Film explores life, loneliness, lAyoffs in the oilpAtCh
Former engineer McKercher takes an insider look at life, loneliness and layoffs in the oilpatch
SPOTLIGHT
As part of the Calgary International Film Festival, Circle of Steel will screen Sept. 25 at 7 p.m. at the Globe Cinema and Sept. 30 at 11 a.m. at Eau Claire Cineplex. Visit calgaryfilm.com.
Throughout Gillian McKercher’s debut feature film Circle of Steel, there are scenes featuring a small group of oil and gas workers preparing for their work day.
Stuck in a remote and snowy field office in rural Alberta, all are clad in requisite blue coveralls. They robotically go through some morning exercises in the dark, unenthusiastically read weather reports to each other and joylessly chant a few safety-related mantras. It all seems very cult-like.
“Unless you work in it, it’s something that doesn’t really make sense to you,” explains McKercher, in an interview with Postmedia from her home in Calgary. “On one hand, you do all of these safety meetings because safety really does matter. I have so much respect for safety, it’s such a high priority of mine. But it is also ridiculous. It does become ritualistic and kind of stupid. But it’s something you do and you don’t question it. It adds shape to the day. It’s a way for people to see each other. If you’re spending 12 hours a day with people, you develop your own culture. It’s a culture where they ’re not going to church, they ’re just saying their safety moment every day at 7.”
Circle of Steel is a funny and occasionally sad exploration of life in Alberta’s oilpatch during an economic downturn. It’s loosely based on McKercher’s own experiences as a young engineer. From 17 to 22, she spent every summer working student jobs in oil and gas. She interned as an operations-engineerin-training, including stints in remote areas around Grand Prairie. After graduating from the University of Calgary, she spent four years as a project engineer on a reserves team out in the field. Like her film’s protagonist Wendy (nicely played by Alberta actress Chantelle Han), McKercher had mixed feelings about her fledgling career in oil and gas. Ambivalent about the job and the industry in general, she nevertheless felt deep pangs of anxiety when the downturn hit and layoffs seemed imminent. She lost her job in 2016.
Since then, she has turned full time to filmmaking. But she saw her former industry as one that was ripe for lampooning. While the satire in Circle of Steel is not broad or nasty, it does shine a light on some of the more absurd quirks of the industry, occasionally tossing in exaggerated and even surreal moments for satirical effect.
“When people think of satire, they think of The Office, which is screwball,” McKercher says. “This isn’t screwball. But we are still satirizing the industry. There is no company that would put a field office in the middle of nowhere, unconnected to any actual site facility. So even that is more a metaphor for how these people feel like they are in the middle of nowhere.”
McKercher populates her film with character types she came across in the industry, but none of them ever become caricatures. Wendy is not particularly devoted to her job or company, but as a young female engineer is part of a new if underpaid vanguard advancing on what was once a boys club. Living in an unnamed oil and gas town in Alberta, she is also lonely and deeply bored with her life, which leads to casual drug use and sexual dalliances. Duncan Ollerenshaw plays Bobby, a weary but dedicated mentor who has spent years in the oilpatch separated from his daughter. Tina Lameman plays Kiki, a cynical and irritable oil-and-gas lifer who antagonizes Wendy. Peter Skagen plays Ian, an ineffectual sad-sack of a manager unable to offer reassurances to staff when rumours of impending layoffs begin to swirl. All seem to suffer from various levels of unhappiness.
One of the most poignant scenes in the film focuses on Ian’s poorly attended early-retirement party, where he drunkenly laments not making it to the 40-year milestone with the corporation and waxes nostalgia for the days when oil companies would give departing employees proper send-offs.
“That was based on a woman who I used to work with,” McKercher says. “She had worked for the company for 40 years and was going to retire. The VP of our company didn’t even attend her super sad, coffee congratulations. They gave her a signed certificate thanking her for her 40 years of service and it was bent. It was so sad.”
It points to the impressive balance McKercher is able to maintain in Circle of Steel. While the film includes strange ritualistic safety meetings, incompetent bosses and bathroom-stall cocaine binges, it still somehow manages to make audiences feel deep empathy for its characters.
“Often the industry is politicized,” McKercher says. “It seems like this massive evil and opaque organism. But really it’s just normal people working and going to work every day. I think if you can humanize that aspect then you can actually talk about problems a lot better. Why do people go to work every day? People just want to have a livelihood, they want to feel like they are doing something useful. So to demonize an industry, that’s when it becomes an us versus them situation. It’s unproductive. Yes, policy comes into it. But there are thousands of people and if you cut them off, you still need to care for them. I hope people relate to this situation.”
Circle of Steel was one of six local productions given a grant from Project Lab in 2017, a governmentfunded program for emerging filmmakers that is overseen by the Calgary Film Centre. Shot over 16 days in late 2017 in Calgary and on the CL Ranch west of the city, it will make its world debut Sept. 25 as part of the Calgary International Film Festival.
McKercher says she harboured ambitions to be a filmmaker even when studying engineering at U of C. She was turned onto filmmaking in high school after attending a summer camp put on by the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers. While in university, she made short films, a web series and music videos. While being laid off from her oil and gas job allowed her to pursue her dream, she acknowledges that real life is never as simple as what is usually shown in the movies. She didn’t want to fall into that trap with Circle of Steel.
