Filmmakers lose years of work

By LINDSAY LAFRAUGH
Friday, January 4, 2008

Dave Clement and Michelle Derosier received the news on their way back from a weekend in Winnipeg in mid-November.
Their film company, Thunderstone Pictures Inc., had been robbed while they were out of town attending the Winnipeg Aboriginal Film Festival, where their film, Seeking Bimaadiziiwin, had been nominated.

Clement said there has been a rash of break-ins at their Court Street office building, noting that a photographer lost his equipment the same way recently and that his friends at Shebandowan Films had a close call with an attempted break-in.

He said the landlord has co-operated by changing the locks throughout the building, but said he has heard nothing back from the police.

“I had to beg them to look at the eye-in-the-sky footage that was 50 feet away from the entrance of the building,” said Clement.

“There has been no followup with the police at all.”
The thieves made off with computer hard drives and monitors as well as video cameras, and the hard drive, video card and ram from their editing machine. The equipment is worth about $8,000.

“The worst thing is that they took seven hard drives, which represented about five years of work,
“With seven hard drives, you can only back up so much because you have such a massive quantity of data,
“So except for a couple of things that were backed up and off-site they basically stole all of our intellectual property,” said Clement who estimated that $200,000 worth of work was lost.

The company‘s graphic design and corporate information is gone as well.

Fortunately Thunderstone Pictures had just finished mastering Seeking Bimaadiziiwin and had made a copy.
“They stole that content and all of the work associated with it . . . so that one is in its final form and intact but we are unable to make any changes to it ever again,” Clement said referring to the company‘s premier film. Seeking Bimaadiziiwin is about a young aboriginal woman dealing with depression. It has won the company awards at local and international film festivals.

He said they were also able to salvage a project that was set to wrap up in December by using an older file that had been backed up.

“We had to play catch-up on that,” he said.

As entrepreneurs in their first year of operation, Clement said he and Derosier couldn‘t have it all – leaving them only partially covered by insurance.

He said he is saddened that these types of crimes are happening in Thunder Bay but that on the other side of things he feels lucky to live in a city with a good sense of community where people are willing to help each other.
Clement and Derosier‘s friend Kelly Saxberg, of Shebandowan Films is helping to plan a benefit for the couple to help them get back on their feet.

“We instantly found people who wanted to help,” she said in an interview Friday.

Clement said he couldn‘t say enough about the people who are taking the time to help.

“It has really been moving for Michelle and I,” he said.
The benefit is on Jan. 11 at the Finlandia Club. Doors open at 7 p.m. with a recommended donation of $10 for adults and $5 for students and seniors.

The evening will include a special screening of Seeking Bimaadiziiwin, a meet and greet with the film‘s stars and crew and musical performances by Heather McLeod, Rob Spade, Rodney Brown and Danny Johnson.