The Beast of Bottomless Lake

Cryptozoologist's Bane

2012-01-13T17:18:00.000-08:00

The Onion had this funny bit today.

If only Paul Moran had known...

The Beast of Bottomless Lake in 2012...

2011-12-01T22:13:00.001-08:00

I am hoping that there will be plenty of news for The Beast of Bottomless Lake but for now there is just one piece of news.

Beast will be back on SuperChannel for fourteen showings in January.

Craig and I are at work on other possibilities, but it simply wouldn't be cricket to talk about them now.

One Month to Christmas

2011-11-25T10:02:00.000-08:00

Ya know...

If you order now... or even in the next ten days... you can still get copies of The Beast of Bottomless Lake for the folks you love the most... or even those you just kinda love in time for Christmas.

The DVD store is open on our website. Don't be shy.

Or...

Do you know someone who loves The Beast of Bottomless Lake? I don't mean in an unhealthy way. Not in a "well then why don't you marry it" childish kinda way either. Merely in that way that they are too often heard saying "hey, have you seen that really cool rather unknown film The Beast of Bottomless Lake?" Well then you can help them get their message across and save yourself having to hear that tiresome refrain by getting them something from our CafePress Store. 'Cause if they are wearing a Beast hoodie and drinking from a Beast coffee mug and tweeting (probably about Beast... don't forget the hashtag "#thebeast") on their iPhone with a Beast phone cover... then they won't feel the need to keep chatting you up about the film, now, will they?

The Beast's New PAL

2011-11-23T21:43:00.001-08:00

At long last...

Have you ordered a PAL DVD version of The Beast of Bottomless Lake?

Well expect to see it in your mailbox soon!

We recieved our order of PAL DVDs yesterday and they will begin shipping over the next week.

We are delighted that this has finally come to fruition. The technical differences between NTSC and PAL versions slowed down the process of getting the DVDs ready, but the good news is that the DVDs will be going out with th complete set of features that the NTSC discs went out with - indeed with slight tweaks (dare I say improvements?) that we will include in future batches of the NTSC DVDs. (If you happen to have the original NTSC discs, don't fret, the tweaks are truly slight... we'd probably have to point them out to you for you to notice the difference. It is simply a matter of our perfectionism and pride.)

So the Beast will soon be seen in places like Britain, Australia and Japan...

Hooray!

More On Set Interviews

2011-09-28T09:16:00.000-07:00

I crossed a threshold yesterday that I didn't realize was there until it was passed. I completed what was more thn likely the last piece of creative work on The Beast of Bottomless Lake. Though, when I say "creative" I have to admit that the amount of real creative work that was involved was pretty limited. The last few pieces have really been little more than deciding how to present on-set interviews: editing out a few spoilers and the odd rambling bit that was too littered with in-jokes or deciding which camera angle to use when more than one was available - that kind of thing. Truly the shallow-end of creative endeavour. In many ways the most creative decision I made at the end was to not edit one last featurette which I ultimately decided wasn't as entertaining as I once thought it would be.

With this behind us the number of things worth blogging about is bound to dwindle. Sure I could report on the minutae (We got a full 10 out of 10 from CTRC, meaning we are worth 150% time-credit to broadcasters! Interesting, huh?), but with DVDs released and our theatrical run over, the big events we are now waiting for are going to be pretty spread out and will amount to "Hey everyone, we just got a broadcast deal on the Iceland National Broadcasting Service!" (We didn't. Yet. We aren't even in negotiations. But stanger things have happened.)

Meantime, here are the last two interviews:

Leanne Jijian Hume:

David Nykl:

A Bunch of On Set Interviews

2011-09-08T16:58:00.000-07:00

It's the eve of The Beast of Bottomless Lake's theatrical run.

It's more than just a little weird to not be there, but such it the way these things go. I'm a new Dad... well, it's practically been a year - four days shy at this point, and between that and work-related commitments I simply can't be there.

As my daughter naps I've been grinding away in these past few days getting the last few extra videos of behind the scenes material finished.

I have five new interviews that our EPK cameraman, Kevin Roberts collected on location in the Okanagan up and ready. There are more to come soon.

Interview with Bronwen Smith: Interview with Roger Haskett: Interview with Alex Zahara: First interview with Gordon May: Second interview with Gordon May:

Some Silly Extra Fun

2011-08-26T12:43:00.000-07:00

The next video in our series of supplementary "Extras" that wouldn't fit on the DVD is now available on YouTube.

This a compilation of the cast on set exercising their vocal chords.

The Beast of the Silver Screen

2011-08-25T11:11:00.000-07:00

Alllll....righty then!

Have you got it figured out?

Yes, there is going to be a theatrical run of The Beast of Bottomless Lake next month.

It is going to be small and more than likely short - like a week, but who knows if things go well.

Landmark Cinemas has chosen three theatres in the Okanagan Valley to run Beast in starting September 9th. Specifically, the Paramount Theatre in Kelowna, the Capitol Theatre in West Kelowna, and the PenMar Theatre in Penticton.

We are currently working on a gala preview on the 8th with special appearances and stuff - more news on that as it happens... to be clear, the gala part is not 100% certain yet, but keep your eyes here for details - they will be coming soon.

A Cagey Announcement

2011-08-19T10:59:00.000-07:00

So really this is more of a tease than an announcement.

Back when I was writing about the impending DVD release party I hinted that we would be making a cool announcement at the screening. Well, that didn't happen. We didn't have the details confirmed, so we didn't mention it.

Well.... we still don't have the precise details, but at least we do now have a confirmation that is is happening. (Whew!)

WHAT IS IT!? You scream.

Well I'm afraid I can't say much yet - and some of the details are still a bit vague - I can say that it has required us to re-edit our trailer to end with a title card that reads "Surfacing September 2011."

More details to follow soon. I promise.

The Real Deal

2011-08-18T10:14:00.000-07:00

This is kind of entertaining.

From the National Post, an article about a real-life Ogopogo hunter.

Good ground for a game of "Name that Logical Fallacy."

To his credit he seems to be making an honest effort to properly dissecting the evidence. Good for him on that.

But it's in his persistence that he fails.

"We’re finding new species of stuff all the time, all over the place: butterflies, frogs. I mean, it goes on and on. Why couldn’t there be something in the lake?" The short answer is that it just isn't logically plausible. But there is more...

For the record, proving that there is no Ogopogo is technically impossible. You cannot prove a negative. (Which is something briefly touched upon by my character in the film.) But every day that passes by without real evidence of a 40 ft. serpent in Lake Okanagan is effectively more evidence that it doesn't exist. Everyone has a camera these days - video cameras in most cases. How does something that has been vaguely seen so many times in the past 100 years not get caught on video now? Every existing video is either clearly something else or is far more easily explained (via Occam's Razor) by something far more mundane - something that Steciuk is clearly capable of doing as he identifies the long rolling waves that form in Lake Okanagan as the reality behind many sightings. (Various other animals and logs make up most of the other sightings.)

Yes, Bill, we are finding new stuff all the time. LITTLE THINGS. The big stuff has no where left to hide. Especially if they exist in the size of a breeding population. He himself acknowledges that they have to exist as a species... which severely complicates his theory that they exist. It is diminishingly likely that a single creature could evade decisive discovery over the period of time under consideration (to say nothing of the fact that it would now be prohibitively old). To suggest that a minimum viable population could remain a mystery is nothing less than absurd.

Looked at with any degree of rationality, the only Ogopogo that exists is the cartoon representations that he detests so much.

Additional Bonus Videos

2011-08-09T15:55:00.000-07:00

Have you been over to the Provost Pictures YouTube page? There are all kinds of additional video about The Beast of Bottomless Lake over there.

On the DVD we made a promise to add more bonus video to the YouTube page, and starting today that is coming to fruition.

It's going ot happen gradually, but over the next month or two I will be posting (as they are ready) a number of additional interviews and behind the scenes featurettes. They will all be things that didn't suit well to going on the DVD for various reasons - too long, too weird, or required too much work to get them up to an appropriate level of production. None of that need be an issue on YouTube though!

For starters, here is a (long) video of the panel discussion we did at VCon in October of 2010.

More to come!

Congratulations are in Order...

2011-08-08T12:37:00.000-07:00

I have been remiss.
The Beast... DVD release party at Denman Place Cinema has come and gone and I have been too distracted to comment upon what is now behind us.

By all accounts it was a great night. Over two hundred people showed up - the biggest single location audience for the movie ever. While it made for an only half full theatre, it made for a very full lobby - and considering the heat of the evening, that was as much as anyone would have fairly desired.

We ended up adding one late-addition short film to our roster for the evening on short notice. 20 Minutes of Oxygen a music video by The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets - a Vancouver band that has a song in Beast....

20 Minutes of Oxygen was directed by the editor of Beast..., Mike Jackson. Mike also edited and did the effects on the video and it was shot by our Director of Photography Naim Sutherland.

Following the screening of the shorts, we took an intermission where everyone was treated to a great set by The Pucks, who have two songs in the film. (they played both in their set.) Lots of excitement in the room through intermission. The short films were extremely well recieved and it almost seemed as though the response from the audience got better with every film... which I am somewhat hesitant to admit, as a short film I wrote and am featured in was the second one shown of six. The buzz in the lobby about the films was great as everyone clamoured to get their vote for the audience choice award into the
box.
The Pucks rocked out - and how can you not rock out with a tuba? People enjoyed the wine (and audience choice award) sponsor's product - Township 7 wines as well as the beer alternative (who didn't sponsor us so it wouldn't be fair or right to name them). A French documentary crew doing a film about independent film in Canada showed up (they were following Beast... cast member Fabrice Grover) and shot the event and interviewed me.

Once all the halftime hoopla was over, everyone returned to the cinema for the main attraction. Craig, I am told, said all kinds of nice things before the film started - I wasn't in the theatre at the time (there was SO much to be done).

The film, as always, spoke for itself. Everyone enjoyed themselves. Many people walked away surprised by the quality of both the production and the depth of the plot. We sold a lot of DVDs.

Once the main feature was over we drew for the 50/50 draw (I must admit I'm not sold on 50/50 draws... I don't win even close to half the time.) and other door prizes and then announced the winner of the Township 7 Audience Choice Award. And here is where congratulations are in order. The winning short was Death Wish, directed by Chad Costen. I didn't think it was appropriate for me to vote, but if I did it would have been for Death Wish. (The film I was involved in wasn't eligible... because I was involved.) I had picked it as a favourite as it had been chosen as part of the shorts program at the Missisauga Independent Film Festival for this year. MIFF was where Beast... won it's first festival award on it's festival circuit pilgrimage last year.

The tiniest (and cutest) audience member.

We have a similar photo of them at the
Provost Pictures launch.

MIFF is finished now for this year. I am sad to say that Death Wish didn't win it's category. However, the feature that caught my eye when I looked at what was being screened this year, Feature Presentation (yes, that is the film's name) ended up taking the mantle from us as the Best Feature. Congratulations to them. Wear it well. I hope I get a chance to see it somewhere someday.

The DVDs have arrived!

2011-07-13T10:41:00.000-07:00

"The new phone book is here! The new phone book is here!" - Steve Martin as Navin Johnson in The Jerk

Totally not staged at all - this is exactly as it naturally occurred.

It was with great excitement last night when my upstairs neighbour called and told me he was home. Rob happens to be the manufacturer of our DVDs. I immediately ran out the door and went and grabbed the first box of our initial order.
Eventhough I have watched every piece of the DVD more times than I can count, it was very exciting to pull out a copy (okay, copies) and run my hands over them and look at the pretty pictures.

The first ones should be going in the mail either today or tomorrow, and of course anyone attending our screening on Friday who has ordered a copy can pick up theirs then.

The party is looking like it's going to be a lot of fun. We've sold a good chunk of the tickets - but there is always room for more. And of course if we have any copies of this run of the DVDs left over, you can purchase the DVD right there.

Also, expect an exciting new announcement at the party... which of course I'll reveal here too a few days later after I've recovered from the hoopla.

Why everyone should order three dozen copies - so your baby can swin in Beast of Bottomless Lake DVDs too.

Red Carpet Preview

2011-07-09T21:03:00.000-07:00

Okay so "red carpet" is just a bit extreme. I don't think we're shelling out for a roll of rug. But there has been some question as to who is going to be at the screening.

I'm just sticking to what I know and only dealing with the principles here.

The Director, Craig March will of course be on hand. I, myself, will be there (Kennedy Goodkey) - co-writer and the actor playing Stewart, the grumpy physicist. Bronwen Smith who played Leslie, the earth mother-y ecology scientist is going to be there with her husband John Prowse who is also in the film in one of my favourite cameos. Fabrice Grover, who plays documentarian Ernie McKellar is going to be present - and on a side note is somewhat ironically going to be being followed by a documentary crew doing a film about Canadian independent film. I do not know if Roger Haskett will be in the house - he just had a new addition to his family (four weeks early!) last week, which understandably has changed his priorities. Leanne Jijian Hume who plays Paul Moran's assistant (and love interest) will be in attendance - this is kind of special as Leanne lives in East Timor now so her being here on the right day is an unusual treat. And of course that leaves the person who will be most asked about - David Nykl, the star of the film... Unfortunately I just got word from David. He has been trying to switch around some obligations, but it has not come to pass. We will have to welcome the DVD into the world without him in attendance. He will of course be there in spirit (and of course he is featured on one of the two commentaries on the DVD.)

And of course... The Pucks (who have two songs in the film) will be there rocking the house.

So... if you don't already have all the info:

What Day?
The 15th of July - that is FRIDAY coming up.

When?
Doors open 6:30, Short films start at 7:30, our feature starts between 9:00 and 9:30

Where?
Denman Cinemas, 1779 Comox Street, Vancouver

How much?
$15 in Advance
You can buy tickets online at http://www.stubmatic.com/Promethian/event/6690

Bring your friends!

New Swag!

2011-07-02T23:44:00.000-07:00

If you don't know about the DVD release you haven't been reading this blog.

But wait there's more.

We would like to take this opportunity to announce that the formerly paltry number of items in our CafePress store has expanded... a lot.

Seriously.

Where there used to be about a dozen different shirt styles in 4-5 colours, there are now more things than anyone will ever buy.

While of course there is standard fare... like the aforementioned shirts - now in more styles, roughly the same number of colours, but with four different images that configure in a metric tonne of different ways - like hoodies and pyjamas

There is also fairly common stuff like coffee cups, water bottles clocks, baby-onesies, hats and iPhone cases....

(Note that the images here are merely the smallest sample.)

As well as utterly stupid stuff like Dog T-shirts, coasters and throw pillows... that is if you really need a Beast of Bottomless Lake Dog T-Shirt..

Canada Day Special Programming

2011-06-30T17:00:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to point out that Beast of Bottomless Lake is back on Super Channel this long weekend.

Appropriate don't you think? Some kick-ass Cancon comedy for Canada Day.

-----

And don't forget to grab your advance tickets to the DVD Release Party - they will not be available at the door.

Tickets Only Available in Advance for the DVD Release Party.

2011-06-29T23:39:00.000-07:00

So there is a change...

Due to limitations on our liquor license we cannot sell tickets at the door to the DVD Release party.

It's fairly cut and dried. If you are coming you will have to buy on line in advance before you come to the show (or directly from one of us with tickets in advance.)

To buy on line just go HERE.

A quick reminder, the party will include - the distribution of DVDs for anyone who pre-ordered one; the screening of several short films - one of which will get a prize from Township 7 for winning the audience choice award; music by The Pucks (who have two sings in The Beast of Bottomless Lake; as well as a raffle and 50/50 draw (and there is currently at least one really cool prize for the 50/50 draw.); and of course, the last big-screen showing of Beast... in Vancouver probably for ever.

Hope to see you there!

DVD Sneak Peek

2011-06-28T10:51:00.000-07:00

Here is a sneak peek at the main menu animation for the Beast of Bottomless Lake DVD.

Pre-orders for DVDS are already open: http://www.provostpictures.com/TheBeast-DVD.htm

With the official release date being July 15th 2011.

If you are in Vancouver, there is a DVD release party and screening at the Denman Cinema on the 15th....

DETAILS & TICKETS

Ten Years

2011-06-23T23:48:00.000-07:00

I don't know if I've written about this on this blog at all, but even if I have, this is still an appropriate time to do so again.

Keith Provost 1960-2001

It was ten years ago this weekend that I was sitting on the couch in my tiny apartment in the West End watching a documentary on SPACE (the Canadian equivalent of SyFy). It was a truly ridiculous documentary about sasquatch hunters. These guys were so clearly beyond reason that the documentary was pretty much an unintentional comedy. I knew that it was prime inspirational material for the film that Craig and Keith and I were working on. I picked up the phone and called Keith. There was no answer. I left a message on the answering machine encouraging him to watch the show when it re-aired in six or eight hours, whatever the rotation was.

At that point we had developed the script to a fairly high-functioning treatment (basically a detailed outline with substantial sections of dialogue). We had the interest of a local producer and things were looking really promising.

Several hours later the phone rang. It was Janet, Keith's wife. Janet and I were friendly, but my relationship was clearly with Keith back then. It was instantly odd that she was calling - the last time she had called me was months earlier, to prepare for Keith's birthday.

Janet told me about the accident. He was already gone.

I don't know what exactly I said. "Oh my god, Janet." Or something equally as shocked and empty. She asked me if I would make phone calls to get the word out. Naturally I couldn't turn her down. That was one of the most difficult tasks I ever had to do. I did a terrible job of the first call. I approached it like any other phone call with small talk off the top. The news totally blindsided the person I called. I'm still sorry about that, T. Sure the news was going to blindside anyone, but it was immediately clear that the only remotely "good" way of imparting the news was as immediately as possible. I did tell one friend to call me when he was home, or at least not in public on his cellphone. I'd recently been party to a pair of sisters getting bad news about their father on the bus on a cellphone. The worst part of that experience was the sister who wasn't on the phone was getting the news the same way all us strangers who had unwillingly been pulled into the conversation as eavesdroppers were getting the news.

I called everyone in my phone book who knew Keith, then went into my bedroom and screamed into my pillow for god knows how long. Somehow I managed to go to work and put in a full shift - though I booked off the next few days.

A friend of mine picked me up from after my shift and took me home to her place and held me all night. We had been lovers, but that was not on the agenda at this time - we were beyond it. This was strictly me needing someone to hold me until I was ready to face the first full day without Keith. I didn't sleep that night. I just lay in bed. methodically re-playing every moment of my friendship with Keith over in my head.

I still can't believe he is gone some days. I definitely can't believe it has been ten years - more than twice as long as we were friends. I am now almost two years older than he ever was. I cannot look at a photo of him and see an older man. That seems amazing and even a little impossible to me, but despite that kneejerk reaction, it is true.

I'm alone tonight, no one to hold me. Jodie and December are visiting grandma. But I think I'm going to try re-imagining those years when Keith was one of my best friends as best I can. It has been ten years, it's time to honour him once again.

So what exactly IS on the DVD?

2011-06-22T12:01:00.000-07:00

Hey, I am glad you asked. I'm pretty darned happy with the package we've created, and I'm itching to boast about it.

Of course the movie is on the DVD in full resolution and in the unbranded equivalent of a major stereo format.

Deleted scenes including:

- The original end of the film.

- A sub-plot line revolving around the character I played, Stewart.

- A secret insight into the background of Lesley Morgenstern.

- More of Stewart at the police Station.

- Neville's encounter with a very frightening creature (played by my niece, Kaz).

     - Several extended sequences of Neville absurdity.
     - A nod to Canadian film royalty.

Two commentaries:
     - One featuring Craig and I having a lot of fun talking about the process of making the film.
     - One hosted by our star, David Nykl, featuring a discussion with the Science Advisor on The Beast of Bottomless Lake, Stan Orchard (who was one of several scientists involved as experts in one of the most famous Ogopogo sightings, "The Chaplin Film.") and Daniel Loxton, editor of Jr. Skeptic Magazine and a big fan of cryptozoology. They discuss the history of Ogopogo sightings and other cryptozoological oddities, the relationship between ambition and science, the role of pseudo-science in society and of course just how accurate (and innaccurate) the science in Beast is.

