Fix My Funeral

Production Company
Vancouver Film School
Producer(s)
Rajkirat Singh
Director(s)
Elliot Nicholas
Casting Director(s): 
Rajkirat Singh
Union Status
Union (TBC)
Project Type
Film
Student Production
Yes
Compensation Details

Ned and Bud in the story will be union actors because a stunt is involved. Pay will be $10 per day and $50 for stunt days.

Shoot / Performance Date(s)
July 16-18
Shoot / Performance Location(s)
Vancouver
Submission Deadline
Tuesday, June 17, 2025
Submission Instructions

Please submit your resume, headshot, and demo reel (if applicable) to fixmyfuneralfilm@gmail.com and indicate which role you’d like to be considered for.

Project Synopsis
After a suicidal, unfulfilled office worker, Stew, tells his friends he wants to kill himself, they offer no objections and start planning his funeral for him. To ensure the funeral is exactly as he envisions, he postpones his suicide until the day of the funeral, turning the ceremony into a grand event that the unfeeling people in Stew’s life could never have imagined. Stew happily invites his boss (who forces him to change the date to accommodate work, his ex-girlfriend (who immediately signs the invitation the moment she learns she’ll be seeing Stew’s dead body), and organizes a funeral that makes him out to be a far more interesting and accomplished than he ever was in reality. Eventually recognizing the value in his ambitious nature and seeing the potential to become the person his funeral advertises, he decides to take back control of his life and fakes his death in order to start over.
Additional Information & Safety Protocols: 

This is a Student film, so for budget reasons, Roles for characters not involved with stunts will go to non-union workers. You are still encouraged to apply if you are interested in the role. But please do so if you are going to do them as volunteer work; if not, then please indicate it in your submission.

Character 1
Stew
Age
25-30
Gender
Male
Description
A passive, deadpan everyman who allows others to control his life without a care. Stew spends his day working for a boss who doesn’t know his name and drinking beer with people he doesn’t talk to. He can feel something is wrong but can’t figure out why. His solution: Good ol’ fashioned suicide. When given the opportunity to put on his own funeral the way he envisions, he finds passion in being someone of importance. Realizing there is potential in this ambitious side of himself, he runs out on his own funeral to start a new life elsewhere. Over the course of the film, Stew goes from empty and almost robotic to adventurous and optimistic of the future.
Character 2
Bud
Age
25-30
Gender
Male
Description
Confident, seemingly trustworthy and amiable businessman, but lacking remorse. Stew’s “best” friend, Bud, is the leader of their friend group. He is used to making the decisions but sees the potential in Stew’s funeral being a spectacle in which he can partake so he helps his friend carry out his vision in any way he can. When Stew refuses to kill himself, however, Bud doesn’t want his chance of fame jeopardized and is willing to do the deed himself.
Character 3
Ned
Age
25-30
Gender
Male
Description
Quiet, mysterious, oddball, seems like his mind is elsewhere. Like most people in Stew’s life, Ned doesn’t have the most unique personality, but he is the wild card of the friend group in. It’s not obvious what Ned is thinking, and he can sometimes act unpredictably, but he seems relaxed and mostly just does what Bud and his boss tell him. Deep down, he feels similarly to Stew about the dystopic society they live in but secretly buries his feelings in the bottle and other substances explaining his enigmatic disposition.
Character 4
Boss
Age
30-50
Gender
Male
Description
Regal, open-minded but firm and slightly narcissistic office manager. The boss is a busy man who can’t afford the time to remember the names of his employees when he could always be adjusting the marketing strategy of Liquor Limited. When he hears one of his employees (Steve was it?) comes to him about throwing a funeral, he isn’t overly pleased. But upon arrival he sees that his employee is more active and ambitious than he ever expected. He sees an opportunity to cash in on the suicidal worker and promote Stew (and subsequently the company brand).
Character 5
Judith
Age
25-30
Gender
Female
Description
Clear, straightforward, sophisticated, acting as the closest thing to the voice of logic and reason in an absurd society. Judith prioritizes her marketing job highly but is still one of the few to acknowledge the existence of her ex-boyfriend Stew from time to time. Judith, like most, seems unbothered when Stew announces his own funeral, doubtful he’d go through with it. But after she realizes her former boyfriend is serious about ending his life, Judith can’t help but admit that it’s a shame for the world to lose someone with such ambition ... but she’d probably get over it pretty quickly. When Stew eventually escapes, she is happy for him despite her cold exterior.
Additional Characters

SOPHIE (Female, 20-30, any ethnicity): Dramatic, overly emotional. Struggling to find an acting job in a society fixated on the logical, the majestic Sophie is thrilled to be employed on a production as big as Stew’s funeral as Stew’s grieving fiancée. However, she expertly disguises her enthusiasm with the fake grief she expresses while auditioning for the role and later at the funeral. Nothing can cause her to break character.

Background: Production Assistant who will carry the casket. Office workers. Funeral attendants.