The following article was featured in industry magazine Playback on September 10, 2015
The Drop lands on TVO, CPAC
The documentary about declining voter numbers among today’s youth will also get a limited theatrical release in the run up to the Canadian federal election.
By Jordan Pinto
Thursday, September 10, 2015
The Drop: Why Young People Don’t Vote, a documentary from Vancouver’s Triple Threat Films and Toronto-based Kensington Communications, will premiere on TVO and CPAC ahead of the Canadian federal election.
The hour-long documentary, shot in Vancouver, Ottawa, Toronto, Raleigh (North Carolina), Ferguson (Missouri) and at Nevada’s Burning Man Festival follows actor/filmmaker Dylan Playfair (Some Assembly Required) as he travels across the U.S. and Canada to find out why voting numbers are falling across younger demographics. The Drop will also receive a limited theatrical release at university theatres in Vancouver, Ottawa, Victoria and Toronto.
The concept behind the doc was first brought to TVO by Playfair and Kyle McCachen of Triple Threat. The pair had been shooting parts of the doc sporadically since spring 2013, and found a fan of the project in TVO’s commissioning editor Jane Jankovic. With the filmmakers’ relative inexperience, it was decided that a team of seasoned documentarians should be brought in to help guide the film alongside Triple Threat. TVO then reached out to Kensington Communications to coproduce the project.
The strategy behind the limited theatrical release is to encourage discussion among younger voters (the film will be screened at university theatres). Though in terms of demographic, the doc was interesting to produce because it sparked a constant debate, Robert Lang, executive producer on the doc and founder of Kensington Communications, told Playback Daily.
“It was important to… get a youth audience to explain something that previously hasn’t been very well explained to an older audience. The demographic ended up being much broader than the original intent,” Lang said.
Kyle McCachen said the film has no political bias and that the approach was centred solely on filmmaking rather than any kind of activism.
The theatrical release will be followed by the doc’s broadcast premiere, first on TVO (Oct. 5 at 9 p.m., Oct. 7 at 9 p.m.) and then in simulcast on CPAC and TVO on Oct. 11 at 11 p.m. In addition, The Drop will be available at tvo.org from Oct. 6, as well as on cpac.ca and through the CPAC TV 2 GO app from Oct. 12.
Financing for the doc came from both broadcasters, as well as the Canada Media Fund and Rogers Documentary Fund. The Drop is executive produced by Dylan Playfair, Ian Waddell, and Robert Lang, who also serves as producer.