What happens to a beloved fairy tale character when he grows up and has to make it in the real world? That question is answered in a clever and funny way by Vancouver based filmmakers Mike Jackson and Peter New in their short film Woodman
Woodman was made in 2017 for the Crazy8s film competition, which is an 8 day filmmaking challenge that provides funding and support to emerging filmmakers to help them produce a short film.
“There were over 150 applications that year,” Director Mike Jackson says. “We made it through several rounds of selections to be one of only 6 films made.”
Making a film is a challenging prospect at the best of times. It’s made more challenging when you only have eight days from conception to final product. “We wrote it during the early rounds of the competition,” Jackson says. “but had to shoot it in 3 days, and do ALL post production (usually a process of weeks) in 5 days.
Jackson’s partner in the project, Peter New wrote the script and stars as the title character. “We worked out the story together, based on an old idea of Peter’s about Pinnochio as an old man. I came up with the ending and the internet elements, and then Peter went to town with the script.”
Any film made in eight days would be a difficult endeavour, but Woodman presented special challenges to the filmmakers. “Not only were we making the film in an incredibly short amount of time, but we had to do it with a main character in full prosthetic make up, which took hours to apply and remove every day. We had to build a set and fill it with 500 feet of ‘nose’.
The two leads speak to each other mostly via video calls. “We shot all the video calls in realtime, running two sets simultaneously and filming the video feed.”
The film also has several flashback scenes that take place in a busy office, in the Italian countryside and even inside the belly of a whale. Normally effects heavy scenes like that would be shot in front of a green screen and composited in post production. But there wasn’t enough time for that. “Greenscreen takes too long in post,” Jackson explains. “So we went old school, setting up an enormous screen and projecting the backgrounds.”
Location shots are also tricky when you have a short shooting schedule. “We had an outdoor scene in the forest, but Vancouver was going through one of it’s heaviest snowfalls in years. Fortunately the snow melted where we were planning on shooting just an hour before we rolled camera.”
The hard work paid off though. The film, once completed, had an incredibly successful festival run, playing over 30 festivals worldwide. “We got an amazing number of award nominations and wins, including Best Dramatic Short and Audience Choice Award at the Sonoma International Film Festival,
Special Jury Prize at the International Short Filmmaking, Amsterdam Film Festival Van Gogh Awards, Special Jury Prize at the Mexico International Film Festival, Le Coup de Coeur Jury Prize at the Festival du Film Merveilleux in Paris, Best Effects at the FantaSci Short Film Festival, Best Film of the Month, Best Fantasy Film, Best Make-Up, Best Visual Effects and Best Film Poster at the Olympus Film Festival and Best Narrative Short at the Vegas Movie Awards”
Woodman was also nominated for seven LEO awards which is the annual BC film and TV awards, including Best Performance for Peter New and Best Screenwriting. “We won Best Makeup for the amazing work of our makeup artist Brendan Mainusch.”
Canada’s national broadcaster, the CBC, picked two of the Crazy8s films that year to showcase. Woodman was one of the two.
The film was produced by Roz Young, Rory Tucker and Avi Glanzer.
If you missed it on TV (or don’t live in Canada) you can watch the film on Youtube.
So what’s next for Jackson and New? How about an independent feature? The two are busy working on a time travel comedy called Time Helmet. Jackson is directing and New will star. “We still have to shoot half the movie, though” Jackson says. “so we’re probably still a year out from completion.”
