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“People make these things … it was the moment where I realised, oh, people make films.”“What makes Indigenous filmmaking unique is that there’s always a lesson … it’s about community.”“Ingigenous crew are now filling every type of role … we’re bringing our people into these spaces.”
The Road To Your Name Podcast series grew out of a program started by Aboriginal Legal Services (ALS) in 2016 that helped people going through the justice system and their families to strengthen and deepen their cultural connections. Host, Lisa VanEvery, examines many aspects of Haudenosaunee culture and teachings with a wide range of guests.
RTYN Jon Elliott
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[00:00:00]
Lisa: Welcome to this episode of Joha De the Road to your name podcast. Today we're having a visit with John Elliot. John is from six Nations of the Grand River from the Mohawk Nation, and he does a wide variety of things in the arts industry and the television industry and the movie industry. And I'm really excited to learn all about all the things that he does there because.
I don't know a lot about directing or cinematography or things like that, so welcome to the
Jon: podcast, John. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to talk to you.
Lisa: Okay. We're in person for this episode, which is always exciting. Yes. So let's get right to it. Now, I met you a few years ago when you had.
Finished a film, one of your films, what was it called again? It was called Her Water
Jon: Drum.
Lisa: Yeah, her water drum. And you were doing a showing at the Wilford Laia University of [00:01:00] the Film. Was that your first
Jon: film? No, actually that was, I guess one of my first, like I, I'd say bigger films. Mm-hmm. Uh, the ones that I'd cared about, it was definitely the biggest project I'd done outside of film school up until that point.
And there was, yeah, like it, it was definitely, I'd say out of all the projects that I've done, Post that it was the one that I maybe put a marker on as the first one that I would consider a real project. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz I don't really consider student projects, real projects, at least mine. So people make better ones.
Mine were not. Great. So
Lisa: what, what prompted you to go into this direction of
Jon: the arts? That's a really good question and I. Think the answer really stems back to when I was a kid. I think there's two instances that I can really point to. One being whenever I would spend time with my grandmother in Buffalo, she had a little bit of mobility issues, so it was hard for her to get around.
Something that we would often do together is watch TV and watch movies, and I specifically remember there was one point where when I was a kid, I watched [00:02:00] Jurassic Park with her on V H s. And I was just, that was the first time I saw it and I was just totally mind blown cuz I couldn't believe that there were dinosaurs on screen.
And I was freaking out about it cuz I'd had all these like picture books. And I loved dinosaurs as a kid. And I remember looking up and asking her like, how did they do that? I thought dinosaurs don't exist. And she started to explain to me the process was, which they did it, they were using animatronics, they used like computer effects and stuff like that.
And then I remember her one time, she had actually recorded, there was a TV special, kind of a behind the scenes breakdown of Jurassic Park that showed the process of how they made it. And yeah, again, my mind was just blown. And I think that because her and I spent so much time together watching movies, and that was the first time where I really understood that people make movies.
It's like you, you just don't think about it when you're really young. But then there's a moment. And that was the moment for me when I realized, oh, people make these things and it was created and everything that was done by people. And then fast forward a little bit more, and my family and I, we would spend like every Friday, like many [00:03:00] people, you know, we'd go to the video store and we'd get at least two movies to watch.
One that my sisters would wanna watch, and then one that like usually me and my dad and my brothers would wanna watch. Yeah. And we would always have a big movie night. Friday night, get popcorn snacks from Starers and then just sit down and watch the movies. So I remember that being really special. And I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to fantasy and sci-fi.
So I got really big into Star Wars, really big into Harry Potter. And then the big thing that kind of pushed me along the trajectory was Lord of the Rings, and specifically the extended editions of those movies have basically per movie about 12 hours of bonus features that break down every minute detail of how the movies were made.
From cinematography to sound design to special effects to the actors and everything, and I still credit that to being like my first film school, quote unquote, was watching all three of those movies like religiously. I would put on the special features all the time to the point where everybody would get so annoyed, but I was just fascinated by it.
So I really think that was the moment where I was maybe, I don't know, 11 or 12 at the time. And [00:04:00] it just clicked. I was like, I am so obsessed with this and I love this and I wanna do that. So yeah, that was it from there, honestly.
Lisa: Wow. And so at that age though, did you know that there were actual jobs that you could do that
Jon: were like that?
Yeah. Honestly, again, I really credit that those special features to be the introduction to the types of. Different types of work that film presents because they talk about wardrobe designers. Production designers who literally make kind of everything that you see, all the props, the like chairs, and in Lord of the Rings, it's like they design the castles and all that kind of stuff.
And the cinematographers who and the camera operators who are actually lighting the set and shooting it with the cameras, directing, editing. It really gave me like a kind of a breakdown of all of the roles that were possible through film. And something that I still believe to this day is that it's almost like.
There's a job for anyone, regardless of your background in the film industry. Like you can take any skillset that you might have in a job or career [00:05:00] outside of that and transpose it into film, into some sort of position and yeah, I think like from a very young age, I was like, I don't know what I want to do, but I wanna do something in there.
Yeah. So yeah, I just pursued it right away. You
Lisa: discovered that you could actually go to university and. Study, these types of things. Mm-hmm. And that's what
Jon: you did, right? Yeah. Yeah. I remember very specifically, I went to Assumption High School for my grade nine to 12, and they had a really good like communications program there, so they would have video announcements and all that kind of stuff in the morning.
So I quickly, as soon as I could, I took the communications class in about grade 11, I think. Um, and I started doing the morning announcements and stuff and I would basically skip every other class in order to go to communications class and work on my little projects that I was doing there, to the point where my teacher was just, yeah, he got mad at first, but after a while he was just like, whatever.
