Happy New Year!!
Starting 2019 we’ll keep you updated here on our day-to-day production and process behind our upcoming projects and past learning experiences on set.
We want to start this blog to share our adventure with you.
Over the past five years or so we’ve been lucky to experience a variety of sets, directors, actors, producers, and all of those interactions have helped to shape the direction we want to take our company.
And we’re speaking especially to new, beginning, aspiring filmmakers - we want to share wisdom we’ve picked up along our journey to hopefully inspire you to try new shots, take more risks, and not let budget stop you from achieving your goals.
We started this film production “company,” if you would dare to call it that at the start, with just one low-end pro-sumer camera, our classmates as “connections,” and a free download of student screenwriting software. With our Fanshawe textbooks in hand we began writing and filming our own work in our spare time with ideas we developed collaboratively. We entered a few film festivals, broadened our network of actors, and things took off slowly from there.
Running an independent film set is much more work than it seems, but it’s also so much more fun than filming in unreliable groups for the sole purpose of completing a school project. Having a dedicated group of artists focused on bringing something uniquely creative to life is an unrepeatable process specific to each project. It’s like having a film baby, every time.
With our current roster featuring Negative Underground Society, Auteur Independent Films, Crabmoose Pictures, and more we’re constantly looking to expand our connections and collaborations. We hope for OHFP to work with like-minded Canadian companies to help enrich Ontario’s film industry and continue to evolve as filmmaking creatives ourselves.
We have a variety of screenplays for feature films we’ve been working on developing currently as well as a few ideas for short films that have started to take shape in the recent months. Besides our frequent collaborators, we are always looking for individuals who are looking for experience on low budget non union sets. Our atmosphere on set is fairly laid back and casual much like our favourite experiences at Fanshawe. Having just finished principal photography on our upcoming feature film .44 we will be looking forward to getting back on set next summer when the time comes again.
We wish you all the best throughout 2019,
Jamara & Darryl
Executive Producers
Orange Hat Film Productions