In the fall of 2012, Brandon, Jim, and I were working on a Guttersnipes comedy video: Department Store Santa. This insane video – depicting me as a homeless man desperately trying to secure a job as a department store Santa for the holiday season – was one of my favorites from our catalog.

During the shoot of this sketch, our teacher came to us in Room 219/306 and said that the school had secured the rights to make a short film based off of the short story, The Tale of the Three Brothers by J.K. Rowling. I had little knowledge of the world of Harry Potter then, but I was game to be a part of any film production, as it is the time wherein I feel most alive.

Brandon would direct, Jim would be the Director of Photography, and I would be the Assistant Director. The following fifteen months of pre-production, shooting, and post-production work for the short and its documentary was the best time of my life so far. It cemented the fact that I wanted to be a filmmaker wholeheartedly. It gave me direction in my life, of which I knew that The New England School of Communications would provide. I had found my niché and it was in writing, directing, and producing.

Then the film was screened during a preview night on May 4th, 2014. We had two screenings, the first was a packed theatre at The Gracie. That’s almost three hundred seats. People cheered and laughed when we expected them to (and at times when we didn’t because we had seen the footage hundreds of times). Then we screened the documentary for each viewing. I was so incredibly proud of that as it was the summation of countless hours of planning, discussion, and editing of hours of footage; all by Spencer, Jim and myself.

Our plan after that was to release the short in film festivals, and eventually on NESCom’s website. Then during the merger of NESCom and Husson (and with the majority of the crew’s graduation imminent), those plans fizzled.

So the film sat unreleased since. As one of the handful of administrators for the Facebook page of the short, we’d go on to receive dozens upon dozens of requests to see the film and inquiries as to when that date would arrive. But none of us had any answers.

Then the other day, I get a Facebook notification: Someone commented on a recent post on the page with a link to an article on Mugglenet.com. The short film and its documentary had been leaked…

I couldn’t believe it; the result of hundreds of hours of work from almost thirty people had finally been released to the public. I’m not sure how long this will remain active, but whoever was responsible for this, thank you. I’ve been talking this up for over two and a half years, as my most recent project, and I had absolutely nothing to show for it.

But now I do. Here is the link to the Vimeo account, aptly named “Three Brothers.” Also, here is the direct link to the leaked video on YouTube.

Please, like and share the video and get our work seen!

-Assistant Director,

Jamie Gagnon (@GuyOnAWire)

Follow Jamie on this very blog as he continues to discuss movies on We Need Movies (with Director, Brandon Doyen), and on Not Quite Hollywood! Also, he’s writing about his battle with Leukemia, chapter by chapter in rough first draft form, until his entire story is told!

Poster by: Taylor Pond Evans