He just opened the door for me and didn't let me come in at any given point, cuz at the expense of my other classes, I wasn't. Failing other classes, [00:06:00] but I was just really focused on this. And I specifically remember knowing already at that point that I wanted to study in university and go to film. My sister's husband at that point, he went to York University for the film production program and he was telling me all about it and saying that it was a really great program to be a part of.
So I knew that's one of the film schools that I wanted to go to, and there was Ryerson and a few other ones that I all. Applied to, but I specifically remember my guidance counselor at the time when everybody is pulled into the guidance counselor to talk about what your career path is. She specifically dissuaded me from trying to get into the film industry.
And I like to think it's just because a lot of people don't know what it entails, but she was like, how are you gonna make money in film? How are you gonna make a career in film? And I was like, I don't know, but I'm gonna do it so I don't care. And I just walked out of the room. Yeah, thankfully I did get into.
To York and a few others, but I decided to go to York just because they were really focused on the theory and I knew that was something that I was really interested in. The history of film and how to do things. So, yeah, I [00:07:00] went to York University, did their four year BFA film production program and it was amazing.
I learned a lot, made so many great contacts and people that I still work with to this day. Mm-hmm. All those years later. Mm-hmm.
Lisa: So it's really worthwhile then going to getting that theory and that study behind you mm-hmm. Before you jump into the film
Jon: industry. Yeah. In some ways. I definitely think that there, there's many paths and roads that you can take to get into the film industry.
Yeah. I know people who did no formal training whatsoever. They just happen to find themselves on set and then build their selves up from there. There's people who spend 30, 40 years in another career and then decide, oh, I really like movies. I'm gonna try to get in there. And then there's obviously like the film school route.
And I think really there's no right or wrong way to do it. Um, I know for me, the film school route was the right way to go specifically because at the time there weren't many people really at all making films on Six Nations. There was no real exposure to the actual industry itself there. So [00:08:00] I knew that I wanted to go to university to start to slowly build up the network and build my introduction to the industry as a whole.
And obviously Toronto's film industry is like booming. It's massive. So I knew it was gonna be a really good opportunity to get my foot in the door. And then for me, it's really, film school I think is all about networking in a way. It's not necessarily about the projects you do, it's you kind of have a safe environment in film school to try every position.
Mm-hmm. And fail at every position and find what you're good at. In a safer environment where there isn't so much on the line necessarily. And for me it was that, and I really just learned what I did, like what I didn't like. I was able to meet a lot of really great collaborators. A lot of my professors were really amazing as well too.
So you get this insight into the industry that you're going into. So as a younger person going into it, when I graduated, I think it was, I don't know, maybe like 20 something. It was. I think instrumental in giving me just the understanding of how to jump into the actual industry afterwards. But I think people who come [00:09:00] at it at different points in their lives can just find their own ways in.
But I know it helped me just find a way. Do you
Lisa: feel it gave you more confidence?
Jon: I think so, yeah. Because you, cuz you knew a lot more. Yeah. It just gives you that opportunity to know, again, going back to the point where it's like there's so many different jobs in the film industry, it gave me the confidence to know which ones I was actually interested in.
And which ones I wasn't very good at or didn't care to be good at.
So
Lisa: what did you gravitate towards then when you were studying? So
Jon: when I went in, I was like dead set on being an editor because as a kid who didn't have much access to things, my mom was a computer technician, so she had a really good Mac when we were growing up.
So I would take like, Movie clips and movie trailers and cut my own trailers out of them. I just thought it was a fun like thing to do. So I was really dead set on being an editor. But then as I went through school, I really started gravitating more towards actually crafting the images and making the images.
So camera was something I was [00:10:00] really interested in. Cinematography. Learning how to light and learning how to compose a shot and tell a story visually. Cause I grew up also, you know, like drawing and sketching and doing visual arts. So it made sense to me Yeah. That way. And then I don't think directing was something that was really on my radar too much at all until maybe the last year of film school.
Just because everybody who goes in is, I wanna be a director. I wanna be like, Quent, Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, all these people. And I knew that. I was like, I don't really care to, to do that. Like I, I like telling. Helping other people tell their stories. But then there did become a point where I realized that like the types of stories that I was given the opportunity to work on in film school weren't ones that I necessarily connected to or cared about, the subject matter all that much in order to really.
Invest, and even still to this day, I think that's one of the biggest reasons why I choose to go onto projects is I need to feel like there's something that I really connect to you and a story that I really enjoy telling. And I know that as a DP and the cinematographer, that the director has a really clear vision of what [00:11:00] they want to achieve, and that's really important to me.
But I realized that there weren't many opportunities for stories. There was no other indigenous students within my year or even the two years above or the year below me at all, and that was something that I kept coming back to and I was like, I really want to. Try to use these new skills that I've developed over these few years to start sharing some of our stories and sharing some of the stories in the way that I like know.
We talk about our stories and it felt, I don't know, I was just more and more compelled and pushed to, to start doing that. And then that I think is, yeah, kind of where the directing really. Started taking foot. Yeah. Yeah. So
Lisa: how do you find that indigenous storytelling is
Jon: different? That's a really good question, and I've had so many conversations with different indigenous creatives about it.
But I think for me it's really, I don't know. There, there's certain, I think cornerstones, like for one, I think. Anytime that, like I, I've been around people telling stories, specifically indigenous storytellers. It's always funny. [00:12:00] Um, there's always a lot of heart and I think that there's a level of, I don't even know if it's necessarily overt, but there's this inherent level of whenever I feel like we tell stories, there's always a lesson.
There's always like a moral, there's always something that goes a little bit deeper than what just a surface level story has. And I think that's something that I really. Always found myself wanting to have, there were so many stories that I was given the opportunity to shoot where I was like, I just don't feel like there's anything under the surface.
