
Speaker 1: my film, and that created an environment of people really
Speaker 1: willing to work their asses off and really believe in
Speaker 1: the story because they hadn't seen anything like this that
Speaker 1: felt so familiar to them but still so accessible because
Speaker 1: of that thin layer of the genre tropes that we
Speaker 1: hit under, and so that made the film making process
Speaker 1: so much lighter and better. It was really enjoyable, as
Speaker 1: painful as asked. Some aspects were the cast and crew
Speaker 1: made it a fun place to show up to every day.
Speaker 1: We got hit by a blizzard, and we thought nobody
Speaker 1: was going to show up, and people just found their
Speaker 1: ways through some of the worst weather of that season
Speaker 1: to get in on time. And then we had a
Speaker 1: horrible sickness blast through and people would be apologizing that
Speaker 1: they could make an they didn't want to get other
Speaker 1: people sick, but other people were willing to step up
Speaker 1: and take on more responsibility just to keep things driving
Speaker 1: forward every single day because we couldn't miss We couldn't
Speaker 1: miss one day. We had tight twenty shooting. Each day
Speaker 1: was packed. If we missed one day, one half day,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have had the film. And so everybody pulled
Speaker 1: together to make it happen. And some of my new
Speaker 1: best friends have come from that experience, and I'll work
Speaker 1: with them forever if they'll have me.
Speaker 3: When did you actually shoot this?
Speaker 1: We started rolling, I want to say late November, and
Speaker 1: we wrapped December twenty second of twenty twenty five, and
Speaker 1: I edited with my cinematographer Joey Forte. We edited and
Speaker 1: got picture locked by February twenty seventh, and yeah, and
Speaker 1: then we had some of the effects that hopefully are
Speaker 1: mainly invisible, and work through everything else of the legal
Speaker 1: stuff so that our world premiere is coming up.
Speaker 3: That's amazing. That's a very quick post process.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't have time to mess around. You gotta
Speaker 1: we have a saying up here. You gotta make hey
Speaker 1: while the sun is shining and right now is all
Speaker 1: this attention on the project and the opportunity in front
Speaker 1: of myself. I gotta keep writing this momentum and see
Speaker 1: how far we can push it. I truly believe in
Speaker 1: this space that I'm creating right now for people in
Speaker 1: my community who have these incredible stories to tell, and
Speaker 1: so I have a responsibility to keep that space open
Speaker 1: and let me do my best. So I'm trying tell.
Speaker 3: Me a little bit more about your co editor and DP,
Speaker 3: because you've worked with him quite a few times, I believe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I grew up with Joey, him and his family. Yeah,
Speaker 1: two of the people involved with the film probably saved
Speaker 1: my life. That could easily ended up being a kid
Speaker 1: on the streets and getting into all kinds of bad
Speaker 1: stuff growing up. But Ray Peru who is the associate producer,
Speaker 1: and Joey Forte, who was my DP. Yeah, they give
Speaker 1: me another They give me an alternative in them and
Speaker 1: their families practically lived with Ray's family from the age
Speaker 1: of fifteen on and Joey's. Joey had a high eight
Speaker 1: camera and used to like makeing horror films, and so
Speaker 1: we would make horror films in the woods all together
Speaker 1: with whatever kids we could get together from school and stuff.
Speaker 1: He once convinced our science teacher to be the villain
Speaker 1: in the horror film, and I think it's okay now.
Speaker 1: It's things he couldn't do nowadays. We had him take
Speaker 1: his shirt off and chase kids slamming against lockers and
Speaker 1: stuff in a classroom during school hours, with big blood
Speaker 1: and ketchups flattering everywhere. And so, yeah, Joey and I
Speaker 1: we've made a lot of projects together. And then I
Speaker 1: went off and did my documentaries and Joey stayed in
Speaker 1: Winnipeg and built a pretty good career for himself doing
Speaker 1: the kind of work he could do in Winnipeg. But
Speaker 1: I felt like a few years ago when we started this,
Speaker 1: he wasn't necessarily getting the kind of recognition and opportunities
Speaker 1: that he deserved. And so we were talking on the
Speaker 1: phone and I told him, I just want to make
Speaker 1: a fun horror film like we did back in the day,
Speaker 1: knowing that Ancestral Beast was the project, but I wasn't
Speaker 1: ready to confess to Joey about how much this was
Speaker 1: steep mound lived experience and stuff like that. I was
Speaker 1: still caring a fair amount of shame and know like
Speaker 1: how to tell him, Hey, by the way, you've known
Speaker 1: me for all these years, but surprise, but this is
Speaker 1: why it was always the weird one in the group.