Three 'making of' featurettes:
     - One highlighting the course of one entire day on the set of The Beast of Bottomless Lake.
     - One showing the highlights and hi-jinx from over 24 hours of behind the scenes footage that was shot during the filming of the movie.
     - One that is guaranteed to be the highlight of the bonus features. I can't even say much about it, as to tell anything not only spoils one of the great moments in the film, but also ruins the surprise of one of the most ironic things that could have (and did) happen to us while we were filming on Okanagan Lake. If you've been to a Q&A session with us you may have heard about this. Otherwise get ready for some great footage of the best behind the scenes story we have about making The Beast of Bottomless Lake.

There will be other additional behind the scenes footage released on YouTube in the coming months, but the best will always only be available on the DVD. The purchasing page is now live. So go order your copy today.

The DVD Approaches....

2011-06-20T20:53:00.000-07:00

The Beast of Bottomless Lake DVD is imminent.

Much of last week - between Stanley Cup Final games - was spent tweaking audio levels on commentaries and picking fonts for chirons in the featurettes. By now everything is out of my hands and we are working on plans for the release party while the manufacturing is completed.

If you are in the region (of Vancouver) on July 15th and you haven't had a chance to see The Beast of Bottomless Lake on a big screen this very seriously could be your last chance.

The party will be at the Denman Cinema starting at 7:30. We will be screening five short films that we have selected from a heap of entries and giving away a prize to the film that the audience deems the best.

We will announce the chosen short films in a day or two.

Also there will be music by The Pucks who have two songs of their CD Martha in The Beast of Bottomless Lake.

There will be door prizes, 50/50 draw and of course beer and wine and popcorn.

Tickets are available at the Denman, online at Stubmatic or if you happen to know one of us, we have tickets available too. They are $15 in advance and $20 at the door.

They Kicked Ass Again...

2011-04-20T19:19:00.000-07:00

We clearly brought the right guys on as crew.

They just won the Telus WSSF Filmmaker Showdown.... AGAIN.

Poached Earth - 2011 Telus WSSF Filmmaker Showdown - BEST IN SHOW from Patrick M. Henry on Vimeo.

Well done guys!

DVD Pre-orders

2011-04-18T10:27:00.000-07:00

It was going to happen eventually - you knew it.

We are currently working on the extras for the DVDs with the intention of having them available for purchase in late June.

What do we have planned for the added features?

(With the necessary disclaimer that any of these planned items could fall through before we get to the final authoring of the discs for any of a variety of reasons.)

We are working on two separate commentaries. A whole bunch of deleted scenes, including an alternate ending. Several short "making of" featurettes.

We do not yet know the sticker price on the DVDs as it in part is a result o the cost of making them - which of course we are not finished doing... and as with the cost of Mastering tapes, the price of DVDs is unstable right now due to trickle down from the fact that Japan is where most DVDs are made.

As soon as we have the price fixed we will make orders available on our website, but for now, you can do us a big favour by letting us know if you would like a DVD - the closer we can match our demand the better we can price the final product. Send us an email at ogopogodvd@gmail.com and give us an email where we can let you know the details as they come in (IE. When DVDs are available we'll tell you precisely how to secure your order and how to pay.) If you can also let us know how many DVDs you would like and the format (NTSC, PAL, or even Blu-Ray). We will assume NTSC region zero on all orders unless specified otherwise.

And for those of you in the Vancouver region, we have plans for a DVD release party which should be a lot of fun!

How Surreal....

2011-04-12T00:42:00.000-07:00

Well, there we have it folks! Not that The Beast... can't do more, or go further than a Canadian cable broadcast - indeed we hope it will and are working on possibilities, at least one of which is essentially a certainty.

Last Wednesday night - almost late afternoon here on the West coast - Super Channel had it's first screening of the film.

I had taken my family back to my hometown on short notice to see my father who had recently had knee replacement surgery. It was good timing. While we were there, Dad and his wife ordered Super Channel and we invited some of their other grandkids as well as the band that lives in Prince George that plays two songs in the film - the Pucks - to come over and watch the film with us.

I must admit that it was kind of odd.

On one hand, I've seen the film on TV before... or at least on A TV. So in that sense there was nothing remarkable about the viewing. Indeed, I sat in the kitchen (still in view of the screen, but very off-axis) and drank beer and listened to people's reactions. But on the other hand there was the knowledge that at the same time there could be people in Halifax and Montreal and Kenora and Moose Jaw and Kamloops all watching the same broadcast. It's something I could really only grasp intellectually - it didn't really feel any different than watching a DVD screener.

I grudgingly suppose it is now only a matter of time before the damned thing is available in pirated form for download*.... sigh.

*THIS IS NOT AN INVITATION!

BIG News!!! ...that is pretty much out of the bag already.

2011-03-23T20:52:00.000-07:00

If you are a member of our Facebook group or are connected to us by just about any other means but this blog you already know this...

The Beast of Bottomless Lake has been purchased by Super Channel!

The first showing is April 6th with over a dozen and a half showing scheduled for April (and possibly beyond.)

Obviously this is very cool from our perspective. Rewind in time to the first post of this blog. Back then we were just a couple of guys with a big dream, no budget and a lot of heart. We are now just two weeks away from being film-makers with a broadcast history - which is a BIG threshold to have passed.

I've mentioned the idea of the "four Everests" before... each stage of making a film is like climbing Everest. Pre-production; production (shooting); post-production and distribution. Over this past month I have really had to face that metaphor. Distribution has been a rough road. We "finished" the film in early 2010. (The quotes are because we had to do more work on it to close this deal.) It took a long time, more than one aborted attempt, plus sucesses at film-festivals and so on to get to this sale - and I for one had all but given up hope. But getting a first sale, makes secondary sales much more likely. When the call came from our sales agent we could hardly believe it. Fortunately we had just asked one of our investors for assistance with his business acumen on a number of things (most of which are still up coming), and he was indispensible to have available through the last month.

At some point I may write about the sometimes Kafka-esque process of getting the film ready for broadcast, but to be perfectly honest portions of it were simply too emotionally exhausting for me to want to revisit it so soon... which is also part of why it took so long to get around to posting this announcement on the blog.

Back to the fourth Everest... It occurs to me now, that as arduous as these past few weeks have been, and how satisfying it is to know that Beast is going to be on TV, and that that represents in a sense the scaling of the fourth Everest... the reality is that the fourth Everest either never ends, or only ends when no one wants to see your film anymore. Sobering thought.

I will share one small funny story about un-anticipated issues...

When I say "funny," I should be clear - I do NOT mean "ha-ha funny." Not in a million years as in this case the background to what makes it "funny" involves the deaths of thousands of people.

In order to prepare the film for broadcast the movie had to be mastered to HD-SR tape. There is one factory in the world that makes HD-SR tapes... in Sendai Japan. Since the factory was severely damaged ten days ago there has been a worldwide run on HD-SR tapes - check this out on eBay, the price is outrageous. Our budget for tapes practically doubled as trickle down from the earthquake. Which compared to the chaos in Japan is nothing - beyond insignificant. And to be doubly clear... the couple hundred dollars extra we have to pay is really nothing even compared to our own budget. We suck it up. We move on. We hope the best for people in Japan.

Our First International Screening

2011-02-18T15:01:00.000-08:00

It was pointed out to me last night that I had teased in my last post, some weeks ago now that we had news upcoming.

Well I can confirm it now - I could have confirmed it about a week ago if my head was screwed on straight!

As you can probably guess from the posting title, Beast of Bottomless Lake is going to be seen but it's first international audience in April.

At Olamot Con in Tel Aviv. It is a science fiction convention in Israel. And here's the kinda wild part... they are making Hebrew sub-titles, which we get to reuse at our leisure. So as unusual as that is, we get to include a Hebrew track on our DVD, all in the service of more people getting to understand our funky tale of ambition gone awry. Unfortunately, it doesn't help me understand more than the limited English text on their webiste, but hey - the want our film!

If you are in Tel Aviv for Passover (and let's face it, it isn't entirely out of the question that some people might be), check out Olamot Con and The Beast of Bottomless Lake!

A Brief Interlude...

2011-01-24T10:31:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone, there is some new "Beast" news coming soon that for the moment I can't say more about. Tease, tease.

But in the meantime, over the past two weeks I've been working on a short film for a contest.

In short, the idea was to pick a film and make a one minute version of it. Not a trailer, but a one minute version of the film. As it turns out that's pretty hard. To make it more difficult we decided to do something that no other team has (yet) done. We did it in stop motion with paper figures, kind of similar to south park... kind of.

Oh... and the movie we chose was Reservoir Dogs.

Part of the judging in the contest is based upon the rating that the film gets on the Virgin Radio website.

So, click here and go to the Virgin Radio website register and give our film the top rating you can. You have to do this SOON. The voting ends on Tuesday January 25th at 5pm PST. There has been a wave of cynical and capricious organized negative voting - which has totally upset the balance of the contest. (IE. Teams are organizing their friends to go and give ratings of zero to other films in serious contention.) We are emphatically NOT doing that and I want to actively discourage you from doing so.

Simply vote for our film with the highest rating you genuinely think it deserves.

Actually,

I'm just going to just cut and paste some info that Scott - one of our team members who incidentally was an Executive Producer of Beast... (and other assorted jobs on the film) - posted on our Facebook fan group (Go join!) the other day. There is some duplicate information here about voting, but the last two items are original.

1. Vote for the film. Go to the link below and register. You see our video is Stop Motion Reservoir Dogs. Then give us 5 stars by scrolling over the blank stars just under the video until they turn blue and it hits 5.... thats it. You can leave a comment as well in the dialogue box just below that.

http://vancouver.virginradio.ca/VideoChannel/FakeFilmFestival/View.aspx?PostID=35764

2. Promotion is part of the contest and we are kicking butt in that category so far, this step is as important as voting for our film! If you have a Facebook account, could you log on and go to the link below. You have to like the page which opens all the content, then select the “wall” tab. You will see a whack of entries by Scott John with promo photos for the film. Please “like” these entries and comment on them so the PR Director knows folks saw them.

http://www.facebook.com/virgin953

3. This one is for YOU if you want to win $10,000! Only for local folks who have the evening of the 28th free unfortunately. There is an invite only gala which shows the top ten films and has a $10,000 door prize plus a trip to Hollywood as the prize for the person with the best movie character costume. Its a nice free evening out regardless with some cool films and a live band. Simply go to the link below and copy our film title “Stop Motion Reservoir Dogs in 60 Seconds” into the empty dialogue field.... you could be joining us at the party!

http://vancouver.virginradio.ca/Contests/Register.aspx?ContestID=122842

Honourable Mention for Mockfest 2010!

2010-11-15T13:17:00.000-08:00

Just a short post (for what it turns out is the benchmark, 100th post!)

This past weekend was Mockfest in LA.

We were not in attendance, but The Beast of Bottomlss Lake was named an honourable mention for the festival. Our first US notice... if you discount those fans who came up over the 49th parallel for VCON last month.

IMdB - Rating.... have YOU weighed in?

2010-10-19T15:06:00.000-07:00

Just a quick posting this time 'round...

Have you been to our IMdB page yet and rated the film?

Well you should!

It only takes a second with that link above so conveniently provided above.

If you've seen the The Beast of Bottomless Lake then go and rate the film - be honest, we aren't asking for you to rate it higher than it deserves. And if you have time to add a few sentences of review, by all means do that too!

Media Frenzy

2010-10-11T12:38:00.000-07:00

Perhaps you know that the Vancouver International Film Festival is on. We've fielded a number of questions asking about whether we are in the festival or when exactly during the festival that we are screening.

The answer is; we aren't. But if you were judging by the media, you would easily assume otherwise.

I can honestly say that I don't believe ANY film in VIFF has had as much media as The Beast of Bottomless Lake has had in the period of time leading immediately up to, and during the festival. Naturally I wear that as a sly badge of honour.

Just for fun (and gloating rights) I'm going to repost them all here in one place (including a few new ones).

I'm going to somewhat arbitrarily draw the line at two weeks from the start of VIFF - it seems to me to be a pretty reasonable period in advance of the event for the earliest preview media.

The first one is from the SciFi & TvTalk blog: Stargate Atlantis' David Nykl Checks In

One week later - one week before VIFF started, and a week and a half before VCON we got two hits in one day...

Glen Schaefer, the Vancouver Province Film Critic mentioned us being at VCON.

That same day Cheryl Rossi from the Vancouver Courier Movie Guide did one of the freshest articles on the film yet. She totally did her homework and found a number of details that weren't spoon-fed in our press-release.

As VCON began we started geting TV hits. First up Deborah Goble interviewed Craig and David on CBC News. This one is perhaps the most amusing, as they strongly imply that "The Beast..." is screening at VIFF. But they don't OUTRIGHT say so - which is probably fortunate, but I'm not going to complain if someone mistakenly assumes we were screening there... it's not like WE said we were!

Also just before VCON the WestEnder ran a small piece and a photo about the film being screened at the convention.

While we were at VCON Johanna Ward from The Express on Shaw TV was doing a piece on VCON and she grabbed David Nykl for a few words.

Immediately following VCON David spent some time chatting with the guys at SciFi Diner about the film (and of course a bunch of Stargate Atlantis and other David Nykl appearances).

But WAIT! There is more!

On Tuesday of this past week we were featured on Film Stew - a blog from LA that focusses specifically on what is hot in the independent film world. Richard Horgan, who runs the blog made this a pretty darned good article covering a lot of ground from the film's inception to the content itself.

On the same day... okay this one is a bit of a cheat as it's Letters from Pegasus, David's Fan Blog.
Lastly - two blog reviews...

After our screening at VCON we were asked if we'd like to do a second screening in the video room on the Sunday afternoon. The video room as it turns out has a rather small and transient attendance - like about eight people at a time. I wasn't in attendance, but Craig was there to do an introduction. The film started at a little past two. At 3:44 my standing search for tweets about the film produced this derisive gem. You can't please everybody. Later my Google Alerts sent me this link. Same guy - quite obviously. And it becomes a little more apparent (from the context of the blog and the time stamp on the tweet) that this guy showed up in the middle of the film watched a little bit and walked out. Bravo. I amke no apologies for not making a film that is appealing to someone walking in after missing an hour or more of set-up. Some people just have to be haters for hating's sake.

The second one is quite insightful. It is from Victor Schwartzman who ran the video room - and over many years of running video rooms has seen an awful lot of stuff. He picked up on a number of things in the film that most people miss on the first viewing. This guy is a veteran film-viewer with some real chops for dissecting the aspects of a movie. This is a really great review.

And believe it or not.... we aren't really done with this cycle!

While at VCON we were asked to do an interview for a notable sci-fi news collective (yeah I am witholding the specifics at the moment). The interview itself was supposed to happen today, but had to be put off for a variety of reasons - not the least of which is today is Canadian Thanksgiving. Anyhow... enjoy your turkey, look for more news from the whole VCON experience next week... and if you have a chance, go out and see some of those neglected VIFF films too before the festival ends.

Where the Wild Fans Are

2010-10-05T17:39:00.000-07:00

This weekend was VCON - if you haven't been reading the past few posts. And it was a lot of fun.

We got started a little later than expected but it was all well and good as everyone hung in there until we got going.

The screening was well received. David Nykl arrived just as the film was beginning and he and I sat at the back of the house quietly amusing ourselves with an analysis of how the various jokes played. There were a few responses that fell outside of what we are accustomed to. One of the oddest I can't say without giving a spolier - so I won't - but I will say that there is a sequence of Star Trek jokes including one that really has to be paid attention to... typically only one voice in a theatre will laugh out loud at it, but this time it was the whole room.

The Q&A after the film was probably the most rollicking we've had - the fact that there were about ten of us from the film involved in it certainly helped. We got it on video, so when we can perhaps we'll post a few choice bits.

As I was taking names for the DVD list (people who want to know when and where to get the DVD when it's available (if you happen to be one of those, say so in a comment and we'll work something out) one of the attendees mentioned that she'd come all the way from (not intending to directly quote Counting Crows) somewhere in middle America just to see the film.

I looked down at her name tag, suspecting (correctly) that I knew the answer. One of the most regular commenters on this blog - Rosie AKA Rosehawk - possibly the world's biggest David Nykl fan had come all the way to VCON to see the film. I thought that was pretty cool.

She had also brought one of our CafePress shirts for everyone to sign... which we did later up in the hospitality suite.

It was a lot of fun.

More press has come from it already and there will be even more soon - look for a post in the next couple of days.

And the folks at VCON suggested they could hook us up with some other conventions... so keep your eyes out if you are in other Sci-Fi convention worthy cities!

The Beast on the Canadian Broadcast Corporation...

2010-10-01T20:51:00.000-07:00

No, sorry not a broadcast deal with CBC (though wouldn't that be cool!)

Just the promised news item from earlier today.

They do strongly suggest that we are a film at VIFF... not VCON (poor assumption on Makarenko's part?) but it's still a good bit.

VCON Rising

2010-10-01T13:01:00.000-07:00

Just a late reminder that The Beast of Bottomless Lake is screening at VCON this weekend.

As a matter of fact that is tomorrow!

We are on at 1pm and the screening will be followed by a panel discussion with about eight people involved in all aspects of the movie.

Naturally I will be there, as will Craig, the director and of course David Nykl. Additionally Bronwen Smith and Roger Haskett from the main ensemble as well as a few other cast members and a couple of interesting crew members like our Editor Mike Jackson and one of the composers, Phil Mahoney are expected to be there.

Hopefully we'll get to post some video clips from the panel.

And speaking of video.... Craig and David are going to be on CBC tonight from VCON. If we can we'll also post that video.

I've never been to a Sci-FI convention before and I'm pretty excited. I'm going extra early in the morning tomorrow just to check stuff out.... including an artist I happen to know and love: Robert Ives.

Check out his stuff. He'll be selling his designer steam punk goggles as well as some of his other steam punk art - which fits in nicely with the theme of the convention this year.

The Beast Lurks at VCON

2010-09-15T11:12:00.000-07:00

Forgive the brevity and "cut-and-pasty-ness" of this, but I became a new father this past weekend, so really I haven't got much time for this, but it IS an important announcement...

The Beast of Bottomless Lake is going to be screening in Vancouver (Richmond, technically) on October the 2nd.

Okay, here comes the cut & paste...

The Beast of Bottomless Lake, will have its first public Vancouver screening at the 2010 Vancouver’s Convention of Science Fiction and Fantasy (VCON).
The film will screen on Saturday, October 2, at 1 pm, followed by a panel discussion with Kennedy Goodkey (writer), Craig March (Director), David Nykl (Dr. Paul Moran), Bronwen Smith (Dr. Leslie Morgenstern), Roger Haskett (Neville Bernard Vincent St. John Honey III) Melanie Blackwell (The Peg-leg Princess) Phil Mahoney (Composer) Mike Jackson (editor), Scott John (Producer), and Rebecca Coleman (Publicist).

The Beast of Bottomless Lake screens at 1 pm on Saturday, October 2 as part of VCON. The screening will take place in the Seymour/Whistler rooms at The Vancouver Airport Marriott Hotel, 7571 Westminster Highway, Richmond.

If you are Vancouver based and still want to see the film, this would be a good chance to see it - with a bonus of a meaty panel discussion (roughly a full hour - you don't get that kind of length in film festival talk-back sessions) AND, if like me you've always toyed with the idea of going to a sci-fi convention but have never taken the plunge, here is a great excuse!

Convention memberships are available for the whole weekend, or just for a day on line through the VCON website or at the door. The price for the weekend is $60 (Students: $45; Kids: 7-12 $30 (6 & under free)); or $35 just for Saturday. Seating for the film is included in the membership, but space is limited and on a first-come, first-served basis.

