The Toronto International Film Festival is upon the city again. The lines are long to buy tickets to the various world premieres; folks will all of a sudden be shopping in the posh Yorkville area of downtown to hopefully run into a celebrity in the Prada store or Holts. Me, I’m in it for the films. I will be seeing five films this year which is more than I’ve seen at the last two festivals combined. Am I excited? Certainly the prospect of seeing 5 movies over 2 weeks in a room full of film enthusiasts (who else would pay roughly $27 to see movie?) is very intriguing and puts me in a reflective mood.
I’ve taken a break from Ashita over the next two weeks in order to attend the industry calls one of the most important film festivals in the world, I call it a giant geek-a-thon. Andy is also taking a break from editing as he is braver and maybe richer than me and will be seeing roughly 25 movies or so. This well deserved time off will allow me the chance to do a number things; 1) Have five dates with my wife in two weeks. 2) Watch some of modern cinema’s greatest master works 3) Seek inspiration 4) Reflect further on my new film Ashita.
Like I said, I’m in a reflective mood.
Last night I had an old friend over for dinner. Frank B. Kermit and his future bride were over to celebrate their wedding this coming weekend. Frank and I have a long history he is the one who gave me my first directing opportunity on a TV show in what feels like a century ago. Frank, who today, is a successful author, radio host and public speaker is a good friend of mine and has work on my two previous features, The Meatball Story and Truant Café, and my TV pilot, Cinema Fix. I mentioned to him that Ashita is very different than my previous work and that it feels a lot different making this one that the others. The Meatball Story, my first feature, I originally wrote as a play and wanted to present it as such, but theatre being more unstable than the film industry it was not to be. So not wanting to put months of rehearsals to waste, I decided to shoot it as film. It was shot in 6 days in black and white in my cousin’s tiny restaurant in downtown Montreal. And to be honest, none of us really knew what were doing. Not that Meatball is a bad movie, on the contrary, it’s a lot of fun to watch because it’s so inhibited and free. Someone once called it a “B-Movie Midnight Cult Classic” which I take as a great compliment. Truant Café, was a much bolder project with a very high ambitions. Truant Café reunited with not only Frank, but also Nina-Rose Singh and the versatile Anthony Colace. We did a complete 180° turn with Truant, I was aiming to make a very dark and angry psychological thriller. As much as the film was different from Meatball, it had a lot of similarities. Truant Café was shot in roughly nine days with a lot of the same cast and crew and I wrote the script over a weekend while visiting Montreal.
I am extraordinarily proud of both films and the excellent work involved. But both films suffer a little due to the time constraints imposed on us by the locations and the lack of experience. Again, both films, I think, are excellent but with my new film Ashita I’ve opted to do things a little differently. The biggest example of that is that 1 year after we began shooting, we are not yet complete. Am I afraid of falling into film limbo and not knowing when to stop? Of course I am, but I trust the people around me and the people I work with. I have a brilliant wife whose support and logic make her a great producer. I have an editor, who is not afraid to tell me I’m going overboard or too far. I am not saying Ashita will be a perfect film, it will be yet another experience that leads to many more. And the influence of Meatball and Truant hand heavy in this movie, from a cameo appearance by Anthony Colace to using the experience and past mistakes as a tool for progress. In Truant Café I had to make a very difficult decision to cut out my original ending and shoot a new one almost a year later. It is a very humbling experience when you first present the scenario to all those involved. Explaining to your cast and crew, who have all worked so hard and believed in your project enough to follow you and work on it, that you’ve changed your mind about something and need to re-shoot, is gut grinding. But it gets easier. The Meatball Story had no re-shoots and was marked with the very film school-esque attitude of: “We’ll iron out the shooting glitches in post.” Never iron out any glitches in post—it works sometimes and did so in the case of Meatball, but took almost one year to get a rough cut out, because I was “Ironing things out in post.” Truant Café was the first time I did a re-shoot and I am very happy with results. We re-shot the ending of the film and it gives the movie a much creepier feeling and darker undertones. With Ashita, I’ve done a number of re-shoots and I made the even harder decision to cut a character and story out of the film—I did something similar in Meatball because of length, but in Ashita the character and story did not blend well with rest of the film.
To be honest, if I had not met Frank almost 15 years ago, I would not be making Ashita today. Over the last that decade and a half I learned some valuable lessons: 1) Always treat your cast and crew well, or they will leave you. 2) If you can help it, don’t rush a shoot. 3) Nothing really gets fixed in post, do it right, it’s worth it. 3) Be honest to yourself as an artist 4) Know your limitations 5) Doing a film because you love it is the only real reason to do a film.
Was reminded of point number 5 a lot last night, and everyone whose worked on one of my projects was in it because they loved it, good or bad, they were in it to learn, play and do something interesting. The love of cinema will be present at the film festival also… But my biggest love for cinema is presented with the people who choose to work with me.
