I first met Morgan Muscat while attending a film networking group in early 2012. An enthusiastic young Canadian filmmaker, Morgan talked about some of his experiences in filmmaking, and told us a little bit about how his latest project - a 30 minute short called Severance - had come together.
There were to be screenings that evening, and Severance was on the agenda. Due to equipment malfunction, we only got to watch the first 10 minutes of the short, but what I saw was enough to convince me that Morgan was someone with whom I'd like to chat further.
Almost a year after I first met Morgan, I was able to get together with him to do an interview, and to revisit some of his work.
Now in his early thirties, Morgan Muscat was born in Toronto, Ontario, and raised in Mississauga, Ontario. He developed a passionate interest in films and filmmaking from an early age, fascinated by all the components that make a film come together: from the screenwriting, set creation, filming, directing, producing and post processing. After he completed High School he enrolled in a Faculty of Arts Program at York University in Ontario. He also enrolled in some film classes, thus feeding his love of film. While at York, he began to volunteer on the set of a popular TV cooking show, where he would do everything from the coffee-and-doughnut run to helping to build sets. "It was a blast", Morgan said. "It was really interesting seeing how things work behind the scenes on a TV production." This experience helped to revitalize his desire to be in the film industry and after a year he concluded that his interest in English literature was outdistanced by his love of film. He made the tough decision to withdraw from the York program, with plans to get into a media arts program at a later date.
Morgan took two years off from studying to work and save up some money. In the meantime he continued to volunteer on various film projects in the Toronto area, which allowed him to continue to build "real life" experience in his future field. He then got into the 3-year Media Arts program at Sheridan College, in Oakville. He also enrolled in an intensive 1-year advanced Film and Film program. Morgan worked on a number of projects while at Sheridan, various short documentaries and promotional films.
We asked Morgan about his first film project, which he made as part of his college program. It was called Duel, and was made in 2007, during his second year at Sheridan College. Because the film was done as a college class project, the usual obstacles of equipment, locations etc. were greatly minimized.
Although this was a low budget film, the production values were high. The special effects they created were convincing (and would later garner them an award at the Speakup! Film Festival in Mississauga), the acting was good and the cinematography was excellent, and the script held it all together. Morgan was the producer. It was certainly an impressive effort for a group of students. Their teacher was thrilled with the results and gave them a really good mark for the project.
The story centers around a young child who is traumatized by his father's violence toward his mother and his subsequent suicide. He carries this emotional baggage with him into adulthood until he finally learns to deal with it in his own way.
Once the film was completely finished in April 2007, they screened it for various faculty members and students at Sheridan College.The reaction was extremely disappointing to the young filmmakers. When the screening ended, there was dead silence -no one applauded.
Later, one of the teachers actually called Morgan into her office and berated him for the film, saying that it was terrible, a piece of junk, in fact, and would never get screened anywhere. Morgan and his classmates were stunned and taken aback by the reaction. They had made the film in good faith and done the best they could, but it seemed that the terrible Virginia Tech massacre (which had occurred a few days before the screening) had left people feeling very negative toward watching anything showing gun violence, and Duel was paying the price. This was Morgan's first real brush with adversity in his filmmaking, his baptism in fire as it were.
Not ready to accept defeat, Morgan and his cohorts put Duel on the back burner for a year - they weren't going to give up on it, but they would give it some time. They discussed it and decided that they would slightly modify the film to reduce the violence, and give it a somewhat "happier" ending. With some clever editing and the addition of a narrator, they re-released Duel the following year and began submitting it to the festival circuit. (It was the re-edited version that we saw.)
And this is when Morgan felt vindicated. Duel was accepted into various Festivals and became an official selection at two prominent 2008 film festivals in Canada and the United States: the Mississauga Independent Film Festival and the Queens International Film Festival, as well as at Mississauga's SpeakUp! Festival where it won an award for Best SFX . In 2012 it also was featured on Malta television, and garnered glowing reviews. Pretty good for a movie that was supposedly never going to get screened! Proving something that Morgan believes in: keep doing what you believe in, and don't let anyone's criticism stop you from doing what you love.
Photo by Bruce M. Walker
