For Campbell River product Steve Michell, it’s been a long, storied road from his days seeing the world from behind the bar to seeing it behind the camera – a road 15 years in travelling. Over those years, it’s also been a labour of love.
This year, that labour has a name, in the form of the web series Michell created: Tips. Michell won a $10,000 grant from Telus storyhive to create this series. Now he and his team are in the running for a $50,000 grant to complete their first season.
It is a voting based competition and you can see their show and and vote at http://www.storyhive.com/project/show/id/1290 from now until Friday Aug. 12 at 12 p.m.
At the start of his journey, Michell discovered a love for telling stories with a camera, and with the fine art of film production, as a student at Timberline Secondary School, where he studied under now-retired principal Kevin Harrison.
Simultaneously, he was also beginning to explore the finer points of hospitality, first as a line cook at McDonald’s, then as a sautee cook at Moxies Classic Grill later that year.
His appetite for both film and the culinary arts whetted, Michell moved on to Victoria and devoted himself to another six months in a Moxie’s kitchen.
It’s at this point that the two distinct arcs of Michell’s professional life started to merge.
It’s not just dishes and recipes that make up a culinary professional’s life, after all. There’s also the chemistry involved in knowing the people who come through a restaurant’s doors, which soon became to saturate Michell’s storytelling mind with their unique, occasionally flat-out zany stories.
The result was the concept for a Jackass-style reality series called Pointless, based on the words and antics of those colourful, often unpredictable characters – characters Michell would soon encounter in greater numbers, when he assumed the role of assistant manager at Nautical Nellie’s, a fine-dining establishment in Victoria’s downtown harbour.
Eventually, drawn deeper into the type of storytelling only possible through a lens, Michell decided to roll the hard six. In 2014, he was admitted as a student at Vancouver Film School, enrolling as part of the prestigious institution’s film production program in 2015.
It was at this point that Michell met another of Tips’s principals: director Geordie Joseph.
Joseph found his way to VFS from the far side of the country, having grown up in a small town in Nova Scotia on the east coast. From humble origins, the idea of becoming a filmmaker — much less relocating to the other side of the country in order to do so – was a tall order for the emerging filmmaker.
Still, through experience as a playwright and director at theatre festivals in New Brunswick and a brief stint studying English and philosophy at Mount Allison University, Joseph leaned on the never-say-die inspiration he drew from family, particularly his father.
The year Joseph was born, his father went from equally humble beginnings to take his place among the ranks of Canada’s Olympic men’s hockey team, back in 1994. Undeterred, no matter how lofty the dream of filmmaking, Joseph dropped out of Mount Allison, rolled the hard six himself, and found his way to Vancouver Film School, where he and Michell found one another. Along the way, he also directed two short films, titled Magnolia’s Dollhouse and Glass Doors.
Tips, which came together when Joseph and Michell began working together at Milestone’s – the location for the web series – during their last months of film school, would be the young director’s third project.
After pitching the idea for Tips, their showcase of an after-hours world, Michell and Joseph were successful, being awarded $10,000 to film and produce the pilot episode.
In the same organic way that the two creators came together, they enlisted the help of friends, peers and colleagues in the film world, such as producer Jordan Rivera, cinematographer Leah Cohen, production designer Savina Chen, and Nick Nadon, who serves as Tips’ editor. Other talent soon joined: novelist Steve Hof and comic Ben Melanson would write the episode, while casting director
Check out TIPS online starting on Aug. 7, and be sure to vote to make future episodes of Tips – a uniquely west coast taste of Canadiana that happens when it’s almost time for last call – a reality.