So, come early, stake out the line up for the film, check-out comic-vendors, other panels, or whatever else piques your interest, see the film, then hang out into the evening getting your geek-on.

I am totally looking forward to it myself.

People's Choice

2010-07-30T15:35:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned it already on Facebook, but it hasn't actually made it onto the blog yet...

Late Sunday night at the Gala Closing Party of the Okanagan International Film Festival - hours after the awards dinner (because there was still one film yet to screen at that point) - The Beast of Bottomless Lake won the People's Choice Award.

At the awards dinner we were nominated for Best Canadian Independent Feature which went to Taylor's Way.

We went from the dinner to our second screening to the gala and waited with baited breath, though once again we had a stong hint from organizers that we really should be present.

So yes, long story short, we won. Yay!!!

Outside of the second screening, Craig & Kennedy with Paul Armstrong, producer of Everything's Comin' Up Rosie which won Best Canadian Short Film.
(All Photos Courtesy of Heath Tait.)

Returning to the Scene of the Crime

2010-07-23T18:32:00.000-07:00

The relaxing part was the drive up.

On Wednesday Jodie and I picked up Phil (one of our composers) and Erin (his girlfriend) and hit the highway to the Okanagan. Its not actually that long a trip - about 4 and a half hours, and the company was good. We dropped Phil and Erin off at their hotel and grabbed lunch before Craig and I met for a TV interview down at "The Sails" - a downtown, lakeside park where we shot a scene in the film three (ulp!) years ago. It was also, appropriately, across the street from the theatre we'd be screening at.

From there I rushed out to where my Dad and his wife, my Sister and my niece were - at an old friend's place which was where Jodie and I were to get prepared for the evening at. We really did have long for hugs and hellos before we had to shower and run out the door again to get to the pre-screening party.

I could not be happier that we planned a pre-screening party. It was really the only reasonable chance I had to say "hi" to most of the people, both from the Okanagan and those who travelled, who had worked on the film and were in attendance. Even then it was total chaos. We had the event at Sturgeon Hall - a place that was always good to us. Right back to when Keith and I first went to Kelowna together and he told me about his idea for a film then called "Nightmare Beast of Blood Lake: A Scientific Overview." Keith and I spent a lot of our time in Kelowna while on tour at Sturgeon Hall. They also provided us with a place for extras to get out of the rain when we shot at The Sails... but it didn't rain so they got off easy on that one. We crammed 'em in on Wednesday night and put their staff on their highest setting. They were great.
At 5:30 they turned on the news for us (it is normally a sports bar, but we had all but one or two small tables... not to mention there wasn't much gripping sport on). The interview that Craig and I had done earlier in the day had been turned into a full feature on the news. We all cheered.

At 6:00 I headed out the door with Rebecca our publicist. The theatre was less than a block away and the line-up party was under way. Yes. "Line up party." One of our Executive Producers, my old friend Scott John, whose in-laws live in the Okanagan, giving him some additional resources, decided to collude with Rebecca to make sure that all the people standing out in the blazing sun to get tickets had a good time.

We had cast members stopping by and doing interviews.

Scott's wife Kathy baked a cake with the poster of the film on it!

And she made a bunch of cupcakes that were put together to show the Ogopogo rising out of the depths of the lake.

People got cupcakes and Craig and I cut the cake like a newly married couple.

The show was officially sold out. There were a number of tickets held for festival staff and volunteers and I spent most of my time before the screening doing everything I could to get people who had worked on the film, who for one reason or another had not got tickets yet, into the theatre. Including giving up my own seat. My plan was to stand at the back.

That plan didn't quite work out. Apparently the theatre only allows one person per-seat plus one standing (the usher presumably). Craig took the place of the usher and I stood outside with Scott and our editor Mike and even Craig's wife Elaine relinquished a seat.

More people arrived after the film had started and had they arrived earlier then perhaps more of us (like Jodie - who was sitting with her parents) who already knew how the film ended would have to wait outside. Don't get me wrong. I am not complaining. This is an AWESOME problem to have.

Apparently the Okanagan Film Festival has never had a sold out show before. It's kind of cool to be first. While the early portions of the show played we listened to organizers tell late comers that they were already considering doing a second showing before the festival was over.

When ever we'd hear a peal of laughter from inside, Mike and I would try to guess what had been the inciting joke. We know the film well enough that we were never wrong.

Eventually people started having to come out to go to the bathroom. I quickly did the math - there were now less people in the theatre than it's maximum (albeit temporarily). So I started sneaking in while people were answering nature's call. By the second half of the film there was always at least one person outside at a time, so I got to witness the audience reactions for the whole last half of the film.

There was little doubt in my mind by the time the credits rolled that they had all had a great time. As Craig and I walked down the aisle to the front the cheers were pretty awe inspiring.

The Q & A was really short as so much time had been lost at the start due to seating issues.

On my way back up the aisle a woman grabbed me and said "I just had to come tonight. I did community theatre with Keith when we were kids. I used to have such a big crush on him."

I answered "I get it. If I was a girl I'd have had a big crush on him too."

Keith's family - his Mother and Father, his brother and his lady, and of course Janet, Keith's widow were there too. They were all so happy. I can't imagine that this film would ever represent closure for any one of them, but it does mean that there's a piece of him that will always be around for all of us. One of the highlights of my night was seeing the big smile on his Mom, Lainie's face when she arrived at the gala.

The gala itself left something to be desired, but I don't want to get into that. It was just as well to go elsewhere and quietly raise a glass with friends - after all I had work to do at my job in Vancouver by mid-morning.

Once again, like the day after we won Best Feature in Mississauga, most of my free time during the day on Thursday was spent responding to messages about the film.

Last night before bed I noticed a tweet on Twitter claiming that there was going to be a second screening of the film. This morning Craig confirmed it and so today, in between tasks at my day job, I spent my time getting the word out that we will be screening Sunday after the awards dinner at 6:30pm at the Black Box Theatre (a part of the Kelowna Community Theatre). Tickets available at the door. That's right, we were the opening film of the festival and now we're also the closing film (co-closing film actually - Paul Gross's Gunless is also screening at the same time.)

So, when my weekend begins in a few hours it will be back to the Kelowna Festival - there is a film maker's BBQ that I'm looking forward to on the lake tomorrow and I should really see some other films!

Get Your Tickets Now - there aren't many left!

2010-07-16T17:36:00.000-07:00

This is no longer advertizing. This is a warning/public-service announcement to those people who were involved or are close firends of people involved who happen to live in the Okanagan and who want to be in attendance at the Premiere of Beast of Bottomless Lake in Kelowna at the Okanagan International Film Festival next week - July 21st.

We've done the math. There are already less than 100 seats left that we are aware of - indeed if the people who have said to us that they were going to get advance tickets have done so then there are less than 70 seats left.... but we aren't actually positive those people have got their tickets yet.

If I were to open up my file of people in the Okanagan who worked on this film the list would be longer than 70 names - and that doesn't include any friends or guests that they'd bring.

Do you see what I'm saying?

Get your tickets now. Do not wait to get them the night of the show.

According to the festival website, tickets are only available through the Paramount Theatre Box Office.

The festival organizers have said that the Okanagan Film Festival has never had a sold out show. Clearly the number of people who worked on the film who would want to see it weren't factored into their plans. Who knows - maybe we will come out the other side of this looking a little naive, but we think that this is not only going to be their first sell-out, but that there is going to be a BIG demand for tickets above and beyond their expectations as based on the venue size.

So, don't get screwed out of your chance to be there for the premiere. We are working hard to make this a special night for everyone in attendance.

What Can YOU Do for the Beast?

2010-07-15T17:03:00.000-07:00

A good question.

For now the answer is simple.

Do you Twitter? If not are you willing to do so for an evening?

Excellent.

So here's what we are planning... A Twitter-Blast!

On the night of our World Premiere at the Okanagan Film Festival we want to have as many people as possible Tweeting about The Beast of Bottomless Lake and using our hashtag - #thebeast - in their tweets.

If you don't know your Twitter basics here's where to go to figure it out.

If you are attending the screening there ought to be plenty you can tweet about over the course of the evening (but we'll provide options below). If you aren't there, then it can be as simple as any of these (feel free to cut and paste):

I wish I was at the World Premiere of The Beast of Bottomless Lake #thebeast
I wish the cast and crew of The Beast of Bottomless Lake the best of luck at tonight's premiere #thebeast
The Beast of Bottomless Lake premieres tonight - I can hardly wait for my chance to see it #thebeast
"Life's a Beast... until you find one." The Beast of Bottomless Lake premieres tonight #thebeast

Or you could tailor your tweets to the timing of what will likely be happening...

(This is all on the night of Wednesday July 21st, BTW.)

5:00 PDT - We will be having a pre-show get-together at Sturgeon Hall in Kelowna (announcement on that to follow)
6:30 PDT - People will start heading to the theatre - we don't know that they're doing anything red-carpet like, but you can imagine they will and tweet about that
7:15 PDT - The introductory statements.
7:25 PDT - The short film that preceeds us (at least I assume it's preceeding us based on the OIFF schedule) Skylight screens.
7:30 PDT - The Beast of Bottomless Lake begins...
9:05 PDT - The film ends - Q & A begins.
9:15 PDT - Off we go to the opening night gala...

If you are in the audience, you WILL be reminded.

And while you are at it, some relevant folks to follow on Twitter:

Me: @kennedyg

Our Publicist: @rebeccacoleman

And Provost Pictures itself: @provostpix

Reaching New Heights

2010-07-12T11:55:00.000-07:00

Today has been so exhiliratingly weird. Many people I know have posted things about "Beast" winning Best Feature at MIFF last night. Last night for a few hours before going to sleep and then again this morning after the West Coast began waking up I could have refreshed my Facebook account every minute and there would be either a new post, new comment or new announcement of someone "liking" one of the already existing posts.

Honest to god, this afternoon when I opened the "top news" that the site generates for me based on the most popular recent threads of all my friends, HALF of them above the fold (and several more below) were related to "Beast." Such a great feeling of validation.

Yesterday before the final film of the Mississauga Film Festival Craig and I went and met two old friends (one of his, one of mine) and watched the World Cup.

When the game was over I remarked as the camera showed the jubilation on the face of Iker Casillias, the Spainish goalkeeper, "what a crazy moment - you are living the single greatest moment of your life and you have to know that the chances of there being a higher high is close to none." But you have to admit that having the specter of your remaining life being that you will never do better than achieveing the single biggest honour that you can in your profession, the "it's all downhill from here" isn't really such a bad thing - there's an awful lot of high topography to step down to below you and hey... you won the fucking World Cup - FOREVER!

When I was in my early and mid 20s I spent six years touring Canada in a comedy troupe, the Juanabees (to whom there is a tip of the hat in the movie). Those were seminal years of my life. We had a great time. We learned a lot. We met some very cool people, some who went on to various levels of fame and fortune and others who are still good friends and collaborators today. (Indeed at least one falls into both of those categories - and has a cameo in "Beast.")
We picked up some accolades - it actually mentions in my company Bio for Provost Pictures that the Edmonton Journal called us Canada's best comedy troupe without a TV show. (This was in the heady days of Kids in the Hall and the earliest iteration of This Hour Has 22 Minutes.) I've had a few people tell me that the Juanabees were inspiring to them - sadly no one who has gone on to being a superstar of comedy.
In any case, those were some pretty cool times for me.

It has occasionally occurred to me that there's a possibility that the time I spent with the Juanabees when we were at our best might just be the most impact I would have on the world, that it might be the biggest impact I would have on the world in this life.

I haven't wallowed in that, but it has always kind of been there - as I expect it would be in anyone's life, this just happens to be my personal version of measuring my self-validation.

I have never assumed that I would never do better and there are numerous things that I have done since then that I could probably make arguments in favour of being new high-water-marks in my life. But none have been definitive.

As "Beast..." has come closer and closer to completion I have been pleased with the way it has been turning out and it has seemed to me that this might just be the clear new pinnacle. Now that we've screened at our first festival and won Best Feature I'm actually thinking that it is a fait accompli. All that really remains is the fourth Everest* - making sure as many people see it as possible: Distribution.

And the cycle begins again. In order to out do myself next time I'm going to have to work even harder - damn! But first, we have to ride this one out... I'm really looking forward to the Okanagan Festival. Returning to the scene of the crime.

"This one is for Keith."

*I could have sworn I had done a post on this phrase already, but damned if I can find it. I don't know where I got it from. I may have made it up myself. And David Nykl cited it in one of our YouTube videos of him. What I was refering to was the notion that making a film is like climbing Everest four times. Once for pre-production, once filming, once in post-production and then one last time in promotion and distribution.

Best Feature

2010-07-11T22:16:00.001-07:00

Holy heck.

Seriously.

Holy heck.

We're one for one.

One festival, one award.

Best Feature at the Mississauga Independent Film festival.

Holy heck.

I'll write with more depth later when I'm a little less shocked.

Mississauga Missives from the Front

2010-07-10T22:13:00.000-07:00

I wouldn't believe this if it didn't happen to me - so I don't expect anyone else to believe this.

I got carded! I am back in my hotel room, rather than partying after the premiere because I GOT CARDED! This is not a boast. I do not look like someone who should be denied entry into a bar for being under age.

SEE...

As if to accentuate the point I have a frikkin' beer in my hand!

Not one week ago I thought to myself "there's something that will never happen to me again" - BZZZZtttT! - wrong.

Just some doorman deciding that everyone had to have valid ID I guess - regardless of how clearly over legal drinking age they might be. Prick.

Oh well. It's not really the end of the world. In the past 36 or so hours I have managed to sleep three times. Sadly its not a matter of quantity. And the quality and the duration have been terrible. I even walked out of the second film tonight because I was concerned about snoring in it - which would have happened if I was watching Jurassic Park or Aliens too so should not be taken as a measure of the film's quality. I was not being rude by leaving. I was leaving to avoid being rude. Warm, dark space with less than 3 hours sleep in the past day and a half... it's a miracle I didn't fall asleep during my own film!

So Beast screened to it's first impartial audience tonight....

The Mississauga Independent Film Festival is small and friendly. There is only one theatre and it may hold 250 people at most. I'd say we had a 1/3 audience - which appears to be par for the course.

I would have to say that if we can get the reaction we got from this audience from every small audience we can be proud of what we've done. They laughed as much as could be expected, and consistently throughout. You could hear people "getting" the tricks in the movie at the points where they needed to be "got."

I don't think I've mentioned this anywhere else before, but at the cast and crew screening, Mike, Craig and I (Mike mentioned it first to give credit where credit is due) noted that there was one scene that due to some additional cuts could now be lifted out wholesale without harming anything else. Tonight we screened the version without that scene - possibly the last cut we'll ever make. I didn't miss it at all, and it helps speed things along more in the last quarter of the film. Yay!

Anyhow... not meaning to dis the MIFF, but I expect a much better turn out in the Okanagan in ten days. And so it should be. The Okanagan is at heart the REAL premiere of the film.

Okay... I must sleep now. I can't believe I'm still awake. I should thank that bouncer for carding me... I'd be a mess if I were still out.

Expecting a Deluge...

2010-07-09T11:02:00.000-07:00

Not a deluge of rain - certainly doesn't look that way in Vancouver right now. Ontario doesn't seem likely either and the Okanagan... yeah, right.

I am speaking of a deluge of posts about the film over the next two weeks.

It has already kind of begin if you haven't noticed.

Here is today's link of note - The Beast of Bottomless Lake pimped on the Pan-Canadian Skeptical Blog, Skeptic North.

If you are following any single one of our outlets (this blog, our Facebook Page, our Twitter Feed or many of the equivalents for the various people involved in the film) you will likely get most of the links. If you happen to be subscribed to more than one - there is going to be a lot of redundancy. For example, this post will automatically appear on the Beast Facebook page, and the Facebook page automatically feed to our Twitter account. I'll link to it on my Facebook page and Twitter feed too...

Anyhow, there's going to be a lot of traffic between now and the end of the Okanagan Film Festival.

I know it's going to seem like there's a lot of it out there already, but in the grand scheme of things it's going ot be a drop in the internet-pond... so if you can link, re-post, re-tweet and - if you are a real superhero - do posts of your own based upon the information that comes out. I know there are a few people out there who are already doing that last thing - thanks to you. There is nothing more important that taking this opportunity to make as much noise as possible in the world.

Stay posted...

And be prepared to take part in the Beast Tweet Blast on Twitter on the night of the Okanagan screening - July 21st.

Countdown: 52 Hours...

2010-07-08T12:44:00.000-07:00

The Mississauga Independent Film Festival began yesterday.

Craig was there for the opening gala, walking the red carpet.

I'm catching a red-eye tomorrow night, arriving early Saturday morning.

I will be talking at Cafe Skeptique about the film, cryptozoology and the Ogopogo at 2pm at The Bean. (388 College St. in Toronto.)

[On a related note, there is a slight irony hidden in all of this. For months I've been bemoaning the fact that I couldn't attend TAM8 this year. Last year I went to TAM7 and did a test screening of the film. But just last week - a week ago today in fact - I returned from a trip to Europe to a wedding where I was best man. It was simply going to be too much money and too little time or me to do both the trip to Europe and to Vegas for TAM. But then we were selected for MIFF - on short notice I might add, just before we left for Europe. I stuck to my guns. MIFF was the same weekend as TAM and would cost a comparable amount... not to mention that in the time since we committed to going to London for the wedding, my girlfiend and I found out we are expecting a baby. Jodie, my girlfriend called me an idiot (about not going to MIFF, not the baby) and booked me a ticket to Ontario. So, now I'm going away on that weekend anyhow - AND I am participating (however briefly) a critical thinking event, all in service of the film. I hope folk are having a great time at TAM8, I plan to have a wild rumpus at MIFF.]

Then I'm high-tailing it out to Missisauga to the theatre for the (ulp!) World Premiere.

I keep getting asked if I'm nervous. The short answer is 'no.'

The long answer is - I suspect I will be, though honestly I feel pretty confident about the film by this point. I guess there is a fine lin between nrvous ad excited.

Beast Teaser

2010-07-05T08:59:00.000-07:00

Okay, this is fun...

Just in time for the two upcoming festivals we are screening at we have just posted our trailer on YouTube.

There are also some other new videos available on our account - interviews with David Nykl and other cast members; reactions to our cast and crew screening; and a parts of a few scenes.

Have fun!

Bringing the Beast Home

2010-06-23T17:23:00.000-07:00

Okay so they mis-quote me with a typo... I'm hardly concerned about that.

All press is good press and this is really heartwarming, this one.

I am SO looking forward to bringing "Beast..." to the Okanagan. It may not be my home, but this festival is truly going to be "bringing this movie home."

The First Review

2010-06-19T19:15:00.000-07:00

I feel like I've been holding my breath for three years.

Only minutes ago the moment to let it our came, for better or for worse.

Gonzo Magazine, in preparation for the Okanagan Film Festival, has released some advance reviews of some films, and "Beast" gets the lead position in the article. It's (literally) a He-said/She-said paired review, so you could actually say that it's our first TWO reviews.

Whew... they liked it!

I have to admit, I got a teeny bit emotional reading it.

And Mississauga Too!

2010-06-18T11:14:00.000-07:00

As much news in as many days...

We are also going to the Mississauga Film Festival next month - yay!

Mississauga, for those outside of Canada, is a large municipality that adds to the Greater Toronto area. The festival is small and exclusive, focusing on Canadian independent films. It's a good place for a film like ours due to the ease of access for many of the domestic broadcast and distribution decision makers who are located in Toronto.

There are many remaining festivals on our list of festivals that we would really like to be selected for that we've applied to, but Mississauga and Okanagan are for various reasons, two of our top five on the wish-list... so far, so good!

Both Craig and I will be attending the screening... so if you are in the area, come and say "hi!"

