The Dummy Factor
Available to watch throughout the world on various VOD platforms, including Tubi, Plex, Prime Video, and Apple TV.

SYNOPSIS
After two children go missing and another is followed home by a strange man, 12-year-old Noel (Will Saleken) and his friends launch an investigation.
Some believe the Supermarket Psycho is to blame. Noel’s brother Jason (Rhys Saleken) thinks it could be the murderous groundskeeper from his summer camp. Noel’s best friend Oscar (Jaime Naranjo) says it’s the weird guy who lives nearby, and that the abducted kids could be locked in his basement.
It’s a big mystery, one that’s equal parts exciting and frightening, and Noel might just be in the middle of it all.
cast

will Saleken (Noel)
Will has collaborated with his Uncle Corbin three times before The Dummy Factor. When he was three years old, he starred in the short narrative When They Were Little. When he was 10, he was featured in Last Halloween, a short documentary shot on Halloween night. He also appeared briefly in Corbin’s debut feature Patterson’s Wager. Will enjoys skateboarding and purchasing sneakers.

Rhys Saleken (Jason)
Rhys has previously been in two of his Uncle Corbin’s films. When he was seven, he appeared alongside his brother Will and sister Audrey in the short narrative When They Were Little. He made his feature-film debut in Patterson’s Wager as Creighton Jr., a child who, along with his father, sees something “big and hairy” in the woods. Rhys is an avid reader. His favourite authors are J.R.R. Tolkien and Stephen King, the latter because his uncle gave him a copy of The Dead Zone when he turned 13.

Jaime Naranjo (Oscar)
Jaime makes his acting debut in The Dummy Factor alongside his older brother Eduardo. Jaime has subsequently appeared in a VSB-UBC video production, but does not think he’ll continue acting. He’s more interested in playing soccer and bass guitar, and eating watermelon.

Toni-Lynn Frederick (Sophie)
Toni-Lynn and Corbin have been friends for almost 20 years. They met at Simon Fraser University, where he was working as the Film and Video Resource Specialist in the Film Department and she was pursuing her MFA in Film. She previously appeared in Corbin’s debut feature Patterson’s Wager, as Roulette Woman, where she uttered the phrase, “I think we should go home now.” Toni-Lynn is an award-winning filmmaker and is currently working on her PhD on the representation of the Holocaust in film.

Eduardo Naranjo (Josh)
Eduardo, his younger brother Jaime, and their parents moved from Spain to Canada in 2012. He is currently studying political science and history at university. He is an exceptionally good drummer.

Reid Rogers (Cory)
Reid was cast in The Dummy Factor through Rhys Saleken, his friend, and, more importantly, nephew of the director. Reid studied acting in the Delta Film Academy. This is his feature film debut.

Rob Stover (Mr. Dandridge)
Rob and Corbin met in 2001, when Rob acted in The B-Team, Corbin’s first short film. He subsequently played the part of Storytelling Logger in Corbin’s first feature Patterson’s Wager. Rob has also appeared on stage in the Vagabond Players’ productions of Other Desert Cities and Rabbit Hole. Unbeknownst to Rob or Corbin, they both attended the same summer camp as teenagers, as well as, amongst other events, A Mighty Wind in Concert at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre and the premiere of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade at the Stanley Theatre.

production information
filmmaker’s statement
I wrote the screenplay for The Dummy Factor in 1998. It was based upon my free-roaming childhood in Vancouver in the early 80s. Back then, it was not uncommon for my parents to have no idea where I was or what I was doing between the time I got out of elementary school at 3 PM and arrived home for dinner at 6 PM. My friends and I would often go on adventures, occasionally making up our own mysteries to investigate. Sometimes, we’d snoop around random houses, taking notes and looking for clues.
I incorporated as many of these early memories as I could into this script, and, after working through several drafts, I was eventually satisfied I had done a decent job of weaving and embellishing my personal experiences into a reasonably compelling narrative. Unfortunately, I also fully believed that said narrative would only ever exist in screenplay form.
Making a feature film is a monumental undertaking. I was well aware of this before I made my first feature Patterson’s Wager in 2013, and I only become more aware of it afterwards, when I began exploring how I might possibly make another one. There’s just no getting around the fact that moviemaking requires lots of money, lots of resources, and lots of people. … But what if it didn’t?
As I thought about what my sophomore feature might be, and, more importantly, how I might possibly find the means to produce it, I began to wonder if maybe I might be able to do something with a lot less than what was traditionally required. Sure, it’d be nice to have a good budget (really, any kind of budget) and a professional crew, but given how difficult these things are to access, I was loathe to accept this was the only way I’d be able to do it, so I decided to undertake an experiment: I would attempt to make a feature by doing everything I possibly could myself, all-the-while trying to maintain decent production values and not compromising my aesthetic.
When I was initially toying with this idea, I didn’t know what movie I’d make. I didn’t know if I’d use one of the various feature screenplays I’d already written or if I’d try to come up with a new one. Then, I realized my two nephews, Will and Rhys, just happened to be the same ages as the two main characters in The Dummy Factor (at the time, Will and Rhys were 12 and 17, respectively). I figured I’d never get a better opportunity than this, so I asked them if they’d be interested in collaborating. They were, which then meant the only thing left to do was to go and make the darn thing.
We shot The Dummy Factor over 37 days during the summer of 2018. Except for five days when I had a friend help out with location sound recording, I handled all of the technical production work myself, this included directing, production designing, costuming, sound recording, lighting, camera operating … you name it, I did it. Similarly, once the filming was done, I handled the entirety of the post-production myself (i.e., picture editing, dialogue editing, sound design, music, mixing, and colour grading), all of which took me nine months.
The Dummy Factor is a deeply personal film, and I am deeply proud of it. My nephews Will and Rhys exceeded every expectation I had for them, as did all the other non-professional actors who agreed to participate in my little experiment. Speaking of the experiment, I can honestly say that, from my perspective, it was a complete success, and one which I hope to repeat in the future.