The road to finding your passion is not always a straight path. Some of us might have a few careers before we finally discover what we were truly meant to be. When that endeavor turns out to be filmmaking, it would take even more perseverance and confidence to finally live that truth. Mike Jackson is a wonderful example of someone proving that his talent should be fostered.
Here is our conversation with Mike Jackson about his journey.
HNMAG: Did you grow up in Ottawa?
Mike Jackson: Sort of. I was a navy brat. We moved around a lot. I was born in Ottawa, but also lived in Halifax and California and then moved to Vancouver when I was twelve.
HNMAG: Was your father in the Canadian Navy?
Mike Jackson: He was a commander and an engineer. He did a lot of early computer stuff. We had a basement full of punch cards when we lived in California.
HNMAG: While he was in the Canadian Navy, they trained him or stationed him in California.
Mike Jackson: He was getting a computer education there. He did a lot of stuff for the Navy and then worked in the private sector and in England, and now is happily retired.
HNMAG: Are your parents still around?
Mike Jackson: My dad and my stepmom live in the UK. My mother passed about a decade ago.
HNMAG: Condolences for your mom. Were you always interested in film and television?
Mike Jackson: Sort of, yeah It’s funny because film was my third career.
HNMAG: Really?
Mike Jackson: When I was a kid, the things I loved the most in the world were Star Trek and comic books. My first career was as an illustrator. I wanted to be in comics, so I worked doing science fiction illustrations for role-playing game books. Telling stories was exciting to me. Then, I moved into video games. Still focused on that, I had my own software company, which went under. Then I was like, what am I doing? I want to make movies. I have wanted to make movies since I was twelve years old.
HNMAG: (Laughs) There you go! As a kid, you were involved in entertainment in some way.
Mike Jackson: Mostly, I played role-playing games. such as Dungeons and Dragons and a sci-fi game called Traveler. I also drew my own little comic books. I had a lot of dreams and a lot of creative ideas, but I’d always figured when I was young that I would become a comic book artist. I finally got the chance in my early 20s, I discovered that I hated it. I got really bored having to draw the same person over and over and over again.
HNMAG: Of course. When you were in college or university, you got into sketch comedy.
Mike Jackson: I was a good friend of Peter New, the local actor.
HNMAG: How did you meet each other?
Mike Jackson: We met through his sibling, who I went to high school with. We had a terrible band. It was with Peter, his sibling, and Sam Dulmage. I used to write with Peter New, and we did a lot of creative things.
One evening, we were out at a Denny’s. I think it was 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning. We were just talking about our dreams and what we wanted to do, and he said I want to be the next Monty Python. I want to form a sketch comedy group. I said, Let’s do it.
HNMAG: That’s what Peter said?
Mike Jackson: Yes, I really encourage him. we called up our various creative friends, including Duncan Shields and Jackie Blackmore, who eventually joined. I am not an actor. I was a writer and a creative person behind the group.
HNMAG: Did that become a jumping-off point for you to switch to filming and TV, or did that take a while?
Mike Jackson: I was kind of doing multiple things. I had my fingers in a lot of pies. I was doing sketch comedy with Bonefish. I was doing illustrations for role-playing game books, My day job was working at a video game company doing game art.
HNMAG: Oh nice.
Mike Jackson: On top of all that, I ended up doing a little bit of storyboarding for animated shows. I was a concept artist for season three of Reboot.
HNMAG: Your job and illustration led you towards television.
Mike Jackson: It was always about storytelling. Being good at comedy was just a side discovery. It was all building world telling stories, and there’s no more exciting places to do that than in film. I dreamed since my teens of getting into film but never fully embraced it until after deciding the games were done.
HNMAG: How did you get into editing?
Mike Jackson: I was working in games but I still dreamed of making films. I was dabbling with writing with my longtime writing partner, Sam Dulmage. We were cooking a bunch of story ideas. I had a friend who was a film editor, and he had one of the first AVID editing systems in Vancouver. He walked me through how it worked and showed me just the basics of the process of editing. I thought it was pretty cool. Flash forward five years, and I came out of film school. I wanted to start directing my own short film and music videos, but I needed an editor, so I bought myself a computer system and taught myself editing. It turned out that I enjoyed it a lot, and I was pretty good at it. That surprisingly and quickly turned into cutting for other people, and a few years after that, I got a nomination. I was like, I’m actually good at this. I’ll keep doing it.