New Premiere News

2010-06-17T17:36:00.000-07:00

Last night it became official.

The Okanagan International Film Festival had strongly hinted to us that we were being scheduled as the opening night film of the festival - a position of honour that I humbly admit makes sense for our film in the Okanagan... after all, that is where the bulk of the film takes place!

Last night was the gala fundraiser for the film festival. David - our co-producer, not the star, or the special effect advisor, or the production accounting consultant, or the background extra, or anyone else named David who helped on the film... but I digress - David Jevons was in attendance representing the film.

At around 8:30 last night he phoned me, totally excited.

It is true... we are the opening gala film.

Apparently we are prominently featured in the program and there was a lot of media there who had questions for David about getting in touch with the key creatives for interviews and stuff - so look for links to that coming soon.

The World Premiere

2010-05-15T12:38:00.000-07:00

It has been a long time coming.

And I really only just kind of realized the significance of this announcement this morning.

We know roughly when and where The Beast of Bottomless Lake will have it's World Premiere, and it could not possibly be at a more appropriate place.

While we don't know the exact date and time yet, it is official: the film will first be shown to the public at the Okanagan International Film Festival this July.

We had some discussion about whether premiering at a smaller festival like the OIFF was what we wanted to do, but when it came down to it, the Okanagan deserves it. We could not possibly find a better way to thank the region than by revealing the film to the world there first. Of course, we have to thank OIFF for giving us the opportunity.

More specific details will be posted in mid June when the schedule is posted.

Battle of Burgledorf - Trailer

2010-04-07T12:19:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note. This just came across my desk - the trailer to another independent BC shot feature which happens to feature Mike Antonakos, who is also in "Beast...."

Keep your eyes peeled - both films are on their way soon.

Decision - Unanimous

2010-02-04T11:07:00.000-08:00

Am I surprised by the responses we recieved from the cast and crew screening? Well - yes. I did expect that the balance of opinion would be positive. I didn't expect the response to be as positive as it was.

When Jodie and I arrived at the theatre to start setting up she asked me if I was nervous.

"No. This is the crowd that is destined to like this film. They're going to like it."
"What if they don't?"
"Then there isn't much reason to get out of bed tomorrow morning."

As people arrived I was asked the same question numerous times, most significantly by Mike Jackson, our editor. Mike was nervous.

It was at the party that the depth of people`s appreciation really became aparent. Time after time I heard variations on the same sentiment - something to the tune of "I've worked on so many independent films. They never turn out feeling like a real movie. But I can't say that about this one." It was a room full of proud people, and they deserved to be. They all served us well each in their way.

Many of them have sent their sentiments to me to be added to the blog. I've compiled them below. (With some editing for brevity, spoilers and irrelevant & personal comments.) I'm also taking the opportunity to draw your attention to a related blog post by Rebecca, our publicist.

----------

Hi Kennedy:

I just can't get over what an amazing accomplishment Beast of Bottomless Lake is. Congratulations. Janet had made plans to take me out for my "birthday" dinner so we did that instead of the pub. We had a great time quoting lines and talking about the movie. I said to her, "boy, don't you think Keith would be pleased with that?" and she smiled a big smile and said, "yes, I do think so, absolutely."

I guess it was a film that appealed to my sense of humour, particularly as the story got rolling. There are so many gems: moments, great funny lines, wonderful scenes. I loved the beach party scene, the wedding scene on the boat, the cheesy "dramatic re-enactments", and David Nykl's reflective scene at the dock questioning what you do once you've achieved your dream. I got a huge kick out of the aboriginal character. I also have to say you were a standout in your performance. Not one false note, natural, at ease and fun to watch - especially cool that you managed this while wearing so many other hats.

Anyway, I'm gushing but I am seriously in awe. I hope you guys are all mighty proud. Thanks for a great afternoon at the movies!

All the best,

- Grace

----------

Congratulations! It went really well and I am so proud of you for managing to finish something this monumental. There is a reason people just don't go out and make full length independent films.

You can be proud of just everything that folks have learned along the way. We have a saying in the project management world.... by the time you finish a project you are qualified to have started it in the first place.

-Scott

----------

CONGRATS

LOVED it and had a blast this past weekend.

- Kenton

----------

Thank you for inviting me to the crew and cast screening. I was happy to attend and really enjoyed seeing everyone again.

I really enjoyed the day and the movie. You guys did a terrific job putting it together.

Gordon May reminded me that he and I, after Craig was stumped about the missing leg of the Peg Leg Princess, asked if we could; that we had come up with something and could we help?

We came up with...

[NOTE: I've snipped out a significant spoiler here. Anyone who has seen the film should be able to identify what is being talked about from the details I've left.]

...not that Gordon and I are fishing for additional credits or anything.

I had fun and many adventures during my short stay in Vancouver. I think I even got a little buzz from second hand smoke walking down Robson Street.

Movie stars, Roger, the Skipper, the Professor and Leanne, all on Okanagan Lake. Awesome!

Thanks to Pat and Kevin and gang for getting me down to the pub, Red Truck Beer, and steering me in the opposite direction of the safe injection site on East Hastings. Instead I was directed towards the light in Gastown and back to my hotel room.

Let me know of any screening in the Okanagan.

Regards and thanks again.

Again cool and awesome. All good.

Enjoy the Olympics..

- Ted

----------

Hi Craig and Kennedy,

Once again I have to say how impressed I am with The Beast! I had so much fun watching it and I look forward to seeing it again.

I hope you had a great time at the pub on Saturday and are able to get some rest and relaxation this week or sometime really soon. You deserve it.

Thanks,

- Janet

----------

Good Morning Rebecca &Provost,

Congratulations on a fantastic film! The cast and crew "screening" was a lot of fun and I am very happy with the final result!!!

As the Production Designer and Props builder (and my husband supplied the picture vehicle - the Juanabees Van) it was great to see the items in play!

Thanks so much!

Kindest regards,

- Trish

----------

Thanks again for the invite to Beast of Bottomless Lake. Love to talk to you guys when your time permits - to pick your brains, find out about the hurdles you had to overcome, etc.

- Tariq

----------

Hey guys,

Great show today!! I had to take off quickly afterward but I wanted to let you know I had a great time and was super proud of you both. The show looks and sounds awesome. Super glad to be there.

- Tallulah

----------

Hi Kennedy and Craig,

I deliberately waited awhile before writing about seeing The Beast on the big screen to eliminate from my comments the euphoria of the moment – seeing everyone again, the swoop of the event itself. I hadn't intended to take quite this long to let the excitement settle.

Funny thing is, I think I’m going to say pretty much what I would have said then.

I was very, very pleased with the film! Right from the opening credits. I love interesting credits that fit the film you are about to see, and these credits settled me into the experience right from dimming of the lights. I was amazed at the cinematography and coverage. You’d think we had given the editor all the takes he could possibly wish for. What a fine job he did of weaving in and out of what he had. Wonderful!

The sound was excellent. I think sound is one of the main weaknesses of many low budget films. Not a problem here! And the music! Just wonderful.

As I read the script, both initially and as the filming progressed, I developed a sense of how I saw the story play out – how I would direct it, I suppose. To be honest, I would have down played the humour much more. In fact, I had moments during the filming when I was afraid we were going over the top to the point of de-grounding the story. Well, I needn’t have worried. The film has humour. It has pathos. Neither over-rides the other. Credit for that must be spread around; the writing, the directing, the performances, and once again the editing.

As I’m sure I’ve told you more than once, from the moment I first read Clive’s sides for the audition, I wanted to be part of this project. And that connection just grew and grew. How fortunate I was to be able to be involved in the physical processes of filming as well as acting in the film. How thrilling the result!

One of the amusing things about seeing the film was my reaction when a scene would come on that I hadn’t helped film. Hey – where did that come from? I never saw that before.

I’m so proud of those of you who have continued the post-photography work. As so many independent films do, it could have died in the can. But it didn’t and I have every faith that this film is going to find distribution and get seen.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

With admiration and gratitude,

- Gordon

----------

And now my words back to all of you...

Thank you all. The effect of your words and appreciation cannot be measured. We could not have done it without all of you.

- Kennedy

A Day of Vindication

2010-01-10T20:15:00.000-08:00

For the past five years a small photo of Keith – his headshot – was pinned to my computer monitor. It served as a reminder of how this all began and who I was working for. Keith has been gone for almost twice as long now as the time we were friends. It was inevitable that a day would come when it was time to take the picture down. That day has come.

A confluence of circumstances make this a perfect time. Any opportunity to take it down was going to be wrought with emotion. Somehow picking a time that is practical and symbolic makes it easier.

I am moving. My monitor is not making the move with me. Indeed I’ve already switched monitors – just a few days ago. I’ve kept the old monitor with Keith’s photo on it on my desk waiting for this day.

Yesterday was the cast and crew screening of the film. Nearly 200 of us gathered together at Pacific Cinematheque.

Craig and I made a quick pair of announcements, welcoming everyone and thanking them for the gifts of time, talent, resources and effort that they provided, and then we retreated to the eighth row. (The eighth row is - possibly apochryphally - the place that cinemas are optimized for, and in theory that films are ‘tuned’ for... but that’s probably bullshit.)

No doubt, this was the crowd that was destined to love the movie. And by all measures they did.

It was the first time I really got to watch the movie on the big screen – the mix at Sharpe last month was cool, but disjointed. I was amazed at how much I missed on the small screen – little details. Micro reactions mostly. But almost as much as I watched the film (I know how it ends, so paying close attention wasn't a big deal) – I enjoyed watching the crowd. David Nykl was sitting down the row from me. He was chowing on his fingernails for the first ten minutes until he satisfied himself that he was actually doing a good job on screen.

The couple in front of Craig and I (and our lovely ladies, Elaine and Jodie, respectively) were fantastically emotive. It turned out that it was Bronwen Smith’s (who plays eco-scientist Leslie Morgenstern) Mother and step-father. They were a delightful barometer whose reactions matched nearly everything that any other sub-set of the audience responded to.

When I used to tour with The Juanabees - the real Juanabees, not the faux-group referenced in the film – we regularly found that by the time we were doing our first performance we would have forgotten that many jokes were ever funny to us. Well, same thing happened with “Beast...” and that is delightful. Jokes that I had forgotten or decided simply weren’t funny got laughs – sometimes BIG laughs. My favourite line in the film got a huge laugh – and I think that with wide enough distribution for the film, Roger Haskett (the actor who delivers it) and I may be responsible for adding a new epithet to the lexicon.

The audience moaned sympathetically as one at a poignant moment from Gordon May, whose performance is heart breaking. I could not be happier.

There are a few secrets in the film too. One is an outright twist that elicited delighted gasps (Win!) and another that is an easter-egg in the plot that rewards those who are paying really close attention. The latter occurred to Bronwen’s mother three or four seconds into the scene that follows the last piece of the puzzle. It may seem odd, but I love the fact that not everyone is going to “get” the connection – and that they don’t absolutely need to in order to appreciate the film. Indeed, one of the key actors involved in that plot thread revealed to me yesterday that he didn’t get it until he was watching the movie.

Once the film was done Craig and I took an opportunity to make some special “thank- you”s – specifically to the post-production teams and a few MVPs from pre-production and production, as well as the investors. I’m told that we made a few of them cry.

And then we headed out to On the Edge Pub. It’s a new pub on the far east-side of Gastown who offered to host our after-screening party. They treated us fantastically. A BIG thanks to Terry and his staff! We had an excellent time there, they had great finger food for us and we stayed well past midnight before heading home to our hangovers.

All in all it was nice to be able to show people that their efforts were not for naught.
This morning the next stage begins. I took down Keith’s photo just before writing this. A fitting way to move on.

Bring on the Love...

2010-01-05T20:20:00.000-08:00

We are days away from the cast and crew screening. I am swamped.
But it's exciting.
People are coming from the Okanagan to Vancouver to see the film... more people than we thought were going to travel.
And for some strange reason today we've had an inexplicable spike in website hits.
I checked the stats to see why... thinking that it'd be people on the 'in' checking out the blog as we send out important emails to them about the film, but it isn't.
It's realy just a confluence of fortunate hits from all around the globe.
The most amusing of which came from a Google hit on "is there any such thing as a bottomless lake?"
The answer to which is: "Yes. There is. But probably not in the sense you want to be told so."
Okanagan lake - a "bottomless" lake. Has no definable bottom in places because there is no firm (pun unintentional) bottom. There is a continuum from water to dirty water to mud to clay to terra firma. So, where exactly is the "bottom"?
To add to the confusion, the lake has an undeterminable bottom by right of the fact that the bottom is so deep that there are portions that never fully thaw over the winter. The ice bottom shifts from year to year. It isn't the proper bottom, but it is the farthest one can descend in any given season.

Anyhow... I'll take whatever connections we can to promote this film. Perhaps soon I won't have to. But this weekend, who am I kidding, we're playing for a crowd destined to love it, no matter what.

Shirts & Swag Available

2009-12-05T15:41:00.000-08:00

While we were doing the mix this past week Mike mentioned that the crest for the Royal Commission on the Loch Ness Monster would make a good shirt.

I can't say he's wrong about that, so I got the graphic and prepared some shirts (and other swag) at Cafe Press.

If anyone wants a copy of our first design, they are now available.

If you order quick you may even have one before I do!

How does it factor in the movie? You are just going to have to wait and see...

Wired for Sound

2009-12-03T15:45:00.000-08:00

I knew in an academic sense that the sound mix was going to change the film - improve it in tremendous ways - but it seems that there is little that can prepare you for the impact that a high-end sound mix can provide you.

Sharpe Sound has been Vancouver's "go-to" sound studio for film pretty much since the industry took off in the '90s. Paul Sharpe who founded it turned down the opportunity to mix Schindler's List so that he could focus on opening his studio. It is a wicked establishment. Their halls are pretty much wallpapered with their nominations and awards. Several of those awards were won by our Sound Supervisor, Bill Mellow.

I've known Bill for about a decade now through a mutual friend, Scott John, who is an associate producer on "Beast." When I met Bill I was working in a smaller capacity on another independent film and he casually offered to help on the audio for it. I am not really sure why that offer was never taken advantage of - it was not my call at the time, and the sound on the film in question was in the end practically ignored.

I think that at the time Bill was interested in taking on a project the size of a feature for the bigger credit (though I am assuming his intention as part of my own personal narrative). When Craig and I were in early pre-production on "Beast" I remembered Bill's previous offer. We - Craig and I - knew that sound was an area that we had very little acumen, even in terms of administrative planning and figured that we should at least talk to someone to get the lay of the land. I called Bill and we met and bought him some beers and chatted. I was crossing my fingers that at some point further down the line we could spin this preliminary meeting into some kind of practical assistance. I figured that by that point Bill's need for bigger & better credits had largely out-walked his desire to work on freebies. I under-estimated Bill's exceedingly good character.

As we drove away from that meeting it hit me... "Holy shit Craig, I think we were just offered tens of thousands of dollars of post-production audio work for free." I was still under-estimating what we would eventually receive.

That was over three years ago.

It's been a slow journey, and in the end we pretty much got the full treatment - edit, effects, foley, ADR & mix - and all from a studio that, beyond being outrageously generous, has also been incredibly patient with us, our first-timer mistakes, and a schedule which has shifted so many times that we ourselves are emotionally burned out from it.

The past two days have been "the show." It was exhausting and exhilarating.

I've been in the big mixing rooms before (indeed the very room we worked in) and I've been involved in sound mixes on small films before - but never have I been in on a sound mix in the big-assed, full-on, state-of-the-art studio. It might have been a touch intimidating at first, but overall it was like going to Disneyland.

Phil's photo from early in day one of the sound mix.

There were some points where things were frustrating - almost all of which can be chalked up to 'learning experiences' on our part. There were a few points where we had to negotiate our way through creative choices made by various combinations of people in the room - and that too could have been more easily dealt with had we on our end been more specific in advance or had a bigger budget to apply to moving all our post-production forward more cleanly (but that is a reality of low-budget film-making). And in the end the result has me elated.

It was good that Mike - our editor - was there. He is the person who has worked most intimately with the final product and knows each moment in the film and what it is achieveing. His eye... er, ear... for what was needed is much more specific than Craig's or mine could be. Virtually everything he brought up were things that I would have noticed... days later, after it was too late.

I was also distracted... no, entranced by the quiet dance of the mixers. Bill and Kelly have been working together behind mixing boards for a decade and a half. Joe has been mixing with them for several years too. It's amazing how well they know each other's work and process. In the course of two days there were maybe two dozen times that they had to communicate instructions or questions to one another verbally - always on very specific things. It was fascinating watching them roll back and forth from one station at the board to another, passing off control to one another without the tiniest outward cue. Initially I couldn't even tell who was 'in control' at any given moment, but I clued in soon enough. Though I never did pick up how they managed to pass it off without stepping on each other's toes.

The foley (which had been recorded by Joe and another technician - Jean - who we did not meet, and mixed by Joe) was great - and with SO many group scenes could not have been an easy job. Nailing the specifics of it was often surprizing - the exciting flourishes that called attention to details that might otherwise get missed. (Case in point that will mean nothing to anyone who hasn't seen the movie - the ratchet on the Princess's fishing-float 'ear-ring'.)

Watching (and more to the point, listening) to Kelly re-edit dialogue and music on the fly was very cool too. At one point he took an edit that Mike had done that had seemed passable at the time and re-edited it seamlessly and with flourish that left us feeling kind of sheepish. His other work was equally well executed, but if I get to every specific I'll be here forever.

The same can be said for Bill. Several times he was put in a position of having to create new effects out of whole cloth, or adjust the sound edits of CG that had been massaged. Suffice to say that all this only adds to the degree that I'll be thanking Bill for the rest of our days.

And then there is the music...

We have two different composers on the film - Luke (who was also our Location Sound Mixer) and Phil. In general Luke dealt with the grittier sounds and Phil with the emotionally delicate sections. Luke's music is more guitar driven, while Phil is more orchestral. Both ventured into maritime sounds and into each other's prime territory - Phil does have a guitar-centred theme that pops up twice in the film and Luke nails the emotional drive of several important scenes - elevating one in particular (so hard to talk directly about this without giving spoilers) from heart-breaking to tragic. Both of them did a great job and at times surprised me with how much they were able to bring to the table. The temp music was effective, but the music that has been tailored for our specific moments makes such a spectacular difference.

And this is to say nothing of the two songs added to the film by The Pucks. One of which Kelly found himself bopping to long after it was over. One was written for the film and appears 3/4 of the way through - the other is our end credit sequence and was a most fortuitous find. (Both songs are on their latest album, Martha.)

It was also the first time I got to see the film on a big screen - and while it was a low-res version that was playing 'hot', it was pretty cool to see the film so close to how it will be in it's idealized final version. Indeed, the 'money shot' of the film - with the sound effects added was something I was not prepared for. I had only ever seen temporary versions on laptops. Last night at 9pm, if the audio had not been turned up to eleven, I would have been heard to mutter "Oh my god..." under my breath. It was a good thing. It was also hardly the only time. The confluence of sound, finalized effects that I was seeing for the first time, and seeing the film twenty-feet tall was inspiring. Expriencing the build up to the set-piece scene that Keith sold the film to me on was fantastic. The characters are getting excited, there is a flurry of activity, the music is pulling the viewer along whether they like it or not... I couldn't help getting caught up in a scene I've seen dozens of times before. Truth be told, I think I might have been more excited for the characters than I was playing one of those same characters in the same moments we were acting.

When all was said and done I was a bit overcome. Even though we had pretty much watched the film in clips 10-90 seconds long at a time, the impact was apparent, and the enormity of the gift that had been given to us by Sharpe hit me like a tonne of bricks. As I thanked the guys for their effort, the value they had added right at the end of what has been the work of over a decade in total hit me. I had to stop talking, or I probably would have lost it and made a fool of myself.

