Honoured to have been featured on the cover of The Now last Thursday, June 16! The story is reposted below for archival purposes. Photo credit: Now File Photo
SURREY â This weekend, two longtime pals will begin filming a project that could win them $50,000 and inter-provincial bragging rights.
At the same time, Kashif Pasta and Shyam Valera are also aiming to put Surrey in a better light.
Theyâre the creative forces behind the comedic âWelcome to Surrey,â one of 30 projects vying for top prize in a Telus-backed Storyhive contest, a community-powered funding program for emerging content creators in B.C. and Alberta.
Makers of the winning web series will be given $50,000 to fund production of a full season that will be broadcast online and also on Optik TV.
The five friends of âWelcome to Surreyâ live in that stage between being a kid and having their own, according to Pasta, the project director.
âSurrey gets a disproportionately bad rep, usually based on outdated stereotypes, and we wanted to tell a story that takes place in a city we know and love,â Pasta told the Now.
âWe have such an incredible blend of cultures here,â he continued. âWhere else would you see chai at a hockey game, samosas at a Superbowl party, a Christmas tree as massive as our city hall tree and a Vaisakhi parade as large as ours in the same place? We live in and enjoy this multicultural landscape weâve built, but often donât notice because we never see it reflected back to us.â
Earlier this spring, âWelcome to Surreyâ was named among 30 Storyhive finalists following the first round of contest voting. With $10,000 in prize money, the task now involves filming the pilot episode for the final round of voting, which takes place from Aug. 8 to 12.
The pressure is on, but Pasta and Valera have confidence in their Surrey-centric story, which is the biggest project theyâve tackled since first meeting at Tamanawis Secondary a decade ago. After high school, they created a Dunya Media channel on Youtube as a portal for their short comedies and social commentaries.
âWeâve seen a lot of positives here (in Surrey),â Pasta underlined. âI mean, this isnât a âYay Surreyâ show either, but itâs a normal place and thereâs lots of good here and people donât usually get a chance to notice.â
The âWelcome to Surreyâ story follows Suneet, a law student living in Toronto who comes home to Surrey to look after her ailing father. She reconnects with old friends and reignites a romantic relationship that forces her to choose between the predictability of her old life and the exciting but scary potential of her new one, confronting what it really means to leave home and become an âadult.â
In addition to Valera and Pasta playing characters with their real first names, the project stars Suneet Maan as Suneet, Courtney Rufh as Skylar and Bikram Singh as Jag.
Theyâll begin filming the pilot episode this weekend at several sites in and around Newton, including key scenes at Old Surrey Restaurant.
âItâs a 10-minute pilot, thatâs the time limit, and weâre trying to get it down to 10 minutes,â Pasta explained. âWe have our whole season written and what we did with this first episode, once we got the funding, is we combined the first two episodes into one. Itâs a swift 10 minutes.â
The script is âfeeling rightâ and rehearsals have been going well, Pasta related.
âI feel confident with this because honestly, the community in Surrey has really been behind it,â Pasta said. âAlmost every city councillor was voting in the first round, posting it on their Facebook pages, things like that. And it was an incredibly diverse range of people behind it to, from 13-year-old kids at LA Matheson to 75-year-old white women who are contemporary artists in South Surrey.
âIt was really incredible to see that community support and so, with that in mind, I feel really confident about it going into the next round. People are so hungry for content like this.â
Pasta calls âWelcome to Surreyâ the most local show among Storyhive projects while also enjoying the most global reach during the first round of voting earlier this spring.
âDuring that week we reached 34 countries, maybe because we are such a multinational society here, with the network effect of having friends and family seeing it around the world,â Pasta said.
âOur top cities that week ended up being Vancouver, Surrey, Johannesburg and then Richmond, Delta. And it did really well in New Zealand and Sydney. I think people respond well to the idea of people telling their own stories, they can relate to that aspect of it.â
For more details about âWelcome to Surrey,â including a video description of it and other projects entered in the contest, visit Storyhive.com.
















