Westman-filmed movie in the works

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This article was published 13/05/2021 (1815 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Fresh out of film school, 24-year-old Alec Chambers has directed and co-written his first feature film.

“It’s like stepping into the major leagues,” he said of directing a full-length movie right out the gate.

The trailer for “Whispers in the Wheat” was released last month and sets the stage for a dark tale of crime and suspense.

“I wanted it to be a multi-layered emotional ride,” Chambers said. “It’s a crime thriller, so I wanted it to be suspenseful, but there are relationships dealt with so it has an emotional component to it.”

The movie was filmed over the course of 15 days last August, in Brandon, Winnipeg and a rural farm in Rossendale.

Prairie Mountain Health came under level orange COVID-19 restrictions in the midst of filming, but producer Miles Crossman said the Rossendale farm they set much of the action was “on the good side of the highway” just outside of the Westman-based health region.

Even so, the pandemic was a constant presence throughout filming, with various steps undertaken to mitigate the virus’s spread.

“There are so many things that go on on set that add stress and fatigue, and this is just something that added to that,” Chambers said.

The 15-day shoot also included a number of difficult scenarios, including filming at night in pouring rain.

Throughout it all, he said they followed the motto of famous director Christopher Nolan, who once said that no matter what, you just have to keep filming.

The project’s supportive crew persevered through it all.

“Once you start filming, you don’t see anyone else — you’re filming 16-hour days and it’s a straight slog getting the filming done,” Crossman said.

“I’m just really grateful for everyone on our team who dedicated their time,” Chambers said. “It really was our most community-orientated project I’ve ever been a part of.”

Team members, paid on a deferred basis pending the film finds success, were fuelled mainly by a passion for the project, which he said shows in their work.

He’s currently going through post-production alongside other crew members, and said the early results show promise.

Response to the trailer, released on YouTube, has also been uplifting, he said.

“It really just keeps us going and reignites that fire to keep on making stuff,” he said. “We’re so excited.”

Chambers said he has been interested in getting into film since his early childhood in Brandon, and that it has proven his clearest vessel for expression — more than art or the written word and their own.

This much was affirmed when he created a five-minute short film about his family while studying at the University of Manitoba.

“I got a pretty remarkable emotional response from my brother, and just seeing that lit a fire in me that said I need to keep doing this,” he said.

He went on to study at Vancouver Film School, where his skills were honed, before pitching the idea for “Whispers in the Wheat” to Winnipeg-based friend Rowan McCabe, with whom he’d studied film at the U of M.

Between the initial pitch in 2019 and filming the following year, the two honed the script, with Chambers considering McCabe “one of the founding fathers” of the movie.

A production company, Muddy Rivers Productions, was born, and Crossman, behind the Brandon-based The Grand Illusion Film Company, came on board to lend his expertise to the project.

“These are people who really want to go for it and have the gumption to try and make a feature from nothing, so we just banded together and pooled our resources to try and make it happen,” Crossman said, adding he was excited to see a Brandon-based filmmaker produce something filmed primarily in Westman.

The movie is about a man in his early 20s trying to connect with a father he grew up without and who disappears. He then sets out to conduct a heist to complete his father’s last score.

The protagonist’s attempts to find connections to his father offer the real “emotional core” to the store, Chambers said.

Although months removed from filming, he said the post-production stage is the most time-consuming.

“We’re at a stage now where we can really see it coming together.”

The intent is to complete it by the end of summer and then shop it around to various film festivals to see if it gets picked up.

Regardless of how that turns out, Chambers said his hope is to host two premieres — one in Brandon and one in Winnipeg — so local audiences have a chance to see it on the big screen.

» tclarke@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @TylerClarkeMB