Anyhow... it was pretty much the end of creativity on this film - and that in itself is a relief. The work left to do is nominal. By this time next week, apart from finalizing the end credits, we will have a finished movie. Really, so far as I am concerned, I am no longer making a movie - I have made one.

Heading into the Mix

2009-11-29T17:14:00.000-08:00

I'll be doing another update very soon. I just wanted to make not that we are on the verge of going into the sound mix.
It starts tomorrow.
The composers are finished, the picture is complete - all the effects comped into the final version.

There will be inevitable tweaks of the credits, but that's simply a matter of adding the appropriate text to the scroll and adjusting the timing accordingly. But truly, this week we will be finished making The Beast of Bottomless Lake.

There are some exciting possibilities ahead that it would be a bad idea to speak directly about here, but let it be said that after all this time - too long a time in many ways - we will no longer be 'making a movie' we will 'have made a movie.'

I'll report on the sound mix in the next few days - and then once that's done, it's really just a matter of creating a final render.

What a long fabulous journey it has been.

If I were Superstitious I Wouldn't even Mention This...

2009-10-13T14:58:00.000-07:00

Haven't had a truly positive update in a while. Thought I'd drop in and let folks know...

Despite all manner of delays, some which could have been avoided with a bit more foresight and some which could not be avoided on our small budget, we have had a few things fall in place this past week and it's looking good for the last few pieces of post-production.

The last work could be done as early as Hallowe'en... but a safer estimate would be a week or so further along. In any case, there are few issues which could hold us back now. The finish line is so close that if it were olfactorily sensible, I could smell it!

Whew!

Interview on Skeptically Speaking

2009-09-05T16:12:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to direct any of you who check in here with any regularity that I was interviewed on Skeptically Speaking this past week about the film and some other stuff...

Oh and for the record, despite what I said, David Nykl is NOT at DragonCon. He called me last night - the night the show aired - asking if I wanted to go see Inglourious Basterds. I am nowhere near Atlanta right now (indeed I've been watching parts of SkepTrack at DragonCon on-line; therefore David is neither (or he expected one heck of a commute) and is NOT at DragonCon.

Sometimes I'm a dumbass.

A Quick Cry for Help!

2009-08-29T12:08:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be a guest on Skeptically Speaking this week, but due to a bunch of factors (they're having technical issues in the studio & the host is going to DragonCon) they aren't doing the interview as one of their normal call-in shows.

We are pre-recording the interview without any random listener questions. We're doing that on Monday evening (Aug 31st).

It would be cool if we had some email questions though...

Here's the preview of the show:"Kennedy Goodkey, one of the actors in the new independent movie The Beast of Bottomless Lake will discuss Ogopogo, being a skeptic in the not-so-skeptical acting community,and what it’s like to shoot a movie in a town where the tourism industry is built on the perpetuation of a myth."

If anyone can come up with a question, go to their home page and email it in to the show.

http://skepticallyspeaking.com/episodes/23-the-skeptical-actor

Thanks in advance!

Toronto Announces Film Schedule - Sorry Folks this isn't a "Great News!" post.

2009-08-04T13:44:00.000-07:00

So, what more is there to say after that post-title?

TIFF has announced their films for this year.

"Beast..." is not one of them. We've actually know this for a few days but haven't made much noise about it until the official announcement.

Am I disappointed? Well, yeah. Kind of.
But honestly I'm a bit relieved too.

We were unable to provide TIFF with a completed version of the film. It was a work in progress. That is never the best situation, but it's not the end of the world.

If we had been accepted... well we STILL aren't quite done. We are very close, but the stress of that impending deadline (plus all the additional work that being in the third biggest film festival in the world) would entail... I'm a bit relieved we don't have to deal with that.

As I've told a number of people - getting into Toronto would have been a huge deal, but not getting into Toronto is not a huge deal. There are plenty of other festivals - a number of which are on the immediate horizon. Not getting into Toronto does not mark being a failure.

Now we can finish the film at our pace - which ironically doesn't add much time to the schedule, but it takes off the pressure to finish hell or high-water and we can roll with complications rather than panic over them.

New Cryptozoology Podcast

2009-07-28T10:33:00.001-07:00

It's only two episodes in – the latest was posted yesterday – but there is a new podcast about cryptozoology which I've started listening to.

It's called Monster Talk and is available through iTunes.

The show itself looks at cryptozoological studies from a position of strict adherence to the scientific method – though not without a sense of humour about it. So you know you will never hear about incontrovertible proof of the Ogopogo (or Nessie, Sasquatch or the Chupacabra) unless one day they are actually found, like say – the megamouth shark or the coelacanth... which they tell us are themselves probable future topics.

Cryptozoology is funny that way. It is a valid science in a sense (sullied by far too many credulous 'amateur scientists') yet when something new is found it leaps from being cryptozoology to zoology. A true cryptozoologist is really a zoologist who is looking for a creature that is expected to exist based upon empirical evidence.

The hosts of the show are Blake Smith, Dr. Karen Stollznow and Ben Radford. Each of them a skeptical celebrity in their own right. Ben Radford, specifically, co-wrote "Lake Monster Mysteries" with Joe Nickell – which I previously mentioned was a significant research text for "Beast of Bottomless Lake."

Drop by the forums. I'm one of the more active members – with only two episodes complete, there aren't many of us! My forum name is "Jedischooldropout" just about anywhere including on Monster Talk.

Thinking About the Okanagan

2009-07-21T20:34:00.001-07:00

There are so many people involved in the film who are from the Okanagan Valley. It's hard to imagine that someone involved in the film wasn't at the very least severely inconvenienced this past weekend while a new fire scoured parts of the region.

It's hard for us to be able to keep tabs on everyone. If perhaps any of you are reading this and were caused trouble, our hearts are going out to you. Keep in touch and let us know you are alright.

Toronto Film Festival – Keep Holding Your Breath

2009-07-16T11:42:00.001-07:00

Just in case anyone is keeping tabs...

Yes. TIFF announced a whole raft of films yesterday and NO we were not on the list.

BUT...

The Canadian Films are announced on August 4^th... so keep your fingers crossed

ADR - Completed

2009-07-15T12:52:00.001-07:00

Yesterday we finished ADR. (Additional dialogue recording.)

It took four separate days. One day just for David (though he did it in less than the scheduled – worst case scenario – time) two more for most of the rest of the cast, and an hour a few weeks ago just to make sure we got Mark Leiren-Young while he was in town.

I did mine yesterday. I haven't done ADR in two years, but between Beast and Frankie & Alice I've done it twice in two weeks.

Everyone was really great and fast.

Myself I had trouble with one line. My only line in French – "Je ne parle pas l'anglais." Somehow I couldn't get my tongue around the "l'anglais." I got it eventually. But who writes this shit? ;-)

The Amazing Meeting

2009-07-15T12:43:00.001-07:00

This past weekend I – Kennedy – went to Las Vegas to attend the Amazing Meeting, the world's biggest critical thinking event.

It was a perfect place to test the film amongst a small group made up of a very specific demographic group that would be interested in "Beast...."

When I arrived at the hotel I was given my room number – 2012. I actually thought that was a joke. In a sense it was. 2012 really was my room number, and I exploited it over the weekend.

For those of you not 'in' on the joke... the doomsday fear-mongering surrounding the end of the Mayan calendar is a current light-weight skeptical subject. The Mayan calendar ends (resets to 'zero' in fact) in 2012. It's pretty silly really. Phil Plait gave a discussion on the astronomical connections to 2012 fears on the 3^rd day of the conference.

Upon looking at the schedule for the conference I immediately selected that first night as the best time for a sneak preview. (The film is still not done. Temp audio and incomplete effects are still in place.) I figured that if we started by 8:30 we'd be done around the same time as the magic show, so people could easily go from the screening to the bar. Room 2012 was a number no skeptic would forget.

I pushed the film on Twitter with TAM7 hashtags a few times in the afternoon, and then face to face at the reception and again to the group that gathered for the Canadian Contingent Meet-up.

We squeezed about as many people into the room as could actually be comfortable for 90 minutes, and let fly.

It's such a relief that it was a success. Lots of laughs. While I hope everyone enjoys this film, outside of my immediate friends and family, the people I most want to like it is the scientific community. And while this isn't precisely the scientific community, there is a HUGE amount of overlap. There was a bit of chatter on Twitter about it afterwards, that made me feel awesome.

Bill Prady – creator of the Big Bang Theory – was the keynote speaker for the conference. He has validated for me that comedies about scientists are totally viable. Jennifer Ouellette also spoke on Friday about the Science and Entertainment Exchange – which facilitates the consultation for film and TV writers with scientists. This was all very cool for me.

In the end I walked away from the conference with two radio interviews on my horizon. The first was yesterday with Radio Freethinkers (July 14, 2009 – episode 17) and the second will be in several weeks time on Skeptically Speaking.

Vicious Rumours...

2009-06-26T15:25:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone I just wanted to quash a rumour that has been flying around.

I just wanted everyone to know that our editor is NOT dead.

That is some other guy whose name is also Michael Jackson.

Our Mike is alive and well.

Transcription... boring but educational

2009-06-19T23:19:00.000-07:00

Taking a quick break.
I'm in the seriously tedious task of transcribing the film as cut. If anything using the script (even the most recent draft) is actually hindering my speed of transcription.
But... in a way I'm in a priviledged position. Not only am I hte primary writer of the script, but I was also in the film and - duh - I'm doing the transcript. It is educational.
Some actors do a really good job of sticking to the script, some (ahem) really make it their own. There is virtue in both.
Those who make it their own really do add an extra voice to the script - at the expense of occassionally ruining a joke with unfortunate wording. At the same time, for every time they blow a gag or other important (to the writer 'preciously important') line, they find at least one brand new gem.
Those who commit to the text really find a way to make it work, hell or high water. Some times due to the type one actor above they have to adjust their lines, but even then it's usually with the slightest variation possible.
Generally speaking - very generally - the actors who stick to the script in "Beast" are the women, and me. But even I slide around a bit - and I wrote the fucking thing!
But nearly everyone has a habit of adding 'line prefixes' (for a lack of better term) and more often than not, what gets added to the top of people's lines is the word 'well'. I actually just finished transcribing a scene where four of the first five lines began with the word 'well'. Sadly as the writer I technically take responsibility for that. The upside is I also get to take credit for the really great improvs that people make around the skeleton I wrote. (Though of course no one has yet said anything truly brilliant that I didn't write... no, really.)
But here is my favourite embellishment...
The line as written was: "Okay, fuck! Fine!" In the final edit (and there are no cuts in the performance to extend it, this is as it was said in the take) it goes: "Okay, that’s fine. No no, that’s fine. Great. Just great. Fine. Fucking fine. Just fine."
When I say "favourite" I don't mean it's the one I'm most proud of. It's the one I'm most amazed by. Three words became fifteen. But... it works!
Fine. Just fucking fine.

Vividus Rocks the House

2009-06-16T14:46:00.000-07:00

A follow up to last week's "Tale of Woe."

The guys at Vividus look just a little bit like miracle workers at the moment.

There is still a lot of work to be done on the shot they are completeing for us, but after one week of work they have got a working temp that is WAY beyond what I expected to have by now.

The version I saw this morning made me giggle like a school-girl in a gymnasium full of Robert Pattinson clones. It's going to look far better in our TIFF work in progress submission than the cartoony hand drawn After Effects thingy we had. Though I admit that when I first saw the cartoony version I giggled like a school-girl getting winked at by Robert Pattinson.

Vividus gets a big thumbs up from me.

New Photos Up

2009-06-16T13:50:00.000-07:00

I just posted some new photos. They should be appearing in the slide show on the right hand side any time now.

For a change these aren't 'behind the scenes' photos. For the first time, these are photos that are actually from the film itself.

The Provost Pictures machine is humming louder than it has for quite a while. As we push through the final stages of post production all sorts of things are happening. It hasn't felt this busy since shortly after we finsihed shooting. Suddenly film-making is fun again!

Disaster Narrowly Averted

2009-06-09T13:54:00.000-07:00

So here's a tale of woe...

There is a very important shot in the film that has been concieved and re-concieved many times. Originally we thought 'CGI', but were talked out of it in favour of practical effects. The basic argument could be summed up by "Puppet Yoda is far more compelling than CGI Yoda." So we made a serious attempt to do it practically.
We brought in a specialized props builder whose bottomline budget would have added 20% to our budget for that single shot. Not exactly a change we could truly afford.
We simplified the shot and the requirements of the hero prop. We planned to shoot it on our first day so we could come back and take second cracks at it. But... our first day was one of our worst days on set. We as a crew were learning a lot about each other and getting used to the time limitations of our tight schedule. We didn't make our day and one of the shots we didn't get was that one.
On day two we were back at the same location and while we didn't have time to shoot that shot (the second day was probably our WORST day thanks to extreme temperatures and no real cover from the sun) we did pick up a complimentary shot.
Roughly a week later we found ourselves back at the location again - a separate story in it's own right, told elsewhere - and this time getting the shot in question was high priority. Various efforts were made and the prop didn't really work right. Fingers were crossed, all efforts were made. We would have to see how it came out in the dailies.
Again our tight schedule interfered and it was over a month before that footage was watched. It probably seems obvious, but this should not have happened. It did happen though, and it's no one person's fault. It just happened. Prey of such a small amount of time with relatively few people available to get everything done. If we had it to do again, this is one thing that we'd spend more effort prioritizing. Lesson learned.
When we finally did get to see the footage... well, I'm sure you can guess - it failed to suffice, and that was not really a big surprise.
From there I can't really recall how we managed to form our new plan. It probably came together in stages over a long period of time and probably in part by accident. When we were looking for Telefilm funding we definitely priced out CG that would be very similar to what we would eventually settle upon.
I am being deliberately cagey here as I don't want to give plot details away, but what basically happened is that we chose to NOT take another run at practical effects in our reshoots, slightly changed the end of the film and decided that we would re-purpose a shot (The 'complimentary' coverage we picked-up on day two suddenly found itself arguably being the most important shot in the entire film!), and go right back to the origninal plan of using CG animation.
Luckily in the two years since we shit-canned the original CG animation plan, a lot has been done in the software world. Getting what we needed for our budget (we never did get Telefilm money, so our budget is practically made up of goodwill) was actually possible.

We brought someone on who promised to have us a working rough for our submission to the Toronto International Film Festival. There was plenty of time for that. Long story short: on the day that we were to see our first version for approval we recieved a message that a sudden family tragedy had just occurred and it would not be done, not only on time, but ever.
Do not get me wrong, my heart goes out to the family for whatever it was that happened... but in our world this was a disaster. All we had for the TIFF submission was a goofy hand drawn temp graphic, patched in with After Effects. Yoiks, Scoob!
To make matters worse, so much of the time we had to get it done in had been burned up. A suddenly very short schedule on top of our lack of budget was quite possibly a show-stopper - and we had already paid our TIFF application fee.
We scrambled through a variety of options - most of which were way out of our budget range, others of which understandably spooked when they found out how short their schedule would be.

And the consequent tale of salvation...

As things looked most dire, we were turned towards a new company - Vividus - who might be interested in the challenge. Thanks to Bob Hume of PHD productions (and husband of Leanne Jijian Hume who plays 'Sondra' in "Beast...") for pointing us their way.
When Mike and Craig arrived at the Vividus office they already had a wireframe ready - up on their computer screens for inspection. Clearly they really wanted this project. And they got it. We'll see how their chops are next week.

Moving Forward by Degrees

2009-06-06T21:25:00.000-07:00

This amuses me. Who said a higher education was expensive?

You too can get a degree in cryptozoology... or parapsychology... or naturopathy... or podcast production from Thunderwood College.

It'll prepare you for finding the Beast of Bottomless Lake!

Blog Posts as Elusive as the Lake Monster Itself

2009-06-01T18:31:00.001-07:00

Well, this is a pain. The same thing happened with my personal blog too a month or so ago – where I thought I had posted something, but in the end it was nowhere to be seen.

The insider punch-line to that is that the post itself was primarily an effort on my part to catch up on reporting a week's worth of developments which I had meant to be blogging on as each came up, but life had interfered to the point where the developing story had kind of merged into one.

So, here is a rough reconstruction of the bottom line:

The picture is locked. The last ten days or so before lock were a flurry of test screenings as we tinkered with the end of the film in fairly radical ways. Each of those screenings was useful and provided good perspective, though the individual receptions ran the gamut.

The first provided the greatest amount of useful input which we based the majority of our changes upon, and which began the process of retooling the end of the film. Basically we realized that we were giving the audience a lot of redundant information. We thought we were reinforcing what the audience was assuming about character arcs – and we were close; the audience was making assumptions, the assumptions we wanted them to make, but by confirming those assumptions it was coming across as pandering and repetitive. That was a pretty cool realization. It allowed us to eliminate a few scenes and challenged us to find a new way to end the film in a satisfying way that wasn't the denoument we had crafted specifically to wrap the film up in a neat little package.

A small detour here – I am continually amazed at the power of context in an Eisensteinian sense. I could cite numerous tedious examples which came up in the process of editing Beast of Bottomless Lake but one stands above the rest for me. In the middle of the film there was a sequence where Paul, the team leader attempts to make an inspirational speech to the expedition team just before they set out on the water. He isn't very effective and it is interrupted by the appearance of his addled father on the dock. Paul goes and deals with his father. As he leaves the boat he asks the boat captain to build some camaraderie and do some team building. Paul goes and deals with his father while the team prepares the boat to set sail under a call and response sequence from the captain. The sequence had a nice rhythm that ended comically first with the team nay-sayer declaring "This is fucking stupid" before being reprimanded by the captain; seeing the boat is on the verge of leaving Paul overreacts and rushes down the wharf, leaving his dejected father on the dock; finally the comic character casts off – in a nice piece of physical comedy barely avoiding going into the lake before the scene shifts to the boat out on the lake in an up tempo scene of the team getting ready as the boat motors along to pulsing music. First we cut Paul's conversation with the captain – where he asks him to build team work for him. It simply seemed unnecessary. But it made a big change to the meaning of the nay-sayer's "This is fucking stupid" line. All of a sudden the character wasn't talking about the team building exercise, he was talking about the entire expedition, and that made him a bit too cranky. That would have needed dealing with, except we ended up making an additional cut – the entirety of the ream-building/casting-off sequence. The final version goes directly from Paul's father sitting dejectedly on the dock to the driving pulse of the boat cutting through the water; a transition which is actually a really effective shift of tone and pace. I'll mourn the loss of the comic character scrambling to get on board – there is one really good laugh in there, but that is the nature of film-making – you have to do some baby-killing.

The second screening put our solution to the test. We had made some more internal cuts where we felt the film had drifted, like in my example above. The screening was pretty remarkable. The response was overwhelmingly positive – to the point where I couldn't contain myself. Mid way through the film after a particularly boisterous series of peals of laughter I declared "You guys are hysterical!" We have to believe for our own sanity that the response was a bit of a false positive, but at the same time it gave us a level of confidence in the product that was definitely necessary at that point.

Concurrent to the second screening we had sent the film to some friends who we expected to be critical. It would be an understatement to say that we were surprised by how critical they were. Though that said it was also clear that they were watching the film under adverse conditions. Lots of starting and stopping (not so good for comedy) and they came into it having been told a previous and by then significantly inflated running time which by all accounts was too long. Their criticism definitely gave us some good food for thought that rang true, but much of it seemed to come from a perspective that was entirely un-useful to the film that we were making, falling into either the "this is the film I would make" category or a range where we simply didn't have the coverage even if we did see virtue in their suggestions.

With the second screening giving us a boost in our confidence we were empowered to make a final few changes and.... ULP!.... WALK AWAY. Yes, we declared the picture locked. It was an exciting threshold to cross. Surprisingly easy to cross too. There was a certain level of second guessing, but we were ready to walk away. I don't know if it was George Lucas who said it first, but it was he who I first heard say it, that films aren't so much completed as abandoned. There is no doubt that we could have continued to tinker. But we were out of specific adjustments to make and all we really could do was re-visit sections of the film that we thought we could improve if we looked hard enough. No doubt that that would be a process fraught with losses to the law of diminishing returns.

