Local movie maker nearly met match with virus

Filming and editing a movie under normal circumstances is no easy task. Factoring in COVID, finishing the Spokane-based drama "All Those Small Things" required going the extra mile. 

When Nike Imoru flew back to her Spokane film and financing company Rebel Kat Productions last January, she knew her project — "All Those Small Things" — would be one of the most recent full-length feature films in the Pacific Northwest. What she didn't know was that a pandemic would make it one of the last. 

During the Coeur d'Alene Regional Chamber of Commerce's Upbeat Breakfast Tuesday morning, Imoru — a casting director, producer, actress, and acting coach — detailed how her team had to break down walls (literally and metaphorically) to complete the movie. 

After filming, editing, and hosting a couple of screenings, Imoru and Rebel Kat Productions was in the home stretch of finalizing the project — until COVID hit. Thankfully, Imoru said, the team had completed two showings, the first to more than 100 people at Spokane's Magic Lantern Cinema, the second to about 14 viewers in a small studio at North by Northwest — a video production company in downtown Spokane.

In hindsight, Imoru couldn't believe they had been in a room of so many people weeks before the pandemic lockdown. 

"It seems almost radically revolutionary to think of 100 people sitting in a cinema, or 14 people all 40 years old and above crammed into a tiny space," Imoru said. "And then, the world shut down."

Still, the "content drought" in Hollywood pushed the team to finish its final editing. 

"There was a lot of anxiety about how, if, or when the film would be completed," Imoru said. "We had brand-new content, very timely, with lots of excitement about it, but we couldn't complete it. And here was Hollywood saying if you've got a movie, get it in as soon as possible."

Typically, developing the producer's final cut can take days, weeks, or even months of working with a postproduction team staring at the same screen and sitting in the same room. That was no longer an option.

To get the picture out to the marketplace, the team went into what Imoru called "stealth mode." Bringing in an engineer, contractors worked through the night to conjoin two rooms and two monitors that would allow for Imoru and "All Those Small Things" director Andrew Hyatt to communicate during the editing process. 

"We wouldn't even see each other, even outside during a lunch break. This way mitigated any fear of any form of contact — even eye contact," Imoru said. "I would come in, bypass his office, no 'hello,' go into my studio and wipe everything down. We were in two different rooms, watching two different monitors, speaking through cellphones to edit the film."

It took about a week to complete the picture, a week of solitude and long hours of flicking through the same frames. Now, the movie about a longtime British game show host that heads into the backwoods of America in search of a deeper meaning of life is available to stream online. 

"Even though it seems like a long, laborious process, it was very exciting," Imoru said. "It was about reducing contact and, in a way, reducing the energetic connection, relying on just what you can see and hear through the digital format."

Nike Imoru is a British-Nigerian casting director, producer, actress of stage and screen and actor's coach. She is best known in the Northwest for casting five seasons of Sy Fy’s Z nation, and over 20 feature films for North by Northwest Productions. Imoru is the Co-founder and President of Rebel Kat Productions in Spokane.