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.
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
We'll All Flow-t On
So, November has arrived. My third month on the other side of the country. Hard to believe it's been two whole months since my long awaited journey out here, and it already feels like home. However, that particular sentiment was thrown for a bit of a loop come the October 31st.
Halloween, it marked the end of an era, and the beginning of a new one as our previous roommate, Jaime, finally made a trans-Canada move of his own, by driving out to Fort McMurray, Alberta, to chase down some better work. Jaime had become one of my friends out here, and when you're in a new city, loosing even one of those new friendships is less than preferable. In his stead we were provided with our new roommate, Adrian. A man so totally different from us that we've dubbed him our "Straight Man" aka the Steve Martin to our collective John Candy. However so far things are very amicable, and Adrian has brought a substantial amount of furniture and kitchen ware, so that's a real big help.
Aside from that we also changed landlords, internet providers and have had to start thinking about the costs of heating the house for the first time. We're on an oil furnace so, as you can imagine, it can be quite expensive to fill, which only pushes us to hold off on heating the house for as long as we can, via usage of warm teas, coffees, blankets, house coats, winter hats and coats and our one, single, space heater. Which I think I probably hog the most.
The company is going well. Flow has been busy chasing down grants for projects, new contracts and building the website as well as our collective brand so we can be ready to start going after top contract prospects in the near future. We've also had some cool video work, including some videos for local non-profit organizations. But by far and away my favorite thing we've got going right now is The Flow Show our soon to drop podcast that focuses on the film making process and showcasing local film makers and artists, especially documentarians. We've spent the last couple weeks recording our first two episodes and are set to record the third and fourth ones tomorrow and the day after. Then shortly following that we're going to start releasing each episode on our website, free to download, so be sure to check that out, we're going to have a lot of very interesting guests on, including a man who visited every music festival in Canada, an award winning documentary film maker and a Holocaust survivor and his film making son. It's going to be a really cool thing and we're very excited about it.
Apart from that, one of the bigger things on the Flow-rizon is coming near the end of the month when Brad, and myself as well as our fellow Flow-stranaut Alexa head to the south shore of Nova Scotia once more to hopefully wrap up filming for our lobster documentary (formerly known as Lobster Inc.) which is coming back with a vengeance and a new title (yet to be revealed). We've learned so much about the subject matter over the last year and this time we're finally going down there to shoot with what we feel is a fully complete understanding of the issue we're trying to cover and the ability to tell the story we want to. A story that does not shy away from the uncomfortable truths of the lobster industry and paints as honest a picture as we possibly can. We're going down with more experience, better equipment and a plan. It's going to be magical.
Personally I've been really trying my best to acclimate to my new situation. It's weird. I think because I feel simultaneously out of place and that there's no where I'd rather be. It's really hitting home lately how long things are really going to take before I can finally do what I want to do full time. Work. You gotta do it. But I feel like, so long as you're down for the long haul, this is the city that's going to reward you the most. It's like Halifax just wants to make sure you're really committed to the relationship before moving in with you. But once it does... well there's a good chance you'll enjoy yourself at the expense of your mother's approval.
Not sure why I went for that particular metaphor...
But my point still stands. We got Irons in the fire, now we just gotta wait for them to be soft enough to hammer into something dangerous.
Tarah for now,
Matt
P.S. This month is probably going to see me doing some posting over at The Lobster Tail, my production blog for our Lobertin' doc as well as starting a tertiary corporate blog over on Flow's website (www.flowproductions.ca) so keep an eye out. It's going to be a lot of writing for me so please forgive me if there are some waits between posts.
Halloween, it marked the end of an era, and the beginning of a new one as our previous roommate, Jaime, finally made a trans-Canada move of his own, by driving out to Fort McMurray, Alberta, to chase down some better work. Jaime had become one of my friends out here, and when you're in a new city, loosing even one of those new friendships is less than preferable. In his stead we were provided with our new roommate, Adrian. A man so totally different from us that we've dubbed him our "Straight Man" aka the Steve Martin to our collective John Candy. However so far things are very amicable, and Adrian has brought a substantial amount of furniture and kitchen ware, so that's a real big help.
Aside from that we also changed landlords, internet providers and have had to start thinking about the costs of heating the house for the first time. We're on an oil furnace so, as you can imagine, it can be quite expensive to fill, which only pushes us to hold off on heating the house for as long as we can, via usage of warm teas, coffees, blankets, house coats, winter hats and coats and our one, single, space heater. Which I think I probably hog the most.
The company is going well. Flow has been busy chasing down grants for projects, new contracts and building the website as well as our collective brand so we can be ready to start going after top contract prospects in the near future. We've also had some cool video work, including some videos for local non-profit organizations. But by far and away my favorite thing we've got going right now is The Flow Show our soon to drop podcast that focuses on the film making process and showcasing local film makers and artists, especially documentarians. We've spent the last couple weeks recording our first two episodes and are set to record the third and fourth ones tomorrow and the day after. Then shortly following that we're going to start releasing each episode on our website, free to download, so be sure to check that out, we're going to have a lot of very interesting guests on, including a man who visited every music festival in Canada, an award winning documentary film maker and a Holocaust survivor and his film making son. It's going to be a really cool thing and we're very excited about it.
Apart from that, one of the bigger things on the Flow-rizon is coming near the end of the month when Brad, and myself as well as our fellow Flow-stranaut Alexa head to the south shore of Nova Scotia once more to hopefully wrap up filming for our lobster documentary (formerly known as Lobster Inc.) which is coming back with a vengeance and a new title (yet to be revealed). We've learned so much about the subject matter over the last year and this time we're finally going down there to shoot with what we feel is a fully complete understanding of the issue we're trying to cover and the ability to tell the story we want to. A story that does not shy away from the uncomfortable truths of the lobster industry and paints as honest a picture as we possibly can. We're going down with more experience, better equipment and a plan. It's going to be magical.
Personally I've been really trying my best to acclimate to my new situation. It's weird. I think because I feel simultaneously out of place and that there's no where I'd rather be. It's really hitting home lately how long things are really going to take before I can finally do what I want to do full time. Work. You gotta do it. But I feel like, so long as you're down for the long haul, this is the city that's going to reward you the most. It's like Halifax just wants to make sure you're really committed to the relationship before moving in with you. But once it does... well there's a good chance you'll enjoy yourself at the expense of your mother's approval.
Not sure why I went for that particular metaphor...
But my point still stands. We got Irons in the fire, now we just gotta wait for them to be soft enough to hammer into something dangerous.
Tarah for now,
Matt
P.S. This month is probably going to see me doing some posting over at The Lobster Tail, my production blog for our Lobertin' doc as well as starting a tertiary corporate blog over on Flow's website (www.flowproductions.ca) so keep an eye out. It's going to be a lot of writing for me so please forgive me if there are some waits between posts.
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