FROST, a Canadian Film Centre Short Film by Jeremy Ball, tells the story of Naya, a young arctic hunter who uncovers a strange world while on the search for food outside of her ancestral hunting grounds. It is the first CFC Short to be shot in an HD format and features over 70 visual effects.

The film, which premiers tomorrow at the Toronto International Film Festival, has been a long time project for Ball.

Emily Piggford as Naya. Photo by David Lee.

zeeBigBang spoke with him about the making of FROST.

According to Ball, FROST is about legacy and the things that we leave behind and what these things say about us as a people.

The film was shot inside a studio on the west end of Toronto, though you’d never know it considering FROST takes place in what appears to be the arctic.

“We were always hoping for some actual snow to fall … I was holding out that we could have moved our green screen outside and had real snow on the ground and that never happened. So certainly there were challenges involved in creating that illusion. I think a bigger challenge was probably editorially, having to show the film as a work in progress and just keeping everybody on the same page about how far along it really was and how far along it still had to go. When you’re looking at things which aren’t really finished, it’s left up to people’s imaginations of what’s going to be there,” said Ball.

Emily Piggford as Naya. Photo by David Lee.

Ball spent the past eight years working in production and visual effects. With his skills as an illustrator, graphic designer, and compositor, he was able to successfully communicate his visual ideas to his team during the creation of FROST.

“I’m able to communicate visually to people at a very early stage and that really helps, especially if you’re doing anything with visual effects. You need to be able to paint a picture for people very early on because there’s a lot that happens in visual production that’s really only part of the picture. Being able to show people something you’re going for helps put everybody on the same page,” said Ball.

Director/writer Jeremy Ball. Photo by Heather K. Dahlstrom.

We asked Ball what inspires him as a filmmaker. Here’s what he had to say,

“I’m inspired by innovation, whether it’s technical or creative and not necessarily limited to film but particularly when people combine things in new ways. Whether it’s taking something old and re-contextualizing it as something modern or vice versa; or in film, people that combine genres in interesting ways.”

Ball’s original concept for FROST came out of a feature project he approached the CFC with, called Polaris.

“We actually did a brief, 90 second teaser for the feature film [Polaris] that introduces the character of Naya and her world; so when the chance to do a short dramatic film came along, I took it as an opportunity to do another film with her character but it was a bit of a side venture to the feature story,” said Ball.

The film will have its World Premiere at TIFF on Tuesday, September 11 at 6:30pm.

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