He’d just been laid off.
An actor without a day job, the normally upbeat Kris McRonney was decidedly down for about two days – until the cheque showed up.
He’d been working with a team of Vancouver Film School students, “to get some work in and keep the (acting) muscles flexed,” he explains. Out of those projects turned into Night Owl High, the story of a vice-principal who imagines himself as a Sam Spade-like detective hellbent on restoring law and order to a chaotic high school.
McRonney hadn’t considered himself a producer, exactly. He was an actor who produced movies he could act in.
But when he got $50,000 grant to turn Night Owl High into a web series, a revelation dawned on McRonney: “You’ve got $50,000. You’re a producer now.”
McRonney reflects on those 48 hours after losing his job and before getting that grant while working on his latest production, Extra-Ordinary Army, at the Waldorf School in Lynn Valley.
“It used to be just producing so I can act but I’m a producer 110 per cent now.”
The new short film revolves around a young girl who loses her parents in a fire. It’s a somewhat macabre coming-of-age story about Amy and the “bone-chilling consequences” she faces every time she dances.
The script was written by Zlatina Pacheva, whom McRonney calls his “film wife.” McRonney thought Pacheva’s script seemed ideal for Crazy8s, an annual filmmaking contest that regularly attracts more than 100 entrants.
Extra-Ordinary Amy made the top 42 and then the top 12. After workshopping their script with a professional story editor, the movie made it to the top six. Under the guidance of director Christopher Graham, the production was staged, shot, wrapped, edited and scored in eight days.
The top six films are set to be screened Feb. 24 at The Centre for Performing Arts on Homer Street in Vancouver.
His producer status feels like a big shift from the days when he got ripped off by phony agencies who charged him for headshots.
“Things are shaking and moving,” he says.
Growing up in Toronto, Ontario, McRonney remembers thinking that a future in acting was impossible.
“I remember telling my mother that I didn’t think Canadians could be actors because you just never saw any.”
But his mother showed him John Candy and the rest of the SCTV cast.
“That inspired me.”
Discussing the Crazy8s finals McRonney acknowledges they’re up against impressive competition – still, there’s a strength to the story of Extra-Ordinary Amy, he says.
Asked how he feels about the movie’s chances, McRonney laughs.
“Pretty damn good.”