....I've already skipped a step! Before we locked Mike and I spent an evening getting a handful (five) inserts, two of which we used Bronwen for. We popped four of those five into the edit before we called it quits. The fifth we tested and while it worked on paper, it simply didn't flow right in the cut once we tried it out. I learned years ago that sometimes moving forward means going backwards to what was right in the first place. In my days in theatre we often found that we had to try something new in order to realise that we had the right answer in the first place.

A few days after lock we had a spotting session with Bill for sound. It was quite promising. He felt that the majority of the audio was useable. We had talked ourselves into a worst case scenario where we were certain that more than 75% of the audio was useless. But we'll trust the Geminii winner on this one. Even a number of scenes we had assumed as we were filming (mostly stuff on the lake) that we were simply recording guide tracks for Bill assuaged us were 'no problem' and he laid out for us exactly how he would salvage them. I credit both Bill for his post-production expertise for this as well as Luke for going the distance on set to get good production sound.

A day and a half later we received a troubling email from Mike (and this is where I began to get upset with myself for not documenting each set along the way). His hard-drive array had suffered a failure. We may have lost data, but we wouldn't know until the array was operating again. The worst case scenario was that we would have to reload a bunch of files from back-ups, so it was not a disaster – merely a delay. Nonetheless it was not a pleasant 36 hours waiting for word from Mike, but eventually it came... no loss except for the day and a half of worry. Yay!

Even so, that day and a half would skew our post production schedule by more than that amount of time.

We contacted the festival with our first submission deadline – the Toronto International Film Festival – and determined that we could still get our work in progress to them in sufficient time for their purposes.

Whew!

It has been a long process and we are not out of the woods yet, but having passed a significant benchmark – picture-lock – and knowing that there is a real light at the end of the proverbial tunnel at last it has been a pleasure to let the incidental folk involved that we will be doing a cast & crew screening before mid-summer when I've has occasion to tell them.

Okay, I admit that I made a point of calling Keith's parents and telling them specifically that the end is in sight.

...Cutting the Deepest

2009-05-06T18:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was not my favourite day in this process.

Last night I had to tell one of our actors that we'd cut her scene in the film - relegated it to the vague promise of "DVD extras" should that ever be realistic. It's a reality I've been prepared for in general for quite some time. And most of our actors know that cutting is a reality and that their only or best scene could end up on the editing room floor. But this was a special case.

I don't even know where to begin explaining the needs of cutting for time to a child.

Worse yet, the child in question was my niece, Kassandra - "Kaz."

I talked to her Mom, my sister, Tara first so she knew what was coming and could be prepared to console. I figured that once I told Kaz, that anything I said would be irrelevant - I'd be the bad guy and that the chances of any reason being heard coming from my mouth would dwindle towards zero.

I'm not sure that Kaz fully appreciated what I was telling her at first. I led with the 'up' side - that her scene would be in the DVD extras (ugh - now I HAVE to follow through on that promise or forever be a monster). She said "I don't care. That's okay."

I explained how her scene was cut due to no fault of hers. The scene preceeding it was too long, too technically compromised and ultimately didn't truly forward the plot. It DID add a nice extra dimension to one character and provide back-story... back story that turns out to be a lie, so removing it definitely changes the film. But the scene following - Kaz's scene - is the punchline to the faux back-story scene. Without the set-up the scene is pointless. It's too bad. It's a funny scene. Gets laughs every time we screen it. Unfortunately that isn't enough - especially when we are seriously trying to shave time.

I went on to tell her how happy I was that she was in my film and that she would always be in my film in my heart and mind... and that's where I started to lose it.

Kaz gave the phone back to Tara, and I commented on how I was taking it worse than she was. Tara told me that as soon as she turned over the phone her stoic facade crumbled. I'm guessing that not being in the film is lousy for Kaz. For two years she's been looking forward to being in a movie. She has told friends that she's in a movie. I made a liar out of her. I'm so sorry for that kiddo. Perhaps she was being 'strong' while she talked to me, or perhaps it wasn't until she heard how it was affecting me that the gravity of it sunk in. Either way, I feel like shit.

Picture lock is days away now. Tonight is our last test screen - the first in ages. This time for some folk with industry insight. Should be interesting. Hopefully it'll lift my spirits a bit.

Ski Bum Musical

2009-04-28T09:49:00.000-07:00

Went and saw the celebratory screening of The Staff: A Ski Bum Musical the winner of this year's Telus 72 Hour Film contest.

The crew was predominantly made up of guys from our crew from Beast.

They were runners up last year, this year they rocked the house.

Congratulations guys!

Cross Posted on The Truth & The Signal blog.

Big UPs for The Pucks!

2009-03-22T12:14:00.000-07:00

Just a heads up...

Friends of "The Beast..." and contributors to the film - they wrote and recorded a song for the film "More than Just a Woman" which appears on their imminent album "Martha" - The Pucks have a couple of shows coming up in Vancouver.

They are playing this week - Wednesday March 25th - at the iconic Railway Club; and again in early April they will be playing at the opening of the new Vancouver Convention Centre... in fact they will be the first band playing at the opening - which will make them the first act at the VCC EVER!

Congratulations to them!

See y'all at the show!

Green chain opens this weekend against Watchmen

2009-03-04T19:18:00.000-08:00

Just a quick link this time...

My buddy Mark Leiren-Young - who appears in "Beast..." - is opening a film this weekend.

It's called The Green Chain.

I have credit as the Director's Assistant - whee!

It stars BSG actors Tricia Helfer & Tahmoh Penikett - as well as voice-actor extroardinaire, Scott McNeil; Leo Award winning (for this film) Jillian Fargey; Brendan Fletcher, August Schellenberg and Babz Chula.

But what I really wanted to comment upon was the awesome - if terribly sobering - article Mark wrote in the Georgia Strait about the realities of Opening Weekend.

The Beast is finally seen...

2009-01-16T14:07:00.001-08:00

A watershed moment.

Yesterday Craig, Mike, David and I gathered together to watch The Beast of Bottomless Lake for the first time front to back on one piece, properly edited.

There is still a lot of work left to be done, but the perspective has significantly shifted. We now have a 'whole' by which to compare against. It also means that I have been robbed of a stock answer. Almost every day I hear some variation on the declaration 'I can hardly wait to see the film!' to which I regularly quip "Yeah, me too!" Simple, but not without its own subtle wit.

But I have seen it now. It's not final, but there is a lot more clarity as to what this particular beast is.

We have a few weeks wherein we are each going to watch and re-watch and compile our own individual list of notes, wishes and thoughts on how to improve the edit; then we will make some high impact changes as time will allow and put that next version in front of a test audience or two... or three. What exactly we get from that remains to be seen, but we'll make our final fine-cut edits based on the ammunition and insight we get from those sessions.

Then we move on to sound, FX and colour correction...

Our intended goal: to be ready to submit to the Toronto Film Festival.

Art? Life? Which is immitating which?

2008-11-02T19:26:00.000-08:00

Okay, this has nothing to do with us, but it is about independent film making.

If you read the entry wherein I posted the full text of our Reel West article, you'll recall that in the article I noted the phenomenon where the making of the film becomes an analogue for the film itself.

Sometimes that's only the tiniest glimmer of the circumstance.

Warning, this one is fucked up.

Take 2

2008-08-19T10:44:00.000-07:00

I really intended to post something before this past weekend, but circumstances had other plans for me. Just your run of the mill 'not enough hours in the day' stuff.

This past weekend - August 15th to 17th - we did pick-ups and reshoots on "Beast..."

For the most part it was fun and at a relatively relaxed pace. Though the last day didn't quite work out as planned, but I'll get to that.

Friday we had a late morning start and spent a lot of the day at the park & beach picking up a handful of small shots that we've discovered in editing that would highly benefit the story telling within the film.

In the afternoon we moved over to Craig's apartment. The timing was less than ideal in that we were a dozen or so people crammed into a one bedroom apartment at the hottest time of the hottest day of summer so far (a record breaker, in fact) and we had a couple of 1K lights shining down upon us.
We got some coverage of Leanne and I for two differnt scenes, and then added some additional inserts and pyrotechnics that we'd been unable to shoot last spring.
The pyro was amusing. I had consulted David Barkes last year on the matter, and combined with some previous theatrical application, we'd decided to use flash paper in a metallic garbage can. There was a lot of paranoia about the effect, though I was confident - I'd used flash paper in my bare hand on stage, I knew it was as safe as could be expected. Nonetheless it was prudent to be extra prepared with extinguishers and other devices intended to contain the fire should everything go wrong. After all that prep, the initial problem was quite the opposite. Due mostly to technique the paper didn't catch fire - the matches were out by the time they got to the paper. When that issue was worked out, the first actual working shot was spectacular and got great oohs and ahhs from everyone. The flame had actually gone so high that it was a bad shot, so we had to do it a few more times. The last attempt - where we used some extra paper for longer burning time and shot it at high speed (for slow motion) - was truly spectacular. I did a dance of joy.
Burning things... fun.

We ended the day with shooting a scene we'd originally decided to cut.
Those of you familiar with Moby Dick will be aware of the chapters that I refer to as the 'documentary' chapters. They don't technically advance the narrative, but they do add something to the book. Chapters on the nature of the colour white, the variety of whales, the use and creation of marine rope... there are dozens of these chapters covering a huge range of topics.

To the best of my knowledge, no other work based on Moby Dick has ever tried to include this aspect of the book - which is one of it's more fascinating features. Granted, it's not such an easy task. The structure of our film allows us a unique opportunity to include an equivalent - documentary interview moments with fictional Ogopogo experts, who each provide a small tidbit of information or thematic layering to the whole. We cut the 'Sheriff Snider' interview during principle photography last year because of scheduling issues. But in editing we've discovered that we don't really have enough experts to sell the trope. So we added 'Sheriff Snider' back in. We also added a brand new expert to be shot first thing the next day...

Saturday began in the afternoon. In my Mother's living room, filming one of our favourite actors, Mary Black, who we've been trying to get into the film for ages, but it has just never quite worked. Mary was very funny, and she nailed her brief 'expert' monologue in no time.

From there we went to our editor's office to shoot a few inserts to existing scenes against his handy wall. David Nykl and I got to revisit our only two hander scene, though only for a very brief moment. Ironically the scene is dominated by a torrent of verbal effluvia from David, while I say almost nothing... but guess which character's arc is being improved by the new version? You guessed it, mine.

Back to Craig's for dinner and to wait for nightfall, as the rest of what we had scheduled was all to be shot in the dark. Dinner - put together largely by Elaine, Craig's wife, was as good as we had anytime on set - and we had a number of fantastic meals served up by Garner and Janet in the Okanagan or by Jill and Scott at the postal plant. We also got to show those who were present a small portion of what has been edited thus far. It was an unintended side effect, but everyone was pleased by what they saw and the already good mood was raised to genuinely high-spirits.

The evening was a mix of inserts of various props doing various necessary things as well as getting additional detail of both David on his own and Roger and I together for the 'wedding scene' so that we can better refine and pace the gags.

Saturday was a little extra fun for me as Jodie (my girlfriend) was able to join us on set and help out. She'd never been on set before so it was a novelty for her. She took all the pictures we have included.

Sunday morning we were back at the home of Brian Sizer, for the most part to get additional footage of Roger and I interacting again - this time for the 'going to bed' sequence, which is already fairly amusing, but with better coverage and more precise performances should play much better on screen.

The shoot up to this point had gone quite well. But it would stumble a bit in the next few hours. We were longer than expected at the Sizer house, and there were a small number of miscommunications in getting to our next location. The sunny day had brought far more people than anticipated to the location and parking became a nightmare. Noise was too much for the dialogue we needed to record, and as if that weren't enough... the sun which had been oppressive for two days began to disappear as we were approaching the last two scenes we truly needed it for. Argh!

We bailed on that location and went to our next one, crossing our fingers that we'd have a chance later in the day to finish up. Suffice to say that the weather didn't do what we needed it to do. We DID get what was intended to be the last scene on the schedule - which didn't need the sun - but we didn't get those last two scenes. Mark Redsky had come out to set and never got used. I hated having to do that to him, but he was good natured about it.

We finished up the weekend with pizza and beer back at my place. It had not been the plan to finish there. We'd hoped to be in the park! But that same damned weather ruined that plan at the last moment too. We watched the rain from my balcony, knowing we'd have to all reconvene yet again, but the mood was positive.

Everyone had seen a good chunk of the film in it's current state and could appreciate how the good work we'd done in these last three days would improve it manifold.

We're hoping to shoot those last bits next weekend - or as soon as possible thereafter. But Craig is going in for surgery next week and he's going to be largely unavailable as a director for a bit. We'll pretty much have to temporarily forge on without him. Sooner the better to finish up is the philosophy. The needs of the remaining footage to be shot is fairly self-evident and we already have the template of the existing footage to go by.

Hope for sun.

Dr. Horrible... a kindred.

2008-07-19T19:01:00.000-07:00

The clock is ticking on this one.

As of this writing, there are 29 hours left to watch "Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog." on line for free.

Go. Do it now.

Is it after midnight on June 20th? Okay, go to iTunes and down load the episodes (sorry, you'll have to pay).

It's a project that Joss Whedon put together over the writer's strike to prove a point.

As he says in his "Master Plan" he did it cheap in order to prove how much can be done with so little, and that that can be turned around and made profit upon on the internet by the creator, rather than going through a distributor or a network. No doubt, more easily accomplished in his position, but definitely food for thought - there is no doubt that the internet is consuming all other media access routes and the survivors will be getting on board now... the only real question is "How is this going to work?"

It's a question Provost Pictures has asked of ourselves. Our future lies out there too. I still hope we can find a distributor or broadcaster, there's no reason to think we won't. But if we don't... we'll be trying our hand at internet self-distribution. I am excited to try. Maybe some day "Beast" will be available via iTunes!

Anyhow, I hope JW can make it work. It's a fun little show - perhaps 45 minutes long, and very much NOT what you'd expect from someone working under the thumb of a 'system'... oh, wait a second, for "Dr. Horrible..." Joss was already out from under any kind of system. It is exciting. And the 'To show how much could be done with very little. To show the world there is another way.' and 'Proving we can turn Dr Horrible into a viable economic proposition as well as an awesome goof will only inspire more people to lay themselves out in the same way. It’s time for the dissemination of the artistic process. Create more for less.' parts... those sound an awful lot like what Craig and I have been telling each other for three years now.

Me happy.

We go watch Dr. Horrible again, before it's not free anymore.

(And buy the DVD when it comes out.)

More Cutting, More Fun

2008-06-09T12:47:00.000-07:00

Oh happy day.

Sat down with Mike to watch the first twenty minutes or so fo the film yesterday.
Significantly there is an aspect of the film which there has been some question about how it should work visually.
Craig and I have naturally talked about it a lot in the past years of preparing the film. We even made a point of showing sample scenes to various people to get a sense of whether they thought it worked or not. For the most part there has been no problem with our plan... but three people on the inside of the production have expressed their own doubts - emphatically. Craig and I decided to give Mike a chance to solve the problem his own way in the editing room... though I have to admit we were both skeptical. Yesterday we got to see if it was going to work.
It works. I am very happy about that. There is no need for any argument. Yay!

In other news...

I was sent a fun link this morning. I admit, I'm a Firefly fan. I've actually watched a shamefully small amount of Stargate considering the David Nykl connection... in fact I made a point of watching a few episodes THE VERY DAY we left for the Okanagan last spring, just so that I wouldn't be totally clueless should it ever come up. Only one of them had Dr. Zelenka in it.
I'm getting WAY off topic here, but there is actually a shot in the existing cut of Beast where David and I are standing on the boat having an argument. It's taken from quite a distance, so the audio is actually lifted from other close up takes. If the audio could have been heard - David and I were actually arguing about Stargate. I should have never opened that can of worms. I made some random comment about Wraiths - one of the few things I had grokked from those two episodes. Within a sentence David was pwning me.

Anyhow - back to the REAL point. Another Firefly fan sent me this. The juice is around the four minute mark.

An 'Expert' Invite & the Sighting of the Beast

2008-05-30T15:27:00.000-07:00

Well, this is amusing.

I've been invited to speak about the Ogopogo at the Vancouver 'SkeptiCamp' this up-coming month.

It should be fun comparing and contrasting the views of both the credulous and the skeptical with a host of people whose hobby it is to delve for evidence and pick apart irrational belief. I am after all, just an artist who, with some friends, made a movie about the mysterious beast - heck, it can be argued that really I re-made Moby Dick, and the Ogopogo just played the part of the great white whale. But Keith's original idea began with 'Pogo, not Moby - it just morphed towards the literary parallel as we gradually began to see the connections.

But it makes me wonder how/where I stand in the spectrum of Ogopogo experts. I don't know the minutae like Arlene Gaal, but at the same time I'm not the sort to accept flimsy evidence either. I would love to find out that there is something significant in the lake that has yet to be recognised by the biological record, but I find it hard to believe that if such a find is ever made that it will prove to be a 40 foot serpent - but that doesn't make me ideologically or methodologically Joe Nickell, either.

Yet, let's say that a deep dwelling species of fish (possibly evolutionarily stunted, like a sturgeon) that has yet to be discovered lives in the depths of Lake Okanagan. Let's say it surfaces in great numbers to spawn, and THAT is the explanation for the Ogopogo that isn't either boat-wakes, beavers ferrying logs, otters, pranksters or any of the other answers which most readily survive a close shave with Occam's Razor. That would be amazing, and awesome. But I fear that anything less than a pleisosaur or basilosaur will fail to excite the ardent believers.

-----

As to the secondary topic;

When I say 'sighting', I do mean that we have had our viewing of the rough cut of the film. It was great to finally have the chance - almost a year after we finished filming. I have of course seen most of the footage, but some of it is new to me.
I can't actually say a lot without giving things away, but from a film-maker's perspective we learned a lot, both about our craft and about the project itself in watching what currently exists. Naturally there are pick-ups to be done - in a month or so, and it shouldn't take more than a weekend.
We also discovered - or in fact Mike, the editor, voiced a viewpoint of our narrative that we had spoken of previously in different terms. But what Mike said - I'll have to talk about it more specifically at another time - was not at all a surprise, though it does bring a narrative issue into focus in a way which answers the very problems it necessarily presented by it's very nature. (Could I be more indirect?) Significantly, this is exciting as it presents an aspect of our film to us that we had previously not fully grokked. THAT is cool - and the sort of discovery in editing that I have been looking forward to all project long.

Something to See

2008-05-24T14:25:00.001-07:00

Just got news yesterday that at long last there is a cut of the film ready to be viewed. There have been a number of bumps between production and now which have slowed us down unfortunately, but so it goes. Mike has declared that he is ready for us to see what he has done with the existing scenes (a number of scenes were taken directly to first polish for a number of reasons several months ago) and the remaining until now un-touched footage.

Very exciting from my perspective.

In other news, I did some work this past week on Stargate: Atlantis - the show our own David Nykl plays Dr. Radek Zalenka on. I was actually working with the animatronics team. It was very fun, and I can't really say any more than that without ruining my chances of ever working for them again. (Not to mention I'm actually not familiar with the show, so my info would be sketchy at best if you were seriously interested and water-boarded it out of me.) Oddly while on set this week I crossed paths with every current Stargate cast member I can actually name except one - the one I actually know.

Also - to end on a real high note - one of our other cast members, Gordon May, won the best supporting actor award in the (Damn, I can't find it, but I think this info is right.) North Island Zone, Theatre B.C. Festival. I can't say I am surprised. He is a tremendous actor, and will break people's hearts when they see 'Beast.'

New Website!

2008-04-24T10:14:00.001-07:00

Seeing as one of the easiest ways to find this blog is to link through our website, this seems a little strange...

