Scene PG | November 2015

LOCAL EVENTS AND MUSIC

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NOVEMBER2015

Free!

A BEAUTIFUL BOUNTY

ROANNE WHITTICASE PAGE 04

COURT JESTER

RICH ABNEY PAGE 12

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local events and music

CONTENTS06 A BEAUTIFUL BOUNTY Roanne Whitticase

KEEPING THE DREAM ALIVE

Dreamland School of the Arts

OPENING THE WINDOWS TO THE SOUL

Erin Filan

LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE GIRL

DJ Riki Rocket

COURT JESTER Rich Abney

16 THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME(WORK) 18 UNDER THE UMBRELLA 20 INDEPENDENTS’ DAY 22 INDEPENDENTS’ DAY 26

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KARAHI KING

2015 Winner of the Northern Taste Challenge Homework

DUC

Chad Magnant John Chuby

AVAILABLE ON-LINE AT:

www.pgcitizen.ca or thescenepg.com General Inquiries ‹ 250-562-2441 Publisher ‹ Colleen Sparrow Editor ‹ Neil Godbout Reader Sales ‹ Alan Ramsay Director of Advertising ‹ Dave Smith Founder ‹ Norm Coyne Graphic Designer ‹ Candice Rosenbaum Writer ‹ Charelle Evelyn Photographers ‹ Trevor Moore Photographers ‹ Brett Cullen

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We’re late! The first issue of year 6 of the Scene PG magazine and we are coming out a few weeks behind... The good news is this is because behind the scenes we have a ton of great stuff in the works for PG. You likely have noticed the Scene has been more active in hosting events in the city over the last few months. Make sure you follow our Facebook and Twitter to keep up to speed with us in between issues. Also, watch for a new website coming soon ...

And now, for this issue...in each issue of the Scene, we try to do something completely different. For this issue, instead of using clothes our fashion shoot used original artwork from Roanne Whitcase. I think you will agree that the the results are positively unique.

We are thrilled to be featuring a couple of local filmmakers in our current edition. It is exciting to watch the community of video artists grow in PG and Northern BC. Watch for this as a more ongoing piece in future issues.

Finally, we are always looking for stories. If you know an artist, musician, or someone who you think is a story we should be telling, make sure you reach out and Share it with us. Happy October! Enjoy our LATEst edition...

- Norm Coyne Scene PG

THE SCENE PG IS A PRODUCT OF

Please Recycle ON THE COVER: Model: Nicky Quinlan | Outfit Design: Roanne Whitticase | Photo Credit: Trevor Moore

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y t n u o B l u f i t u a e AB n

By Charelle Evely

Born and bred in Prince George, Roanne Whitticase has ample inspiration for her mixed media fare, bringing together pieces of nature to create unique works of art.

Whether she’s combining dried flowers with sunglasses or bark and witches hair with a needle and thread, the artist behind the Scene PG’s cover fashion isn’t afraid to experiment, get a little messy and see where her

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imagination leads.

This spring, Whitticase decided to devote more time to the pursuit of art, and now her work can be found around the city at the Prince George Farmers’ Market, Studio 2880, Underground Art below Books and Co. and online at thewittycase-shop.ca.

The Scene: How did you get into this type of art?

Roanne Whitticase: I’ve always collaged – always. I think I just developed into enjoying more

so doing the assemblage, mixed media where there’s basically no limits to what materials you use. I’m always drawn to using a lot of things just found in nature.

There’s just so much beautiful stuff out there like dried flowers and a lot of that. I always tend to incorporate a lot of things in nature around us. It’s fun, being able to do that. There are no boundaries to what you can do with it.

TS: Have you always been into art?

RW: My whole family’s artistic.

My sister has the more natural ability, like she could draw your face perfectly. I was never really that, I was more into the different, abstract, weirder stuff, I guess. When I was 15, I didn’t have a bare space on a wall or the ceiling – it was entirely collaged.

I don’t know why my parents let me do that. I always dabbled in it.

TS: What’s your process? Do you find the material first to inspire you or do you look for things to fit an idea?