Like I said, I’m in a reflective mood.
You can check Frank out at: http://franktalks.com/
You can check Anthony out at: http://www.anthonycolace.com/
I’ve taken a break from Ashita over the next two weeks in order to attend the industry calls one of the most important film festivals in the world, I call it a giant geek-a-thon. Andy is also taking a break from editing as he is braver and maybe richer than me and will be seeing roughly 25 movies or so. This well deserved time off will allow me the chance to do a number things; 1) Have five dates with my wife in two weeks. 2) Watch some of modern cinema’s greatest master works 3) Seek inspiration 4) Reflect further on my new film Ashita.
Like I said, I’m in a reflective mood.
Last night I had an old friend over for dinner. Frank B. Kermit and his future bride were over to celebrate their wedding this coming weekend. Frank and I have a long history he is the one who gave me my first directing opportunity on a TV show in what feels like a century ago. Frank, who today, is a successful author, radio host and public speaker is a good friend of mine and has work on my two previous features, The Meatball Story and Truant Café, and my TV pilot, Cinema Fix. I mentioned to him that Ashita is very different than my previous work and that it feels a lot different making this one that the others. The Meatball Story, my first feature, I originally wrote as a play and wanted to present it as such, but theatre being more unstable than the film industry it was not to be. So not wanting to put months of rehearsals to waste, I decided to shoot it as film. It was shot in 6 days in black and white in my cousin’s tiny restaurant in downtown Montreal. And to be honest, none of us really knew what were doing. Not that Meatball is a bad movie, on the contrary, it’s a lot of fun to watch because it’s so inhibited and free. Someone once called it a “B-Movie Midnight Cult Classic” which I take as a great compliment. Truant Café, was a much bolder project with a very high ambitions. Truant Café reunited with not only Frank, but also Nina-Rose Singh and the versatile Anthony Colace. We did a complete 180° turn with Truant, I was aiming to make a very dark and angry psychological thriller. As much as the film was different from Meatball, it had a lot of similarities. Truant Café was shot in roughly nine days with a lot of the same cast and crew and I wrote the script over a weekend while visiting Montreal.
I am extraordinarily proud of both films and the excellent work involved. But both films suffer a little due to the time constraints imposed on us by the locations and the lack of experience. Again, both films, I think, are excellent but with my new film Ashita I’ve opted to do things a little differently. The biggest example of that is that 1 year after we began shooting, we are not yet complete. Am I afraid of falling into film limbo and not knowing when to stop? Of course I am, but I trust the people around me and the people I work with. I have a brilliant wife whose support and logic make her a great producer. I have an editor, who is not afraid to tell me I’m going overboard or too far. I am not saying Ashita will be a perfect film, it will be yet another experience that leads to many more. And the influence of Meatball and Truant hand heavy in this movie, from a cameo appearance by Anthony Colace to using the experience and past mistakes as a tool for progress. In Truant Café I had to make a very difficult decision to cut out my original ending and shoot a new one almost a year later. It is a very humbling experience when you first present the scenario to all those involved. Explaining to your cast and crew, who have all worked so hard and believed in your project enough to follow you and work on it, that you’ve changed your mind about something and need to re-shoot, is gut grinding. But it gets easier. The Meatball Story had no re-shoots and was marked with the very film school-esque attitude of: “We’ll iron out the shooting glitches in post.” Never iron out any glitches in post—it works sometimes and did so in the case of Meatball, but took almost one year to get a rough cut out, because I was “Ironing things out in post.” Truant Café was the first time I did a re-shoot and I am very happy with results. We re-shot the ending of the film and it gives the movie a much creepier feeling and darker undertones. With Ashita, I’ve done a number of re-shoots and I made the even harder decision to cut a character and story out of the film—I did something similar in Meatball because of length, but in Ashita the character and story did not blend well with rest of the film.
To be honest, if I had not met Frank almost 15 years ago, I would not be making Ashita today. Over the last that decade and a half I learned some valuable lessons: 1) Always treat your cast and crew well, or they will leave you. 2) If you can help it, don’t rush a shoot. 3) Nothing really gets fixed in post, do it right, it’s worth it. 3) Be honest to yourself as an artist 4) Know your limitations 5) Doing a film because you love it is the only real reason to do a film.
Was reminded of point number 5 a lot last night, and everyone whose worked on one of my projects was in it because they loved it, good or bad, they were in it to learn, play and do something interesting. The love of cinema will be present at the film festival also… But my biggest love for cinema is presented with the people who choose to work with me.
Like I said, I’m in a reflective mood.
You can check Frank out at: http://franktalks.com/
You can check Anthony out at: http://www.anthonycolace.com/
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