{"id":30533,"date":"2018-10-19T03:54:22","date_gmt":"2018-10-19T10:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=30533"},"modified":"2018-10-18T16:10:34","modified_gmt":"2018-10-18T23:10:34","slug":"revisiting-shop-class-misery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2018\/10\/19\/revisiting-shop-class-misery\/","title":{"rendered":"Revisiting shop class misery"},"content":{"rendered":"

A scene from Shop Class<\/em>. (photo from NFB)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Hart Snider has followed up his award-winning animated short The Basketball Game<\/em> with Shop Class<\/em>, one of four National Film Board of Canada shorts selected for the 2018 Spark Animation Festival, which runs Oct. 25-28.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wrote and developed Shop Class<\/em> while editing the TV series Yukon Gold, Klondike Trappers<\/em> and Ice Pilots<\/em> \u2013 documentary\/reality series driven by \u2018manly men\u2019 who would run into big problems in remote locations, but then they\u2019d break out some tools, rock music would start playing, there\u2019d be a montage, and the guys would \u2018man up\u2019 to fix the problem,\u201d Snider told the Independent<\/em>. \u201cWhile they were very successful shows, it made me laugh to be a not very macho guy telling these stories. It reminded me about being 14 and wanting to take home ec, but instead being forced to take industrial arts class, where my teacher tried to scare us into becoming men. I was inspired to write the story, which, yes, felt very cathartic \u2013 especially when I shared it with friends who also had him for a teacher.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not only does young Hart have to endure the bullying of his shop teacher, but he and his friends are targets for their bullying classmates. In one scene, Hart and his buddies are hanging out at a convenience store, when the friend checking out the latest Supermensch<\/em> comic receives a punch in the stomach.<\/p>\n

\"image<\/a>\u201cThe comic is not just a reference to being Jewish,\u201d said Snider, \u201cbut to my first film. Shop Class is actually a sequel of sorts, to my 2011 National Film Board of Canada animation The Basketball Game<\/em>, another autobiographical story. It\u2019s about being 9 years old and at Jewish summer camp for the first time, when ex-students of notorious Holocaust denier\/high school teacher Jim Keegstra come to our camp in Pine Lake, Alta., for a \u2018day of fun and fellowship.\u2019 Early in the film, my character is reading a Supermensch<\/em> comic (which is there mostly because of the unnamed villain in Supermensch<\/em>, seen fighting on the cover, that ends up inspiring a nightmarish transformation later in the story).<\/p>\n

\u201cShop Class<\/em> has a documentary-type scene that takes place in a convenience store, so I added a teenager reading Supermensch<\/em>, issue #18, the same comic, to show that both the stories actually exist in the same cinematic universe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every single character in Shop Class<\/em> is voiced by Corner Gas<\/em> and Dan for Mayor<\/em> star Fred Ewanuick.<\/p>\n

\u201cFred went from listening to me imitating my old teacher\u2019s way of talking,\u201d said Snider, \u201cto stepping into the recording booth and totally bringing that character to life \u2013 and he did it just by saying, \u2018Sit down, Turkeys,\u2019 over and over until he totally nailed it.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the other characters in the film, Snider said, \u201cI\u2019m still friends to this day with people I met in kindergarten at Talmud Torah in Edmonton, and I included a couple of them in both of my films. The love interest is totally inspired by my wife, Galit Mastai.\u201d<\/p>\n

The couple lives in Vancouver and, according to his bio, Snider \u201ccan usually be found either in an edit suite or at the park with his wife Galit, daughter Leora and dog Wolfie.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to writing and directing Shop Class<\/em> and The Basketball Game<\/em>, Snider also wrote and directed the animation segments for I Am Sam Kinison<\/em>, a feature-length documentary about the late comedian that aired on Spike television. \u201cI\u2019ve edited animated short films as well,\u201d he said, \u201cincluding Lisa Jackson\u2019s The Visit<\/em> and Elisa Chee\u2019s Lucy<\/em>. Most recently (outside of animation), I\u2019ve written and edited the theatrical documentary features I Am Heath Ledger<\/em> and Botero<\/em>, which will be released next year.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the NFB media site for Shop Class<\/em> \u2013 on which he reveals his plan to create a third short \u201cin this trilogy of animated films about growing up in Edmonton in the 1980s\u201d \u2013 Snider traces his love of animation \u201cback to being a little kid on Saturday mornings, glued to the TV. I have loved animation ever since,\u201d he says, \u201cbut it took attending a screening of adult animation shorts (which included the film Lupo the Butcher<\/em> by Danny Antonucci) when I was in high school to make me realize I really wanted to write and direct animated films. After interning at Nelvana animation in university, I thought I was on my way, until a job in post-production on a doc series about Cirque du Soleil back in 2001 led me on a totally different path as a documentary editor and writer.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, while he still loves animation, he doesn\u2019t do the art for his films. \u201cI just love telling stories using the medium,\u201d he told the Independent<\/em>, \u201cand I\u2019ve gotten to work with some brilliant artists \u2013 Sean Covernton animated The Basketball Game<\/em> and the team at Jesters Animation, led by animation supervisor Brad Gibson, brought Shop Class<\/em> to life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shop Class<\/em> screens Oct. 26, 11 p.m., at Vancity Theatre (19+). The NFB\u2019s Animal Behaviour<\/em>, by Jewish community member David Fine and Alison Snowden (jewishindependent.ca\/animated-therapy-session<\/a>), screens Oct. 25, 7 p.m., at Scotiabank Theatre. For the full festival lineup and tickets, visit sparkfx.ca<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A scene from Shop Class. (photo from NFB) Hart Snider has followed up his award-winning animated short The Basketball Game with Shop Class, one of four National Film Board of Canada shorts selected for the 2018 Spark Animation Festival, which runs Oct. 25-28. \u201cI wrote and developed Shop Class while editing the TV series Yukon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[787],"tags":[8295,6968,5933],"class_list":["post-30533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tv-film","tag-animation","tag-national-film-board","tag-nfb"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}