A Beautiful Bounty | Roanne Whitticase

RW: It goes both ways. Quite often it will be something that I see that I want to make something with. Other times, like with the dresses, you have a fun idea and then think ‘how would I make that work?’

fun. I just think it will be great to be around other artists where there’s endless possibilities to learn... It’s not necessarily easy to walk into the art community but you slowly learn once you put yourself out there.

TS: What’s been the response since you’ve started putting yourself and your art out in public forums.

TS: Do you find it easy to put yourself out there?

RW: I’ve had a lot of people come by (at the farmers’ market) and stand there and talk and give neat advice, which is great because I’m going into the artist world blind. I never had formal training.

TS: What’s the most helpful thing you’ve been told so far?

RW: I want to start going to the Maker’s Lab and to the studio for

RW: Yeah, I’d say so. I’m maybe too overly ambitious at points.

But that’s the nice thing about art that doesn’t intimidate me: there’s so much you can learn but so much you can learn along the way and there’s nothing wrong with that. There are a lot of professions where you have to have specific, precise skill set to do it at all. But art is so subjective that leaning along the way isn’t as intimidating.

Outfit design by Roanne Whitticase.

Photo Credit: Trevor Moore

A Beautiful Bounty | Roanne Whitticase

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Keeping the

Dream Alive

By Charelle Evelyn

Photo Credit: Submitted

In the realm of the performing arts, mainstream works often follow a standard form: the movements in a symphony, the sections of a sonata, the acts of a play.

But Jeremy Stewart is well known for eschewing artistic convention, so it’s no surprise that his latest venture with wife Erin would also seek to break the mould.

Since it opened its doors in September 2014, Dreamland School of the Arts has sought to carve out a new niche in the world of education and community.

“The big thing for us is a belief in access to performance experience and the social aspect of music in general,” said Stewart, who noted that most studios and schools have a regular, albeit limited, schedule of student recitals. “We’re still getting it off the ground, but a big part of the concept was that we would have a venue space in our building so that we could have an accelerated schedule of

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recitals and more performance opportunities for students.”

To that end, the Stewarts secured a lease on a downtown building that not only had the classroom space, but also a sizeable framework suitable for performances.

The 1010 Fourth Ave. location was practically purpose built for Dreamland, given its previous incarnation as a dance studio kitted out by Judy Russell.

But don’t think you need to be a student to walk through the doors and be a part of dream.

In January, Dreamland launched Later On – an afterhours coffeehouse borne out of a suggestion by friend, Dreamland teacher and frequent collaborator Raghu Lokanathan.

Set for every odd-numbered Friday of the month (i.e. Feb. 13, Feb. 27, etc), Later On offers the opportunity for arts-minded individuals to let their freak flag fly with music, poetry and all the coffee they can drink when all the other venues have turned in for the night after 10 p.m.

“After he suggested that idea I really started to run with it

and think about what kind of experience would we like that to be and for it to be something that’s darker, edgier, more surreal, stranger, more absurd than other events,” said Stewart. “I started to realize this is something that we’ve never had where those kind of aesthetic values are the focus of any concert series here. To me, it’s so Prince George. I think the surreality of daily life here can be a major topic of conversation for people. “ Another major element of the Dreamland ideology is the ready availability of group and ensemble programs.

“It was a common problem when I was teaching at other studios where I would have students who would get to the point where they’re not going to make a lot more progress unless they can start playing with people – they’ve become fairly advanced and it’s time to branch out and acquire some new experiences.

And they would say to me ‘who should I jam with?’” Stewart recalled.

Instead of putting up a flyer at

the local music store looking for collaborators, students and teachers are encouraged to work together – regardless of instrument.

Slowly but surely, the formula seems to be working. In less than six months of existence, Dreamland and its 10 instructors had about 100 students.

Dreamland offers instruction in voice, guitar, bass, piano, violin, accordion, banjo and drums as well as some visual arts.

And just because something isn’t on the curriculum doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a place at the school.

Stewart said he believes Dreamland has more potential than it’s currently realizing and welcomes ideas and suggestions that will take advantage of the school’s infrastructure and platform.

“Our program didn’t come down from the mount on stone tablets.

We want to keep it growing and keep it really dynamic. “ Find Dreamland online at dreamlandschoolofthearts. tumblr.com or on Facebook.

Keeping the Dream Alive | Dreamland School of the Arts

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Opening the Windows

to the soul

By Charelle Evelyn

If you think you’re hiding your bad day behind a smile, chances are Erin Filan sees right through you.

