shorts
ALLAN & MARIA WEDDING VIDEO
Probably the best day of my entire life. I got to marry the girl of my dreams, had family from all over the world come to share our love, and were surrounded by our best friends the entire time. It was over a year of planning and even though it got a little stressful and expensive at times, it was 100% worth it. I got my friend Curtis Gee to film the whole day for me and then edited the video myself. Everytime I watch this video I’m reminded how much love and friendship I have in my life. Also, I hate editing myself.
QUARANTINE
With 2020 being such a screwed up year with COVID-19 taking over our lives from March - July, I felt the need more than ever to do something creative with my time. I wanted to make a horror movie, and this was the idea I came up with. A killer is on the loose over a Zoom meeting with 5 friends. It was a quite a good challenge to edit this together as the amount of layers and effects required to piece all these videos together, and also keep the timing of the shots in order, pushed my Avid to the limit. It’s just a fun, cheesy little short horror film.
DARK RITUAL
In the summer of 2018 at my cottage in Algonquin Park, I canoed over to my ‘neighbors’ cottage and found the place to be abandoned. It was freaky, and I knew I had to shoot a movie here one day. Then my buddy Guybrush came up with an idea for a movie called ‘Cartografear’, and it was just perfect for the location I had in mind. So I said fuck it, grabbed my three buddies - Curtis, Comrie and Perry and went up one frigid night in November to shoot it on Saturday. Just a one day shoot. We went to bed after partying all night in anticipatory happiness of shooting this movie the next morning. We woke up to a snow storm. It was bone dry the night before, and in 5 hours, all of Algonquin got covered with a sheet of white snow. It was COLD. We were not prepared at all for the weather, and between Comrie’s hands literally freezing and not working anymore, and my battery dying within minutes because it was so fucking cold, we had a hell of a time shooting this thing. But through adversity comes triumph, and man did we ever have the time of our lives up there making this thing happen.
My brother Erik Hughes did the entire soundtrack and totally nails the 80s horror vibe I wanted. Genius sound track.
BANANA’S BREAD
Sometimes, Mike Comrie (Chiefy Poo) has a genius idea. This is one of them. I tried to convince him, when he and Perry came over, to make a really awesome horror film, but instead, this piece of trash is what we made. It marks the first time we used the green screen that I bought 7 years ago. It’s fair to say, it was put to good use.
Banana’s Bread. Gotta be up there with some of the worst shit ever. I love it.
JENNY HOME
Jenny Home came to be by asking a simple question: What scares you the most? For me, it was looking up from my bed, and seeing a monster or person at the foot of my bed staring at me. So we build a short film around the idea of something terrorizing you while you're trying to sleep. I made it black and white because the lighting was horrific, so making it black and white was simply just to cover that up.
MANHUNT
For my brother's bachelor party, we rented a cottage up north at Lee's Lakeside Lair and then drank, played magic and boardgames for 3 days straight. At one point I decided - we should probably get outside at some point this trip. So we decided to play a game of Manhunt. None of us have ever played it, but we made quick and dirty rules, and went for it. Erik filmed and didn't realize it was on manual focus the entire time, so half the shots I had to work with were blurry. We were loaded during this entire game... and I won.
SURVIVoRLIST MAN
Comrie has a knack for thinking on the spot, and 'Survivorlist Man' is a role he was born to play. A man who knows everything, and is never wrong no matter what. Up at my cottage in Algonquin Park, Time Travelling Survivorlist Man, Jebediah Blizzard Handspring, tries to survive in the wilderness. He faces Bear attacks, Mosquito swarms, and gives valuable information on water, sewing clubs, and parallel junctures in the Universe.
THE NEVERENDING SCOTCH
Up at the cottage in 2012, Dr. Paul Barrett and I noticed that Guybrush would pour a glass of scotch, and then have about one sip of it over a 4 day span. So Barrett and I thought we should start documenting it.
60 TO SMOKE LAKE
Guybrush had an idea of making a horror movie at the cottage involving a broken down car, and some murders. We worked together on a script and story board, and shot this in a span of 3 hours. Erik Hughes did the music for it and Barrett fell in the freezing cold October lake during the filming.
THE DEAD BODY
'The Dead Body' is my first REAL attempt at a short film. I had lighting, audio, actors, writing, story boards, and a real desire to try and make something that I would be proud of. Bryan Pasic does a fantastic job at carrying the entire movie, practically by himself. Haris Cehajic was incredibly patient as we put make-up on him, and forced him to lie motionless on the ground for hours on end. All in all, I'm really proud of what I accomplished here, and more importantly, I'm proud that I just got something done from start to finish. Now I can look back on this and see how much I've improved, and what I need to work on. We all have to start somewhere, right?
