Two national contests that ended last week resulted in a Coquitlam native winning the $45,000 grand prize and a Port Moody school taking second place.
Last Saturday, Centennial secondary grad Alan Miller was in a Vancouver pub with his family and friends when they saw him win the CBC Short Film Face Off.
The contestants had filmed the show in June as well as possible endings for each of the three finalists. After a public vote that started Sept. 27, Miller was decided as the winner for his flick In Passing.
"It's been a lot of fun," an elated Miller told The Tri-City News on Monday. "I've been able to connect with a lot of people over the past few months because of the film's attention. Everyone's been so supportive."
Miller was up against two Toronto filmmakers for the title: Alan Powell (Sunday Punch) and Adam Goldhammer (Jesse), both of whom presented dark comedies about domestic life.
In Passing - a four-minute movie that Miller wrote and directed for his master's thesis last year at the University of Southern California - is also a dark comedy, centering on a man and a woman who happen to be jumping off a Vancouver skyscraper in different spots but at the same time. They find love on their way down.
Now, Miller is mulling over a couple of scripts he wrote, both of them based in the B.C. wilderness, to spend his $45,000 windfall. He plans to start production this winter.
Meanwhile, Seaview community school in Port Moody came up 1,997 votes short last Saturday to win $10,000 worth of books for their library (the results have yet to be verified).
Seaview and Port Coquitlam's Central community school were involved in the Indigo Adopt a School contest that garnered "adopts" from the public for a chance to win literary material from the company.
The winning school in B.C. was Rocky Mountain elementary in Elkford, with 17,765 votes. This past spring, their classrooms and 14,000 library books were ruined in a furnace fire.
