In winning the 72hr Filmmaker Showdown after entering it 10 times, Angie Nolan has now experienced everything the contest can throw at her, the agony and the ecstasy.
"I've won the People's Choice award and been in the finals, but I had never actually won," Nolan says.
"And I've had every possible technical glitch, I've been one minute late (in handing in the film, which disqualifies the crew), and two years ago I corrupted my file because I was rushing (also leading to disqualification).
"Winning and handing it in early were the only things I hadn't done. I did both (this year)!"
While it was great to win one of the key events of the World Ski and Snowboard Festival on Wednesday, April 13, Nolan says the camaraderie between the 30 competing film crews who spent April 8 to 11 making five-minute shorts was what made it special.
"It felt like the old days when the competition started, people were calling each other up to ask for things," Nolan says.
Asked if it's different finally reaching the top, she struggles for words for a moment or two.
"It's so different. It's a kind of validation that, you know, you've been waiting for. When they called my name, I was just 'What? What?!' I was shocked."
She adds that she never assumes that she will win because each year the finalists and the quality of their films are so different.
"You never know who will win. It was a really strong group this year and really funny. This year, there were some really great ones," she says.
Nolan wrote the script and directed; she says she always wants to have a message in what she is creating or there is no point.
"And I have to do it in my Angie way, it usually has to have some humour," she says.
She describes her film, Control Shift, as a technology vs. love story.
"I wrote (the screenplay) with no dialogue because the actor in me loves doing improv and I made the decision I wanted to use Olympus gear," she says.
Nolan's team included actors Fish Boulton and Rhona Rees, cinematographer Stefan Lee, editors Brendan Lee and Erica Sorenson, makeup artist Hannah Chornoby, and script supervisor Tara Bowland.
The win comes with $12,000 — $5,000 of this because the film was shot on the sponsor Olympus's camera gear — and "a whole bunch of cameras and spa passes, which I'm trying to divvy up amongst the team right now." She isn't sure how the winnings will be spent.
Snow Game by Jonny Fleet — a hilarious short that used special effects to turn a snowboarding race down the mountain into a video game between good guys and bad guys — won the People's Choice Award.
Nolan almost didn't enter this year. In 2015, she missed the competition after being part of a team that made the finals of Vancouver's Crazy8 competition with her film Twisted Slipper, which they later took to the Cannes Short Film Corner.
This spring she was shortlisted for Jameson's First Shot, an international short film competition run by actor Kevin Spacey, with Maggie Gyllenhaal as leading lady for each of the three winning scripts.
Nolan made the finalist list of 20 out of 2,700 entries and waited to see if she made the final cut.
"I had to put everything else on hold because if I'd gotten top three I'd be in L.A. shooting that film," she says.
When it didn't happen she was freed up for the 72hr Filmmaker Showdown.
Sporting a luxurious handlebar mustache, Nolan's husband Fish Boulton was one of two leads in Control Shift, making the win all the more special since this is only the third 72hr collaboration they've made together.
Asked about the experience he says:
"This year was a reunion of sorts, I suppose, which was great because I was too busy to do anything else as far doing anything other than acting. And she had a really good story.
"The experience was great and I think with someone you are committed to it can be a challenge. But it was super easy."
