Film with local ties eyes festival

A filmmaker with ties to the Yorkton area is hard at work on a new project in Saskatoon.

Gray Myrfield grew up in a small town near Buchanan, going to school in Canora, until he was 14 when the family moved to Saskatoon. He is now working on a short film entitled Daimons (www.daimons.ca).

"The idea came about as most of mine do, from late night browsing the internet," he said. "This one came from Wikipedia. I had stumbled on the seven deadly sins, and found that in some beliefs there is a prince of each sin.

"Asmodeus, which was Lust, was the one that got my wheels turning. See being the embodiment of lust you would assume a succubus or a woman in red, or something like that. But there was nothing like that. There were tons of different versions, but the idea of a dirty character with a limp, and a dark sense of humor spoke to me.

"This doesn't sound like a bad person; it's just the &*&** at the party.

"With this in mind I went through the history of the other princes and created my own story for each where they weren't necessarily the bad guy, what would they believe? What would they do? How have they influenced history? The film is about these seven, and how they interact with the world."

Like many small indie productions Daimons has taken literally years to come together.

"Writing took about two years or so, on and off with other projects," said Myrfield.

"Once auditions happened everything moved very quickly. It was early August and we had seventy people come out, (for eight major roles, and five or so minor roles mind you). September, we did the majority of the shooting, wrapping up in early October. Post Production is scheduled to be finished for spring 2014."

To help with the costs, Myrfield and company have taken Daimons to Kickstarter for crowdfunding support.

"Kickstarter was a right time, right place sort of thing," he said. "We had gone into the project planning on making it out of our own pockets. As it got bigger, that plan became harder.

"One of the cast members mentioned that Kickstarter was going to launch in Canada soon, so I put together a pitch video, and set out to be the first in Saskatoon. It looks like we were actually the first in Saskatchewan, which is pretty crazy. The Kickstarter has done well, and will cover a large amount of our promotion and marketing budget."

As for Myrfield, film is a natural progression for him.

"My background is in theater, writing and directing for the FLoYD Youth theater festival," he explained. "'Daimons' started as a script for the festival, but I couldn't make the script fit. It was my friend, Erich Jurgens, who gave me the idea to try and turn it to a film. We had done a few small YouTube videos before, and we were planning on doing the same here.

"However when we got started, People kept offering their support, Pulsworks Audio Arts, Zeroframe Productions, and a ton of talented actors. We thought to ourselves; alright let's see how big we can make this. Erich Jurgens took the main role as Director, and I handled Artistic decisions like makeup and costumes."

With post production under way, plans are also in place to get the film out to the masses.

"The release plan is to release each section as an episode online," said Myrfield. "Seven episodes and then a finale to wrap them all together. The episodes will be released weekly or bi-weekly until the finale, where instead we will have the premiere in Saskatoon with all of the episodes and the finale in the film cut. Later the finale will be released online as well."

And there is a plan connecting to Yorkton as well since Myrfield said he still holds childhood memories of Yorkton.

"Being the closest theater around, I remember seeing most of my childhood movies at the Yorkton Tower Theater," he said. "The first I can remember was 'Pokémon: The First Movie' in 1998, though I'm sure there was something before that.

"Even after moving to Saskatoon, with all the bigger and better theaters here, I still miss the Tower. It just had a great atmosphere, and being able to see 'Daimons' in it would mean a great deal to me."

And Myrfield said he does want to bring Daimons to Yorkton.

"After the premiere we plan on submitting the film cut to as many short film festivals as possible, starting with the Yorkton festival," he said.

You can follow the progress of Daimons on Facebook, www.facebook.com/DaimonsShortFilm and their kickstarter which concludes Thursday at www.kickstarter.com/projects/902245474/daimons-a-short-film