“I think I connect to people’s emotions and behaviours more on a deeper level than the face value,” said Filan, who for the past three years has been putting those inner struggles to paper.

But just because her pencil and charcoal drawings seem to showcase a mood often described as “dark,” Filan isn’t a morbid person. Rather, she’s a realist who taps into human emotion as opposed to pouring her own psyche on the page, finding physically dark spaces – where light is absent – soothing and opportunities for reflection.

“Talking about emotions and being an emotional drawer to me are two different things,” she said. “I think understanding emotion and putting that understanding on to paper is

how I draw compared to drawing my emotion.”

Thanks to posting her work on social media and now on her website, VelvetLeadDesign. com, Filan has commissions for portraiture coming in from around the world.

It keeps the mother of two (who works at a bank during the day) busy in her downtime, plotting meticulous pencil lines that seem to shape images from neither grid nor logical progression.

While most people would be upset by coal in their Christmas stocking, Filan is perfectly content with hers getting weighed down by charcoal and pencil lead.

Superstitiously, she has used the same green mechanical pencil for every piece for the past three years.

But don’t bother buying her an eraser. Any errant pencil marks either have to be incorporated into the piece or Filan starts over – even if she’s already put in multiple hours of work.

Photo Credit: Brett Cullen 8

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Opening the Windows to the soul

| Erin Filan

A doodler in high school, Filan put down the pencil for nearly 20 years, letting post-secondary school, a career and family take precedence. But she jumped back in a few years ago and with her first exhibition at Two Rivers Gallery under her belt, Filan is slowly coming around to the idea of being a “self-proclaimed artist.”

From the Outside In ran for a month beginning June 11 and it was a process that was both nerve-wracking and humbling for Filan, who had begun by holding

Opening the Windows to the soul

| Erin Filan

her work to the public eye via Facebook and had never publicly stood in front of it.

“I almost felt a little vulnerable because a lot of these feelings, even though they may be so generic or even universal across the board, a lot of people won’t admit they feel this way so they’re going to interject the drawings onto my own personality,” said Filan. “So they’re going to be like ‘Oooh, Erin’s got problems.’

When actually I don’t have a problem but we all have one. I’m just choosing to talk about it.”

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Let's hear it

l r i g e h t for

By Charelle Evelyn

There are a lot of things you can call DJ Riki Rocket: drifter, teacher, filmmaker, fearless, lucky – the list goes on.

But what you can’t call the Prince George native, is someone who is lacking a good story to tell.

From living on a Mexican nudist beach to spinning for a Naomi Campbell photo shoot, Riki’s penchant for breaking new ground and doing away with a plan has landed her some amazing opportunities.

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By the age of 17, Riki had left Prince George to live the ski-hill dream in Jasper. An avid alpine ski racer, she eventually got into snowboarding and boarder cross.

“In my mind I was going to be a pro snowboarder, so right away I booked a ticket to New Zealand to go to ride half pipe,” Riki recalls.

With no plans and no connections, Riki stepped off the plane and into a new life.

Photo Credit: Submitted

Let’s hear it for the girl | DJ Riki Rocket

By the time she returned to Canada, she had had hitchhiked all over the south island, discovered the underground nightclub scene.

Back in Prince George and bitten again by the urge to do something else, Riki and a friend headed to England with the sole goal of partying in London.

“So we end up going to this club called Heaven and to me that’s exactly what it was. Seeing it from those eyes, I felt like it was 10 floors of clubbing madness,” Riki said. “It was probably two, maybe three. There just seemed like there were rooms everywhere and everything was new and great.”

One side trip to the coastal town of Brighton later, and Riki was hooked.

“My friend and I were going there just for a party, I stayed there for 10 years.”

The passion for the music that would turn into booking gigs as Riki Rocket was forged from Brighton’s eccentric, artistic environment.

“It’s where I first started actually DJing. It was the first place I studied film and worked on my first films; my first school for film and for music production as well; and first loves. It’s very close to my heart.”

Riki began working in clubs, watching other DJs, collecting her own vinyl. And as she got behind the decks herself, she was quickly informed if she wasn’t hitting the right notes.