HNMAG: Which film school did you go to?
Mike Jackson: I went to the directing night course at the Vancouver Film School (VFS). The easiest way to learn how to make films is to just make films.
I’m jealous of the people who are coming up now. You can make slick-looking productions for no money, and that was not possible when I started. The editing software has really improved as well. With the help of Zach Lipovsky, I was the first person to edit a feature for Legendary Pictures in Premiere.
HNMAG: When did you start writing feature films?
Mike Jackson: My first full-feature script was completed in 2001.
HNMAG: That was after your film directing course at VFS?
Mike Jackson: Yes, it was with Sam Dulmage. We wrote a script called Hell To Pay. A horror film that almost got made so many times. The project always fell apart before we could get it together, but we had a great name actor attached to play the devil at one point, but it still fell apart. I kept writing, and finally, Time Helmet, my new one, actually made it to screen.
HNMAG: How did that project come together? Did you write the script with Sam or on your own?
Mike Jackson: It was the first script that I wrote entirely on my own.
HNMAG: Ok.
Mike Jackson: I got a lot of helpful feedback from good people, but I wrote it from the start. It was something that I wanted Peter to do.
HNMAG: Nice. Is it entirely a Canadian Cast and Crew?
Mike Jackson: To the best of my knowledge.
HNMAG: You said that it’s going to go screen. Where is it at this point?
Mike Jackson: We just finished up the last little bit of a technical cleanup a couple of weeks ago. We’re submitting it to festivals and crossing our fingers.
HNMAG: Is Time Helmet set in Canada?
Mike Jackson: It’s a story that could be happening anywhere. We don’t make a big deal about it, but we don’t hide the fact that it’s set in Vancouver.
HNMAG: You’re not hiding Vancouver like other US productions.
Mike Jackson: No, no!
HNMAG: Trying to make it look like LA or Seattle.
Mike Jackson: And when money is shown on screen, it has…..
HNMAG: Colours.
Mike Jackson: And the Queen, RIP.
HNMAG: How do you think we can go about getting more films like Time Helmet where we’re creating our own product and then showing the world what Canada can be?
Mike Jackson: I read Peter’s answer, and it was pretty good. I wish I could tell you more, but that’s just not my expertise.
HNMAG: What’s next?
Mike Jackson: I’ve been mostly consumed because I’ve also had a lot of jobs and visual FX and editing filling my plate.
HNMAG: Sure.
Mike Jackson: I just recently finished a documentary called Bribe. It’s about a shockingly large bribery scandal. A giant international scandal of close to $1 trillion from siphoning money out of oil-rich countries.
HNMAG: Is it a Canadian production?
Mike Jackson: Yes. It’s from the director of Peter Klein. I’ve had the privilege of editing a lot of shows for him over the years.
HNMAG: Anything else after that?
Mike Jackson: I’ve got a couple of future ideas. I got a sci-fi thriller TV series idea. And I love cutting, too, so I’m looking for the next big project to edit for someone else.
HNMAG: Was there anyone else who helped with Time Helmet?
Mike Jackson: It was a challenge putting the project together because we didn’t have any major funding sources. It was mostly through friends. Zach Lipovsky is an executive producer who helped us get things moving. Robin Chan, who I’ve worked with a lot before, staffed up, and man, he did so much, getting it done through all the stages of production. He’s been very patient. So many other amazing people helped out with it. Major was a big part of our production. Lori Watt has been running our festival campaign to get it out into the world.
HNMAG: Did you do any crowd funding?
Mike Jackson: We did an Indiegogo campaign, and that went really well. We got a lot of support, which got us over the finish line for shooting.
HNMAG: Could you get over 20 grand from an Indiegogo?
Mike Jackson: I think 20 grand was exactly what we got.
HNMAG: Did the donors receive any kind of incentives?
Mike Jackson: At different levels, yeah. We had various little stickers, T-shirts, posters.
HNMAG: How about a producer credit?
Mike Jackson: Oh yes, yes, a producer credit as well.
Mike Jackson is very smart, creative, and talented. He has a long career as a professional film editor in Vancouver and has now completed his first feature film as a writer, producer, and director. Mike is also a Canadian who has a wonderful, authentic voice. Not only do we hope for great success with Time Helmet and all his future projects, we are really crossing our fingers that Mike’s work can inspire more projects that are set in Canada.