Editors, production designers and actors are getting the opportunity to don a director’s hat for the new initiative Little Films About Big Moments, which puts crew and talent at the center of the filmmaking process as scribes and helmers of their own stories.

The idea — comprised of 10 short films from 10 filmmakers — is the brainchild of thesps Susan Coyne and Martha Burns of Slings & Arrows fame, who collaborated as co-directors last year on the 18-minute short How Are You?. The film marked their directorial debuts and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Coyne tells Playback Daily they were filming with crew members who expressed interest in crafting their own stories.

‘We thought that everyone has a short film in them, [and] a lot of these people are at that position where they could make a film themselves. We just wanted to find a way to make that happen,’ she says.

Coyne and Burns, along with How Are You? producer Sonya Di Rienzo, invited filmmakers including picture editor Christopher Donaldson, props master Tanya Lemke, sound editor David McCallum, actor Beatriz Yuste and producer Stephanie Markowitz to ‘come out of the comfort zone’ and create their own shorts.

‘We had a premise that we were very strict about… that each short film had to have an epiphany of some kind, big or small,’ explains Coyne, adding it’s that moment ‘you know that your life is never going to be the same.’

The five- to six-minute shorts, which began production on March 1, each had a mentor attached to guide the filmmakers through the process of putting their stories on paper and film. Notables such as Bruce McDonald, Guy Maddin, Sturla Gunnarsson and Sarah Polley participated.

Conversations between mentors and filmmakers were documented for a companion film that focuses not only on ‘the nuts and bolts of filmmaking,’ but also their source of inspiration, according to Coyne.

Little Films About Big Moments will be presented as a one-hour special on The Movie Network and Movie Central in the fall. In addition, the 10 short films will be shown individually on both networks. Coyne says they’re also looking to submit the film to TIFF.