There’s a certain kind of summer job that sounds good on paper and then dissolves the second you actually clock in. Lifeguarding. Landscaping. Retail. The kind where […]

There’s a certain kind of summer job that sounds good on paper and then dissolves the second you actually clock in. Lifeguarding. Landscaping. Retail. The kind where every day feels suspiciously identical to the last.

And then there’s the version where you show up to set at 6 a.m. in Windsor, Ontario, carrying coffee in one hand and a production schedule in the other, trying to figure out how a group of students somehow ended up making a professionally distributed film series in the middle of a Canadian heat wave.

That’s the summer Buzzflix is betting on.

The Toronto-founded production initiative, led by industry veterans and powered almost entirely by students, is turning Windsor into a working film set this summer, bringing roughly 75 emerging creatives from across Ontario together to produce Walkerville, a four-part anthology series tackling youth-focused themes like bullying, social media pressure, and identity. And unlike the traditional “internship” setup where students mostly observe from the sidelines, Buzzflix is handing them the actual keys.

Directors. Cinematographers. Writers.

Department leads. Students are doing the work.
Which sounds slightly insane until you hear Jack O’Keeffe explain it.

“We’re taking the best of the best students,” O’Keeffe says. “And all we’re doing is giving them an outlet to show that talent.” 

O’Keeffe isn’t your stereotypical film-school evangelist either. He studied business at Wilfrid Laurier University, not cinema. But while surrounded by friends in film programs, he noticed something strange: students loved movies, studied movies, analyzed movies, but rarely got meaningful opportunities to actually make them.

“The problem with the film program is that it’s very theory based,” he says. “There was kind of a gap where a lot of people weren’t getting real on-set experience.”

That gap became the whole point.

Buzzflix’s model feels less like a traditional production company and more like someone accidentally merged a film set, startup incubator, and creator collective into one thing. Students apply online. No elite connections required. No “who do you know?” politics. This year, Buzzflix received around 400 applications and selected roughly 75 participants. Every applicant was interviewed personally. 

And the opportunity isn’t theoretical.

“These aren’t student films,” O’Keeffe says. “These are professional feature-length films made by students.” That distinction matters.

Because for decades, aspiring Canadian filmmakers have been fed the same map: move to Toronto, maybe Vancouver, try to survive long enough to get noticed, and hope someone eventually lets you near a real production. Windsor wasn’t really part of the conversation.

Now it is.

And honestly? That might be the most interesting part of the entire experiment.

Southwestern Ontario’s Film Scene Is Growing Fast

For decades, the Canadian film industry has functioned a little like Canadian hockey development: if you were serious about making it, eventually you were expected to leave home.

Toronto became the gravitational center. Vancouver became Hollywood North. Montreal carved out its own lane. And for everyone else especially creatives growing up in places like Windsor, London, Kitchener-Waterloo, or St. Catharines the message was usually the same: if you want a real career in film and television, you’ll eventually have to go somewhere else.

That thinking is starting to crack.

Not because Toronto or Vancouver are disappearing they aren’t but because cities across Southwestern Ontario are no longer waiting to be invited into the conversation. They’re building their own ecosystems instead.

And Windsor might be the clearest example yet.

For years, Windsor has existed adjacent to major entertainment infrastructure without fully being considered part of it. Close enough to Detroit to understand large-scale production. Close enough to Toronto to recognize the opportunities. But historically, not enough investment or long-term infrastructure existed to convince productions to stay.

What’s changing now is the mindset.

Instead of trying to compete directly with Toronto’s scale, Southwestern Ontario cities are beginning to lean into what actually makes them attractive: accessibility, collaboration, affordability, and a willingness to experiment. They aren’t trying to become “the next Toronto.” They’re becoming something different entirely.

Buzzflix recognized that early.

“We chose Windsor because they are very open to new film productions,” Jack O’Keeffe says. “We’re able to work very closely with government officials, with leadership in the city, to mutually support both of us.” 

That openness matters more than people realize.

Because one of the hardest parts of independent film production, especially for emerging creators, isn’t necessarily talent. Canada has plenty of that. It’s finding cities willing to actively collaborate with productions instead of simply hosting them temporarily.

In Windsor, Buzzflix found a city interested in participating.

The partnership already stretches beyond just securing locations. The University of Windsor worked alongside the production to provide accessible student housing options for cast and crew members relocating for the summer. Local catering companies and Windsor-based businesses are being intentionally prioritized during production spending. There’s a sense that this isn’t a one-off production sweeping through town before disappearing, it’s the beginning of a longer relationship.

“We’re not here to ask for money,” O’Keeffe says. “We want to build a long-lasting relationship.” 

That kind of language lands differently in places like Windsor because cities outside the traditional film hubs have often spent years watching productions arrive, extract value, and leave without meaningfully investing back into the local creative economy.

Buzzflix’s approach feels intentionally different. The production itself becomes infrastructure. 


