In 2016, local actor and producer Griffin Cork had a harrowing near miss while shooting a scrappy TV pilot here in Calgary.
“It’s a scene where [my character] Chris is running after a van because they took his chair,” he remembers. “I’m booking it after this van. I’m running, I’m running, I’m running…, Afterwards, people ask, ‘Are you okay, man?’And because it’s just kids fucking around with the camera, two vans were driving beside each other, and the camera person was in one van. And I didn’t know this, but the drivers of both vans started to veer in. I almost got crushed between two vans!”
That pilot was for Abracadavers, the now-flagship show of local film production company Numera Films, which just wrapped shooting its third season this past May. That initial pilot was funded through the Telus STORYHIVE program and led Numera to earn a $100,000 grant to film the entire season in 2019. Around this time, Cork — who has deep ties to Calgary’s theatre scene — officially joined Numera as one of its core producers while still starring in the show.
That first day on set for season one was surreal for the actor-turned-producer. “There’s a crew of like 30-35 people,” he recounts. “And they turn to me, Morgan and Jo and say, ‘Hey, first day. Is there anything you want to say?’ It’s moments like that where I go, ‘How did we get here?’”
Those other two “kids fucking around with a camera” are director Morgan Ermter and cinematographer Josef Wright, the founders of Numera. The two got the germ of the idea in 2014 while working in the back of a SAIT classroom while enrolled in the Film and Video Production program. They officially incorporated in 2016 alongside Cork and producer Cayley Ermter.
According to their website, Numera is proud to be “storytellers first and filmmakers second” in all of their work, which also includes film work for weddings, businesses, and musicians.
“We like to do genre things and then do a twist on them,” says Morgan Ermter. “Real life is great, but we’re in movies; we can do literally whatever we want.”
Abracadavers is a great example — their own twee, Wes Anderson-esque take on the superhero genre, a coming-of-age tale about a group of friends navigating life with superpowers, explicitly set in Alberta.
Our province’s rolling hills and golden prairies are a boon for the Numera team. “The variety of environments available to you within an hour of a metropolitan city… It’s unlike anything else, not any other province or place else in North America,” says Cork.
Abracadavers’ third season took the crew on a whirlwind prairies road trip, shooting on Scott Ranch in Longview, the Atlas Coal Mine in Drumheller, the Sundre & District Museum (in collaboration with the Mountainview Regional Film Office), and the brutalist architecture of the old Greyhound Bus Station in Calgary (where I hung out with Cork and Ermter during their last day of filming).
“When we’re shooting in locations, we don’t want to pretend that we’re somewhere else,” says Ermter. “It’s not some fantastical place, even if the story is fantastical. I like to [ask], ‘What did I do growing up and where was I, and can we just go and shoot at these places?’”
In 2021, the provincial government removed a cap that limited film and television productions to a maximum $10 million tax credit claim, opening the floodgates for larger productions like The Last of Us to film here. But according to Cork, there’s also tons of room for smaller companies like Numera.
“Calgary Economic Development welcomes productions really well and equally works with indie productions [to find] spaces, like with location scouts,” he says. “It’s an indie-friendly city.” The third season of Abracavers is produced in partnership with Canada Media Fund, and the team is, at the time of writing, seeking a new distributor for it, likely through streaming.
“Introducing a lot of elements that feel personal to me helps me better connect and helps other people better connect to the story,” says Ermter of the third season. From a hair salon chair found in an alley that drove the entire first season to his mother’s old television set, Abracadavers is full of small details that connect to its creators’ lives and foster its inner nostalgia for the people who’ve spent eight years making it.
“It’s the atmosphere where we want to feel, or you want people working on the show, to have that connection where they’re willing to put a piece of themselves in it.”
Beyond Abracadavers, Numera wrapped filming on Project: Six Shooter last year, a horror-western mashup co-produced with Greater Fool Films LLC. You can also catch their short film CROW at this year’s Calgary International Film Festival. It’s a profoundly personal film for Ermter, made possible by the deep camaraderie Numera has fostered since its humble beginnings.
“Making stuff with people you love is the biggest piece of advice I can give filmmakers,” says Cork. “Sometimes it gets tricky with money, for sure, but the pros so vastly outweigh the cons.”
Catch seasons 1 and 2 of Abracadavers on Roku and Tubi, and learn more about Numera’s upcoming work at numerafilms.com.
