Elmira made it to the Canadian Screen Awards last weekend when native Sarah Mercey and her husband, Oakville-raised Jay Boose, won the prize for Best Direction in an Animated Program.
![Sarah Mercey won for Best Direction in an Animated Program with partner Jay Boose.[Submitted]](https://www.observerxtra.com/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/post_news_csas.jpg)
The Magic Hockey Skates, which aired on the CBC in the 2012 holiday season, is about a young hockey player who finds a pair of skates that he thinks will grant him three wishes.
“This nomination happened and we were very flattered by it, and we were just excited to go to the show and see friends we hadn’t seen in a long time and just hang out,” said Mercey from Montreal. “When we won, it was a total, total surprise.”
Mercey likens the experience of winning the award to an out-of-body experience.
“It’s almost as if you step out of your own body, and you watch your body walk up to the stage. I didn’t even feel like I was there. It becomes a very weird dreamlike state … especially because I’m an animator and I’m used to being behind the scenes, not in front of other people.”
She added, “I’m actually looking at the trophy right now and saying, ‘How is that in my house?’”
Since graduating from Elmira District Secondary School in 1994, Mercey, along with her husband Boose, has worked in the animation department on many films, including Ratatouille, Cars, WALL-E, and Lilo & Stitch. The experience helped for their directorial debut.
“We’ve sat in the same room with some of the best directors in Hollywood – that’s a master class in directing right there. Jay and I have done things like storyboarding, which is basically drawing and directing your own little sequence in a film. That prepares you in camera angles, and how to pitch a story.”
Some of the success can be attributed to growing up in small-town Ontario, she said.
“When you’re from the country – away from Toronto, away from America – you become an observer,” she said. “To be a good artist, you need to be a good people-watcher, and when you’re from a small town, you grow up watching and learning.”
She added that growing up playing Woolwich Ringette and pond hockey prepared her for The Magic Hockey Skates.
“Just knowing what it’s like being in a dressing room, and knowing how hard you have to work to be a better teammate. And also that feeling of being on the pond – the sound of the ice under your skates on a cold winter day, and knowing that the puck acts erratically on the bumps. I knew what it felt like.”