“You would never really play anything sort of mainstream,” Riki said of gigs at genre-specific nights and venues. “Even if you had a funky house version of a Katy Perry song, it would be, ‘you played Katy Perry.’ It wouldn’t go down.”

Though she started out playing more hip hop and R&B, Riki now specializes in vocal and electro house, bassline, mashups and indie dance.

Unlike in Brighton where she would regularly play all-female DJ nights and in Vancouver, DJing is still a male-dominated field in smaller locales.

“It’s a lot of dudes, a lot of dudes definitely,” Riki laughed.

But none of that detracts from her love of the game.

“For some people it’s a job. For me it’s a passion, it’s a hobby and I get pumped on music.”

Check out www.djrikirocket.com for info and mixtapes.

Let’s hear it for the girl | DJ Riki Rocket

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Court

r e t s Je

By Charelle Evelyn

There were two framed portraits in Rich Abney’s bedroom that probably seemed a little out of place for a teenaged boy.

The fact that Norm Macdonald and David Letterman – two dry, sometimes polarizing, comedians – had places of honour on his wall says something important about the CKPG sports director.

Abney, 29, who recently had the chance to see his childhood hero Macdonald live in Kelowna, lights up when talking about the Canadian comedian who was famously fired from his Saturday Night Live Weekend Update gig in 1998 – only to immediately appear on the Letterman’s Late Show and laugh the whole thing off.

“I really think he’s the best at bombing in the world. Like, when it might to seem to some people like he’s bombing, if he’s on Letterman or something, he’s getting joy from it,” said Abney.

“I think, to this day, if I say some silly joke in our news and it’s crickets – that’s almost better to me than some obvious, laughout-loud joke.”

Abney’s penchant for telling bad jokes and reeling off corny puns during the nightly broadcasts is nothing new. But this summer, one of them seemed to strike a chord.

Following a story about lettuce grown on the International Space Station, Abney chimed in a crack about it being better than the romaine getting harvested from Uranus. Co-anchor Camille MacDonald made a gif-worthy face and the clip went viral.

“I was amazed,” said Abney, who was fielding a flood of Facebook friend requests from strangers and interview requests from places as far-flung as Australia and Spain (which he turned down).

He was the subject of clickbait headlines on GQ and EW and Time magazine’s online properties.

Abney took it all in stride, kept on with his normal work and eventually the furor died down – though he still deals with the occasional “Uranus” called to him from while stopped at a red light.

Raised in West Kelowna, Abney wanted to parley a passion for sports into a career behind a sports desk. A well-bruised and reassembled hockey player, he applied for BCIT’s broadcast journalism program before wrapping up high school. A rejection letter sent him to Okanagan College where he began a path towards becoming an elementary school teacher.

But after playing in the college’s now-defunct hockey league, Abney was recruited to do press for the team.

“I remember seeing my stuff in the newspaper and thought ‘well this is fun.’ I liked interviewing the guys, getting the stuff, sending it in and seeing it sort of manifest

itself the next day when people open up the paper,” he said.

He reapplied for BCIT and was off to Vancouver within a couple of months for the two-year program where it was at times trying for a sports-oriented WHAT to navigate a school looking to produce the next Peter Mansbridge.

But Abney stayed on task and was hired halfway through his studies (he finished his diploma remotely), coming to Prince George last November where he made it his mission to put the local back into the sports package of the nightly news.

“No one’s watching CKPG to find out how the Canucks did the day before and I haven’t shown a pro sports highlight in a year and a half,” said Abney, who works seven days a week to make that happen.

For a 10-minute appearance on television, Abney is putting in exponentially more work. A oneman sports department, he also shoots and edits all of his stories.

“I think it’s way more exciting

for people to see themselves or their cousins or neighbours or classmates on TV, so the response has been really good,” he said.

The fact that he didn’t run any Super Bowl or World Cup highlights is point of pride for Abney.

“If you told me two years ago I would know the name of every high school football player in Prince George or girls’ hockey or whatever it is, I would have called you crazy but the feedback and the reaction is more than enough to make me want to do it.”

Another point of pride his is national Radio Television Digital News Association award. He picked up the hardware at a ceremony in Toronto in June for a story on acceptance and sportsmanship at an elementary school relay race that also earned him a provincial honour.

