Lauren Grant, originally from Gibsons, is no stranger to producing films. She’s been the principal at Clique Pictures since 2006 and has made some inroads into the industry by working on several films, some of which have won awards.
Just recently her career branched in a new direction. She’s been chosen from among several hundred applicants to be one of three apprentices to the Bell Media Producer Accelerator Lab. She will undertake a six-to-eight-month apprenticeship with one of Canada’s top production companies, Temple Street Productions.
During this program she will get to know the role of television executive producer, a somewhat different role from that of a film producer. She will help develop production, develop script and raise money.
“There are so many opportunities in television right now,” Grant told Coast Reporter from her current home in Toronto.
Grant describes herself as “hands-on creative” and the role of executive producer in TV involves a creative piece of everything — sometimes in the office or with the director while shooting takes place or often involved with post production. She’s looking forward to it, especially to cracking the glass ceiling. Being a producer has traditionally been a job for a man.
“It’s important to me as I go on to have female protagonists,” she said.
One of her previous productions that earned kudos was Picture Day, a film aimed at a teens and 20s market with a strong female lead and female director.
Grant has also worked on the award-winning short films Frost and Savage.
Recent films include Traceable, a documentary about clothing and the fashion industry; it will be seen on the Bravo channel in the fall. The latest film for which she is a producer is titled Wet Bum, a coming of age drama by award-winning writer/director Lindsay MacKay.
A fourteen-year-old girl who is uncomfortable in her own body does not even like to change out of her wet bathing suit in front of the other girls before going to her after-school job in a nursing home that her mother owns. She makes friends among the people she cares for, and she develops relationships.
Wet Bum, starring Julia Sarah Stone from Vancouver and Kenneth Welsh, is currently in post production, and Grant is seeking a suitable premiere festival.
Although Grant now lives in Toronto, she lived in Gibsons for years and attended Elphinstone Secondary School, but she is not a graduate of the video production program there.
“I was always interested in film,” she said, “but I took the theatre program while I was there.”
She later went on to the film production course at the University of British Columbia and attended the Canadian Film Centre’s Producers Lab.
More about Grant’s company can be found at www.clique-pictures.com.