As with most who fear being laid off, Wendy’s reality is far more complicated. McKercher admits that leaving a stable job for one in the arts, for instance, has its own challenges.
“I’ve reflected a lot upon this,” McKercher says. “Following your dreams is a high-risk activity and you have to be prepared for the risks. Luckily, I have the most amazing support network and I’ve been working towards this for a long time. But I also think it comes from an extreme position of privilege to be able to do it properly. I have a lot more sympathy and compassion for people who are more wistful about some grand gesture that they are going to do and they don’t actually do it. I get that now. I think artists often vilify people who don’t follow their dreams. I hate that. I feel lucky I get to do this, but it’s still a challenge. But I will say that my soul is much healthier than it was before.”
It’s been 25 years since David Fine and Alison Snowden made a short film.
Now, a quarter of a century later, the couple has combined to write, direct and animate the hilarious new 14-minute NFB -produced animated short, Animal Behaviour.
The creative couple behind the Academy Award-winning Bob’s Birthday (1989), which grew into the hit TV series Bob and Margaret, have set their new tale in a therapist’s office with various characters in group therapy. It’s kind of reminiscent of scenes from the classic TV series the Bob Newhart Show, except this group is made up of animals.
“The inspiration I think really came from human behaviour,” said Fine, who along with Snowden has called Vancouver home for the past 15 years.
“We thought, ‘Oh, it’s interesting that a lot of humans have characteristics that could be equated with what comes naturally to animals like aggression or guilt. So that’s where we kind of made the connection that a therapy session with animals expressing ideas that are human would be interesting.”
In the film, six animals meet regularly to discuss themselves and their various anxieties and angst. The session is led by a dog that goes by the name of Dr. Clement (voice of Ryan Beil).
“We wanted Dr. Clement to not be the perfect erudite therapist. We wanted him to show his own quirks and issues,” said Fine. “At the end of the day, he’s an animal.”
“But he’s working on it,” added Snowden, who is also the voice of the obsessive-compulsive cat Linda. “The thing we find funny about Dr. Clement is that he’s desperately trying to keep control of himself and his patients.”
You can visit with Dr. Clement yourself at his helpful Facebook site, Dr. Clement’s Sage Advice for dogs and other creatures.
The issues facing this pack of patients are wide-ranging and include a skeptical gorilla named Victor (voice of Taz Van Rassel)
with anger issues and a praying mantis named Cheryl (Andrea Libman) who wonders if it’s her thousands of children or the fact she kills and eats her mates that might be causing a dry spell in her dating life.
“You know, you don’t normally judge animals for ( being animals), so we thought it was sort of funny to put them in a therapy room where they’re being analyzed for those behaviours as if they weren’t socially acceptable anymore,” said Snowden, who grew up in Nottingham, England and met Fine, a Toronto native, while they were both at Britain’s National Film and Television School.
The overriding message in this film is can we, should we, be ourselves? Or do we adapt and change our behaviour to suit everybody else? Does a big gorilla need to count to 10 before losing his cool? Should a praying mantis maybe not kill her lovers?
The film has made some animated festival appearances, but just last month it got the nod from the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) . It comes to the Calgary Film Festival Sept. 19-30.
“It feels like we’re with the grown-ups,” said Snowden, who had some local consulting help on the film from Calgary animators Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby.
Snowden and Fine always wanted to be live action filmmakers, so they approach their animated work as if they’re writing and working with humans.
“We went to film school,” Snowden said. “That’s why we always write first, because really, we’re interested in the story and the animation is really just a means to communicate it.”
This film, like Bob’s Birthday, seems perfectly suited to spin off a series, and the topic has come up.
“A lot of people who have seen the film have got invested in the characters and said: ‘Oh, I want to know more about what Lorraine (a leech with separation anxiety issues) gets up to or how it goes with Victor and Cheryl when they go on their date or whatever.’ So there has been some casual interest so far from people about maybe developing it into a series,” said Fine.
“It certainly wasn’t our intention when we made the film. It’s a film in its own right, but I guess our stuff is kind of friendly looking and comedic, and people will maybe see it and think: ‘Could there be more to this?’”
Series potential aside, Snowden says it always comes back to one thing for the pair.
“It’s wonderful when you make a film and get a great reaction. Make people laugh,” Snowden said.
They have certainly done a lot of that over the years. Along with Bob’s Birthday and Bob and Margaret, highlights from the creative duo’s resume include the Oscarnominated short George and Rosemary and the Shaun the Sheep (of Wallace and Gromit fame) series for Nick Park’s Aardman Animations. Snowden has also written for Peppa Pig, who incidentally was voiced by the couple’s daughter Lily.
This long-term, successful collaboration started years ago and it’s that early reality of their film school lives that Snowden said gave the partnership its solid foundation.
“I think because we met as equals at film school and we had the same interests and the same sense of humour, we just clicked on a friendship level as well as romantically. I think now we are just a team, really,” said Snowden.
“From my point of view I just love Alison’s talent and what she brings to my ideas and hopefully it’s also the other way around,” said Fine with a chuckle. “It’s fun to work with her.”