But we have a new website.

It's pretty - and way more functional than before.

Like I said in the last post - things are starting to happen!

Check out the new trailer on the website - it's not a final trailer... no sir - it's actually a trailer we threw together last year between our advance shoot and the main portion of production. It recently screened at the Okanagan Film Festival.

www.provostpictures.com

What the Boys are Doing....

2008-04-24T09:48:00.000-07:00

After literally months of slow progress this past month has suddenly shot to life. All kinds of stuff happening in Provost Pictures world.

Legal stuff, editing stuff and more.

Just last night David Nykl was interviewed on This Conversation. Funny thing, the crew for TC is made predominantly of former members of the 'Beast...' crew. Seems they've formed a solid relationship, those boys. (Many of them already had started down that road before we shot.) As a matter of fact they went up to the Telus Filmmaker's Showdown earlier this month and made it into the top ten with a parody of '24' called '4'. It's fun and I gotta say there are parts that I am really impressed by - so glad we had these guys on-side.

Bye Bye Brodie

2008-02-11T16:01:00.000-08:00

Roy Scheider died today.

Makes me wistful.

Jaws was one of Keith's favourite films. It's one of mine.

"Beast..." owes Jaws a huge debt.

Once, years ago, Mr. Scheider was in town shooting some movie... (I've forgotten what, but for som reason I also think that I did make a point of seeing it.) ...Keith and I discussed trying to find him and see if we couldn't get him to do an interview on camera that we might find a use for. This eventually led to what is now the 'expert interviews' in the film.

Anyhow, it's been a long time since a post. I felt like this event was worth acknowledging.

- K

Cult Times - David Nykl Interview

2007-12-14T12:41:00.000-08:00

The latest special issue of 'Cult Times' - a special issue featuring Stragate - includes an interview with "Beast of Bottomless Lake" star, David Nykl. David mostly discusses Stargate, of course, but there are also a few paragraphs and production stills about "Beast...."

Here's a link to an excerpt... which doesn't include the "Beast..." discussion.

In other "Beast..." news at my annual building Christmas party, Craig was able to bring a handful of scenes to show the eager main-ensemble. We all ignored the rest of the shennanigans for a half-hour and sequestered ourselves in my bedroom and watched a few rough cuts that we are preparing for Telefilm.

It was a bit of a tease, the final edit is still a long way off, but everyone was able to pat each other on the back. David declared himself "cautiously optomistic." I think everyone was kind of relieved to see that what we had done was actually working, even in a rough form.

Meanwhile we grind through out Telefilm application... which is far more work than we could have imagined.

The REAL Production Diary

2007-11-19T11:57:00.000-08:00

The NOV/DEC issue of ReelWest is out, which means that the issue featuring "Beast..." has been displaced on the shelves... which means it's now kosher for me to post this.

When the original ReelWest production diary was requested there was a miscommunication about length and what I wrote was fully three times the length they wanted... so the published version was heavily edited - and for those of you who read it some of that was very apparent.
Anyhow, the time has come to post the full length version. Enjoy.

- K

"BEAST OF BOTTOMLESS LAKE" - Production Diary by Kennedy Goodkey

August 1997
About a week in from touring a show in the Okanagan, Keith comes to me with an idea. It’s a film he’s calling The Dweller. It’s pretty high-concept. The ‘lost footage’ of a documentary of a group of hapless scientists trying to prove the existence of the Ogopogo, which has been re-cut and packaged as if it’s a horror film. I’m not sure if that last part works, but he grew up in Kelowna and knows his Ogopogo lore. He also has a funny idea for a scene about the anti-climatic demise of their proto-type equipment. It’s worth more thought and discussion.

August 1998
Again on tour with Keith in the Okanagan. The Ogopogo film idea resurfaced, this time with a new name that plays the concept harder – Nightmare Beast of Blood Lake: A Scientific Overview. We spend a lot of our spare time brainstorming ideas and running around to the places catalogued in Arlene Gaal’s books where it has been seen. No doubt Rattlesnake Island would be central to the story.

January 1999
Mark Leiren-Young hired both Keith and I for his Year in Revue show at the Waterfront Theatre. Keith and I have honed the idea a bit. We’ve dropped the ‘documentary packaged as a horror’ concept as being too convoluted a gag. Any joke you have to explain isn’t very funny. In it’s place we’ve decided to take aim at academia. Keith graduated from the UVic Theatre Department a few years before I arrived there. We have similar uncharitable thoughts about all the same professors – it’s a good starting place. For now we’re referring to it as The Ogopogo Project – definitely a place-holder. Mark, a long-time Ogopogo fan in his own right, loves the idea and is encouraging us onward.

August 2000
Keith and I have been meeting weekly on Ogopogo we think we’ve got the essential story. I’ve been spending my weekends through the summer working on Meghan Ciana’s Sons of Cohen – which I also wrote – it’s enlightening. I’m learning a lot about how to shoot cheaply and how to capitalize the most on the least of resources – sadly Meg is also learning these lessons in the hardest of ways. In any case it’s making it clear to Keith and I that we could actually make this thing ourselves – but we aren’t sure either of us is ready to direct.

October 9, 2000
Sons of Cohen wraps on my birthday. A number of the cast and crew join me for shenanigans, though it’s not our official wrap party. Craig March and I get in a conversation about ‘what is next.’ Ogopogo comes up. Craig ended up playing the role that I had written with Keith in mind and though we only had about four days on set together we managed to bond a bit through the film and weekly pick-up hockey games.

November 2000
As it turns out, Craig and Keith have wanted to work together for quite some time. Craig is feeling like he is ready to take another go behind the camera. I’ve heard a lot about his first effort Jerry’s Day through mutual friends. In our first meeting together, Craig floats the idea of having an extra layer to the documentary wherein the fictional film-maker is shooting a lot of footage clandestinely with hidden spy-cameras. It certainly bears more discussion.
By this point we have a very detailed treatment. We assemble some actors and cast ourselves in a few roles – Keith as the arrogantly book-smart but impractical team leader, Paul; Craig as the porn-director turned documentarian, Ernie; and myself as the brooding and useless physicist, Stewart – and do a few days of workshopping.
It has also occurred to me that the story we are telling is very much analogous to Moby Dick. From here on out I’m going to push it further in that direction whenever I can justify it.

January 2001
A friend who knows a friend who knows a friend with money that he wants to invest in film got wind of what we are now calling ‘Pogo. We know we’re still a long way from really looking legit, no matter how well intentioned, so we again turn to Mark Leiren-Young for some advice and guidance. Mark gives us a serious make-over from the ‘script’ down. In the first place it’s still not really a script so much as an over-written treatment. He shoots holes in all sorts of specious plot-logic and has us cut scenes and characters with furious baby-killing abandon. Of course he is right – the treatment, which is starting to look like a script – is far tighter as a result. He also says about four sentences which turn into the final scene we never realized was missing.
Mark grooms us and the project for presentation to the potential producer. He also wakes us up to the hard facts about film-money and first-timers. It’s a long-shot. But our eyes are wide open.

February 2001
We present The Beast via our contacts. No overtures for a face to face meeting are ever accepted.

April 2001
With Mark’s encouragement we’ve kept tinkering and developing our package. Made some inquiries towards other potential avenues of production. We submit The Beast – re-written for Vancouver Island’s “Cadborosaurus” – to the CHUM/Bravo! Drama Initiative. I submit another script of my own. My other script is short-listed, but The Beast falls flat.

June 24th 2001
I find myself watching a very entertaining documentary on television about Sasquatch hunters. Lots of fertile soil for the seeds of inspiration. I call Keith and leave a message telling him that the doc is scheduled to be shown again later in the evening. A half-hour later the phone rings. It’s Janet, Keith’s wife. There has been an accident. Keith is gone.

August 2001
The number of people who stood-up to be counted amongst Keith’s friends was astounding. You would have thought God died. And a lot of people connected in the industry. Mark has again been very helpful in guiding us through the wave of “Let’s make this film for Keith” energy. It’s been very encouraging, but as well meaning as it is, it’s not focused and we ourselves are in no way ready to forge through.

July 8th 2005
Before leaving my girlfriend’s this morning I read a newspaper article about the ridiculous stuff that people sell on eBay and get spectacular prices for. It’s actually kind of infuriating. ‘People! Use your powers for good, not evil!’ On the bike-ride home I got to thinking about what would be a righteous thing to sell on eBay when it came to me – credits in a film. The Ogopogo film – whatever it’s called – has been sitting on the back-burner for years. When I walked in the door I picked up the phone and called Craig. “I know how we might fund this damned thing. But we have to act fast or else someone else will do it.”

August 17th 2005
After a few harrowing weeks, we hosted a launch party last night. We formed a company – Provost Pictures, named after Keith -, had a website made, produced a brief teaser to illustrate the feel of the movie, picked a Spring 2006 production date, set-up three separate auctions and presented it all to a packed house at the Media Club Lounge. When we announced the actual auction there was literally a roar of excitement – surprised the living hell out of me. Today we’ve had a number of interview requests so hopefully this thing will take off.

August 26th 2005
The auctions closed today. Grand total – about eight hundred dollars. Hardly a budget. But we got some good attention in the media and a lot of people we know are excited that we’re back on task on this thing… we’ve got a placeholder name for it now: The Beast of Bottomless Lake. We needed to call it something for the launch, so we decided to harken back a bit to the horror-film title just for the time being. I’m sure we’ll come up with a better title – something that says ‘comedy’ more than ‘B-horror.’

September 2005
I walked into a restaurant and a guy at a nearby table declared “Hey! You’re one of those eBay guys.” Turns out he works for Telefilm and we are on the radar. He told me to call him when we were ready.

January 2006
We need someone who better understands the business of film than we do to be a co-producer. Marilyn Thomas is looking for her first feature. She’s got good credentials and she likes the project. Despite some amusing over-eagerness on Craig’s part she has said ‘yes’ and has come on board. Now we need to fill some other personnel holes.

February 2006
We interviewed First A.D.s. Three of the first four applicants were ten minutes late apiece. Not an auspicious start. Luckily one stood out from the pack, Manjit. We had her start on the breakdown right away. We’ve also interviewed D.P.s – much better pickings. If anything the biggest problem is the preponderance of style. Lots of fledgling D.P.s out there dead-set on standing out with snazzy to spare – too soon out of film-school. If we wanted to make a Guy Ritchie film, we could out Guy Ritchie Guy Ritchie. Fortunately we won’t have to. Shari Bailey was the only interviewee who was able to sit down and tell us how our film looked – the act of which was impressive in it’s own right, the fact that she nailed it sealed the deal. She’s got a great egoless feeling style. She’s going to be a star, I’m glad we lucked out and get to use her before she is.

March 2006
I have to wonder how many indie films at our level have publicists this early in the game? There are only really only two answers; 1) Those that don’t are fools; 2) It’s rare and thus would be a big leg-up on the competition. It occured to me that Rebecca Coleman must be into the swing of being a mother by now, and it would be a good chance for us to re-establish our friendship. She’s never done publicity for a film before, but she’s game. I know she’s good – and ‘good people’ so we’re well taken care of there.

May 11th 2006
Colour me stunned. Craig and I are off to the Okanagan once the weekend is over to meet with the Okanagan Film Commission, do some scouting and other business. Rebecca sent the Okanagan media a release to let them know we’d be in town in case they wanted to get an interview in the can for later. It seems that the release ended up on the news wire and god knows why, but it triggered some imaginations. And by ‘some’ I mean a LOT. I woke up this morning to a 7am call from the Globe and Mail. After forty five minutes of chatting with them there were already two messages in voice mail for other interviews. When Craig arrived at 11 he got on his cell and started doing interviews as well. It didn’t stop until after 5 o’clock. We were supposed to be preparing information packages for the Kelowna C.O.C.

May 12th 2006
Well, every article or news clip about the film is using our working title The Beast of Bottomless Lake. I guess it’s not our working title anymore.

May 18th 2006
I admit that it would have been nice to be leaving the Okanagan with the promise of more money, but apart from that the trip was an unqualified success. We arrived in Kelowna talking about shooting a week or so in the Okanagan. The Commission showed us how we could shoot the entire thing there. Granted, that is their job. At the end of our first whirlwind day we were standing across the lake from the Manteo Resort (one of the many places we scouted) and a Rainbow formed, shining down on the Manteo. It’s kind of comforting to think that perhaps Keith was sending us a message. The upside of all that press has been that the Centre for Arts and Technology in the Okanagan contacted us offering some assistance. We had a good meeting with their rep, Bob Sterling. We also received a well timed email from a local casting director, Siobhan Shaw, who expressed interest. We got the email an hour or so before our one and only evening off began, so we met her for drinks on a patio on the lake. She’s full of enthusiasm – perhaps too much! – but we’re going to see what comes of it. We stayed with Keith’s parents in Westbank. They were awesome.

June 16th 2006
Damn it, damn it, damn it! Marilyn went to Banff and was given a job offer that she can hardly be expected to turn down – certainly not over our ‘working for love & pizza’-level project. While this in itself is a problem, Craig is not only out of the country with Elaine, he is going to be out of all contact for the next ten days. I’m sure he could arrange contact if he had any idea that there was an issue of this depth – but even so, what could he do? Either way, it’s all on me. I need to have a new producer in place before Craig gets back here or there’s no way we are going to be shooting in September as planned.

June 19th 2006
It’s been whirlwind. I’m variously talking with about 12 different people. Actually started to lose track of what stage I was at in discussion with whom. So I sat down and made a list. When I got to the last name I wrote it down and started trying to figure out who he was and what we’d discussed. As I was doing that, the phone rang. It was him. He told me he was on his way over to discuss the project. Okay. That will clarify it for me.

June 20th 2006
David Jevons in his name. We went for dinner, and I talked to him about the possibility of producing for us. Soon he was telling me about his plans to make a film about the Ogopogo… and it all came rushing back. He WASN’T one of the people who I’d been talking to about producing at all! He had called me a day or two before Marilyn quit. I was watching the Stanley Cup finals, and only half paid attention. He had gone to the Okanagan Film Commission to discuss a film he wanted to make about the Ogopogo and they informed him that we had him scooped. Through our discussion we agreed that the options were: to go on working on separate and competing projects, potentially getting in each other’s way; one of us could simply quit – and it sure wasn’t about to be us; or we could combine efforts. I sent him off with a copy of the script. We’ll talk in a few days.

June 22nd 2006
David loved the script. We’ve all but committed to him stepping in as our new producer. He’s moving forward under the assumption that a meeting with Craig (when he returns) goes well. He’ll join us for the auditions the next week, and then head for the Okanagan to move things along there.

June 27th 2006
It is a done deal. David is our new producer.

June 30th 2006
Damn it all. Manjit has cash-flow problems. She can’t commit to the shoot. We are down a 1st A.D. It's understandable, people do have to pay the bills. Oh, to be able to pay people.

July 1st 2006
I ran into a ‘friend’ of mine at a barbecue tonight. She’s working as an Office P.A. for one of the successful local companies. Told her about the film and how we’re consciously setting out to do a bunch of things that would make the list of things an independent film should avoid – a main ensemble of seven, total cast of nearly forty, shooting on a various boats, locations spread through five cities, working with kids and animals. She scoffed and informed me that we are idiots and that it’s all impossible. Gee, thanks for your kind support.

July 3rd 2006
Auditions were a lot of fun. Justine is already set to play ‘Sondra’ so she came out and was our reader. There were some great discoveries in the auditions. Going in, Craig and I were both fairly certain that we knew who we were going to cast as Paul’s parents, Clive and Anna, but for both roles our favourites going in didn’t have great reads and in each case there was someone who stood head and shoulders above the rest. We’ve offered Clive to Gordon May and Anna to Christina Jastrzembska. There was some discussion about giving the roles to our original favourites, but the question came up ‘then why did we even have auditions?’ A great surprise in the role of the David Suzuki-esque ‘Tony Hashimoto’ – Aki Nagai did an average read in broken English, but when Craig asked him to do it in his native Japanese he was magic. Looks like we’ll be sub-titling that role.
The really exciting thing was casting the lead role of ‘Paul’ – Keith’s role. Craig and I had not spoken about it at all. Avoided it even. Sub-consciously we were both scared of giving that role away to someone who wasn’t Keith – but it’s not like there was an option if we were to move forward. First person on day one Maureen Webb brought in David Nykl. I had seen him in a stage-play a few years back. I knew that he’d been doing well for himself on Stargate Atlantis, but had never seen him on screen. He owned the role. It was nothing like what Keith would have done. It was exactly what we needed – a strong audition that shook us out of our pre-conceptions. Casting that role could have been a painful experience, but David saved us from that. We dutifully considered the other guys who came in, but David made it easy on us.

July 7th 2006
Craig and Shari and I drove up to the Okanagan to do a second round of scouting with David Jevons (now ‘DJ’ to avoid confusion with David Nykl.) Siobhan did a bunch of advance scouting of possible beachfront and forest. One of her finds – Bertam Park could be as many as four different locations for us. It was hit by the big forest fire in 2003 and while recovering has an amazing desolate look to the ravaged portions – will be a great stand in for Rattlesnake Island. The real Rattlesnake Island is too hard to get a crew to on our budget.

July 10th 2006
Craig has been cast in a substantial role in ‘The Englishman’s Boy.’ He’s going to be away in Saskatchewan for three of the last 8 weeks before we shoot in the fall. Luckily he’ll have a lot of downtime from shooting while there.

July 17th 2006
Craig was back in the Okanagan this weekend doing a casting session with Siobhan at CATO, the Centre for Arts and Technology. He stayed at the Jevons’ ranch in Penticton. Looks like the ranch will be production central while we are up there. I’ve reviewed the tapes and we’ve made our choices for the day players we’ll cast from the Okanagan.

August 4th 2006
Had a first read-through with the main ensemble and other Vancouver based cast this evening. Lots of fun. Good spirits.

August 11th 2006
DJ got word from the Union today. They declined our application for a waiver. No indication why. We meet all the stated requirements. Most frustratingly they gave us notification at 4:30, just as the office closes for the weekend, so we now have to stew in our own juices ‘til Monday. On top of that, Craig is getting on the plane to Saskatchewan this evening.

August 12th 2006
I know there is a lot of support in the acting community for this project – both because of Keith and in favour of the D.I.Y. spirit of it. I wonder how many signatures we can have in their inbox by Monday morning.

August 14th 2006
Over three hundred names. The vast majority of them UBCP members, many with additional personal notes attached declaring how important it is to support upstart indigenous production, so that perhaps someday our own industry might be as strong as the U.S. service provision that makes up most of the industry here. Sadly, the powers that be aren’t in the office today. That’s rather irritating. Not only do they wait to inform us just before the office closes, but they aren’t in the office on Monday!

August 15th 2006
Wow. Angry Union staff. Still not sure why we’ve been turned down. But we’ve been told that ‘the petition’ has ruined our chances of ever getting approval. Seems kind of like a childish reaction to me. We’ve also been told that ‘three hundred names means nothing’ and that it’s ‘just a drop in the bucket.’ I’m sure the Union members would be really happy to know that their individual opinions mean nothing to the staff – to say nothing of the contradiction that ‘three hundred names means nothing’ but it is enough to scuttle our chances of ever getting approval.

August 16th 2006
Now we’ve been told that we aren’t allowed to have Union members travel on a waiver agreement. I’m sure there’s some logic to this, but it would be nice if appeared in any of the literature about the waiver.
On the plus side, we’ve now been told that they are looking into possibilities which could work for us. Clock is ticking.

August 25th 2006
Next Monday is our self-imposed drop-dead date on a solution from the Union, but today we admitted that even that is too late. I’ll spend the weekend making calls to cast and crew telling them they have their September and October free. Shit.

August 29th 2006
The Union got back to us today with a specialized agreement. The “Membership Initiated Agreement.” I don’t know how realistic it is, but at least if we adhere to the letter, we can be confident we’ll get a ‘go ahead.’ But it’s too little, too late for now. Even the paperwork to get this together, let alone everything else we’ve put-off waiting for this news, could not be done in time for our scheduled shoot dates – even if today had been a reasonable drop-dead date.

