Life inspires art for Lethbridge film maker Gianna Isabella, who is putting the finishing touches on her new short film “Tom Gaffney is a Gangster.”
She has a variety of projects on the go which she is trying to fit in in between working on set with big Hollywood productions filming in Alberta including “Interstellar” last year and the new Leonardo DiCaprio picture “The Revenant” which was released this week and the HBO mini-series Lewis and Clark.
As much as she enjoyed the experience, not to mention the steady paycheque from working on blockbusters, it means putting her own projects on hold including her documentary on local daredevil Johnny Korthuis’s recovery from almost killed doing a base jump of the Perrine Bridge in Idaho Falls and her short film Rosalind Revenge.
“We got some integral feedback ( on Rosalind Revenge) coming from professionals in Los Angeles. It’s not ready. It’s not abandoned,” said Isabella, who in between being part of big productions creates her own independent films with her company Deadline Media.
“It’s been an amazing three or four years,” said Isabella, who graduated from the University of Lethbridge with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in New Media in 2010.
“ I was just a general production assistant on the Revenant, so I just helped out where ever I was needed,” Isabella said.
“And I got that because some of the same people who worked on ‘Interstellar’ were involved with ‘the Revenant’ so they gave me a call,” she continued, adding working nine months on The Revenant flew by quickly.
“I said, it’s been nine months, I started to feel really anxious, wondering what I was doing. It’s difficult. I want to be a film maker so I was thinking about everything you have to sacrifice for the security of a full time job. It’s easy to get comfortable like that. But what’s the end result of that,” she wondered, adding she wrote her short film Tom Gaffney is a Gangster during down time which allowed her to express some of those feelings. She shot it during down time while working on Lewis and Clark in Calgary back in March.
The character Tom Gaffney, played by Tighe Gill who is also in the Revenant, is a socially awkward misfit trying to conform in order to pay the bills, explores that in the short film.
“Tom Gaffney is a poet in the film and he’s trying to get a job but he is so awkward, which is part of the comedy, ” Isabella said, adding there is a lot of her own character in Gaffney.
“It’s very funny. A lot of the character comes from where I am at,” she said, adding a lot of the Gaffney character is in his movement. The film also features Megan Tracz as Sarah, Nina Marrone as Karen/ Mother and Braden Paes as the bartender Jim, whom Isabella has worked with before.
“I’ve been interested in films ever since I was a teenager working at Blockbuster video,” she said.
She has submitted the film to two film festivals so far, which means there likely won’t be a local screening until it is accepted to a festival. She may host an evening of her short films in the future, though.
She learned a lot from general arts education at the University of Lethbridge, which helped her become a film maker. She has since been part of a dozen films including documentaries, blockbusters and independent films.
“You really learn a lot more just through experience than just in the classroom. But I took a lot of psychology courses, which helps me create characters. So you learn how to apply your education to the real world,” she said.