K-W native directs Frosh week film

Wild partying and school rivalries characterize the university careers of many students. Now, the experience is being brought to the big screen, with FOMO, or “Fear of Missing Out,” a feature film directed by Kitchener-Waterloo native Jared Pelletier.

In an interview with The Cord, the director explained the premise of the upcoming film, saying “it’s about five hometown friends who go to their respective schools at the end of the summer to begin second year and essentially compete to see who can throw the biggest Frosh party. Ultimately, it ends up being about who gets in the most trouble. The events are definitely worth the FOMO title.”

Pelletier has enjoyed great success in his recent projects, including a short-listed nomination at Cannes Film Festival when he was only eighteen years old. Now, the twenty-one-year-old director has embarked on a new project, which involves the student bodies at each Laurier, UofT, York, Western and Queen’s.

“After a couple of shorts [films] went viral, we were approached by Paramount to start developing a feature with a limited theatrical release,” Pelletier told The Cord. “We were looking at a number of original ideas while looking for a market we could capitalize on,” he continued. “We decided to make a movie about universities because word of mouth can travel over a campus so quickly… essentially it was like, okay, let’s make a big party movie … Pretty much we looked at the biggest party schools, obviously Laurier and Western come to mind right off the top, then we branched out and gauged the kind of interest we could generate.”

“It’s really hard to fill theatre with independent Canadian projects, but there is clearly a market here and we have no doubt we can fill a theatre with an audience in these university towns. I think it’s really interesting for students to see their university play out on screen,” said Pelletier.

The film, which will shoot from Oct. – June of this year, will screen in each of the university towns upon it’s completion. According to the director, ten to fifteen minutes of footage will be shot at Laurier’s campus, including scenes at both Uptown’s the Fox and the Fiddle and Phil’s Grandson’s.

FOMO, scheduled for a 2013 release, is still casting and encourages interested parties to e-mail castingfomolaurier@gmail.com regarding acting, extra and production roles.