Foam Drive Renegades

It is with deep sadness that the Foam Drive Renegades team announces the tragic passing of Matt Chisholm, co-writer and star of the film.

Matt was a positive inspiration to all who knew him and a creative force who can never be replaced.

The Foam Drive Renegades team will miss him dearly, and dedicate this entry to his loving memory – Adam DeViller, Melani Wood and Kevin A. Fraser

• • •

A gang of petty criminals enlists the last-minute help of an irrational acquaintance to pull off a robbery. Oh yeah, he’s a puppet.

Creative team

Writers: Matt Chisholm, Adam DeViller
Director: Adam DeViller
Producer: Melani Wood

Filmmaker’s statement

Foam Drive Renegades came to be when I was batting around ideas with Matt Chisholm (co-writer) and he pitched what ended up being the opening scene of the movie.

I’ve always loved dark comedy and the street crime genre, so as soon as he said “He gets in the car, and he’s a puppet,” I was enthusiastically on board.

From there I added some more beats for the gang to stumble through and together we fleshed out the characters and dialogue and connected all the dots.

We funded the movie with the generous assistance of The Canada Council for the Arts, and our producer Melani Wood made magic happen on a modest budget. We secured our first choice of crew and locations, and shot dual-camera on two RED Epics.

Our fantastic cast consisted of Glen Matthews as Travis, Gordon White as Smooth Floyd, Matt Chisholm as Kyle, and the multi-talented Rhys Bevan-John, who amazingly both puppeteer-ed and voiced Reggie simultaneously, with the flu. Foam Drive Renegades [was also] the first time he worked with that style of puppet.

I couldn’t be happier with what each of these guys brought to their characters, and we also got really great supporting performances from both Kevin Kincaid and Josh MacDonald (who one-taked his death scene five minutes before pumpkin time on the last day we had the location, essentially saving the day).

Reggie was built by special effects wizard Henry Townsend, who also built and rigged up ‘stunt’ Reggie for his hail-of-gunfire moment.

We shot the bulk of it in three eight-hour nights in January 2013 (on what ended up being the three coldest nights of the year), and then myself, Melani and our cinematographer Kevin A. Fraser drove around for a few hours shooting the driving-at-night cutaways you see in the title sequence.

Our editor Shawn Beckwith really brought the film to life, and Marc Savoie from The Postman lent his expert hand to the colour correction. Sound design and mix was handled by Kirk Redden and Eric LeClerc respectively, and the music (arguably my favorite part of the movie) comes from a variety of artists and composers including Cam Smith, Adam T. Burke, and David Chisholm.

All in all, with Foam Drive Renegades we wanted to make something familiar, yet fresh. We wanted to stay true to an early 90s crime drama without taking ourselves too seriously, and we wanted to be funny without being heavy-handed about the puppet.

We were lucky enough to have an amazing cast and crew who worked diligently in the freezing cold to make this crazy idea a reality.

About Adam DeViller

Adam DeViller is an award-winning writer and director from Halifax.

A graduate of Nova Scotia Community College’s screen arts program with a knack for dark comedy, Adam’s works have screened in various festivals and galleries worldwide.

Currently the feature-length version of Foam Drive Renegades is in development while Adam heads to camera on Bad Morning, a dark comedy short with co-writer Matt Chisholm and producer Melani Wood.