Winners Take Home Big Money in Indie Ignition Film and Animation Accelerator Pitch Competition

A local Calgary business major with a passion for game and hacker culture took home top prize at the Indie Ignition Accelerator pitch competition, but the biggest money went to a documentary filmmaking bootcamp for teens.

Five of the 12 teams to complete the Film and Animation Accelerator program came away with cash prizes.

Catalyst by Luke Simms of Subject Change Films took the top prize of $12,000 after a unanimous decision from the panel of industry judges.

Judges said Simms had a very clear focus and was already completing similar content.

“He delineated a vision very specific to Calgary,” says judge Steven T Seagle, a veteran writer in the comic and theatre world. “It's seven episodes, they are all thematically linked, it was unified and it looked like you could make it for what he was asking for.”

Simms says the money will make all the difference in starting production.

“Catalyst uncovers the untold stories of Albertus's tech culture, from the video game industry we have here all the way to Hackathon's, which actually originated here in Calgary,” Simms says.

“I think there's a lot of really cool stories to tell herein Calgary.”

In second place overall was Saadiqah Omar, who’s Reel Documentaries program builds off an award winning concept she launched in South Africa.

"It will provide the knowledge and the inspiration to pursue film as a viable career path," says Omar.

The $10,000 seed money will go to creating a documentary filmmaking workshop for young creatives age 16 to 21. Omar was also awarded an additional $8,000 as part of TC Energy’s generous Female Founders grant for the top three female teams.

In third place with $8,000 was Mauricio Flores, a former petroleum engineer who is launching MF Media, an-industry association-level podcasting service.

Other winners of the Female Founders award were Claudia Bognar’s children’s adventure series about animals overcoming fears and exploring the world and Villa Cartoons, run by sisters Isa and Anavi Piñero.

Villa Cartoons is a web series that teaches animation and behind the scenes dives into creating cartoon content, delivered in Spanish. Their background is a combination of acting and art, but they said that’s not the part of their idea that needed help.

“This program was so well constructed in the business side that for me, what I took the most and that I'm still using like to the last week and I know I'm going to continue using, is the validation market and the research of the market audience,” says Isa, who majored in film. “All those things that I learned in the program, they seem very basic, but my two years of film school never touched it.”

Seagle says he was not only impressed by how the teams presented their ideas, he was also encouraged by what he sees happening off the stage.

“The business of all of this is new to a college setting. So I think it's savvy to do it. It changes by the second, so you can get creaky really fast, but it's a good idea,” says Seagle.

Putting people together and having them watch other people's pitches and building this there's already people who are working with other people on things. That's very smart.”

The next round of Indie Ignition Accelerators has already begun, wrapping up in November. The main prizes for the top three teams are made possible through the generous support of OCIF.

More information on the program and how to apply can be found here.

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