Being well-versed in the art of string-pulling is an advantageous skill if your line of work is filmmaking. And making a film with an initially estimated budget of more than $2 million for just $240,000 involves a considerable amount of string.

This is the feat that Reel Deal Guys (RDG) Entertainment’s Jason Barbeck and Rafael Kalamat – industry vets and the film’s co-directors and coproducers – are attempting to pull off with their first feature, Adams Testament.

After adding up the raw costs of what they would require to make the film, RDG estimated that a $2.5 million budget would be required, based on the script. Without that kind of financing at their disposal, Barbeck and Kalamat set about trying to make the film for a tenth of that budget.

The movie’s 15-day shoot began in Toronto last week, and involves an all-Canadian crew, with the addition of 17 Ryerson students from the university’s Film and Television program and a cast working under ACTRA Toronto Indie Production (TIP) Class I guidelines, which has helped the producers reign in costs.

Having a healthy contacts list, accrued over a combined 50 years in the Canadian film industry, doesn’t hurt either: Kalamat and Barbeck leveraged industry friendships and contacts to secure discounted Toronto filming locations (including a heritage mansion show home in Toronto)  and equipment use for the production as well. The ordering of crew trucks and crew cubes was done well in advance as well to secure preferred rates. 

“It really does add up – from locations, to picture cars, to cast and crew. And with such a vast number of people, costs can crawl up there very quickly,” Barbeck told Playback Daily.

Given the story’s subject matter, in which angels and demons morph into humans, VFX is a key component in the film. This was also an area in which the producers were forced to get creative in order to keep costs from spiking. As avid fans of 1940s and 1950s film, the producers were aware of some old-school camera techniques that could be employed to capture scenes in which humans morph into angels and demons (and vice-versa). These techniques were instrumental in keeping the production below the $275,000 threshold, over which the ACTRA TIP guidelines no longer apply.

Adams Testament was originally written by Barbeck in 1998 as a 40-page short film which was subsequently shelved until he and Kalamat founded RDG Productions last year. After meeting on the set of Flashpoint, the pair struck up an immediate friendship and began discussing the idea of starting their own prodco. When RDG launched, the two men resurrected the story and expanded the script to become the company’s first feature-length film.

The film stars Luke Bilyk (Degrassi: The Next Generation) as Adam Gable, a young musician whose life is going according to plan until disaster befalls him. In a world inhabited by angels and demons disguised as humans, Adam’s faith is tested when a dark stranger descends upon Toronto.

RDG’s credits so far include crime short Forensic Fringe Cop and a three-episode talk show series, In The Room, hosted by Barbeck and Kalamat, which were part of the prodco’s “walk before you can run” approach.

“The long-term strategy was to build a company where we reached a level where we could produce feature films. Our ongoing strategy is to go to the highest level and get worldwide distribution on feature films,” said Kalamat.

The completed project is scheduled to go to market by Oct. 1.

Targeting a broad 18- to 35-year-old male and female demographic, the $240,000 film was privately financed entirely by executive producers Elva and Todd Yuill. Also in the works to accompany the feature film is a comic book and a video game, both of which are still in development. Kalamat said that thematically the story lends itself well to a comic book format, and the hope is to take it to next year’s Toronto Comicon. The video game is in early development, and a platform yet to be determined. There is no distributor yet attached to the project.

Also starring in the film is Zoé De Grand Maison (Orphan Black), Nick Mancuso (Entity) and veteran character actor Sean McCann, who makes a cameo at the conclusion of the movie as God himself.