One local family has recently been immortalized on film.
Between March and May of this year, the Cave family of Lacombe was part of an independent Christian Film Project from Movie Makers in Airdrie.
Movie Makers is an independent, family-run film studio specializing in Christian and educational films. Lyndall Cave said her family met the Lammimans, the family running Movie Makers, through another family who are mutual friends as well as through her own work as a wardrobe assistant with the Canadian Badlands Passion Play.
It was through their mutual friends, who had been involved in the Lammiman family’s first project, that the Caves became aware of Movie Makers. Lyndall said she and her mother both auditioned for the studio’s next production, My Grandpa Detective, but did not receive any major roles.
However, the whole family was invited to be extras on the film. Lyndall was also involved in designing and constructing the costumes for the project.
“It was good fun,” said Lyndall.
She added that she enjoyed working with the Lammimans, saying they are patient directors.
A stage actor who has experience working with the local ZAP! Theatre productions, Lyndall said it was, “Really neat” to be part of a film project. She mentioned how she found the differences between screen acting and stage acting interesting.
“It was really cool to see how (a movie) gets put together, because it’s not shot all continuously,” she said. She added because of the different cuts, camera angles and other features in film acting, it differs quite a bit from stage acting.
Lyndall said acting in movies can be much more subtle than on stage, because the camera makes it easy to capture and portray emotions to the audience. In a play, the actors have to convey feelings and emotions more obviously so that they read over a large crowd.
Even though she was an extra, Lyndall said she still felt nervous about her acting.
“I was kind of nervous because I don’t know much about screen acting.” However, she added that watching the other, more experienced actors taught her a lot.
For the costume design side of things, Lyndall was involved in the initial discussions on how the costumes for characters would look. She assisted by coming up with ideas for different looks and finding suppliers to get necessary materials. Once the designs were finalized, Lyndall also helped put the costumes together.
Greg Lammiman, co-founder of Movie Makers, said that the company was founded by him and his son Dallas through a mutual interest in film. He said the company was founded in 2006 and started by making educational films.
Once the pair ‘got their feet wet’ with educational films, Movie Makers started to make moves more towards their already established goal of creating feature length Christian films.
My Grandpa Detective is one such project. It is family-friendly comedy film about a grandfather, grandson pair who are forced to work together as detectives when the grandfather discovers a clerical error has left him ineligible for his pension.
Greg said that production is full of a lot of laughs while delivering a Christian message. That message being that in order to forgive others, one must seek forgiveness for oneself.
“The main character blames his grandfather for a lot,” said Greg. “But he has to come to the realization that he has his own needs of forgiveness before God, before he is able to forgive others.”
Lyndall said that, even though My Grandpa Detective isn’t a major Hollywood production that everyone in the world is going to see, it is still very exciting to be able to see her work on screen. It has also sparked an interest in her to work on future film projects.
Already, Lyndall is in discussions to work on costumes for Movie Makers’ next project, a sci-fi story called Mayflower II, which should begin filming in August.
Lyndall added she has auditioned for the film again as well.
“I’ve always wanted to work on a sci-fi film,” said Lyndall.