Went on a trip to Toronto in June, to spend a week at Phil Hoffman’s Film Farm. What an inspiring place. Came back to Vic with a new fascination with 16mm, learned how to turn a Steenbeck into a contact printer (Thanks to Josh Bonnetta), and how to double and triple-expose. lots of little tinting and toning tricks. Started shooting on high contrast sound stock, it’s got a really low ISO, but with enough light, it looks great.

Collected some footage and skills for my thesis (yup, still working on it, just slowly) and snooped around the Toronto indie film community.

This is one of my experiments, double exposed and printed through the Steenbeck.

I saw the film “RIP: A Remix Manifesto” by Brett Gaylor at this year’s Victoria Film Festival.  In the spirit of the film , I pirated parts of the film onto 16mm Black and White film with my bolex, then hand-processed, tinted and toned it, then composited it digitally. The soundtrack is an old jazz show, recorded from an old reel-to-reel and mangled on the computer. You can find the origuinal film here: http://www3.nfb.ca/webextension/rip-a-remix-manifesto/ – go watch it.

You’re welcome to remix the film yourself at http://www.opensourcecinema.org/

It is a flurry of format changes. It was shot on Super 8 in black and white and hand processed, then digitized, composited and coloured with final cut pro.

The sound is a whole other story. 

It starts with a new toy. Slim Sandy gave me an old reel to reel audio recorder last night. So me’n Dan sat around and made some noise with the deck and some reels of tape that were in my basement (a friend dropped them off one day, thinking they were 8mm film film reels.)

This soundtrack started as a radio transmission of the now-cancelled “Brave New Waves” program on CBC Radio 2, hosted by Patti Schmidt. It was (and still is) my favourite radio show, and helped shape my teenage years. It was recorded onto a cassette tape in the 90’s, recently digitized for my ipod touch, then piped through the old 1/4 inch reel to reel deck, warped and transferred to a digital recorder to be edited and chopped up on a computer….phew….

Back from Dawson City now, still trying to catch up on everything I left behind in April.

The “Experiment” workshop at MediaNet is starting this weekend, and I’m still trying to get everything ready. I think there are still a couple spots left in the workshop if anyone wants to take it. On another note, I’m off to Toronto in a month-and-a-bit to go to Phil Hoffman’s Film Farm. I’m giddy about the whole thing.

The Dawson City One-Minute Film Challenge went beautifully last weekend. We ended up with 25 films for the screening. A really great show and get-together, all sorts of little gems. Here is a film I made for it, called “boots.” Rozalind MacPhail made the music.

Been out of touch for a couple weeks, lots of things happening,

I’m in Dawson City right now, doing a residency at the Klondike Institute of Arts and Culture, and had a screening at the Dawson City Short Film Festival a couple weeks ago. I love it here. Fantastic people.

Performed with Rozalind MacPhail on the Sunday of the Festival, and now we’re getting ready for the Dawson-City-one-minute-film-challenge. We have more than a dozen films so far (a super-8 camera I brought from home did the rounds with a few visiting filmmakers, Deco Dawson, Terry Haines, Elisabeth Belliveau and Lisa Pasold.) Lisa is actually a writer – and was a little intimidated by the camera – but now she’s a filmmaker.

Here is a 16mm film diary of part  the trip from Whitehorse to Dawson in a van full of filmmakers. (Deco, Elisabeth, Lisa, John Overell and Natalie Edelson) I was a little nauseous by the end of the trip (from the bumpy road, not the company) Mmmm, Gravol. 

There’s a little more static in the air here and it’s impossible to keep the dust and hairs out of the projector. after 4 tries to transfer, I am now embracing the glitches, and calling the work  “Dawthentic”

Oh, and in past news, I was voted “Victoria’s Favourite Local Filmmaker” at this years M-Awards – thanks to everyone who voted.   And this years UVic Sunscreen Festival screened “Splash” and “House” and I took home “Best Director,” “Best Auditory Experience” and “Best Screenplay/story.”  I was in Dawson City and missed the screeening…after flubbing my way through the M-Awards, I was half-relieved. Crazy Month.

Stay tuned for the rest of the Dawson Films.

WARNING – THIS FILM MAY CAUSE SEIZURES – PLEASE DO NOT WATCH IF YOU ARE EPILEPTIC

This started as an experiment with 16mm Black and white film. one frame of black, and one frame of white, alternating at 24 frames per second. When it’s switched to 30 frames per second to play in NTSC format, some interesting (and nauseating) things happen. Then I pushed it a little further and started to use red, blue, green, black and white frames. I guess this falls into the Structural Materialist category of experimental film. I find it fascinatingly abrasive.

THIS WILL MOST LIKELY GIVE YOU A HEADACHE. you were warned.

This is a video made from still images. I’ve been thinking about the idea that film can be experience and not just documentary or narrative, so this is an exercise to see if I could create an experience and place with only stills and sound. None of the stills are from the place I’m trying to create. It’s a little depressing and dark. sorry. Comments about it are welcome, I’m wondering if it’s working…What do you think it is about?

Another film made for this year’s “My Victoria.” Abstract 16mm black and white, tinted, toned and layered. The words were an afterthought, because the film had to have something to do with Victoria.

And I just started a twitter account. You can find it here: http://twitter.com/oilyfilms

This is a short film I made with the help of Daniel Lombardi for the Victoria Film Festival’s “My Victoria” Competition this year. I submitted it late, so didn’t end up in the competition part, but it was a good excuse to make a film, and to play around with some cut-out stop motion.

This is an abstract piece, shot on 16mm colour film, and transferred with an early-80’s telecine, that lags a little with the colour channels. I think it’s quite obvious what it actually is, but visually interesting nonetheless. A part of the journey. David Parfit made the soundtrack. You can find all sorts of his wonderful creations here: www.davidparfit.com