It feels like it's just what it is, is what you get. Yeah. And I was always looking for, I started really thinking about in my own way, like what is it that makes us our storytelling unique? And I also think that it's like, it's live storytelling, right? So it depends on who's telling the story. What details you're getting and what those accentuated moments are and how the story is being conveyed.
And naturally exo, you know, film in and of itself is you're solidifying the version of the story that you're telling and you're like cementing it as what it is. So it's different than our lip storytelling in that way, [00:13:00] but I do think that there's something that's really inherent to it, which is that.
You're really capturing the moment in time that you're telling the story and who you are as a person and everybody else who's involved in the story, right? Because again, the film, on average, it's so many films require a whole team of people to bring it to life. It's not just the one individual like you as a director I'd say, are really, it's your vision of how you're telling the story, but.
You are bringing on collaborators who have their own unique perspective and their own ways of doing things and their own ideas about the story that you're telling. And it's really up to you to bring the right team together. Yeah. Who you trust to be able to be real collaborators because they change the story too, right?
Like having a certain cinematographer on a project will change the way it looks. Having a certain production designer on board will change the way that like the wardrobe is and, and the. Costumes in the background and a certain makeup artist will make people look a certain way. That was like the community aspect of storytelling was what I found was so interesting because I think that is [00:14:00] similar to our stories, right?
It's meant for community, so it kind of feels like in some ways, this as an art form is like bringing that community aspect into the actual process. Of making a film, if that makes sense. I don't know. Yeah. So on
Lisa: indigenous films and indigenous storytelling, the director's not the only boss or the big boss?
No. It's everybody has their own unique gifts to
Jon: contribute. Yeah. And I think that it's so important to embrace that because it's. It's, it's about making a story feel authentic, right? At the end of the day. Yeah, and I think specifically when you're going into not only our community, but other communities as well, because I've done a lot of directing for documentary and fiction projects that take place in so many different nations, and it's really about like how I approach it is.
You tell me how you want your story to be told, and I will help you achieve that. As a director, I'm coming in and I'm helping lead the team in a way that services how they want the story to be presented. I think it's a very, what I love so much about [00:15:00] indigenous cinema in particular, and all the rise of indigenous filmmakers right now is it's changing the way movies and TV shows and series and everything are being made.
Because before it's like people from not our background would come in. And tell these stories in a way that it's like I'm telling it the way I want to tell it. I don't care necessarily what your input is as a community or as a nation. It's gonna be the way that I want it to be presented. I'm not gonna show you the project until it's done, and I'm just gonna shape it into whatever I want it to be.
And the thing that I love so much about all the new filmmakers on the rise right now is it's. The complete opposite. It's you're, if you're telling a story about a community or a nation, either your own or others, so many people are actually taking their perspectives and into consideration and working with the community to actually develop the story the way that it's meant to be told.
And I think that is such a different and radically different approach to so many other people who are making movies that are non-indigenous or I guess really even non bipo, right? It's just we're starting to see that authenticity [00:16:00] in. What feels right. It's like you're starting to see projects that actually feel like, oh, I know these people and I know that this is the, how we would tell this story.
Yeah, and I think it's, yeah, it's such an interesting time to be in the film community and for me, that's always the big thing is I want to involve as many people from the community that I'm telling the story and as possible.
Lisa: Because it's so ironic that indigenous people were a part of the film industry for many years in them wanting us to be riding horses and things.
Yeah. And things like that. But it wasn't our stories. Yeah, no. We were just playing roles in there.
Jon: Films. Exactly. Yeah. And you can see that there's so many amazing filmmakers now where you're starting to see this really, I, I think sense of authenticity and it's showing what life is like in a contemporary way for indigenous people
Lisa: to say, now what's a film that D says that for you?
A real authentic
Jon: story? I think, honestly, it's not a film, but like one that I constantly look at right [00:17:00] now, and I think it's sweeping across indigenous nations everywhere is reservation dogs. Oh, I was gonna mention that one. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's. I, when I look at that show and I look at the characters in that show, I'm like, yep.
That's how me and my like shitty teenage friends were when we were bumming around the res. Yeah. I recognize these people. Exactly. I recognize the types of characters of this and I even know what they're gonna say next. Yes. It's, I know exactly what's going to happen here, and it doesn't make it bad. It makes it satisfying because you're like, oh my God, finally I get to see like, How I grew up presented because it is different, right?
It's like when you're growing up on Lorez, you just have different experiences, different types of people around you. If you were to grow up, Outside of that environment. And I think that's finally a show where I'm like, oh, if you want to know how I grew up, you can look at reservation dogs. You know? It's like, yeah.
And also
Lisa: when you were talking about storytelling and what you like, it's interpretive and that's a show that does that as well. Yeah. And also a lot of humor. Yeah, exactly.
Jon: And I think that those are, to me, like the core tenets of [00:18:00] Yeah. Like good indigenous storytelling is, it's gotta be funny and it's gotta be like, It has to have something more to say
Lisa: because we're different.
I find in that we find humor in the most unique places. Mm-hmm. You know, um, grief in grief and in in death. And we always embrace our humor. Yeah, yeah.
Jon: All the time. Yeah. It's like you go to a funeral on the res and like, Obviously people are sad but people are laughing too, right? Yeah. And like having a good time.
And I think it's about, to me it's about the celebration of people and life and community and I think that show does it so well, and that's definitely the type of storytelling that I like to lean towards as well, is stories that kind of celebrate life and are who we are and our background and our nations and our culture and that they can definitely touch upon very heavy subject matter.
