After receiving a $10,000 grant from TELUS's funding program STORYHIVE, Marliss Weber's short film is complete.
Weber is a filmmaker and former Olds resident, now operating her own communications firm as well as working on a webseries called Necessary Evil.
Her short film is called Recruiting Hell and complements the webseries.
The 10-minute-long clip is done in mockumentary style and follows the human resources staff of literal corporate hell – Hell LLP – as they produce a recruitment video.
Weber's husband Randy Brososky directed and acts in Recruiting Hell. She said they drew on their own experiences as creatives-for-hire when producing the film.
"Absolutely. Both my husband and I have worked in communications for many years and so we have been tasked with producing things like recruiting videos and corporate videos of all sorts. It is certainly a reflection of some of the work we've done, some of the challenges we've come across in dealing with organizations," Weber said.
There were 30 finalists who received a $10,000 grant from STORYHIVE.
They have been trying to earn as many online votes as possible in hopes of winning career training, mentoring, distribution on select TELUS platforms and a trip to the Banff World Media Festival.
That festival would give producers a chance to pitch their ideas to those that can share them with the world.
"Bigwigs from Netflix and from Amazon and from the networks, it's sort of a think-tank where people discover new talent and figure out new ideas and make deals to try to produce things. It would be a huge win for us to get to the Banff World Media Festival," Weber said.
Voting closed on March 4.
Weber said Brososky has written a 15-episode story arch for Necessary Evil as well as mapped out the next three seasons. They just need to secure funds to produce them.
They plan to do that by building their following over social media. Content distributors are looking for productions that resonate with audiences. The more likes, views, shares and engagement Weber's work gets, the more interested they become.
"We're trying to build that large audience in the social media sphere so that when we take it to a broadcaster, they're more interested in our proposal because they can see we have a large audience and large following already behind us," she said. Recruiting Hell and the Necessary Evil pilot can be viewed at www.necessaryevilseries.com
"We're trying to build that large audience in the social media sphere so that when we take it to a broadcaster, they're more interested in our proposal because they can see we have a large audience and large following already behind us."MARLISS WEBERFILM-MAKER, FORMER OLDS RESIDENT