“I’m comfortable being myself on air. I get to tell positive stories,” said Abney. “I get to do something pretty cool every day.”

Photo Credit: Brett Cullen

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Court Jester | Rich Abney

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CARNEVIL SET TO RETURN TO CN CENTRE

The CarnEVIL is coming back to the CN Centre this Halloween and and its BIGGER, BADDER, and BETTER than before!

Featuring world class DJs & MC, circus performers, live visuals and projection mapping, a $1000 best costume prize, and a Halloween event unlike anything you’ve ever experienced! After a successful first year sell out with 1400

attendees the CarnEVIL crew is stepping it up with increased production and some new talent for this year. Headlining the event will be festival favourites from Whistler, BC - SkiiTour. This dynamic duo brings their unique brand of high energy party rocking and will be accompanied by West Coast rapper and MC Def 3. Def 3 recently took home the honour of Western Canadian Music Awards - Rap Recording Of The Year for his album new Wildlif3.

For your visual entertainment we

have INEO Studio who specialize in projection mapping and visualizations. Back once again this year are crowd favourites Cosmic Co Motion who specialize in aerial art performances, glow shows, go-go dancing, stilt walkering, and visual effects they have the perfect twist of excitement, danger, and sexuality!

Remember tickets sold out last year over a week in advance so head to ticketmaster.ca or the CN Centre Box office to grab yours today!

carnEVILII SS A AT. T. O OC C T. T. 33 11

H HE EL LL L FF R RE EE EZ ZE E SS O OV VE ER R

$

1000

BEST COSTUME

ALONGSIDE MC

DEF3

Þ DJ ANT ˜ BLAINE ESTBY ˜ DJ NIGE COSMIC CO MOTION t INEO STUDIOS CN CENTRE 2187OSPIKA BLVD TIX $29.99 AT TICKETMASTER.CA*LIMITED VIP TICKETS AVAILABLE DOORSOPEN 8PM AERIAL/ACRO/GLOW CIRCUS PERFORMERS

P G ’ s B I G G E S T H A L L O W E E N PA RT Y

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SCENESTYLE Clothing designed by Roanne Whitticase | Photo Credits: Trevor Moore

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Karahi King

By Chris Dias

As it should be known to many, Karahi King was the recent 2015 winner of the Northern Taste Challenge, where several local restaurants competed in an IronChef-style contest.

The event had the requisite secret ingredients, oversized red clock, and a charismatic celebrity

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host. In the end, the “king” was… well…King—well, actually queen if one were specific. The win was not just deserved; it was earned.

Some of the dishes were epic, like a yogurt kebab—fried yogurt is apparently a thing now. The moment I sampled that, I knew there was genius at work.

Yes, your Sherlockian deduction is correct—I was a judge at said

Karahi King | 2015 winner of the Northern Taste Challenge

competition, the benefits of being a food critic. So by saying the victory was earned, I speak from firsthand experience. To put it bluntly, Karahi King is not only the best Indian restaurant in town but also one of the best restaurants in the entire city.

The décor, very often postscript with these establishments, is exquisitely ethnic, reaching inches from an echelon reserved for top-end bistros. Tables are topped by red cloth and sandwiched under flawless squares of glass. Napkins are folded fabric in empty glasses, not paper pulled from a cheap tin dispenser. The plates themselves are whimsical. Spotlights accentuate the shadows. Karahi King is one of the few Indian restaurants I’ve been to where I don’t have to excuse its faults.

It replicates all the positives of other Indian establishments without repeating any of their mistakes.

And for the curious, those yoghurt

kebabs are now a permanent fixture on the menu, referred to as Dahi-Ke-Kebab, and although their most expensive appetizer, the serving size is closer to a full meal. I enjoy the fact that Karahi King doesn’t feel the need to embellish chili powder like so many other places. Jagdish Gill lets the aromas of her homeland take you on a culinary journey, one where you’re introduced to the wonders of fenugreek, cloves and coriander.

The one aspect of Indian food I appreciate is that I’ve never met an Indian chef that phoned it in.

Sure, there are those that rely on more westernized expectations, but I don’t’ recall every having a bad experience in an Indian restaurant, and maybe that’s the perch atop I place Karahi King.