But I don't like to leave people in that, you know? And I, I don't think it's authentic to make it like, [00:19:00] oh, we're just gonna show you this really terrible situation for 20, 30, however long minutes, and just leave you there. Because I don't think that's really authentic to who we are as a people, right? It's like we're not going to sit and wallow for like 20, 30 minutes of screen time.
A story that could take place over days and like not be cracking jokes and not be like finding something more. We have to be
Lisa: resilient
Jon: somewhere along the line. Exactly. And I think that is something that I always look for. And when I see other stories that let's say, don't show that side of us, I feel like, oh, who got their hands on that?
Like that doesn't feel like it would be coming first. It's not done yet. Yeah. It was like, it doesn't feel then, it doesn't feel right. Yeah. I don't know.
Lisa: Wow. It sounds like an, it's a, it's an exciting time to be in the film business. Do, like, when, do you always work with indigenous people or your, or do you find you work with a lot of different.
Kinds of [00:20:00] people. Types
Jon: of people. I definitely work with as many indigenous crew members on every project as I possibly can bring on board. It's an interesting time because I feel like now we're starting to get people who are coming from different places and indigenous crew members who are actually starting to fill every type of crew role.
For a long time it was like, oh, we don't have any indigenous editors, we don't have any indigenous production designers, makeup artists, all these kind of things. And I know that when I was. First in university it was like struggle to find anybody. But now, 12 years later, I feel like I'm able to like crew up either almost entirely or entirely, or a project with indigenous crew.
And I do that across the board regardless of what I'm doing, whether it's documentary or a fiction film or a music video or a commercial, like I try to bring on as many people as I can because I think that. For a long time too, the arts weren't really necessarily seen, and I'm just speaking from my personal experience growing up on six, like the arts when I was a kid, weren't really seen as a [00:21:00] viable career path, and there wasn't a lot of focus on it in school.
It was more sports oriented and I think now there's so many. People who are actually starting to put a stronger emphasis on the arts. And I think that film is a really great pathway for any young kid who's in the arts to start trying to see if it's something that they're interested in. Not only because I think it's become more accessible.
It's like you can make a movie on your phone, you can edit it entirely on there. Have you done that? I've done it before. Yeah. Really it's, it's an interesting challenge. I'll say that much. There's people in like younger people, like on TikTok, who are so much better than me. In this regard, but I think it's that access now where it's like you can so easily make something and distribute it and show it to people online.
That's really, I think, put a stronger emphasis on people and young kids in general who want to actually pursue a career in it, and I'm really excited about that. And I've, I've been doing mentorship programs and training programs for indigenous youth, like both in Toronto and abroad, trying to get people a little bit more interested in the [00:22:00] media.
World, not necessarily film entirely, but I'm coming at it from that perspective where I'm like, oh, if you want to have a career with longevity here, it's like you can get into this. And I think that, yeah, I'm slowly starting to see more and more people who are starting to be able to fill these other types of crew roles on projects, and it's really exciting and great and I try to.
Regardless of experience level, cause everybody's gotta start somewhere. I try to bring people, even if they have no experience whatsoever into these crew positions, to at least get their foot in the door and see if it's something that they like. For instance, there is a, my last short film that we just finished shooting like a month ago, we shot it entirely on six nations and it was at least, I think 65, 70% crew up by indigenous people.
The majority of the key crew were all indigenous. And our entire production assistant team, our locations team, we're all like people from Six Nations who had never done it before. And both my producer, Jesse Anthony, who's an amazing filmmaker from Six Nations as well, we [00:23:00] were really adamant about doing that because both of us have seen the need for.
More indigenous crew members and we were like, there's no better time than now to start getting more of our community members into the industry cuz we have projects that are coming back there all the time and our team who had never done it before were absolutely incredible. They took to it like nobody's business.
They were like rocking it. It was a six day shoot and they were the first ones there. They were the last ones to leave. They were like doing so many different types of jobs and having a really great time and it, I think it was really special for us at the end of it. For almost all of them to say, this is something that I actually want to consider doing more like in the future.
Mm-hmm. Because it is a lot of fun, right? It's when you're making a film, it's like you're kind of your own small community. Yeah. In a way. Yeah. And you make a lot of great friends and you have a lot of great fun. And if the project you're also working on just happens to be something that you personally connect to, it just makes it all so much special.
More special.
Lisa: What's the film you were, what's the film
Jon: that you did? So the film that I just directed, it's called uh, . [00:24:00] So it's a little deer, a baby deer in Mohawk.
Lisa: Oh, I would've got that. I would've got that, yeah, with my language.
Jon: So it's actually, it's a story that I've been developing for almost two years now with survivors from the Mohawk Institute Residential Schools.
I'd worked with them previously on another project, and we all felt that there was a need to continue telling as many stories as we can from as many different perspectives as we can. Talking about the history of that school and the ongoing impact of residential schools on our communities. So I worked with, uh, this group of survivors and we started slowly coming up with the idea of what hap what would we.
You know, what would we want to see? What hasn't been really like been done before? And for me, I think that was really like a narrative film. I was like, there's a lot of documentaries being produced and this group of survivors, so it's Roberta Hill, Don Hill, Shirley Berry, John Elliott, bud White Eye, and so many others.
They are talking about their experiences all the time. Both the Woodland Cultural Center, they do a lot of video interviews with the survivors. There's so many other people that do that as well. [00:25:00] And I thought it, it's, it's one thing to hear people talking about their experiences and it's another entirely to kind of see it as they were experiencing it.
So what. We decided to do was make a narrative film combining a lot of their experiences that they went through when they were students at the school, and turned it into basically a 30 minute narrative film about these two young girls, one's from six nations, one's from Oneida, and they're running away from the school in 1967 at Christmas time to make it back to their families, to spend Christmas with their families.
