I'm Here With Magazine Issue 1 | Page 78

Jewelle

Jewelle has worked with celebrities Judy Norton, Mark Gantt, Neil Schell and many more over her long career that began in theatre. Schell was particularly important as he was a pivotal acting coach to her. Schell subsequently offered Jewelle a film-making apprenticeship and promised to teach her everything he learned from his 20 years of experience in the business – everything from directing, color choices, camera angles and writing. Colwell accepted, her desire to build and share stories since she was a child seemed to culminate in this opportunity. Jewell’s first assignment after completing the writing segment of the apprenticeship, was to write original dialogue and shoot a scene with a minimum of four people, with the required editing and camera work also part of the assignment. This was the birth of Poker Girls.

Jewelle decided to ask some women in her circle to come and act with her. Five women replied with a resounding “yes” and the first shoot of Poker Girls was planned. Though no one knew it yet. Each of the women who decided to attend was of a “certain age” seldom portrayed truthfully in western media. Jewelle felt this would be a great point of exposure for them, she wanted to provide them more opportunities than they were currently being offered in Calgary’s growing industry. From this she received one of the best compliments she about that first season of Poker Girls, is that the audience thought they were improvising, although in truth they were following her scripts nearly verbatim.

In 2010, Jewelle decided to continue her journey with a one-on-one film making apprenticeship, which ultimately helped birth the new series, Poker Girls, which was nominated for best TV Pilot at the Banff World Media Festival in 2011. It was at this point that all her hard work started to get recognized for her work as both an actor and producer. Jewelle’s creation, Poker Girls, was nominated for Best New TV Series at the world wide Banff Media and Film Festival, simultaneously Best Drama at the HollyWeb Fest in Los Angeles. Jewelle’s passion to create stories that positively influence humanity’s status quo, exploded from ember to full and raging fire. She pushed her projects and herself to even higher standards, ultimately bringing Poker Girls, renamed to BLUFF, to television both in the US and Canada. Again, Jewelle was honoured and pleased to be found again in such great company as Hell on Wheels (AMC) and Heartland (CBC), Bluff having been nominated for Best Dramatic Series at the Alberta AMPIA’s.

Poker Girls evolved from a simple and fun shoot into Bluff, a weekly series, that she produces as a fulltime endeavor now with its own DVDs and the project is now slated for Fox Affiliate Channels across the US. The series, Poker Girls began when Jewelle suggested to a group of ladies to meet one time and develop a series around the mature and professional world of women.

Jewelle immediately began to write, direct, film and edit all the episodes. As one can imagine this project quickly took over all her time. Her schedule soon became very complicated. Sunday was availability day, which she used to work on things outside of the project. On Mondays, the scripts were sent out. Tuesday through Thursday, Jewelle was busy editing the footage from the previous week. Uploading the final product to YouTube was done on Thursday evenings.

Friday was left for shoot day in Jewelle’s home, around her dining room table. Saturdays were based around writing and more production. Furthermore, in the fall of that first year of Poker Girls, Jewelle was invited to visit Nairobi, Kenya to work on the series “Saints”, learning behind the scenes for two weeks, as well as being offered the role of Ms. Deya, the baby thief within the series itself.