Speaker 1: So I put it to him like that. He was
Speaker 1: all for it, and Joy was willing to sacrifice and
Speaker 1: do whatever he possibly could to help support my vision
Speaker 1: and make this movie the best it possibly could be.
Speaker 1: So that's why the proof of concept looks so incredible
Speaker 1: for such a shoe string. No budget was because Joy
Speaker 1: used both to his cameras and all of this time
Speaker 1: meticulous the storyboarding ever shot with me and designing everything
Speaker 1: to be the most cinematic experience. The proof of concept
Speaker 1: looks like a million dollars but maybe cost ten bucks.
Speaker 3: I can't even imagine how excited you must be to
Speaker 3: have this premiere at Fantasia.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, really excited. I still deal with stuff where
Speaker 1: it's like anytime something good happens, I don't either, don't
Speaker 1: believe it's real or wait for the other shoe to drop. Okay,
Speaker 1: where's the scam coming? I imagine waves of dread, like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, what if these people don't like like film,
Speaker 1: Like these are people who love horror. They're like, what
Speaker 1: didn't you do to my beloved horror genre, you documentary poser?
Speaker 1: Oh I'm dealing with that. But I have some really
Speaker 1: good people around me, good mentors, and like the cast,
Speaker 1: like Morgan, who's the star of the film. She is
Speaker 1: incredibly well adjusted when it comes to managing your feelings
Speaker 1: and stuff, and so she's talking me through it too,
Speaker 1: about how to just shut that part of the brain
Speaker 1: off and stop being an idiot and just enjoy the moment.
Speaker 1: So I am definitely being deliberate in recognizing how amazing
Speaker 1: this moment is. And when we have the world premiere
Speaker 1: at that incredible Fantasia audience, I'm just gonna soak up
Speaker 1: every second of it. I'm determined, as I always am,
Speaker 1: to just take it all in. Have you been the
Speaker 1: Fantasia before you familiar with the Fantasia audiences.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's been a number of years, but I do
Speaker 3: remember how into it they definitely are, And yeah, I
Speaker 3: remember or how into it I was as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they really want to love movies, and I compared
Speaker 1: to like how audiences are like with a rocky horror
Speaker 1: picture show, you know, how they have all these different
Speaker 1: traditions and stuff. Just the meowing at the screens alone
Speaker 1: here the beginning fantation. When that happens at the beginning
Speaker 1: of my movie, if they starts and yowing, I might
Speaker 1: shed a tear because I'm like, oh, they're meowing. Did
Speaker 1: they me out back in the day when you went
Speaker 1: I don't remember any meows? Oh okay, so yeah, they
Speaker 1: got this thing now where they all me out and
Speaker 1: then they start me yewing a lot. And then I
Speaker 1: think they wait for a certain screen to come on
Speaker 1: that signals like, oh, the movies about to start. Then
Speaker 1: they all shush each other really loud to stop them yewing.
Speaker 1: It's incredible. I think there's all this other kind of
Speaker 1: fun stuff that they do too.
Speaker 3: I don't normally ask people about their websites, but I
Speaker 3: want to ask you about yours because the name on
Speaker 3: the website is not Tim Reedle dot com. Can you
Speaker 3: tell me about your site?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's mitchiff Quinture dot com it's my language, Southern
Speaker 1: Mitschiff communities language. It means mayti storyteller. The thing with
Speaker 1: the word Mayti is that it's a French word that
Speaker 1: means half, and my people aren't half anything or our
Speaker 1: own whole. So I prefer the term mitchieff and yeah,
Speaker 1: mitcheft storyteller. It says everything that I want to say
Speaker 1: about my production company and the projects we take on.
Speaker 3: Do you know what you're going to work on next
Speaker 3: after this or are you just so in the moment.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to be so in the moment, But I
Speaker 1: do have something that maybe you and I can talk
Speaker 1: about after the festival that I would love to get
Speaker 1: your your thoughts on, because you're such a film connoisseur yourself.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I've got something, Bruin.
Speaker 3: Tim, thank you so much for your time. This is
Speaker 3: great talking with you all right.
Speaker 1: Likewise, Mike, let's keep in touch.
Speaker 3: Sounds great s