And that's a lot of that. The core backbone of that story is based on my own cousin, who's also named John Elliot. His story cuz he was called the runaway at that school. He ran away like over 30 times basically. And over the five years that he was there every single Christmas, he would run away to spend Christmas to New Year's Day with his mom and then he would walk himself back or his grandfather would drive him back to the school right after.
And he would do it regardless of the [00:26:00] punishment that he would face. Because he just knew that he wanted to be home with his, mm-hmm. With his family at that time. So it took a long time because everybody's experiences are so vastly different to develop it. But there were a few key things that I thought was common between all of their experiences, which was one thing they talked about all the time was the loneliness that they felt at that school.
And it, it was as if you were strongly discouraged from ever talking to other students. You were separated from your family members and it felt like you couldn't really. Tell anybody else what you were going through. And it's interesting because there was this kind of, obviously the shared common experience that they all had, but as they were kids, they didn't talk about it.
And the other thing was when, whenever one of the kids would be brave enough to try to run away, they, as soon as they got off the grounds, they always described this sense of overwhelming freedom and joy that would just like, All of a sudden burst out of them. And I thought that was really interesting because I'd heard so many stories about the Marshall growing up and other residential schools across Canada, and there were so many things in their stories that I was just, [00:27:00] were totally unexpected and about how the only way that a lot of them felt like they could make it through there was by making friends.
And that's something that I've never really thought about or never really heard or seen in other stories that kind of deal with residential schools is like. Yeah, how would these kids make it through? And it's only by making friends. That's the only thing that really makes sense is that they would have to build up their own small community in there to be able to deal with what was happening to them.
And again, you're not sharing those experiences between each other, but you're there for each other. And it was all those things that I found absolutely fascinating. And I was like, having grown up hearing these stories, never heard this perspective before. And obviously coming from. The actual survivors themselves.
It was a totally different thing. So we worked together for almost a year and a half developing what this script wound up being, taking a lot of of their own individual experiences and putting it into this single story. And they were guiding the project every step of the way. I would write a version of the script, I would send it to them, they would give me notes.
Sometimes I would have to drastically change things. Sometimes I would be right on the money and. It was such an [00:28:00] a amazing experience to kind of work with them to develop the story and to the point where it feels real. It like every single one of them feels like, this feels real to our experience. This feels real.
Like I recognize these characters, I recognize these situations. The language was so important because I'm telling a, it's a period piece, it's set in the sixties, right? They don't talk the same way as we do now. It was all those things that took so much time and consideration to do. I was working with Woodland Cultural Center and Brantford Museum and Archives.
To try to get as much information like visual research that as I could about like, how are we gonna present these, what do the uniforms look like, what did all of this kind of stuff. And then obviously my, my producer Jesse Anthony, who's also from Six Nations. Her mother is a survivor of the school as well.
I wanted her to come on to produce the film, not only because she's an amazing producer and we've worked together so many times, but I knew that for anybody working on this project in a major role, there needs to be some connection either to the mush or to other residential schools. And there just needs to be something there that allows everybody to put [00:29:00] themselves into it in a deeper way.
Because I knew this is a story about our community. It's a story like, That about the residential school and how it affected our community and community members. In my own personal way, it's a story about, I'm adapting the story that happened to my cousin as well. So I have my own like really strong desire to tell the story appropriately.
So it was, it took a long time to get it to where it needed, but that's the time the project needed to get to that point where everybody who worked on it, all the survivors across the board, we all felt like this is finally ready, this is good to go. And we all feel like, okay, we're on board. We've all brought, and like I was talking about before, it's like surrounding yourself with the right collaborators.
They were all able to bring in so much more experience and their own views and their own kind of family history into the project that just enriched it and made it so much better. Yeah. I've never, I think that movie, we're working on the post-production right now. We're working on the editing and everything and already I can say it's probably the project I'm the most proud of.
Mm-hmm. Um, because of how we made it. It was a real community effort across the board. Mm-hmm. [00:30:00] It still is now in post-production, a community effort cuz I'm sending it to the survivors. They're giving feedback and yeah. It's just something that I feel like it's something I've wanted to do for a while is find some way to talk about that collective experience that so many of people from our reserve have gone through and really kind of use it as a.
Education tool, right? Not only is it preserving the memory for our community and a lot of individuals who worked on the film, but it's also preserving the, I guess, the legacy in that history. And even though it's a dark chapter of history and some of the events in the film are, you know, like difficult to deal with them, we're dealing with a lot of traumatic stuff.
But in how we were talking before, it's finding the joy that came with these kids in some of these experiences and also the resiliency. Yeah. And finding friendship in a way and being able to deal with this through making friendships other as students in the, it's a lot to summarize, but that's the [00:31:00] project.
I know that you're, well, I'm getting
Lisa: the picture. Um, from your description, do you think the film will, when it comes out, will be a part of the museum?
Jon: Yeah, so actually that was something that we were very adamant about right up front, like pretty much when we first started talking about the movie. I reached out to Woodland Cultural Center and I was like, I don't know what this movie is yet, because we had still, we were so early in talking about stuff, but I really want this film to be used by Woodland Cultural Center, and I've, I'm basically, I've gave it to them for free.
Like I was like, here, this is our project. This is your project. We want to use this as education. The survivors want to use it as education material for everybody. So I want you guys to basically have it and do what you want with it, basically. Mm-hmm. If you want to use it for part of fundraising, if you want to have it in the museum, if you want to use it however you want to do it.
