KNOWING HER SUBJECT
Film focuses on oil industry
It's massive, it's powerful, it's controversial and, at least in the past few downturned years, has had no shortage of personal misery attached to it.
All of which makes the glass towers and remote fields of Alberta's oil and gas industry a natural backdrop for a darkly comedic satire. Circle of Steel, which has been shooting in Calgary and other parts of Alberta for a few weeks now, is the debut film by writer and director Gillian McKercher. But this is no ham-fisted broadside from an outsider.
McKercher has a history in the industry. Her first summer job was with Arc Resources when she was a teenager. After graduating from the University of Calgary, she spent almost four years working as a project engineer and on a reserves team in oil and gas before being laid off in 2016.
“I think everything about it is entirely cinematic on every level,” says McKercher, when asked why she chose to focus her first film on the oil industry. “The money is huge. When there's a lot of money, you have people with big emotions who are in place. There's the power of oil and gas and the shifting power dynamics.”
It's also deeply political, which never hurts when making a darkly comic satire about shifting power dynamics. The oil industry, which McKercher says is one of the most “reviled or controversial” in the world, comes with its own emotional baggage for those working within it. The film also takes place amid massive layoffs in the industry, which helps make the world of Circle of Steel desperate and conflicted and, yes, inherently cinematic.
“The world is changing and people in oil and gas feel that transition towards greener, alternative energies and you are starting to see the effects of climate change,” says McKercher. “I just feel it's such a beautiful, emotional place to tell a story where you have these macro problems affecting micro stories.”
Circle of Steel was one of six productions given a grant as part of the government-funded Project Lab, a program for emerging filmmakers overseen by the Calgary Film Centre.
It stars Alberta actors Chantelle Han, Duncan Ollerenshaw and Tina Lameman in a story about a young engineer named Wendy (Han) who is experiencing her first field rotation in the industry. She sees how the layoffs disrupt the people and operations of a neglected field office.
“It's a celebration of the working person and sympathizing with people who have a disruption for the first time in their life, whether that's layoffs or an environmental or ethical dilemma,” McKercher says.
McKercher herself has not pursued a job in engineering since she was laid off, dedicating all her energies to her debut feature. When she was still in high school, she attended a summer media arts camp program put on by the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers. It changed her life. While she pursued an engineering degree at the University of Calgary, she also made short films, a two-season web series and music videos. She hopes Circle of Steel, which wraps in mid-December, will get a festival run and theatrical release. She has already signed a broadcast agreement in Canada, which should make it widely available sometime in 2018.
“Filmmaking was always an ambition of mine,” she says. “Although there are creative and artistic people in my family, there was nobody who had a profession in it. I remember when I was graduating high school I really, really, really wanted to go to film school. But there was quite a bit of conflict of how that was going to get me a job or be practical.”
But now, she's hooked and there's no going back.
“It's great, I love it,” she says. “This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.”
The money is huge. When there’s a lot of money, you have people with big emotions who are in place. There’s the power of oil and gas and the shifting power dynamics.