If there's one thing I know about Orangeville right now, is that it's covered in snow. Some people would miss that I guess, snow seeming to symbolize the impending inevitability of the Christmas season, and therein exciting the child inside all of us awaiting presents of the morning of December 25th. But not me. Snow, while, sure, ascetically looks great, is never something I'm really all that happy to see. Some people think Christmas when they see snow, I think of freezing toes and fingers, and long, uneven ice and snow covered driveways in need to be cleared, as well as the constant annoyance of perpetually damp socks.
And, no, I'm not "Scrooging" or Grinching" or "Jim-Carrey-as-Dr.-Suess'-The-Grinch-ing" I love Christmas, and I'd love to have snow on it, just never at any other point. Ever.
Seriously, snow is the worst.
Which is why I'm ecstatic about the weather I've been enjoying in Halifax lately. It may be cold, it may be extremely wet, and there may be winds so strong that they seem like they might actually shift your house off its foundations, but there is no snow. Not a flake so far. But I mean, now that I've said that I guess I'm dooming the rest of the city to a white blanket of overhyped annoyance in the near future. But I guess that's a risk I'm willing to take.
It was grey overcast wet weather that set the stage for our journey on Monday. A shoot inside an abandoned Youth Training Centre which, while it was active, served as a boarding school of sorts for people with intellectual disabilities. What a location. Paint decades old peeling off the walls, windows shattered, drop ceilings in decay, cabinets left either eerily empty or suspiciously locked, as well as miles of files and torturous looking bathrooms. All in all it was a cinematographer's dream.
The shoot was for A Flow Productions documentary, The Freedom Tour which Brad has been working on for some time and which I was lucky enough to be invited to do some camera work on.
We followed around Al, a former student at the facility who told us all about all the things that went on while he was there, both good, and particularly awful. He also took us through some of his old yearbooks, while sitting in an old dorm room of his. It was really powerful shoot that really captured well all his emotions and opinions of the kind of facility that that place used to be.
(Such institutions were shut down country wide in 1996)
The Freedom Tour looks to be a big film for the company. The subject matter is compelling and well captured, and will likely be a big stepping stone for us in the future.
The future. That seems to be the place where all our best projects are having their success. We should see about taking a trip there sometime.
But for now I can just look at those things and not touch them.
Things like The Flow Show, as well as the corporate blog, launching in the next week hopefully. We've got my short film Wicked Smart in preproduction as well as a couple potential short subject documentaries and a completion grant for Bottom Feeders (AKA Lobster Inc.). All things that have the potential to be big payoffs in the future but for now give us only lip service, and long work days.
They're the things I think about while I flip burgers at Mcdonald's. Yes I'm still working there. Unfortunately it's still necessary, but I always figured I'd be working somewhere pretty terrible for the first 6 mouths to a year out here on the part time until things get going. With the way things are looking I might be lucky, it might be more in the 6 month range. Which would be much better than a year.
Mcd's gives me two things: money and material. Wicked Smart, the short I've been writing for the last month and a half centres around a character who works at a similar fast food place, so at least i get plenty of ideas for that.
Keep an eye out for updates on all these things and more coming up soon. For now they're mostly all I have to talk about because working on them is taking up the majority of my time for the moment.
So, I guess I better get back to it.
Nose, meet grindstone, population: you.
-Matt.
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