It's theirs to use. It's the C Communities project. So basically it's interesting because film in and of itself, like it's so many times where you make a project, and [00:32:00] this happened to me so many times, you make a project and you want it to be seen by people, but like you want to do the film festival circuit and because of that you can't show it to anybody and you can't have community screenings and stuff like that.
And. To be honest, that pisses me off and I really hate it because I wanna make stuff for people to see, and I wanna make stuff for people to engage with. And I don't love all of these barriers that film festivals and other people set up where it's, oh, if it's online, you can't submit it. You can't do this.
I'm like, so many of our community members, like they have access to Facebook and they have access sometimes, most of the time to internet. Uh, and that they don't have the ability to, let's say, go into Toronto or go to BC or go to all these places to be able to watch these films. And I'm like, I, I just don't like that.
So, yeah. Yeah. I try to just put stuff up in any way that's accessible as much as I can and then like, deal with the fallout basically. But you got into.
Lisa: Films so your films could be seen.
Jon: Yeah. I don't make stuff for just me to watch. Yeah, that's, nobody does that. So you want it to be seen. And I think especially a [00:33:00] project like this as Woodland Cultural Center will have it, I'm gonna work with the on Ontario School Boards, Toronto District School Board and stuff like that to try to get it into their education curriculum.
And I absolutely just want to host it online as soon as I possibly can to kind of be like, here it is everybody. Because I think that. It's the access to these projects that makes a difference, I think, and being able to generate conversation in a more kind of wholesome and in a more open way. Because it's one thing for a film festival audience to see a movie and be like, oh, that's great, but some of those people like it goes over their head immediately.
Wow,
Lisa: I can't wait to see it cuz my family went to the mush hole as well and I didn't get to hear their stories because they didn't tell their stories. It was like it was the era before people were telling their stories. Yeah, yeah. But now we have a lot to see with films like yours and the survivors out there telling their stories all the time.
So that's really good. So I wanted to ask you one question about. You were talking about people working on that film, [00:34:00] maybe for the first time, what would a position be in the film industry that somebody could just try out, see if they wanted
Jon: to? Yeah, so honestly, it's the position that, let's say super general, but there is, it's what's called a production assistant.
So generally speaking, people can come into that role with very little to no experience whatsoever, ever having worked on a film and a production assistant's job is essentially whatever it is that the producer kind of decides it is, right. So you'll have production assistants for different departments.
So you can have somebody who's a producer's assistant or a director's assistant. You can have people who are helping out with the production design. People are helping out with camera. It's a really, let's say, general role where you could be doing different things every day. You could be doing different things every hour even, right?
It's, oh, help the camera team, set up the camera, move the tripod, move all the gear. And then once that's done, you're gonna help the production team. The production design team like helps set up like the art on the walls and do all this, and then you're gonna be moving the trucks and doing all this, right?
So it's a very general role, but it's a [00:35:00] great introduction role because it really does allow you to dip your toes into every department. And you get to see what the personalities are like in different departments, but what those different jobs entail. And then you can, let's say start. Once you find something that you like, you can start specializing and start.
Gravitating more towards that position. As far as, uh, general position goes, it's like the most kind of common one. And I've seen so many people go from being PAs to being like, oh, I really like camera. I'm gonna go and be a, a first ac, which is a first assistant camera who like does the focus and changes the lenses and all that kind of stuff.
And then they work their way up to being a cinematographer. There's production assistants who are directors now because they've done it for so many years and they got a really good grasp of. What every position entails, and I think as a director you need to understand what every department does and what every position does.
In order to do your job well and know the reality of how long certain things take. Yeah. It's a really great kind of general position for people to do, and then once they find something that they, let's say very specifically, they can start to [00:36:00] move into that. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's so, oh,
Lisa: that sounds interesting.
Maybe that's my next
Jon: career. Yeah. I'll have you on the next one.
Lisa: Oh, great. I'll try it out. So as a director, When you're doing a film, it's mostly your project, right? Or do people hire you to be a director for their projects? Do
Jon: both, honestly. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the nice part about being a director is that once you get to that level where people can kind of like, you know, you have a few projects under your belt and most of the time as you're starting, it's gonna be your own thing, right?
It's gonna be, you're probably writing, you're probably directing, you're probably doing a lot of different positions on the project to be honest. But then once you've got enough. Things under your belt, people can start to see that and be like, oh, this person has some skill. Let's see if we can get them onto this project and then see if they're interested in directing in that.
So for me personally, yeah, like I really, for a while I thought I was gonna be strictly narrative filmmaking, but I kind of fell into documentary in a big way. And I [00:37:00] absolutely loved it. I didn't think I was going to at first to be honest, but there's something so special for me about helping other, like I said before, it's other communities and other people tell their stories.
And I think that working in documentary, it's like you just get to work with real people and you get to tell real stories and stories that mean something to to other people. And I'd worked on a few different projects like that. And then I got started to get hired by other production companies to direct these documentary series.
And it feels really great when you get that first offer where you're like, oh, sweet, okay, cool. I get to do this. And it is a bit different when you're working on a project that you're hired on for as opposed to your own personal project. I try to take them both in Stride and give them as much emphasis either whatever the project is, right, but it is like something that you can absolutely be hired on for.
So I've done so many documentary series now that have been on aptn and like CBC and all the Crave Bell, whatever, and. Yeah, like now, about a year ago. I started [00:38:00] dipping my toes in the commercial world because there is like only a handful of commercial indigenous commercial directors in Canada. I know every single one of them, there's three, so.
Wow. Yeah. So I was like, that feels the film, film world, the narrative world, the documentary world, really. There's so many amazing people working right now that are indigenous, like key creatives and directors and stuff. But I really felt like the commercial world was something where there wasn't enough people working in yet.
