A life, in short
After spending the whole day lugging around camera equipment, third-year Ryerson film students Michael Hurlbut, Michael Pierro and James Klopko almost forgot that their film was being screened at the Student Shorts Film Festival that evening.
"Where is it?" said Pierro, the editor.
"Some town hall, I'll have to check," said Hurlbut, the director.
The fifth annual Student Shorts Film Festival, held at Innis Town Hall at the University of Toronto, allows young filmmakers from around the world to expose their work to the public, fellow filmmakers and people in the industry.
The third-year film trio entered their documentary, Lavarius, which was filmed last year for an assignment in class. After attending Student Shorts last year, the group was inspired and decided to test their luck.
Although roughly only 10 per cent of the short films submitted to the festival are selected to screen, their project passed muster and landed a spot on the circuit.
Their film profiles the title artist who went through a devastating mental breakdown after being hit by a car, losing his job and becoming addicted to pills and alcohol.
"Ryerson always has four or five (films) that make it, meaning the quality of work produced at this school really stands up against the rest of Canada, and the world for that matter," said Iain Robinson, who started the festival with his classmates Erin Tee and Alex Galeote five years ago when they were all still film students attending Ryerson.
Hundreds of entries were screened and 42 were selected to be in the festival. With so few films being selected, Lavarius stood out for the three founders. "It was funny because we recognized the profile documentary that we all had to work on in second year," Tee said.
Robinson said the group was fortunate to find such an interesting character to profile. "They found a really interesting profile. It's hard to show character in five minutes but the film did it. It was also beautifully shot with the black and white, the colours and the textures. It was short, sweet and very successful."
Pierro was walking in the Gallery District on Queen Street West around midnight of last May when he came across Lavarius's works at the Show Gallery. The abstract swirls illuminated with black lights attracted Pierro to enter the only gallery open at that time. He mentioned that he was a Ryerson film student and Lavarius asked him to come back tomorrow to film him paint the next day.
"The original idea was to showcase a different type of person. He's a person that you might want to avoid on the street. We want to make him more relatable," Pierro said.
Cinematographer James Klopko prepared for a day of filming as he loaded film into the school-issued Arri ST 16mm camera that he used to shoot Lavarius. He said that the film quality was better and easier to work with.
Similarly, Lavarius said that the crew was easy to work with. "They allowed me to be in my flow and they were patient when I was thinking of what to paint," Lavarius said. "We were efficient. We shot it in one afternoon. There were no egos at all. Everybody's interests were in synch."
The hardest part of filming wasn't figuring how to use their $500 budget, which came out of the filmmakers' pockets (and mom and dad's), but instead it was getting the audio.
"(Lavarius) is so energetic and so all over the place, it's hard to get a straight sentence out of him. So we had to get creative with the editing," said Pierro.
"And he was pretty high," Hurlbut said.
Hurlbut changed his focus from music to directing when he saw Goodfellas at the age of 14.
On the night of the festival's premiere, Hurlbut, Pierro and Klopko ran into their film subject at the theatre lobby. The lights dimmed on the slate blue theatre and when the first film finished, black and white montages of Lavarius painting and talking about his addiction illuminated the 15- by 30-foot screen.
"It felt good. I haven't watched (the film) for a while so I was happy that I was still happy with it," Pierro said.
When the credits rolled and 150 pairs of hands applauded, Lavarius leaned in to whisper to the filmmakers, "that's the best thing you're going to see here. You're not going to see anything better."
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