June 5, 2026 9:15 am
Published by Marie-Noëlle Clermont
- What’s your role at the NFB, and what are your responsibilities?
As a designer of creative technologies with the Innovation Lab, my role involves developing tests (prototypes, trials and research), presentations and functional proposals. In practice, that often means collaborating with different teams to identify and solve challenges, evaluating emerging tools, building rapid prototypes and helping ideas move from conversations and sketches into things people can actually see and react to.
Ultimately, the goal isn’t just to experiment with technology, but to help people tell stories, connect with audiences and create space for new possibilities. Also, occasionally my job involves explaining to people why I’ve built a strange experimental thing.
- How long have you been at the NFB? Tell us about your career path.
I graduated from the University of British Columbia as a Mechanical Engineer, working on everything from hydrogen fuel cells and biomedical devices to aerospace composites and forestry materials research. But outside of school I was equally interested in creative things: producing music, experimenting with video and graphic design, and building multimedia websites using an interactive animation tool called Flash.
During the dot-com boom, my roommate and I started a web design company, where we worked on everything from e-commerce sites and games to installations and interactive documentaries.
Around that time, some of the most exciting work online was coming from CBC Radio 3’s online magazine. They were pushing storytelling in ways that felt new and experimental, so when that team later joined the NFB to form the Interactive Studio, I jumped at the opportunity to join them. It felt like a place where technology and storytelling were both allowed to be a little adventurous.
Since then, I’ve had the chance to work across interactive, animation and documentary projects, and more recently with the Innovation Lab exploring how technology can help the NFB better connect with audiences and adapt to an evolving media landscape.
- What makes the NFB unique in your view?
The NFB gives people permission to experiment—but with purpose. The goal isn’t simply to try something new; it’s to create meaningful work that helps people see, listen, question and connect. That’s rare. In many places, experimentation can sometimes feel like a tech demo looking for a reason to exist. At the NFB, trying new approaches is part of the culture. You can have filmmakers, animators, programmers, producers, artists, researchers and support staff all approaching the same problem from completely different perspectives. Sometimes the best ideas come from those collisions.
I also think there’s something unique about being a public institution. The NFB can support creators and stories that might not otherwise exist if every decision were driven only by commercial pressures. That creates space for experimentation, for taking risks and for exploring perspectives that might otherwise go unheard.
At the same time, the NFB isn’t only creating new stories—it’s also helping preserve a cultural memory. It has this incredible history and archive that captures moments, perspectives and voices across generations of Canadians. I like that balance: preserving where we’ve been while staying curious about where storytelling might go next.
- What is it about your job that makes you most proud?
As a public institution, the NFB plays an important role in helping Canadian stories create understanding and connection across communities, regions and perspectives. I’m proud when my work can help create new paths for those stories to reach audiences and help bring different ideas and perspectives together.
There’s something satisfying about helping transform an early idea into something real, especially when it has the potential to connect people through stories. In a small way, it feels a bit like helping stitch together part of the Canadian fabric—although some ideas definitely need a few extra threads before they hold together.
- Are you a bigger fan of animation, documentary or interactive experiences?
This feels a little like being asked to pick a favourite child. I’ve had the chance to work across all three, and each does something different. Documentary can connect us to real people and experiences. Animation can make impossible things feel real. Interactive experiences can invite people to become participants rather than observers.
If I had to give an unfair answer, I’d say I’m most interested in the spaces where they overlap. I like when documentary borrows from animation, when interactive experiences become more cinematic, or when technology opens up new approaches to storytelling. I’m curious about how future audiences might experience stories in ways we haven’t imagined yet.
Apparently I’m very bad at answering multiple-choice questions—which may explain how I ended up in innovation.
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This post was written by Marie-Noëlle Clermont