Heath Tait

Heath Tait was born amidst fruit clustered orchards, albeit in the wintertime, a 4th-generation of Summerland, British Columbia, the same land passed down and farmed 3 prosperous generations. He grew up a country kid with a very creative housewife mother who favored quiet sewing and writing, and an adventurous father who enjoyed traveling to exotic countries in the off-season and making elaborate photo-documentary collections of unique peoples, places, and nature. His Dad was a key member of the local camera club when imaging was an esoteric, expensive practice and his travels grew into an impressive range of picture stories, thousands in number. Heath grew up with a routine of slide shows, 35mm Kodachrome screen projections in the living room, a father's explanatory voice often recorded and presented in conjunction with his primary travel arrangements for small audiences which won him a number of regional awards. Several trips for Heath at a very early age down the coastline to the American Southwest, Disneyland, Universal Studios, SeaWorld and more- and further into vibrant Mexico, affected him for life: it was where his imagination and innate skill sets were a reality. And so Heath more or less became the sum of both his parents. Always a writer and craftsman of sorts, a photographic documenter from an early age, and a dreamer and designer of movies- long before ever having access to a motion picture camera, the impulse and raw craft guiding the process which resulted in many staged experiential art forms: haunted houses, dungeons and exotic crypts, taxidermy displays and later, special makeup FX. 80's heavy metal music and gory horror movies were thrillingly unique in his youth and he became a metal head teen making high school horror videos, his school granting him the complete freedom of self-directed projects, (he was one of the 1st to receive the new "work experience" experimental course), resulting in Grade 11 & 12 elaborate special FX horror videos. He marvels at how he had won such favor as his own schedule and even a petty cash allowance doled out through the school office. But such was earned and by day and night he did just that. Arts college would follow with As and Bs all whilst creating a complex animation short film in his spare time, Pictorial Forest. The envisioned 5-year plan outgrew his college years and was continued thereafter until complete and competing after a decade, its 1st award winning Gold at the 1999 32nd Worldfest Houston. Allot of time had passed, but more striking was the speed of change in the media landscape. The age of Napster and reality shows had arrived, countless spin-offs, legal or otherwise. The term "communications" became the catch-all for a trans-media world that has worked ever since to reinvent the electronics age, online and off. For the 1st 5 years of the new millennium Heath refused to attempt adapting to the ever-changing landscape. He wrote a feature then directed and produced half of it, opting to shoot on film to attain its genuine look and feel at a time when HD was not only sterile looking but still emerging and expensive. By 2005, reality struck: the craze of cheap reality shows was not going away as many had hoped, commons HD had usurped the classic feature film wide-screen cinematic standard, and a rather popular newcomer started its sharp rise: "social (amateur self-generated) media". Audiences both vanished and started to change in attitude and demand. Heath realized that the days of film were limited yet he tried to save the medium and its method, even investing in a 1 ton Oxberry Animation rostrum studio camera. But even prior, the expense couldn't be easily justified so he switched gears. He decided to tell his feature film story in documentary form by going out and collecting real-life video footage of the times around Vancouver in the lead up to the 2010 Winter Olympics. It was intended to be a much simpler process than it became. Heath found that he enjoyed news study and the great inter-connected puzzle of our times, and the resulting feature film, "Vancouver Vagabond" in 2009, would expand into a series. Heath figured that the VV series would become a landmark of the times and serve history for the decade straddling the Vancouver 2010 Games, 5 years on either side thus ending in 2015 after which the series could be effectively marketed since the greater whole resists fragmentation, all stories interconnected and supporting each other. Several features and over 40 short and medium length featurettes promise to delight and inform audiences with their clever form and spectacle. The first three features of the VV series as of 2013 have won 15 awards and give promise of more movies to come. Heath has dreams of returning to scripted drama, working with actors and crew like in the old days, possibly returning to acting as well as he had pursued for some time; and in his spare time, returning to his hermetic world of deep esoteric painting and sculpture wherein he taps the secrets of the universe in the pursuit of breakthrough... genius. He clings to the hope that within history's digital revolution, the public will somehow regain respect for genuine artists and the meritocracy they face: the real sacrifices they live with to create quality standards, outside of the celebrity surface, the red carpet and an envious mob's perception- in pictures- of wealth at the top. Heath resides in BC and, for a few winters before the Canadian currency crash, in Las Vegas Nevada where he was a seasonal resident. He enjoyed hanging out with his dogs, reading and working in his yard through the spring-like winters, wandering about and studying the ongoing wild custom inventions of Vegas and the greater history of the gonzo entertainment infrastructure while meeting interesting people from around the world. Back in BC he has returned to performing and filmcraft, on and off road motorcycling and downhill skiing.