– by Melissa Tobin

Jason Eisener is living the life many wish they could. The 26-year-old filmmaker is working on his first feature film with Alliance Atlantis and is getting offers from other big studios for up-coming projects. And to think it all began with making skate videos in Dartmouth.

Eisener bought his first camera in junior high with all his earnings from a summer job. Bought originally to film him and his friends skateboarding, it wasn’t long before the camera became an outlet to practice his passion for movie making. There was even a point in high school when making movies was all he wanted to do.

“I didn’t really care to go to parties on the weekend,” said Eisener, “I’d rather be out shooting movies with my friends. I didn’t even bother chasing after girls because that would have just took time away from making movies.”

Filmmaker Jason Eisenser in his Dartmouth office.

His enthusiasm for the art of film continued after graduation. Eisener enrolled in the screen arts program at the Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC) with best friend John Davies. The two had known each other since primary. They had so much fun making films together, they couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

“I remember thinking it would be so awesome to entertain people and be able to do that for a living would be the greatest job in the world.”

The road was not without its bumps, however. Eisener says there was a point at NSCC where he had lost his motivation and became down on the whole industry.

“People would come into the school and would talk about the film industry in a way that made it sound so tough. They would say ‘you want to sell out you can just make a horror movie’. But that’s what I wanted to do, just make fun movies like the ones I grew up watching and loved.”

That’s when the pair came across ‘Rebel Without A Crew’, the autobiographical book by Robert Rodriguez, detailing the director’s rise as a young filmmaker making it in Hollywood.

From there, Eisener went on to make a hour-long film for NSCC titled Fists of Death. A few years later, he made The Teeth Beneath, a horror/comedy set in the basement of a skate shop. It was through this film where he met Rob Cotterill, Eisener’s partner with Yer Dead Productions.

Yer Dead quickly began working on a fake trailer for a Rodriguez contest for the film Grindhouse. Titled Hobo with a Shotgun, the trailer went on to win the contest and was shown along with Grindhouse screenings in Canada.

Eisener and crew flew down to the Hollywood premiere of Grindhouse. While in Los Angeles, they got a call from Canadian film distributors Alliance Atlantis who wanted to make Hobo with a Shotgun into a feature film.

But before work on that project began, the crew had an idea for a short film: Treevenge. The 15-minute film was shot in ten days in the spring of 2008, and cost $5000 to make. To date, it has won numerous awards in film festivals across North America, including a Honorable Mention at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.

“It’s been a pretty wild two years, that’s for sure.”

But Eisener has no plans to leave Dartmouth anytime soon.

“I’d love to keep making movies here. We’ve got great crews in Halifax and Dartmouth and the locations here are awesome.”

Now, Eisener and Davies are working on the seventh version of the script for the feature film Hobo with a Shotgun. In the meantime, Eisener awaits approval of funding for the multi-million dollar project in which he had modest hopes.

“I would like for it to make it’s money back… I want to be able to keep telling our stories and being able work with the same crew. If we can pull this one off then we can all work as a crew together to make another film. I just hope to make a good movie, and to be able to go into someone’s house one day and see it in their DVD collection would be pretty cool.”

Filming for Hobo with a Shotgun is set to begin in October 2009.

Photo by Melissa Tobin