The students gain experience. Local businesses gain revenue. Emerging crews build connections. The city gains proof that large-scale creative projects can function there successfully. And perhaps most importantly, younger creatives growing up in Southwestern Ontario gain something that has historically been harder to access: visibility.

Because once people can physically see productions happening in their own cities, the industry stops feeling theoretical.

And that shift isn’t isolated to Windsor.

London, Ontario has quietly been building a similar identity for years. Long known as a regional media and broadcasting centre, the city has deep ties to Canadian television production, commercial work, post-production, radio, and digital media. Fanshawe College’s broadcasting and film programs have helped produce generations of Canadian media talent, many of whom eventually fed larger productions across the country. But increasingly, the goal isn’t simply exporting talent outward anymore.

It’s retaining it.

Southwestern Ontario is beginning to realize something that larger entertainment hubs learned years ago: creative industries become sustainable when communities stop treating artists, filmmakers, and production crews like temporary visitors and start treating them like long-term economic contributors.

And younger creators are responding to that shift. For students entering the industry today, the idea of automatically moving to Toronto feels less mandatory than it once did. Remote collaboration exists. Independent distribution exists.

Social platforms have changed discovery entirely. Mid-sized cities now have the ability to support meaningful creative ecosystems without needing Hollywood-level infrastructure.

That’s part of what makes the Buzzflix model so interesting. It isn’t simply producing films in Windsor. It’s helping normalize the idea that high-level production can happen there consistently.

There’s also something culturally important happening underneath all of this.

Southwestern Ontario has stories that don’t always get represented on screen. Different pacing. Different communities. Different perspectives than the hyper-urban worlds that dominate much of Canadian media. And when productions are rooted locally, those stories naturally begin surfacing more authentically.
That matters.

Because Canadian film and television has often struggled with a strange identity issue: trying to look international while accidentally sanding away the regional voices that make Canadian storytelling distinctive in the first place.

What Buzzflix and increasingly cities like Windsor and London seem to understand is that regional identity can actually be the advantage.

The future of Canadian film probably won’t be built exclusively inside three major downtown cores. It’ll come from networks of smaller cities building sustainable creative communities together. Cities willing to invest in young talent before the industry fully validates them. Cities willing to experiment.

And right now, Southwestern Ontario feels increasingly less like a secondary market and more like a region building its own lane entirely.

The Best Summer Jobs Usually Don’t End With IMDb Credits

There’s a moment in almost every student’s life where the practical voice wins. Get the stable internship. Take the office job. Work somewhere “safe.” Save some money. Figure out the dream later.

Buzzflix is basically arguing the opposite.

What if the summer job is the dream job?

Students working on Walkerville are being paid around $250 per day, already competitive with many entry-level production roles but O’Keeffe insists the money isn’t the real value proposition. 

“What’s really special,” he says, “is that at the end of the summer, there’s going to be 75 students who are just entering the industry, but they’re going to be highly trained.”

That training happens under the guidance of experienced industry mentors embedded into every department. But the students aren’t there to shadow professionals carrying the actual workload. They are the crew.

And the structure intentionally rewards initiative.

Roles evolve between productions. Someone helping manage logistics on one episode could direct the next if they prove themselves capable. 
That’s not how most industries trust young people.

But it might be how creative industries survive.
“The success of these projects lays in their hands,” O’Keeffe says. There’s also something refreshingly modern about the way Buzzflix thinks about filmmaking itself. Instead of treating social media as a distraction from production culture, they’re integrating it directly into the experience.

Traditional productions lock everything down with NDAs and secrecy. Buzzflix encourages students to document the process in real time, shooting videos, posting behind-the-scenes content, and building community while the work is actually happening. 

Which makes sense. Because the next generation of filmmakers isn’t just learning how to frame shots. They’re learning how audiences discover stories now.

“How do we implement social media into filmmaking?” O’Keeffe asks. “That’s what we went to students for.” 

It’s easy to dismiss that idea until you realize the students growing up on YouTube, TikTok, and creator culture are probably the people who will define what the next 20 years of media looks like.

Buzzflix isn’t treating that as a liability.
They’re building around it.

A Different Kind of Canadian Story

Underneath all the innovation talk, the startup energy, and the production logistics, there’s still a simpler idea powering this entire thing:
Canadian students telling Canadian stories.
“Stories written by a diverse Canadian student audience made for a diverse Canadian student audience,” O’Keeffe says. 

That matters more than ever.

Because the future of Canadian film probably won’t be built exclusively through giant studio systems or by trying to imitate Hollywood better than Hollywood does. It’ll come from smaller cities betting on creators early. From students being trusted before they’ve accumulated a decade of credits. From productions willing to experiment with what filmmaking can look like now, not what it looked like 20 years ago.

And this summer, a lot of that experimentation is happening in Windsor.

Which means somewhere in the city right now, there’s probably a student hauling gear onto a set, stressing over call sheets, trying to solve problems they’ve never had to solve before, and accidentally getting the kind of summer job they’ll talk about for the rest of their life.

Not bad for a city people used to overlook.