Two high school slackers stumble upon a discarded set of old reel-to-reel tapes, labeled 'Riley Oakes'. When they listen to the voice on the tapes they discover the Riley uses music to overcome a disability and decide to find him as part of a school project.
Who is Riley Oakes? is a 20 minute narrative short film about two boys who find a reel-to-reel player and some old tapes with six songs on them. After receiving a class assignment to build a website, they try to find out who's singing on the tapes by uploading the songs onto the website. But, the catch is: in order to pass the class, they need to actually find the voice on the tapes. Using music, Who is Riley Oakes? touches on themes of alternative therapy, bullying, divorce and suicide in this coming of age story.
The film was shot in Calgary, Alberta using an almost exclusively Albertan crew and cast, many of whom, are up-and-comers, such as Sam Duke - Fargo, Olympus; Griffin Cork – Hug-o-Gram, Heartland.
Who is Riley Oakes? is a period piece set in the 1970s, 1980s and 2004, therefore, a strong artistic choice was made to film the 70s and 80s scenes on 16MM AgfaChrome Color Reversal film stock to be as authentic as we could for those eras.
Who is Riley Oakes? has been fortunate enough to be accepted into several film festivals so far, and won awards such as the “Bronze Prize for Cinematography” at the LA Shorts Awards 2015 and “Best of the Fest” at the Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Fest 2015.
Credits
Ron Devitt Director
Ron Devitt Writer
Naddine Madell Producer Consolation Prize
Sam Duke Key Cast
Jesse Collin Key Cast
Griffin Cork Key Cast
Alan Sabir Key Cast
Stacie Harrison Key Cast
Neil Enock Key Cast
Specifications
Project Type: Short
Runtime: 19 minutes 26 seconds
Completion Date: July 3, 2015
Production Budget: 20,000 USD
Country of Origin: Canada
Country of Filming: Canada
Language: English
Shooting Format: Digital, 16mm
Film Color: Color
First-time Filmmaker: No
Student Project: No
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