Even though Two Brothers, A Girl And A Gun doesn’t add up to three – director William Hornecker’s lucky number – it went one better at this month’s Alberta Motion Picture Industries Association annual awards show in Calgary, winning four awards, including best director and best production over 60 minutes.

Filmmaking was probably the furthest thing from Hornecker’s mind when he completed a degree in biology and went to work for the Government of Alberta as a parks naturalist. It didn’t take him long to realize a career with the government might not be the answer for the rest of his life. So he quit.

He traveled to Vancouver to attend the Emily Carr School of Design with the idea of becoming a sculptor. During his stint as a naturalist, Hornecker was introduced to the use of multi-image slide shows. The bug had begun to nibble. So he enrolled in a Super 8mm film course at Emily Carr with director Sandy Wilson (My American Cousin). The bug had bitten.

In 1986, while still a first-year student, he wrote and directed his very first film, Entropy. It was a short, only two minutes long in fact, but long enough to capture second place in the B.C. Student Film Festival that year. ‘Although that doesn’t sound like such a big deal,’ he says, ‘no other second or third year students at school were even selected, and winning a prize for my very first 16mm film gave me a lot of confidence to pursue my own films.’

Which is precisely what he’s done.

‘If it’s an alternative between working on a paid gig or doing my own production,’ he says, ‘I would always choose my own film – much to the chagrin of my visa card and my creditors.’

Hornecker says his big break came during his final year at Emily Carr in 1988 when he managed to fast talk his way into working as a camera assistant on the official Calgary Olympic film produced by Cappy Productions of New York and production managed by Calgary’s Doug MacLeod. Working with 12 of the finest cinematographers from across Canada offered Hornecker a once in a lifetime opportunity to learn some great hands-on skills.

After graduation, Hornecker applied to the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television apprenticeship program for graduating students. Once again he lucked out and was accepted as a director’s observer on Wilson’s feature, American Boyfriends, produced by Steven DeNure, vice-president of production for Toronto-based Alliance Communications.

Later that year, he returned to Alberta, moving to Edmonton where he worked on a variety of productions – as everything from p.a. to camera assistant – to pay the bills. He began work on a half-hour sci-fi film called Valley of The Moon, which this time won an honorable mention from the Canadian Student Film Festival.

Hornecker says when he finally decided to try making his first feature-length film it was not so much his own choice as a choice made for him.

In 1990, while working on the Great North Communications/ Atlantis Communications pilot Destiny Ridge outside Jasper, Alta., Hornecker received ‘good news’ from the Canada Council that his funding application had been approved for the production of his first low, low-budget feature, Two Brothers A Girl And A Gun.

After receiving funding approval, he fought for two more years to get additional funds to make it a more ‘workable’ budget, i