Blue Hour, written and directed by Jesse Pickett. Born and raised in Red Deer, Pickett moved to Vancouver, years ago, to pursue his passion for film.
“After I graduated high school, I was really interested in video, photography, storytelling, and I just wanted to learn even more about storytelling and large-production narrative filmmaking,” Pickett said.
“I went to Capilano University for four years, and I’ve just been really engaged in documentary filmmaking, scripted filmmaking, and corporate filmmaking ever since…it’s been a really fun journey.”
Blue Hour is Pickett’s first feature-length film and tells the story of a young rural Albertan man who works in road construction, but secretly has aspirations to become a writer. Pickett said while the story is unique, he did take inspiration from his own life in Red Deer.
“I worked road construction for the City of Red Deer for three years, and my dad’s a road construction guy too, and I had some pretty great experiences working for the city of Red Deer, but our film touches a lot on masculinity stereotypes in these settings and toxic work cultures,” he said.
“I was very fortunate to have a good crew, but you always hear these things in different kinds of blue-collar settings, so that’s something I wanted to touch on narratively and to explore.”
Pickett started writing the script…