The best Indian restaurant is quite bull’s-eye to hit, and Karahi King has most definitely found its mark.

Read my full review at princegastronome.tumblr.com

Photo Credits: Bo Dannefaer Karahi King | 2015 winner of the Northern Taste Challenge

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There’s no place like

Home(work)

By Charelle Evelyn

There’s no charred furniture or singed clothing on the sales floor, but the memory of the May 6 fire that destroyed Homework’s downtown Prince George location is still fresh for Anthony Voitik.

Watching a movie at home with their family, Voitik and wife Louise Fonda – co-managers of the gift, fashion and home decor store – received a phone call from their security company that the Third Avenue property’s smoke detector had been triggered after a fire had broken out in the neighbouring building.

“I just drove down there as quick as I could and when I got there, the flames started leaping to our second floor,” Voitik recalled.

The blaze spread through that second floor and that was it. The first floor wasn’t engulfed, but it sustained water and smoke damage as well as more damage from the ceiling falling through.

A fire is devastating in any circumstance, but those behind Homework felt it even more keenly having just reopened in the new location after six months of renovations.

“It was a complete shocker,” Voitik said. The nearly centuryold heritage building had been repurposed to blend the historic with the modern.

“It was so nice – like a gallery, almost. I felt it really showcased everything in the store really well,” said Voitik.

Since opening on Oct. 10, 2007, Homework has become a Prince George staple for anyone looking for unique and fun merchandise, following on the heels of its older sister store in Prince Rupert,

headed by David Smook and Lucy Pribas.

After the blaze, Voitik and Fonda had to have some serious conversations with their business partners about the next steps – including whether to just call it a day.

“There definitely was a consideration on the table. You have option A, B and C. We definitely didn’t want to do that but we had to weigh everything and make the right decision,” Voitik said. “Thankfully the support from the community was a really huge boost. There were so many people on our Facebook page commenting every day and really excited to have us back.”

Barely two months after the fire, Homework reopened in Pine Centre Mall (it’s next to Sears) and has settled nicely into its new environment – so nicely that the previous tenant’s flooring and fixtures complement the Homework aesthetic so well there was little the Voitik and Fonda had to add to make it their own.

While the new location has brought new challenges – such as requiring more staff and bringing in different product lines so that they weren’t in direct competition with other mall tenants – it has also brought Homework new clientele and a renewed vigor.

Plans are in the works to rebuild and reopen in the nowdemolished downtown location and bring the total of Homework stores in the city to two.

“We were planning to start a mall location eventually,” Voitik said. “We’re just doing things backwards now.”

Photo Credit: Submitted 18

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There’s no place like Home(Work) |

Homework

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Under the Umbrella

By Charelle Evelyn

“Business is tough,” said Digital Umbrella Creative’s Elisha Brown, “but it doesn’t always have to be serious.”

B

rown’s business, launched in May 2014, creates media materials and marketing products. Together with web designer Lakeysha O’Neill, Brown is able to use her skills as a graphic designer – and bubbly personality – to help make clients pop.

Just take a look at the logo and website for Northern FanCon. Brown’s design won the event’s Facebook contest for design, which opened the door for O’Neill to craft the website.

“That was just fun,” said Brown of the logo designs they both submitted. “That wasn’t work for us. We wanted to make sure with where we are in business and the name we’re trying to establish for ourselves, that we are part of the community and wish to be involved in these kinds of events and contests. It’s a lot of fun for us to do because we’re passionate about it - something we get to play at after hours.”

Brown and O’Neill met while both taking part in College of New Caledonia’s New Media Communications and Design Program.

While Brown was well versed in the arts – both theatrical and visual – but out of practice, O’Neill joked that visual arts weren’t exactly her forte.

But web design, thanks to an enthusiastic elementary school teacher, had left an impression.

“We were in Grade 5 or 6 and we were making websites

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Under the Umbrella | DUC

Photos captured by Like a Lion Photography Hair and Makeup done by Pinups, Punks & Pretty Things Clothing and Accessories provided by Homework Layout and Digital Art designed by DUC

and flash animations,” O’Neill recalled. “It was really exciting. I remember loving it, excelling at it and teaching other kids how to do it.”

