James Street in downtown Wallaceburg was shut down for a few hours on Sunday, as filming took place for the local film – Red Ryan.
Aaron Huggett, the director for the film, brought in volunteer actors – dressed in 1930s attire – to shoot a bank robbery scene. Huggett said the researching for the movie dates back to 2010.
“It kind of came about organically,” he said.
“I didn’t intend it to be a movie back then, I just got interested in the story. I kept peeling away layers and doing more research, finding more natural twists in the story. At some point I was just like ‘man, someone should make this into a movie’ and I kind of have a background in that. So it just clicked with me one day, well I could do that.”
Huggett and his crew spent the afternoon in Wallaceburg, before heading to Dresden to shoot a quick scene as well.
Huggett said the film got off to a great start, after receiving recognition from Scriptapalooza .
“So I started with a screenplay and made some revisions, but really I just considered it a rough draft at that point,” he said. “I submitted it to Scriptapalooza back in 2013, just more or less to get some feedback on it. They really liked it so they made it a Top 100 screenplay in 2013, which means they basically promote it to top tier productions companies in L.A and New York for a year in their catalogue.”
Huggett added: “So if a company is looking for say a romantic comedy, they go to Scriptapalooza and say send off your three best romantic comedy screenplays and they would request them, read them and the one that they like they would seek production rights to. That’s kind of the stage we are at.”
Huggett said they had several companies that had an interest in the screenplay, but he did not want the “souther Ontario” feel lost in the film.
“Our concern was that if we just sold it than it would get changed,” he said. “They could take some of the elements of it and then they would set it in L.A or set it in New York and this great piece of southern Ontario history again would be kind of lost to an American production.”
Huggett said his last feature film was shot in Minneapolis back in 2009 and came out in 2011, and is now in 60 countries.
“We have kind of got some distribution channels in place so for this one we thought we can kind of wade into it,” he said. “We will do the short film and we will do it in such a way that the footage that we shoot for the short we can use for the feature length version if we choose to go into production early next year on the feature. So basically we will take the short and put it through top tier festivals first and then take it as proof of concept to film investors and raise the capitol to finish the feature next year.”
Huggett said this is a unique approach to creating a film.
“I am not aware of it being done before,” he said. “I guess it’s kind of a new model. Just from working over the years, I have friends in a number of different of circles and networks of filmmakers all over Canada and the U.S and it’s one that people are really watching because if it works it’s a new model for transitioning a project towards a feature.”
Huggett said doing a feature film is a huge undertaking, especially right of the bat.
“If you can do it in such a way that you have a proof of concept for your investors in advance and something that distributors can look for so that you can secure distribution even before you secure your feature film financing, than it would be a model that a lot of people can use,” he said. “We are kind of pioneering it a little bit. Either way, the worse case scenario, we would come out with a great 30-minute short film that tells this piece of local history and something that everyone involved in it can be proud of.”
Here is our previous article, where Huggett describes the film in more detail: Movie being shot in Wallaceburg and Dresden
Here are some photos we shot of the filming held in Wallaceburg:
