Two years ago, Matthew Shewchuk was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award. This year, he received his second nomination.
In January of 2016, Matthew Shewchuk received word that he had been nominated for a Canadian Screen Award in the category of “Best Direction in a Documentary Series” for his work on The History Channel’s long-running hit series Ice Pilots NWT.
Shewchuk, who was raised in Herdman, recently returned to the Chateauguay Valley in order to be closer to family. The Finance major is self-taught in the art of directing and producing, having earned his position through sheer experience. Becoming a director was never part of the plan for the country-raised Shewchuk. In fact, it was something that the local fell into after a chance encounter with his now long-time friend, Phil Price, who had initially hired Shewchuk to paint his production office.
The episode that Shewchuk was nominated for is “D-Day” of Ice Pilots NWT, one of the longest running shows on The History Channel. Surprisingly, the episode was shot over a few months, as the DC-3 aircraft featured in the episode needed to be equipped with the proper gear to handle a static line jump that both the Canadian and American militaries would approve of. “It’s not like they were just gonna step out and jump out of an 70 year-old-plane—they need proper safety mechanisms setup to allow the event to happen,” explained Shewchuk. The episode, which was filmed to honour the 70th anniversary of World War II’s D-Day, was the result of many hours of filming in order to ensure that the story could be properly covered. Filming the episode was not nearly as easy as Shewchuk and his team thought it would be. One of the leads in the show, Buffalo Joe, threatened to shut down the operation because the area above Abraham Lake in the Rockies was too tight to fly through due to the proximity to the mountains, forcing Buffalo Joe to do multiple recon flights in one of his smaller planes. The filming team also faced weather issues, all while trying to respect the space of the flight crew. “In the end, with an amazing crew to support my decisions, we turned what was originally supposed to be a straightforward episode with not many stakes into a fun, entertaining and dramatic episode that ended up being the series finale, for which I am so very proud and honoured to have been a part of,” said Shewchuk of the experience.
The last year has been a busy one for Shewchuk. He is currently working on the popular Highway Thru Hell (he is the only director to work on all five seasons of the show) and is now the lead director on a spinoff of the favoured series, called Highway Thru Hell: 401. The new show will follow the brave tow operators that work in the Greater Toronto Area on one of the busiest highways in North America. Recently, Shewchuk also helped develop, direct and became Show Runner of Ice Racer Showdown, a new series for CMT Canada that is currently airing on Tuesday nights at 8:00 P.M. as of February 2nd (the original six episodes aired in the fall). As for future plans? Shewchuk is also writing scripted television pitches in both drama and comedy and is looking to direct his first feature film next year.
The Canadian Screen Awards will take place in March 2016 in Toronto.