And it's really hard to get your foot in the commercial door. They're like gate kept, like nobody's business, and it's like a, oh, you have to have already been making commercials for five years in order to make your first one. That makes no sense. Yeah. I got fortunate enough to be offered a few different jobs on smaller commercials at first through different companies, but I signed onto the roster of a company called Nimble Content.
So they specialize in digital media commercials. They're doing stuff not necessarily for broadcast, but for online. And I did a commercial with them. The first one I did was through, it was for TD [00:39:00] Bank, so they had a commercial that had been being developed for several months. And Michael Cor, who's one of the, the EPS at Nimble.
He and I had been talking for maybe about a year and a half trying to get together in some way and do some commercial together. Was that like, oh, you don't have enough experience yet, type of deal. In the commercial world I've been doing so much else, but eventually it just wound up working out that the agency who was producing it was an indigenous run agency.
Michael is like the only indigenous ep, so executive producer in a commercial company in Canada. And then they were really, because we'd been chatting for so long, like we really wanted to have an indigenous director on the project. So, uh, yeah, I joined on, I did that project, it went amazing. And then I signed on to Nimbles roster.
So I'm officially represented by them. So I've done now six, seven commercials with them. Mm-hmm. And it's, would we know Annie? So I've done two for Tim Horton's. I did the Orange sprinkled Donut, the one that's raising awareness for the residential school survivors. [00:40:00] And going to those, they were raising funds for the two different societies.
So I did two commercials for them. I did stuff for Nike, I've done stuff for Skip the Dishes, uh, Deloitte. Mm-hmm. Uh, I recently did one for, uh, and also through them. It was like a funny connection, like for that TD commercial. DJ Shove actually did the music for it and I, he, up until that point, he hadn't worked with any real like indigenous directors for any of his music videos prior to, so as soon as he knew that, like me and Michael were like a team now working together.
He was like, oh, I want you guys to like do the music video, like a music video for me. So we shot a music video for him on Six Nations, uh, in, I think like Oh, I heard about that. Yeah. At the skate park. At the skate park, yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So we shot that back in. I was almost
Lisa: an extra on that. Oh, you
Jon: should have been, please.
Yeah. No, so we forgot my. Skateboard that day. Oh damn. We had extra, but it's okay. But yeah, so we shot that in November. It's gonna be coming out very soon. Yeah, which I'm excited about. And yeah, [00:41:00] so it's just been cool. It's just given me opportunities to kind of work with more indigenous creatives that are in like different arts as well.
But as I was saying before, it's really important to me to bring indigenous crew into these new spaces, in particular in the commercial world, because one big difference is that in the commercial world, As expected, there's more money. Mm-hmm. To pay crews. There's more money for resources. There's more money per project.
And while I love documentary, it's not always the best funded project. That's what they say. Yeah. Yeah. It's not like you can find good ones that are, but it is difficult sometimes to make a living that way. So. For me, what I was really trying to do and what I want to continue doing is bring all of these like indigenous creatives that I've met in other crew roles and get them onto commercial productions where it's like you can start to actually make better money for the job that you're doing.
Because I see so many incredibly talented people and I'm like, you deserve to be getting paid more. And that's important for us when you're working in the arts and in film, like generally speaking, nine [00:42:00] times outta 10, you're like a contract worker, you're freelance. So it's really like job to job. So I'm like, I'm trying to get people into the commercial world cause I'm like, it gives you more money for the same job.
And it's a shorter time span too. Yeah. It's really important for me to just try to get as many people in there as possible because, I see the need and I went through that as well, where it's just, oh my God, you're trying to make ends meet. It can be difficult. Yeah.
Lisa: So your goal is to go into the commercial world.
What about feature
Jon: films? Yeah, that it's going hand in hand to be honest. Like commercials are great and I love working in that industry because, uh, I just feel that there's still so much more of a need for our representation. In that field in particular, I would be lying if I said I didn't have aspirations to be directing like long format narrative feature films and like TV and stuff like that.
And I think it's really the, I don't know, it's the next big hurdle that I have to work up to because when you're doing a feature film, like it takes years really to see it from [00:43:00] beginning to end. Even independent ones, like you could be writing a script for a three year and a half, and then once you. Make the project, the actual filming of the project is always the shortest part.
Like for a low budget feature film in Canada, you're generally shooting between, let's say 16 to 20 days, give or take. So relatively speaking, you're working on the script for a year. You're working on a pre-production for five months, and then you're shooting it for three weeks, and then the postproduction could take another year sometimes.
Right. It's just finding the project and I have a few scripts that I'm working on right now at different budget levels. Where I want to commit to this project for that times fan, right, and live in this project for that long in order to see it through I, I definitely have stuff like very much in the works.
I'm hoping to get that on the go either this year, maybe early next year in order to become a, let's say a TV director. In Canada, which is really like the end goal for most directors. In order to be like quite lucrative and make enough money to support yourself well, that's kind of what you need to get to.
And the only way to really get [00:44:00] there in Canada right now is to make your first feature film, right. They kind of need to see, oh, you can make something that's like an hour, hour and a half, whatever, and you have enough skill to be able to pull that off and tell a coherent story in that time. Now we can trust you with like this.
There's a roadmap that you have Default there kind of is. Yeah. It's a little unspoken and it took a long time for me to figure out what that roadmap was and now I'm like, okay, I see what it is. Because then I like watching
Lisa: those shows that are like 10 episodes and then they're
Jon: over. Yes. I love that.
Yeah.
Lisa: Yeah, me too. Because then you can start and stop at any point. It's not really a long future film. Has there ever been, has there ever been a like a comedy special? Of an indigenous comedian done for a, like a Netflix special.
Jon: I don't know, actually, honestly,
Lisa: directed by an indigenous people.
