Partners that is.  Yes we don’t often mention what goes on behind the scenes here at VMG but the truth is VMG Cinematic was founded and is owned by four passionate and unequivocally devoted individuals (myself included) who strive each day to produce the best work we have ever done, and then best it the next.  But we used to be five, and our missing fifth man is Mr. Brent O’Hagan (pictured).  But don’t worry this isn’t a sob story, just a melancholy one.  You see Brent isn’t dead, he’s not even in coma. In fact right now he’s probably blazing a trail across the trans-Canada highway heading west in his old Jeep YJ (or was it a TJ?) and not giving a damn about where he might end up along the way.

Brent resigned a few weeks ago.  He had been with us almost from the beginning helping build VMG up from a small, basement operation into the successful company that it is today (and yes we have moved out of the basement).  I went to school with Brent, we were in the same Film Studies program at Western.  It was a terrible program, underfunded, understaffed, and dull.  So dull in fact that Brent and I and several others realized that if we were going to learn proper filmmaking technique there was only one thing we could do: teach ourselves.  And that’s what we did.  We wrote scripts in between essays, borrowed equipment between classes and begged favors from anyone who would listen. Those were heady times. We won film festivals, not big ones but significant enough to convince us that we had something, something that could be developed.  And from that hard knock, teach-yourself-education, friendships were forged, good ones, long lasting ones. The kind that inevitably define your life in some way for years afterwards.

Brent didn’t leave in anger or disgrace.  He wasn’t kicked out because of a raging coke habit or a pimp that would call late at  night demanding to know where he was and how much money he was making.  No, Brent left for his own reasons, and they are his to know and his alone.  As the character Laroche said about his fish collecting hobby in Susan Orleans’ “The Orchid Thief” (and later Spike Jonze movie “Adaptation”)- “done with fish”.  Brent was “done with VMG” and it was simply time to move on to see what else life had in store.

God speed good friend.  You helped us create something truly unique and you will be missed.

- Evan