M

entors – and strong support systems at home – have played a major role in the Digital Umbrella Creative origin story. For Brown, Lorna Steffensen at the provincial employment services agency helped kick her back in the design direction after a career in business and event management started to feel stagnant.

Now Brown and O’Neill want to help others be just as dynamic by removing the mystery about marketing tools.

“One thing we both agreed upon, right at the beginning, was taking down the veil you tend to find between client and designer,” Brown said. “We want them to leave the project knowing more about how to make their business brand better – from being able to manage, or have someone in their employment manage, the content of the website, to seeing the difference between a vector image and a bitmap image – understanding better the details of what we do.”

Find Digital Umbrella Creative online at

www.coolduc.com

design@coolduc.com DUC is now located at THINC. Coworking 350 Quebec Street, Prince George, BC

Photo Credit: Submitted

Under the Umbrella | DUC

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INDEPENDENTS’ DAY

By Charelle Evelyn

The reluctant genius Chad Magnant never intended to get behind the camera.

But after years of prodding from high-school friends who wanted him involved in projects, he finally gave in about four years ago.

The Prince-George raised Magnant always had a creative streak.

“I was always into music and I was doing music,” said Magnant, whose industrial Scorpion Frequency work can be found online and in film.

The availability of technology made it harder for Magnant to resist film.

“Everything’s so cheap now – like cameras – it was almost stupid not to do it at this point.

I think more back in the day, in the 90s, it was so expensive even to do a low-budget movie. Now everyone’s shooting with offthe-shelf cameras and it looks good,” he said.

The writer-director’s credits include Defenseless, Through Blood Like Ice, Stalking and Pigboy and a variety of other short films. He also worked on the music video for Jeremy Breaks’ Come Down (shot in Barkerville) and directed William Kuklis’ Save Me (shot in P.G.).

He has regular collaborators, such as Norm Coyne and Michael Continued on page 24 Photo Credit: Submitted

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Independents’ Day | Chad Magnant

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ge 22 Continued from pa the writing is Kroestch, but said his gig. e writing out “I’ve been doing th use no one ca be of necessity – ed. “But when else will,” he laugh ally doing it, tu ac we get down to rative.” bo lla co ly ite it’s defin l seeing his ril th a It’s a bit of en, Magnant work on a big scre around the ls va sti said, when fe the films. His country pick up y – a found bo latest flick Pig ort – was footage-style sh Fright Night e th selected for l in Hamilton, Theatre Film Festiva Ont. to see people “It’s kind of cool g you made,” hin et watching som he said.

26 Continued on page

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Independents’ Day | Chad Magnant

Photo Credit: Submitted

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The unlikely duo Technically, it actually makes perfect sense that Daniel Stark and John Chuby ended up working together.

A University of Northern B.C. basketball player with a dislocated shoulder and a physiotherapist were probably fated to meet and start talking about film. Luckily for Stark and Chuby, that destiny was theirs to discover about two years ago.

In his senior year as a Timberwolf, Stark had plans for getting together with some Vancouver friends to shoot a swampmonster movie. He was finishing up his marketing degree and would have the time to finally do a big film project.

Chuby had already been testing the film waters and when colleagues heard about Stark’s plans, encouraged the two of them to put their movie minds together.

“Meeting Dan and actually finding someone that was actually into the same stuff and had the same kind of drive that I did with it was a huge asset because film’s not something you can do by yourself,” said Chuby. “There’s certain things

you can do, but with productions at the level we’re trying to do you need a creative team to pull things off.”

“It was love at first sight,” said Stark.

Chuby helped out with Stark’s Summit Lake shot horror film but the next collaboration was what really set them on their path.

Along with Chuby’s high school friend Jeremy Abbott, the trio put together a CBC ComedyCoup sit-com pitch Geoff and the Ninja, which made it just shy of the competition’s top five.

“Geoff and the Ninja opened up a new door for us. We decided that we have to keep riding this wave and put our smaller projects on hold for a while,” said Stark. The duo wants to take advantage of connections made through the process that have put eyes on their work.

They’ve spent the summer fleshing out the most-Canadian of feature film ideas: a hockeythemed horror comedy called Penalty Kill.

With the writing process wrapping up, Chuby and Stark are hoping to shoot a trailer and start finding financing over the next couple of months.

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Independents’ Day | John Chuby

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