{"id":21621,"date":"2021-10-12T09:00:43","date_gmt":"2021-10-12T16:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=21621"},"modified":"2021-10-12T11:50:23","modified_gmt":"2021-10-12T18:50:23","slug":"camosun-student-co-produces-new-feature-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2021\/10\/12\/camosun-student-co-produces-new-feature-film\/","title":{"rendered":"Camosun student co-produces new feature film"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Camosun College student is seeing his experience with his harm-reduction work\u2014and his hard-partying past\u2014reflected in a new feature film, River Road<\/em>, which he is the co-producer of.<\/p>\n

Second-year Social Work student (and frequent Nexus<\/em> contributor) Fred Cameron says that his childhood friend Rob Willey, who wrote and directed the movie, aims to tackle themes of drug abuse with the film, which circles back to Cameron’s life.<\/p>\n

\u201cI work in harm reduction, offering support to people who are currently in addiction, many of whom are homeless and living a life that’s centred around drug use,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
A still from River Road<\/em>, which was co-produced by Camosun College student Fred Cameron (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Cameron\u2014who is currently taking a short break from his Camosun studies but hopes to return and graduate next year\u2014says that his childhood friendship with\u00a0Willey eventually turned into a life of partying together, which, for Cameron, led into a life of addiction.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo he had this film in the works for a while,\u201d says Cameron. \u201cHe had sent me a script initially, just to review the script, because as somebody who had lived a life of partying I knew a lot about the subject matter of this film, which is largely based on drug use.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once Willey had everything lined up for the movie, he brought on Cameron as co-producer.<\/p>\n

\u201cNormally he wouldn\u2019t have asked me for money, but he came to me and offered me an opportunity to get in as a producer, which, you know, for a struggling student who’s working part-time, the idea of that was incredibly scary but exciting at the same time,\u201d says Cameron.<\/p>\n

Despite it being scary, Cameron says he saw this as an opportunity\u2014Willey already had one feature film, 2016’s Dark Cove<\/em>, under his belt\u2014so he jumped at it. As far as further details about the movie go, Cameron describes a cautionary tale.<\/p>\n

\u201cBasically, it\u2019s a gentleman who had gotten himself into a lot of trouble with drug use, after he had gotten out of the lifestyle giving a recount of how he had gotten himself into that situation,\u201d he says. \u201cYou see in the preview\u2014it shows the lead actor telling the story of how he got into drugs and got back out through a sponsor in a 12-step program.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Cameron, although the movie is entertainment, the themes are deeply connected with his own life, work, and story.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m going to be honest with you\u2014my life path and now career is one very deeply rooted in addictions, suffering, and then an improvement to quality of life is now my life focus,\u201d he says. \u201cSo drug use is essential to my story and there are a lot of ups and downs attached to that. It’s been quite a trip. But at the same time, this, on the other hand, is about drug use, it’s about the culture, and it’s about the trauma associated with it, but there’s a separation between life and art. This is a stylized film that’s really for entertainment. It’s very well done, incredibly good visuals, but it’s separate from what I do in the real world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the heavy subject matter, Cameron insists the film itself was made for fun, and says that it’s been a lot of fun to work on.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe film itself is a stylized piece that’s made for fun,\u201d he says. \u201cIt’s very entertaining. It was great to take part in, loved seeing it in the theatre for the first time.\u201d<\/p>\n

River Road<\/em> premiered on October 1 in the US, and is screening on Saturday, October 16 at the Vic Theatre. Details on streaming are yet to be announced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Camosun College student is seeing his experience with his harm-reduction work\u2014and his hard-partying past\u2014reflected in a new feature film, River Road, which he is the co-producer of. Second-year Social Work student (and frequent Nexus contributor) Fred Cameron says that his childhood friend Rob Willey, who wrote and directed the movie, aims to tackle themes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21633,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-webexclusive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21621"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21636,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21621\/revisions\/21636"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}