After the storm

Shannon LeClair  

Time Reporter

 

It’s not every day a film crew sets up shop in Strathmore, but that’s exactly what happened on Nov. 2. Stephen Lubig, a Strathmore resident, was at Leroy’s Motor Inn filming a scene from his feature film, ‘After the Storm.’ Lubig is an independent filmmaker, and is the producer, writer and director of the project. He lives in Strathmore with his wife and their young son.

“I really wanted to put a piece of Strathmore in the film because I live here and it’s my community,” said Lubig.

One of the scenes was written in a motel and he said Leroy’s has such character he wanted to portray that on the screen. 

“The film centers on our hero named Hudson, he is heavily influenced by his good friend Tristan, and it’s not a very healthy relationship. Tristan influences Hudson to go down kind of a negative path in life,” said Lubig. 

“Conflict arises when Hudson meets a young girl named Clair who influences him to go down the opposite path in life, a much better path. We begin to see a lot of conflict within Hudson himself in which path to choose, and also conflict between Hudson and Tristan and Hudson and Clair.”

Keeping things local and focusing on what this region has to offer is important to Lubig. 

“All of the big productions that come into Calgary, they always bring their lead actors from Los Angeles, New York, Vancouver and Toronto. So all of the acting community within and around Calgary they end up with smaller roles because all of the larger roles are filled from outside talent,” said Lubig.

“What I wanted to do with this project is feature 100 per cent local talent, so everyone who’s in this film is from Calgary and the surrounding areas. There’s such rich talent and I really wanted to make it a point to showcase local talent and not to bring in talent from outside the region.”

This is his first feature film but he has directed music videos, one of which, the ‘Do the Right Thing’ video for the Calgary Indie band The Dudes won best music video of the year from the Alberta Motion Picture Association.

“The nucleus of the idea spawned from my desire to create a film that was reminiscent of the family value films from the late ‘80s and the ‘90s. There’s really not the same type of film around and a small portion of this film has a Christian faith-based element to it,” said Lubig.

“I wanted to make the story relatable to today’s audiences, to today’s youth, young adults and parents. This was the type of film I wanted to create and then how the actual story came about was totally due to the actual creative process.

“Since I was a young kid I have always been interested in film particularly in telling stories. Every second I had I tried to put something on film and make a story out of it.” 

Canadian Country music star George Canyon will be scoring the music to the film. More information and updates can be found at www.afterthestorm-movie.com.