As the world’s most talented actors, set designers and filmmakers hit the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this month, a young Capilano University filmmaker was home in North Vancouver, proud to know his work was being recognized in the festival’s Short Film Corner showcase.
“It’s amazing that it got in,” says 20-year-old Capilano University School of Motion Picture Arts student Malibu Taetz of the 13-minute film, titled Accidental. “I was working really late at night on (another) film and I received the email and I couldn’t keep working because I was so excited.” Written by Taetz, and shot in four days, it was produced with a team of over a hundred including actors, musicians, visual effects specialists and cinematographers through the school’s Off the Grid film program, which takes place outside of Cap’s regular curriculum and provides support to promising filmmakers through the use of equipment and facilities.
Taetz, an avid French horn and trumpet player since childhood, drew on his experiences playing in the Kelowna City Band Orchestra and the Okanagan Symphony Youth Orchestra when writing the script. It follows a young French horn player who realizes mid-performance that he has mistakenly taken the music folder of a cello player sitting on the other side of the room, and he must clumsily navigate the musicians to return it.
“Just sitting in the back row among hundreds of other people and counting bars till the moment you get to play your note is such an exciting and beautiful experience. And I realized that’s (it’s something) that a lot of people, who haven’t played in orchestras (won’t understand). So I wanted to make a film that would show, what (it) was like.”
The French horn, one of the least graceful-looking instruments in the orchestra, says Taetz, mirrors the clumsiness of the protagonist, “who’s sort of an awkward character but has a lot to contribute to the symphony in the end.”
Taetz’ love of filmmaking was initially inspired by his father’s collection of VHS tapes featuring classic films from the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s which “I would watch everyday as a kid,” says the student, in his second year of Capilano’s four-year School of Motion Picture Arts program. His two biggest influences are silent film star Charlie Chaplin, “whose performances are so heartfelt but you’re laughing the whole time, which makes it even more real,” and It’s a Wonderful Life director Frank Capra, whose films “show the world as dark as it is but somehow end up with a beautiful, hopeful ending.”
Like Chaplin’s films, Accidental is silent, save for Antonin Dvorak’s “Symphony No. 9,” which Taetz describes as “adventurous”: “The simple journey of two people takes on such an epic scale when you put this score behind it.”
Since participation in the project was volunteer-based, Taetz says he is thankful to all who took part, including Long & McQuade which provided instruments, as well as Ambleside Orchestra, Vancouver Pops, Lynn Valley Black Bear Band and Brock House Orchestra.
With one short film under wraps, Taetz is now working on editing another short through Capilano’s Off The Grid Program. Return To Sender is a fantasy-adventure story about a clerk working in a celestial mailroom who must deliver a package containing the meaning of life.
For this production, he will once again draw on the expertise of cinematographer and Capilano University film program alumni Martin Dudzik, who took time off of work to help produce Accidental when the director of photography dropped out at the last minute. “It’s not my fault (Accidental) looks so good,” says Taetz, who admits he learned a tremendous amount about directing and cinematography from Dudzik.
Another one of Taetz’ mentors, instructor Michael Thoma, runs the Off the Grid program at Capilano University and first met Taetz when the student came to him for writing advice on the Accidental script. “For Off the Grid I look for students who are self-starters, who I don’t have to be on set all the time to watch, and that was another key factor with Malibu … He is very hardworking and courteous, and wants his films to be the best.”
When asked if Taetz has a future as a full-time filmmaker Thoma has this to say: “ideally these students are content creators and I see him as a success because he’s developing a unique voice inspired by (greats) such as Frank Capra.”
In other words, this likely won’t be Taetz’ last nod at Cannes.
