A man from West Grey with cerebral palsy is hoping to make people laugh and maybe win a prize as a part of the Easter Seals’ Disability Film Challenge.
Joschi Shea, teaming up with one of his caregivers, Steven Morel, put together a four-minute-long entry into the film challenge, called The Yeah Yeah Gang.
With a love of heist movies, Shea and Morel decided to try their hand at making a short film.
Morel says that it helps make the medium more accessible to people with disabilities, and a way to give Shea a new experience.
“This challenge being a short film that’s five minutes or less, it allows people entry that a full hour-and-a-half film could never allow.”
There were criteria that the film had to include, such as hooded sweatshirts, hats, and a coffee cup, and it had to be classified as a “buddy comedy”.
With a total film crew of four people – Shea and Morel star in the feature, and Shea’s father, Geoffery Shea, and friend Zena Curwain helped out as camera operators and editor.
As for the storyline, it was entirely conceived by Shea and Morel.
“I’m an improviser by trade, so I’m always using those skills every day with him. And he’s always pushing me to come up with stuff all the time, just because it’s fun for him,” says Morel. “[He’s] someone who’s stuck 24/7 in a wheelchair or on his bed, the only travel he gets is in his imagination.”
The entire mini-movie was filmed, edited, and uploaded to the Easter Seals in a span of six days starting on April 2, 2024, and was filmed in Durham.
Easter Seals will give awards in six categories: Best Film, Best Director, Best Editor, Best Actor, Awareness Campaign Award, and Best Writer.
2024 Winners will receive:
– $2,000 grants to each category winner
– $15,000 seed fund/film finishing grant provided by the Adobe Foundation to winners of each category, to further develop the winning short film and/or to accelerate the development of their projects into feature films or episodic series
– A Dell Technologies computer
– A Sony Cinema Line Camera FX30
– One-year membership to IMDbPro
– Screenings at Academy Award-qualifying festivals, including the Heartland Film Festival, HollyShorts Film Festival, and NewFilmmakers LA
– One-year subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud
– Mentorship meetings with entertainment industry executives and talent