Nathan Fleet: Filmmaker, Festival Leader, Champion of Indies!

Nathan Fleet is a stalwart in the Hamilton film scene.

And we're really excited to kind of pick his brain and see where he started.

So Nathan, why don't you just tell us a little bit about your journey, how you started in film all the way back in the 90s?

Yeah, so I started in music.

That's where I first started.

Mm-hmm.

um had a band in like the late 80s we were a metal band we did a pile of shows we went through three different band name changes but it was always the same band um throughout high school and then the early 90s like 1990 i think it was i went to uh college for music at Mohawk.

I took the jazz program for three years.

And after graduating there, I was thinking like, what was I going to do? I definitely still wanted to be a performing musician, but I really wanted to get into film scoring.

I thought that's where I, you know, cause I've always loved film ever since star Wars in 1977.

I was, you know, that kind of dreamer that music and film I really enjoyed.

And then, uh, So there wasn't, there was no film scene in Hamilton.

And if there was, I didn't know about it.

And there wasn't anything.

So I used to go to Toronto all the time and I took workshops at a place called Lift, the liaison of independent filmmakers of Toronto.

And I would go there on weekends.

and study anything.

I would take any workshop they had.

So my early training was on actual film, like celluloid.

So I learned how to shoot on film, edit on film, 16 millimeter.

And so I started learning how to do that, but I really wanted to get into the film community as a composer.

And it was, you know, old school where you go in and there's a big board and you post, you know, I'm, you know, I want to, I'm a composer looking for someone who needs music.

And the response I was getting from people was that they wanted a demo reel, like what movies have I scored before? And I hadn't.

So I thought, well, I'm just going to I'll just make a short film, put my own music into it and then see if that worked.

And it did work.