ASSRITUS
Sometimes, you just need to stop trying so hard, and do something that’s just fun and quick. Also, if you have ‘Assritus’, this is important to watch
RISK - Tony the risk thompson
I always wanted to do a short film involving board games with my buddies at the cottage. We get most intense playing RISK and after a long canoe ride, Tolga, Peter, Comrie and I came up with the idea of a billion dollar RISK tournament, and we all adapted fun characters. The plan was to have 4 trailers, one for each of us, which would lead up to a feature length film of this massive RISK tournament. I got lazy, and only made 2 trailers instead.
RISK - THE POLISH PUNISHER
This is the 2nd trailer I made for the RISK tournament, and it's about Peter. He is usually incredibly reserved, and hates being a part of my movies, but he got into his stupid character and had a lot of fun with this.
THE CONFESSIONS OF MIKE FERA
This was my 2nd short film when I was in Graceland University in Iowa. I wanted to do something more ambitious, longer, and more professional, the result was something I was proud of at the moment of my life, but now, I have trouble watching it. We made it over a span of 2 days, and had a ton of fun making it. This film made me realize the process is far more important and fun than the result, for me anyways. Also, Francis was awesome as the lead, the dude was born to be an actor.
Drunk Santa Claus: The Rudolph Chapter
This is hands down the dumbest thing I've ever done. I must have been drunk while making this, but surprisingly, I wasn't. I made this at a time in my life where I was experimenting a lot with editing and music. This is just awful. Awful.
The summer of wilson
I went up to the cottage with Erik and a bunch of his buddies, and we decided to fill a watermelon with vodka. From there, the watermelon started falling apart, and turning into a monster. We named it 'Wilson' and this is his story.
FIST OF FERA
This is a Haris Cehajic production. We were really into jumping off fences, roofs, over cars, doing backflips, and pretty much destroying our bodies any way possible back in the day. Haris really wanted to make a martial arts movie on the heels of watching 'The Matrix', so we put together this stupid action/comedy short film for him to submit to a University of Toronto Film Festival. Chicken Ball and Fruite are out to avenge their Master Fera against the evil Artemus.
We had a shit ton of fun making this movie. But filming it in January with shirts, and light sweaters on? Stupid.
Erik and Grace's Wedding Video
Erik and Grace got married in Maui, Hawaii, and as a wedding gift to them, I made them this video. I shot it over a 3 day span, and wish I could go back to Maui and eat fish tacos from taco stands on the side of the street every single day of my life. It was a beautiful wedding and this video unfortunately only captures a glimmer of it.
THE BLACK LOTUS TOURNAMENT
Bryan Pasic is a dear friend of ours, and my brother told me that he's never been pranked before. I took this as a personal challenge, and we planned the greatest prank of all time: Making him think he won a Black Lotus (A $15,000 card)
This movie is what started my editing career - A friend saw this video (Alex Liu) while he was filming a Moneen documentary in our basement, and he helped me get my first editing job at CBC's 'The Hour'. So not only do we love how stupidly funny this is, it also started my career!
THE G.U. HORROR
When I got to Graceland University, I became an English major because they didn't have film studies. So I constantly filming things on my own time, and this was the first movie I made at school as a Freshman.
I entered it in the first ever Graceland University Student Film Festival, and I won Best Director, Horror, and Film.
I made this with a couple of my baseball buddies, and it helped put me on the map at school as someone with a real passion for making movies.
A date with the devil
All I would be doing at school in my Junior year was play Mario Kart on Gamecube, and Guitar Hero with Francis Ambrosia. We played guitar hero so much I decided to make a movie about it.
This is pretty much Guitar Hero meets 'Crossroads', with Ralph Machio. We wanted to do something with Francis' red fire lamps too.
beware the bridge, and jack bauer
Francis and I were binge watching '24' before binge watching was even a thing. We destroyed 5 seasons of it, and probably missed about 2 weeks of school, and then decided we should be making a movie about it.
Francis as the troll is just amazing. There's a scene where he's falling down a hill and smashes his head off a steel beam. I thought he split his head open, and would be concussed and dead. He was fine, and laughing, thank god.
FIST OF FERA
This was a Haris production, and we came up with a tradition revenge ninja story. Chicken Ball and Fruite try and exact revenge on Artemus after he murders their Master Fera.
We shot this in the dead of winter, and for some reason thought it would be a good idea. It was freezing, and shooting it was awful. But we had so much fun making it.
The Matrix just came out, and was our number one influence on this film.
TWO-HEADED GIANT 2019
We held a big Two Headed Giant tournament at Haris’ place in December 2019, and I wanted to film Tim and I’s big victory. We lost, in the craziest way ever at the end. While the footage, and story is all pretty crappy, I’m proud to have managed to scrap together some random clips into a somewhat watchable video. This video was actually just an outlet for my After Effects skills. I’ve been trying to re-learn After Effects, and all the silly graphics and text in here gave me a great excuse to use it again.
GRACELAND Baseball VIDEO
Chronicling the 4 years of adventure in Lamoni, IA.