Jon: Yeah, I don't know.
Realistically. I know for instance that recently Dom Bernt Stick did a special down on six, and I think it was filmed and they were recording it as part of his [00:45:00] first recorded. TV special, so that might be one of the first ones. As far as I'm aware, to be honest, I don't know if any indigenous comedians have gotten to the point where they're getting their own Netflix special yet.
If they did, hell I would love to be in the running to to shoot in directive, whatever. But yeah, I think that hopefully like watching those. Yeah, I do too. Yeah, I think they're great. The comedy specials, they're really great. They're so much fun and they're, I don't know, it's like just fun to kind of pop on and be like, mm-hmm.
Yeah, I have it on in the background. Yeah, especially
Lisa: indigenous humor. I love indigenous humor. I know. Okay, so what else is going on? Anything that we haven't talked about? We've talked about a lot. I've learned so
Jon: much. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. There's lots of stuff on the go right now, but I mean, do you have
Lisa: an assistant?
It sounds like you need an
Jon: assistant. I think I'm getting to the point where I feel like I need one too. When things are busy in film, and I'm sure Eric can attest to this as well, like. There's a million emails flying at you all day, every day. A million messages on Facebook and texts and all that kind of stuff.
It gets a [00:46:00] little overwhelming as a freelancer to like sift through it all because what they don't tell you in film school, uh, and I wish they did, was you are going to be your own secretary. You're gonna be your own accountant. You're gonna be doing every one of those. Yeah. Menial jobs that I absolutely got into film to avoid and you're gonna just have to do it.
Yeah, I've gotten really good at trying to sift through my emails and like respond to people as much as I can. I know lots of people would say that is not the case, but yeah, I've heard from him in a week. I know it happens. So where can we find you
Lisa: on the internet,
Jon: John? So I have a website that I keep usually quite up to date.
Uh, it's john b elliot.com. J o n? Yeah. J o n b b Elliot, which is E L I O T T. Do com. Dot com. So I, I put a lot of my projects up there. And then I'm on Instagram as well, which I think it's John dot b dot Elliot, same spelling. Okay. Facebook as well. But I kind of mostly post things on. [00:47:00] Instagram is like a, it's almost like a work portfolio in a way.
Oh, okay. Yeah. I don't post a lot of personal stuff on Instagram. It's just, Hey, here's work stuff going on. Again, it's one of the things that they don't tell you is you have to be your own social media, you know?
Lisa: Oh yeah. Person and Facebook. What's your Facebook
Jon: handle? I think it's the same. I'm not entirely original.
Oh,
Lisa: okay. People will find you and look up your work and, um, I'm so glad we got to talk today because you gave a lot of advice about maybe people are, young students are wanting to get into the industry and, um, you know, it was like a mini seminar. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Which is really good.
Jon: Yeah, I, I absolutely 100% think, uh, if anybody's like halfway interested in the film industry, if you like making tos, you like doing Instagram stories and stuff like that.
It's such a good career path. I think you meet so many different types of people. You get to work on so many meaningful stories and you get to go places too. One of the reasons I love documentary is you get to travel. Yeah. Like you get to go to different communities that you would have [00:48:00] never thought to go to.
If you weren't working on a project, but then when you're there, you meet so many amazing people and yeah, it's really like a life changing experience to be able to do that. And I think the film industry counter to what my guidance counselor in high school said, where there's no jobs or anything. That's a total lie.
I think the film industry is an incredible industry to work in. It was one of the only ones, to be honest, like that was covid proof. Pretty much like throughout Covid, the film industry maybe shut down for a month and then as soon as that month they had figured out how to operate safely in testing and all this kind of stuff.
They're already their own little community. Exactly. If you're thinking about future pandemics, the film industry is quite pandemic proof and it's very safe. I know so many friends working in other industries who were out of work for months and I was back working on projects within like a month's time.
Right. So, Yeah, it's safe industry. You can make a lot of like really great connections and you can make a living. I've been able to support myself in Toronto, which I think is like something to say at this point. Okay,
Lisa: so I'm gonna check you out on john b [00:49:00] elliot.com and see some of your work. Are your commercials on there?
I love watching
Jon: commercials. They are. Yeah, I've definitely got the majority of my commercials up there. There's a few more that should be coming out halfway soon, that DJ Shep video should be coming out soon as well. So obviously post that on my Instagram and on my website and stuff. And yeah, as soon as I'm allowed to start sharing things from my shore, I will do that as well.
Lisa: Okay. Yes, Eric?
Jon: This episode probably won't air for about six or seven weeks, right? Yeah. So you could probably say by the time you hear this episode, this should be out. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So that's, so say that over again. Yeah. So I think by the time you hear this episode, the DJ Chef video and probably the Deloitte commercial that I directed recently, I should both be out online, easy to access.
Uh, I'll definitely have them on my website and I'll have them on Instagram and stuff. Yeah. And then for future projects, like my short film that I was telling you about, as soon as I'm allowed to start sharing things from that, I absolutely will. Yeah. We're hoping for, [00:50:00] for that to be out in the next few months and for people to start seeing it.
Oh, that's
Lisa: really great. The one that you did with the survivors. Yeah. Yeah. I really wanna see that one. Okay. We have been visiting on this episode with John Elliot and he is a director and cinematographer. And has a lot of other talents in the film industry and he's from six Nations. He's Mohawk and he's shared a lot with us, son, Yahweh, John, for sharing so much of your knowledge about the industry and what it's like to work in the industry as an indigenous person, and I've learned a lot today.
Jon: You know, to you for having me. I really appreciated the conversation.
Lisa: Okay, let's meet again on the next episode on IK
Jon: series.