The Final Years of Your Best Friend

LINE PRODUCER - In Association with toronto spca

About

‘The Final Years of Your Best Friend’ is a documentary focusing on preserving an animal’s life in their senior years and the challenges of saying goodbye.

The film itself is 27min runtime and premiered in downtown Toronto’s Royale Cinema

My approach

When this concept was first introduced to me by a local shelter I knew I wanted it was going to be close to my heart. At the time my first childhood pet, a scrappy cat appropriately nicknamed ‘Smacky’ , was turning 20 years old. This was also my first solo Producer credit on a film so as soon as the funding was approved I was happy to get interviews rolling.

The funding for this project was actually completely crowd sourced. We did fundraisers partnered with local vet clinics, Toronto SPCA and shelters. Once we met our goal I put together a pitch package for our schedule, budget breakdown and premise of the film. This was handed out to all of our partnering organizations, crew members and film festivals upon request

challenges

The biggest challenge was this was my first feature film as a solo producer.
There was a bit of a learning curve when it came to interviewing and locking in talented crew members.

I found overwhelmingly that even if someone had an incredible amount of experience and impressive demo reels, I needed to know they were going to fit the project. As a seasoned produced I now realize what I was actually looking for is ‘crew chemistry’. It’s a difficult thing to create organically, but when you have it on a project, it’s like witnessing magic.

Overall I’m extremely proud of the final product of our film. It now has a permanent home at Projektor.com and Veterinary clinics nation wide use it to help clients cope with the loss of their furry family members.