oh m, why didn't i choose fingerpainting???

Im staring down at the sheets of paper I've laid out...the skeleton of a skeleton...just marrow...of what is to become a feature documentary.
they just lay there. They don't do anything. They don't tell any stories. And then, i stare at one long enough and an invisible thread connects it to the last one on the right.
quick switch. suddenly a web begins to form, it makes no sense, there's no way to tell it.
i can tell it if its one at a time.
I'm trying to find a way to put 23 or so people in front of the camera; and 7 or so behind the camera; over 13 or so different days; in 10 or so different places...before the funding run out.
If this wasnt hard enough...tthey have to form a story of a place and its musicians.
well, for now:
PRIDE IS A GO, WE'RE WORKING OUT PLANS WITH SYDNEY BLU AND DEKOZE (yay!)
we're still workin on you know who...and a couple of surprise you know who's (hint: we're goin right out to windsor...)
and the interviews are hurriedly being compiled.
one or two more ingredients and we'll have ourselves a pretty interesting brew.
stay tuned. v

shoot diaries - dear m

hey m,
im missin u tnight.
long weekend. right in the middle of it, plans for the rest of it were scuttled (original plans to goto muskoka started showed 0% chance of rain and 75% of raining sausages)...but i gotta say, there is someting really interestng about playing electronic music in the middle of  boreal forest / cotage country that i find is uniquesly Toronto, if not Canadian. and this place must be filmed to be believed.
anyway - tonight i shot at 2 clubs at the same time.....
sadly, without the power to be at 2 places at once, i just pretended i had the power...which left me ragged and sweaty
met Tim Patrick.CZ regular and cool cat. (someone who knows him wanna tell him i'll get him those shots i got whenever he needs)
got good ol boys KEVIN CHEUNG, ADAM NICS and friends as they held up the top floor at MOD CLUB (video shortly)
everyone needed a piece of me (or my camera)...had a friend from winnipeg i met in thailand came by this wked and i just had one hour with him because i had to be pulled away from club to club...
its what i asked for.
But when the lights go out and everyones looking for cabs, or the next party, i pack my gear in the care and miss you for a while.

anecdote of the day:
local movin-shakin Producer KOEN MUSICA there jabs at me in the loud room, "DUDE, ONE OF THESE DAYS IM GONNA TAX THAT CAMERA YOU'RE HUGGING AROUND YOU"
"DUDE I LOSE THIS CAMERA MY FILM IS OVER...NUTHINS INSURED. STEALING MY CAMERA IS LIKE STEALING THE FUTURE OF ELECTRONIC MUSIC!"

whining and bellyaching

i will reiterate a promise i made to myself that i cant manage to keep this time around...
the next film i direct. i will NOT produce.
the next time I produce, I will NOT direct.

its out there now - it has to come true

hotdocs - I AM DANGEROUS WITH LOOOVE

we had a choice.
adrian grenier (ala entourage)'s new doc about a teenage papparazzo (i was curious); or a film about a man who beat heroin addiction magically with a root derived from the bwiti tribes in Gabon, Africa.
it wasnt a choice for me, really.
very different type pf documentary than what i would make i guess. bt it does a great job at what it does. the camera searc into the lives of broken and healing people, through the eyes of his main subject - a cross between a doctor and a drug dealer. The story worked, we overcome obstacles and reach a resolution. i was a bit dismayed that it took him 3 years to make the thing.
i wanted to ask filmmaker MICHEL NEGROPONTE: "i hope you had other gigs during that time cuz thats a long fuckin shoot!" but instead i asked him: "uh when you took the african root, was what you saw like the animations on the screen? duh? (or sum like that ;)
i find myself back in school-like. a documentary is a very different beast than the fictional narratives i am used to taming.
But both beasts feed off the same food: story and meaningful images.
if we start from there, the rest are just production matters, i suppose...

i gots to schmooze more

thats pretty much it. i gotta schmooze more if im gonna get more support for the film from the film community. No question the music community seems on board ina  big way. But without festivals, without distributors, without bradcasters. This will just be a well-produced fanfilm the DJs can show their grandkids about how they used to big time.
not my intention.
those guys, i hear, like to frequent parties. much like music people, but at different prties it seems.
ive been making films since i grauated university, thats 8+years, and i've booked artists and directed artists and taken artists to the next level in my work as a manager...the truth is i cant remember the most talented person standing in front of me who does not make a positive imprssion right away...and what better place to make yourself a better impression than to go where there is copious alcohol etc.?
this weekend there are closing parties for hotdocs, and yes. i will be there. wallflowering. i hope they like weed. im bringin some :)

RE: WE DON'T CARE ABOUT MUSIC ANYWAY

I was starving, i was itchin to go home after a looong day at traffic court, pickin up cameras, etc etc. it was 11:35pm. then i remembered there was a set of midnite screenings playing at this year's hot docs festval for $5.
i could make kd at home. and am i glad i did (watch the movie, not the kd)

the film by two french expats in Japan about Tokyo's avant garde noise music movement treated its characters with intimacy and allowed their film style to be a visual counterpoint to the dissonance-driven, speaker smoking improvized sets driving the film. The thrust of the film is that many will continue to not get the music, but they will get the artists. The meanings f the music is inherently dissonant as a reaction against the commercialized noise of the tokyo soundscape.
For me, the best thing the film did was affirm for me in living color that some of the approaches i'm planning in my own film can and will work (using the image / sound relationship to make the relationship between electrni music and the digitized nature of our daily lives). But it also gives me pause that these filmmakers managed to weave a very good 75 r so minite film out much fewer locations and artists. Toronto Sounds plans to work with many more artists in many more places...and the question of budgets arise...anyway, food for thought, i got in touch with the director last night and hope to have a dialogue with him about these questions.

The music of a city is not the music about a city...it is a reaction to the realities of that city, for good r ill.

im gonna transcribe a bunch f notes i took in the dark, cuz right after i do this, im chucking that ol program:

• event / studio shoot in a garbage dump? still sick sounds...with smart miking any space will add to it. every shoot requires 1 track music, straight from the line...1 premixed track (several mikes if nec), or several time-cued tracks w separare mikes (well-documented)
  
• gaspar said he just kept clean and controlled miking and had a sound designer pull it all together, thats what i thought would be best as well
• use BW for discussion sequences. it works cuz the space was probably shite (said it was behind a club super hot)
• the film found artists who has profound insights on the nature of music, of their society, of their place in it and their goals as artists...articulately. without this, my film runs the risk of being seen as a bunch of inarticulate party ppl...which this film dows not want to tread. FINDING THESE SUBJECTS WILL BE CRUCIAL
• what is a FUCKIN CONTACT MIC? its sick! buddy had a contact mic ad stethoscope taped to his heart...mixed into a board and a software that translated his midi signal into electrical pulses that turn on a bunch of lightbulbs...every heartbeat the lights flash. very very cool.
• the film lacks humor, but so does corporate imperialism and urban decay...so understandable
• any city has a million faces and symbols. they focused on the urban decay and homogenizing asets of the city (and any city, but tokyo++). for toronto maybe the approach is that it has many faces, shown indepednently through each essay
• I GOTTA SHOOT THE TIME LAPSE SEQUENCE AT 6-8AM. they had a subway sequence that was righton. this is the face of the city electronic music ppl see