Kim Feragen hasn't even made her first movie, yet, and she's already getting provincial attention as a budding auteur.
Feragen is better known as a professional Prince George photographer. She does family moments, weddings, portraits, etc. Her artistic eye has been leading progressively towards filmmaking ever since she graduated from the Vancouver Institute of Media Arts and suddenly, four years later, she finds herself near the top of the online voting to land a big cash infusion into a short-film production she has on the drawing board, even though it is her first effort with moving pictures.
The film's working title is Final Breath.
"It is the story about a videographer who films the final messages of terminally ill patients in a hospice house. The videographer meets with a mysterious patient who reveals a story that will change the videographer's life forever," said Feragen.
But the mysterious patient doesn't just have an interesting story, it strikes terror into the film.
And, said its creator, it is based on something that once happened to her. The specifics of which she refuses to reveal before the film is finished.
"It comes from an experience I had as a teenager, and when I tell people about it today they just look at me in shock, like 'Are you kidding me? That really happened? To you?' So yeah, I think it's a good film to make because I know how people react to it in real life," she said.
The proposal for the film was entered into the Telus-Storyhive competition for digital short-films. This program has ongoing grant competitions for music and screen arts, and this one is focused on digital short-films and female directors.
Feragan's proposal surged to the lead, sitting in first place in the provincial polling as of Monday night.
If she can hang on to any spot in the B.C. Top 15, Feragen will receive $10,000 cash expressly for making the film. That's money that will go right into the local economy, as well as establishing a new voice in the local filmmaking industry.
"People want to help films and photo-shoots and whatever else happens in Prince George. It's one of the reasons we moved back," said Feragen.
She and her husband left the city to pursue schooling but once that was finished, they came back.
She got a job with the 2015 Canada Winter Games organization and got an epic eyeful of what community support, Prince George style, looks like.
"We just fell in love with that P.G. feeling - everybody supports everybody," she said.
She is already getting flashes of that as local people involved in the film industry provide her with equipment and expertise to get her debut project done. She has some tight deadlines, because of the weather. The tone of the story requires stark autumn trees but no snow.
"I am already designing the shoot. We have to move quickly," she said. "Short films have to tell the story every single frame, there is no room to waste a second," she said, and she has education and experience in that artistic pursuit.
"Even if you're taking a portrait of somebody, you are telling a story with the photo. There is so much more that goes into a photo than most people realize and the photographer's job is to figure out what you're really trying to say and helping you say that as efficiently as possible."
Now she translates that to the realm of pictures that move, have sound, and also pack the punch of that tantalizing mystery story stamped onto her teenaged memory.
"It's going to be labelled as a horror movie or a thriller, but it's not the disgusting kind. It's the 'wow' kind," she said.
"For some people it would definitely be terrifying. For me, it was scary, but I'm also naturally curious and I want to get to the bottom of things and understand things, so I hope it will be appealing to people like me who want to dig deeper when something scary suddenly happens."
To help keep Feragan in the Top 15 money go to www.storyhive.com and look for the heading marked You Help Decide The 30 x $10K Digital Shorts. It is on the scrolling feature window of the main Storyhive page or you can also find it by clicking the Digital Shorts button on the main page's menu bar. Click into the Vote section, read through the dozens of entries, and click on the one marked Final Breath.
Anyone can vote, it is free, no personal information is required, and you can do it once per day per computer device. You can vote for as many as five projects each time.
Voting is open until noon Friday.
