0:00 It's your father's funeral. I can memorialize that on my own. I don't need to be surrounded by a bunch of fake pricks pretending they give a shit about him. 0:08 What's your problem? 0:09 I don't have a problem. Get the fuck out of my way. 0:11 You're acting like a little girl. 0:12 I'll call security. 0:22 What you just heard was a climatic scene between Goliath's two leads. A full length feature film that students across Ryerson University worked on. Luca Mayer, a fourth year film student was the brainchild behind the whole project. 0:36 So I've been interested in screenwriting since I was young and I knew that film was an area that I wanted to go into. And I find that there's a lot of opportunity in writing to really explore stories and things that you're dealing with personally as well. For me, it was a big decline in my mental health last year. And Goliath was my way of kind of coping with an exploring that. So the story follows a woman named Robin Walker, who returns home to her small town after years away to bury her father for his funeral. And she kind of has a tremulous relationship with her siblings that she's trying to repair ahead of the funeral. My dad is alive, so it's not necessarily based on my life, but a lot of things that that the main character is going through are things that I think a lot of people who have experienced mental illness will be able to relate to. Hopefully people who haven't will be able to empathize and understand a little bit more about it. I think one of the greatest things about this project is that it's opened so many doors for a lot of the people involved. And it continues to have an impact on people who are coming to me and asking me how I was able to do it. And it's great to be able to sit down with students, other students, my peers, and tell them about the process and the lessons I learned and the mistakes that I made, and hopefully inspire and encourage them to do the same. 1:47 Mental health plays a huge part in the world of Goliath. The writing actually hits close to home, because although it's silent, and invisible, Luke lives with depression and borderline personality disorder. 2:00 So what that means is, I have difficulty regulating how I'm feeling on a day to day basis. And that was explored through the film through the character of Robin Walker. And it's something that me and Jessica Cebos, who plays the lead discussed a lot in the months leading up to it. Because he wanted to make sure that we did a really accurate portrayal of someone who would be going through these experiences, because I think there's really a lack of positive portrayals of people with mental illness in the media. I think as a filmmaker, and someone who has experienced thoughts of suicide and self harm, it was important for me to show that you can come back from that and you can really do big things. A lot of people told me that, you know, Goliath is projects too ambitious, and you should not be doing it this early in your career, but I didn't listen to them. And because I didn't, all these great doors have opened for me and I think we created a film that I'm really proud of 2:46 Helping Luke throughout his recovery was a clothing company called Wear Your Label that tackles the stigma of mental health through their clothing. Not only has he joined their marketing team, but Wear Your Lable is actually a part of the Joe Fresh Center for Fashion Innovation, a center that is based out of Ryerson. 3:04 Wear Your Lable started out of New Brunswick by Kyle and Kaylee, who I've grown to known are a great people to work with. I'm excited about kind of the impact the brand has had on Canadians and people worldwide. It's it's exciting to see people having these conversations about mental illness based on T shirts that they see people wearing. Some of the slogans for example are, self care isn't selfish, it's okay not to be okay, sad, but rad. Being a part of where your label it came at, again, a very convenient time. I was going through a lot of difficulties in my own personal life and I was lucky enough to have a project like Goliath leaned back on. 3:39 The budget for the film total that $200,000, but it was the initial $20,000 funding from the Ryerson Communication and Design Society that caused a controversy on campus. Luke was our Vice President of finance last year, and he breaks down the conflict of interest, and whether the money he received was fair. 3:59 I think at the end of the day, it's fair that people would have concerns about it being in a position of power to be pushing for this money. Yes, although there was kind of the negative press surrounding it and the questions asked. What excited me is that people were asking questions and that people knew about the project funding because I think it was an untapped resource in the RCDS. And one of my goals as VP finance was to make people more aware of it. Now, when I was elected to the position, I did not realize Goliath was even a thing in my in my heart. I didn't know that it would be something I'd be making this early in my career, I thought it would be more four or five years down the line. But again, because of the personal things going on in my life at the time, I felt in a sense that I had nothing to lose by going ahead and pursuing this ambitious project years earlier than I had originally anticipated. So I asked the staff advisor Mary Makin at the time and Casey Ewen, who was the president, if it would be okay for me to pitch if executives have done it before, if it would be a conflict of interest. And they showed me that it'd be fine as long as I was not present in the room during deliberation, and I was not given access to the meeting minutes. Both of which ended up happening. I went in I pitched like every other student and I left the room. The board deliberated, and in the end voted in favor of funding Goliath. At the end of the day RCDS was just 20 grand of that 200,000 and it was the first 20 grand I'm really grateful for that because it definitely started a snowball effect, and other people were more willing to back a project that had the support of a student site like that. 5:24 The feature for Goliath and Luke's upcoming project is bright, as the film industry is charting and noticing his tremendous talent and work 5:32 because of kind of the impact of the connections that I made from Goliath. I'm now moving forward with a TV series that I'm entitling Dark Horse. So Goliath will either be released at a summer or a fall festival, and then theatrically most likely in the spring of next year. 5:48 Look out for Goliath next year in theaters and festivals and dive into the vibrant world Luke Mayer has created for them. I'm Serena Quok.