December 11th 2006
Met with the Union staff today. Cooler heads have prevailed. We went through the M.I.P. and got questions answered, and expressed concerns about some of the realities within. Looks like we’ll be able to work it out by May.
In related news, since they turned us down, the Union has cancelled the waiver program entirely except for student productions – not their most popular move ever.

January 2007
Met with DJ to establish a preliminary ‘to do’ list as we get this thing back on the tracks for the Spring. May seems so soon all of a sudden. I have to admit, if we can’t get this done this time around, I’m finished. I have to move on to something new.

April 4th 2007
A new round of auditions. The change of dates caused us to lose several ensemble members. We have to re-cast the roles of ‘Leslie,’ ‘Sondra,’ and ‘Neville.’ If there was ever a good argument for watching the tape, we witnessed it today. For Leslie, Craig and I were both impressed in the room by two of the women we saw. There were a few other solid auditions for the part, but those two struck us as stand outs and we couldn’t agree on which would suit us best. So we watched the tape – and quickly discovered that one of the other women who we weren’t even discussing impressed us both as much or better than the other two. To top it all off, she’s an old friend. Hooray, Bronwen Smith will be our Lesley! Roger Haskett, who played Paul in the teaser we shot nearly two years ago was not available to audition last summer, but came out this round and did a hilariously effluvious Neville. For Sondra, Leanne Jijian Hume was the first woman we saw. When she left, we knew that we had our Sondra. No other potential Sondras really gave us what we needed. We even considered bringing in one more hand-picked possibility on a subsequent day so that we could feel like we were making a real choice, but in the end we agreed Leanne won the part, it was hers.

April 9th 2007
Spent another weekend in the Okanagan. One more round of auditions, some tech-scouting, meeting with potential crew-members in the Okanagan… but more exciting, we shot three of our simplest scenes. It gave us a chance to work through some protocol and get used to the P2 dataflow with a reduced version of our crew. We’re still working without a 1st A.D. Caroline Battista is stepping in for Vancouver, but in the Okanagan we have yet to nail someone down.
We shot our first scene in the Jevons’ Ranch garage, with my friend Gabe Newman from University coming in on short notice to play our fisherman, Buck, in the ‘Dramatic Recreation’ of his encounter with the Ogopogo. That was Friday night. Saturday was kind of rough as Craig and I stayed awake all of the previous night excited and giggling that we’d shot our first scene.
The Ranch is going to be an awesome place to stay.

April 27th 2007
Craig and I went and hand-submitted our M.I.P. application to the Union today. It has been a big headache, to be honest. Working out the detail of the partner contract so that it conformed with the Union’s requirements, but who am I kidding? That’s the game. It’s not like jumping through bureaucratic hoops isn’t going to be a part of running a film company in the future.

May 2nd 2007
Scott John, one of my oldest friends in the world has come on as an investor and is also taking care of a number of Vancouver production details. He arranged for Craig and I to come and look at the Vancouver Mail Processing Plant downtown as an option for a few remaining locations. Craig and I were skeptical, but damn if Scott wasn’t right. Most of our University scenes can be shot at the VMPP, as well as the police station and one of our faux ‘expert interviews.’

May 5th 2007
Day One of two days of rehearsal. Our second ‘first read-through.’ Final costume meetings. I think we’ve got a good group here. We’ll have a lot of fun. I need to start turning my head from producing to performing. Only days until we’re all in the Okanagan and my ‘to do’ list is, thankfully, getting very short.

May 6th 2007
Really feel like I’m fumbling around. I’ve had this script, this character, in front of me for years – why do I suddenly feel at such a loss?
While Craig and I were in rehearsal DJ managed to answer most of our remaining equipment issues… which was a pleasant relief. Coming out of the studio into the rain knowing that I could actually go home and get most of a night’s sleep to head into the last week of prep, rather than worry about where were getting more P2s and within our meager budget.

May 7th 2007
DJ left for the Okanagan today with the advance team. Most of what I have left to do here is baby-sit the office and answer the phone. I have to wrap up details with the VMPP, supervise the picking up of equipment and transport vehicles, and the assignment of remaining cast and crew to vehicles, but the latter is largely being organized by my sister, Tara.

May 9th 2007
Craig and Rob leave this evening. DJ called and let me know that he and Kevin had solved the issue of the puppet Ogopogo. He assured me weeks ago that they could handle it cheaply once up there. I’m glad it’s taken care of, the options we were looking at here just weren’t practical in our budget. Jeremy will be coming by the office tonight to do the build of the Ness-sled, out last remaining (and arguably most important) prop.

May 10th 2007
Okay, this is getting excruciating. My job has really boiled down to waiting for people dropping by to pick stuff up or drop stuff off. Trish will drop off the remainder of the properties and the main picture vehicle, all-dressed, tomorrow. Jeremy is finishing up the Ness-sled this afternoon. I’ve done the tiniest bit of running around picking up last-minute forgotten gee-gaws. I’ve even made sure all my personal stuff is packed – and I’ve still got over a day of sitting around before I’m scheduled to leave. I swear I’ll be choked if something surfaces that I could have been doing now – but most of the action is in the Okanagan now. I totally feel like a spare part.

May 11th 2007
Got a call from Brie, who is coming up from Oregon to work as a PA. She got turned back at the border. Great, down a set of hands on what was already a very under-manned crew. On the plus side, Craig sent word today that he has met with a guy in the Okanagan, Ian, who can be our 1st A.D. Thank god, that was getting dire. CATO has also donated use of their jib and dolly as they are between semesters. We’d been planning on using them on a spot basis, but now we’ll have them on hand full-time in case inspiration strikes. Gordon, who is playing Clive, arrives from Vancouver Island tonight. He has totally bought-in and drank the cool-aid. He’s coming to the Okanagan for the duration and doing whatever we need him to do, in addition to driving our main equipment trailer with his Volvo.
It occurred to me at about 4pm that we haven’t got official word from UBCP! I called immediately to get an out of office reply. This falls into the ‘you’ve got to be kidding me’ category. I called a few alternate numbers at the Union and left desperate messages. About ten minutes later I got a call. Turns out that we’d been approved, but no-one was informed before the appropriate messenger had gone on holidays.

May 12th 2007
Picked up the LX and Grip package with Gordon and Shari this morning – it was a little early coming, Gordon and I hit it off really well and talked late into the night. After we were loaded up, Shari hit the road directly. Gordon and I went back to the office to wait for the confirmations that everyone else was on the road who was supposed to be, with the passengers they were supposed to have. Gordon and I were the last two vehicles on the road – he with the equipment trailer, me in the picture vehicle – ‘The Juanabees van.’ He picked up David Nykl, and I was traveling alone. I had been meant to be traveling with Brie, but with no Brie… It actually worked out quite well. I caught up and passed Gordon and David twenty minutes before the Coquihalla toll-gate. Shortly thereafter I started talking to Keith – or to myself, depending on your perspective. It wouldn’t have happened with Brie there. In minutes I was crying like I haven’t in years, and I cried most of the way to Merritt. I guess I needed it. Worked out a lot of my bottled up tension and emotion.

May 13th 2007
Woke up early and had breakfast with Leanne on the porch watching the Ranch’s horses, and discussing the relationship between our characters. We were soon joined by David and Gordon.
After breakfast I did some running around with Gordon, up to Kelowna and back – lots more chat-time. He’s a great guy. We’re a bit ‘Mutt and Jeff.’ I think we got really lucky with him in our camp.
We barely made it back to the ranch for the third ‘First Read-through,’ this time with the Okanagan cast. It was great to see and hear all these people. It was great that so many showed up on Mother’s Day.
The Ranch is packed to the rafters with people. Kevin is sleeping behind a couch. I’m sleeping in the Juanabees van. We are hardly the only ones sleeping in odd places.

May 14th 2007
Bertram Park. The first shot of the film – not counting the advance shoot from May – is of Young Paul as a child with his home-made Ogopogo. It’s a great celebratory feel on the beach.
The day is chaos. Despite our efforts to get through some of the first-day teamwork issues by shooting some in May, things do not go smoothly at all. Most of the day is at the end of the dock. I spend most of my day on shore dealing with everything I can think of in order to help things go more easily… I have no idea if anything I did really had an appreciable impact, but by the end of the day I am totally exhausted.
It’s also the day that my niece, Kaz, is on-set. She demands a lot of my attention despite having a chat in advance about it.
Naturally we over-shoot like crazy on the first day. We go into the sixteenth hour. At least it’s behind us. We learn a lot.
Ian, while a good guy, and far from useless is not really ready to be a 1st A.D.
Our rotating Okanagan props-masters are not going to work – from here out it’s my on-set job (not counting acting, still doing scattered Producer things, and making decisions as the writer). It’s more to take on, but it’s what makes most sense, I was the one who worked most closely with Trish and Jeremy, no one in the Okanagan knows as much about the props as I do.

May 15th 2007
Media Day. Back at Bertram Park. Several Okanagan media outlets visit the set during our lunch break. We’re shooting at the far end of the park today. This is where the fire did the most damage. There is no cover, and our tents are small. Three crew members go down to sun exposure, including Shari. It’s a second brutal day in a row. I miss the worst of it as I’m not in the scene in question and have plenty of other things to get dome. Finally in the afternoon I get in front of the camera for my first scene. Having missed the morning, I feel like the rest of the ensemble is already ahead of me in camaraderie and character – luckily I don’t have much to do but stand and listen.
Before bed the camera crew informs me that they can’t read any of the data on the hard-drive. We may have lost two very tough days of footage. I ask them to keep the news from Craig until we know for sure, he doesn’t need the extra stress if it’s un-necessary.

May 16th 2007
Manteo Resort. Finally a day where I’m more of an actor than anything else, but it starts with a mad scramble to get everything dressed in time to be shot. I think I ran for nearly three hours straight. My knees were screaming in agony, but my head was shouting ‘this is awesome!’
Keith’s parents Clare and Lainie visited us on set today. Rebecca is also here – not only for media day yesterday, but we’ve cast her as a bitchy hotel clerk. She does a bang-up job.
Mid-day it comes to my attention that despite this being a much easier day than either of the previous two that there is mutiny afoot amongst the core crew. I feel like an idiot for being so out of touch with it thus far, but it’s clear to me that I have to get to work. Gradually over the day I speak to each of the individuals involved and pin-point what their issues are. For the most part I discover that the mood was exaggerated and nowhere near as universal as I was led to believe, but there are a few people who genuinely do need some concerns dealt with. I promise to get to work on those concerns if they can promise to forge onwards long enough for me to do so in the minute holes I have in my schedule.
After a relatively short day, we get back to the ranch to news that Russell, who was to arrive from Vancouver tomorrow has had a personal emergency. He cannot come. He has taken the initative to contact Alex Zahara who he knows we had also considered for the role. Alex is ready to be meet us in Kelowna by Noon tomorrow for his first scene. Not only is it pretty much already done for us, but we know Alex will be great. It’s a no brainer.
Time for Craig and I to chat.
I let him know that the footage is gone from Day One and almost all of Day Two. He knew it was in the air. We put a plan together to deal with the problem. There’s a chance someone can rescue the data, so before we start arranging a re-shoot, we’ll ship the drive to Vancouver for a quick assessment.

May 17th 2007
Shelter Bay Marina. A very fast day. And very fun.
Alex and I have a scene together. My first scene where I actually say something! Unfortunately it includes a line of techno-babble that I can only blame myself for writing in the first place. I can barely get it past my lips.
We also shoot the speed-boat scene. Very fun. Very fast. Lots of delighted hollering on my part. I didn’t have to act to pretend to be having an awesome time.
The mood on set raises in all ways. Everyone seems to be having a much better time.
Upon getting back to the Ranch we discover that ‘Captain Bob’ has booked a cruise Monday afternoon on the “Princess” the boat whose use we’ve had donated to the film. It is his livelihood, but damn! It echoes a situation that occurs late in the film – what is it about the process of making a movie being an analogue of the film itself? Great, we’re making ‘Moby Dick’ – which one of us is Ahab? Recall the whale drags him down to a watery death.

May 18th 2007
Today we shot in downtown Kelowna. The Sails public art sculpture is one of the few genuine and specific Okanagan landmarks in the film. I’m not in the scene, so I go and have ‘second breakfast’ with Bronwen and Roger. It’s a good chat, I’m glad to find out that I’m not the only one who is still trying to figure out where their character lives.
In the afternoon we shoot traveling shots of the Juanabees van on the Okanagan Lake Bridge. It’s rush hour on a holiday weekend. I’m driving. It’s got to be the most un-cool filming I’ve ever done in my life. Stressful as all hell, and it seems we are pissing off the entire population of the West bank as they try to get home.
Oddly, when we finish the scene and I park the van, standing on the curb with her jaw at her knees is an ex-girlfriend I haven’t heard from in years. I hardly have time to say ‘hi’ – luckily we have a high-school reunion approaching next month.
We end the day with a University scene in a classroom at CATO. I have more to do this time, but again it’s still pretty much secondary to the scene. We leave most of our stuff there as there is underground locked parking and we’ll be back tomorrow to shoot in the underground lot.

May 19th 2007
The underground was great fun. A goofy set of scenes. It was also nice to have so much room, yet not be moving around or worrying about interruptions by the public. Conveniently it was also the first day that we haven’t been shooting under the sky, and it chose today to rain. A good light mood around the ranch tonight. Leanne, Craig, Shari and Roger all have loved ones who have come to visit for the holiday weekend. Evenings at the ranch have always been a good time for unwinding – some beer, some wine. The heads gathering at the end of the fence. Not to mention Janet and Garner. They show up every night at the ranch – often before we do, but no on our shorter days – and have a full and varied meal made for us in reasonably short order. I don’t know if they’re gifted cooks or if it just seems that way ‘cause we’re always hungry and thankful that it’s not us doing the prep. Life at the Ranch has become a very special part of the shoot, despite the fact that we’re practically sleeping in each other’s suitcases. Tonight we have a bit more room to relax. Tomorrow is a ‘day off.’

May 20th 2007
My ‘Day Off’ is spent finishing the assembly of the Ness-sled support equipment. Pretty much takes me all day. I’m sure I could have recruited some help, but I was happy to just plug away at it myself. It gave me time to reflect on what I’m doing in front of the camera. It has occurred to me that I’m in a different film from everyone else. The only day that is likely to have suffered in any way from that is yesterday, but even by then I was bringing my level up from what had been in my head. Funny how six other ensemble members playing at a different pitch from what I’ve envisioned for years can out of necessity change what I’m doing. There’s definitely a happy medium between what I imagined and where they are that ‘Stewart’ can live in. I’m not used to being the straight man – definitely some adjustment to be made.
We’ve got word that there is a chance that we can get the data off the original hard drive (we have bought another one) but it hadn’t been fully backed up when it crashed and we’re going to have to go back to Bertram Park. We have to re-live the two most hellish days we’ve had. Great. At least we don’t have to re-shoot everything, and we’ve got past the ‘too precious’ and over-shooting stages. We should be able to get it all in one day.

May 21st 2007
An early start so we can be done before the cruise. We shoot the aftermath of the Ness-sled disaster. Finally I have a scene with some meat to it. We also shoot a few small scenes and get some establishing footage of the boat. It’s a light day, which is good because we really need to learn how to work together in the confined domain of the boat, but it comes fairly quickly.
Even with a long lunch we are done so far in advance that it seems we can shoot something that wasn’t on the schedule. Alex, David and My big scene in the wheelhouse was scheduled for next week, but we have all we need. The three of us sit down with the script, plough through our lines and figure out how the scene lives on the set. It feels great. We finish the day one scene up, I feel like I’m finally getting to act in this film and the tone on set has clearly turned around for the better.

May 22nd 2007
Back at Bertram Park.
We don’t know where we’ll shoot it, but the ‘press conference’ scene was going to be shot at the Summerland Yacht Club today. We’ll get it in Vancouver… somewhere.
Re-shooting the park goes well. We finish mid-afternoon. It certainly helps that Ian is starting to come into his own by now. He still needs good support to keep the set running, but it’s no longer the clown-show it was on Day One.
David and Gordon’s scene on the end of the dock is going to be really touching.

May 23rd 2007
Summerland Yacht Club. Back on the boat. It is crazy windy. But it works. Today is one of two days of shooting the Ness-sled’s ignominious maiden voyage. The wind is blowing David’s already out of control hair all over the place. It makes the build up seem all epically dramatic – should work great.
Back at the ranch (it was only a matter of time before I gave in to that phrase) Shari sits down with me and gives me some bad news. She’s been called to a paid gig in New York. We knew this could happen. She’ll shoot tomorrow, but then she’s got to go. She’s also got four days booked when we’re back in Vancouver. We need to find someone to cover for her back home. For here it looks like it’s going to be Patrick Henry’s job. He’s been operating our ‘A’ cam and working most closely with her. He’ll also have additional support from Rob whose been op-ing ‘B’ cam as the videographer who appears in the film, documenting the expedition. No doubt now that we’re feeling like more of a ‘well-oiled machine’ the rest of the crew will be good support to Pat too.

May 24th 2007
A blistering day. We’re shooting mostly in the parking lot and on the wharf today. Pretty uneventful really. We finish early, but I have to go back a few hours later to dress the boat for tomorrow’s wedding scene. Luckily I have some assistants arriving. When I get back to the Ranch from dressing the boat I head up the hill with Bronwen, Leanne and David to Bronwen’s brother in-law’s place to listen to their band practice. On our way there, a run-away horse trots past us on the road… and then turns into the ranch! We run back only to see the aftermath of the panic which occurred on the porch – the horse ran right through where everyone was having dinner!
We piled into vehicles and went off looking for a thrown rider. We found her pretty soon. She was fine. We directed her to her horse and made our way up to the rehearsal. It was a surreal, but excellent evening.

May 25th 2007
Unbelievable.
We lost the Ness-sled. Too many cooks in the kitchen. In an ironically too-much-like-the-film manner we lost the Ness-sled. I know I’ll be telling this tale until the day I die.
The morning was spent shooting the Ness-sled going into the water. We got what we absolutely needed, but then we went to shoot the underwater shot of the same. There were too many different versions of what the plan was, and a perfect storm of miscommunication hit. Everyone managed to be acting upon the one element of their own version of what was going on to ensure disaster. It’s a long story to get into in detail, but suffice to say that we were in WAY deeper water than planned, the sled was not only not properly tethered – it wasn’t tethered at all.
When it dawned on me that the Ness-sled was gone forever, I looked up and there was David with a shit-eating grin on his face. “Well, that was ironic.” I muttered with equal parts amusement and fury. God I hope the EPK team was rolling on that, ‘cause already there are a half-dozen Rashomon-esque versions of what happened. I’d love some clarity.
In the evening we shot the wedding. Possibly our biggest actual scene in the film – the most extras, long, lots of lights and at night. We weren’t able to get out of there until 1am. Luckily there isn’t much left to get tomorrow.

May 26th 2007
A short day for most of us. Bronwen was on a plane to a wedding by mid-afternoon. Most of the rest of us were wrapped. A small team went back to Bertram again for some pick-ups.
Those of us who were wrapped hung out at the ranch. Mostly in silence watching the horses. Every now and then one of us would mutter something like ‘cherish this’ and there would be a mumbled chorus of agreement.
Definitely these two plus weeks in the Okanagan have been a special time. This was supposed to be the hard part of shooting this film… and we’ve made it.
Some teary goodbyes. Siobhan was with us for every day of the shoot. She became so much more than a casting director for us. One of the many who can genuinely say that the film would not have happened without them. And Ted Farkas – god I wish I’d mentioned Ted before now. He was really special to us. He’s a retired accountant who just decided to toss his hat in with this crew of ‘head in the sky’ film-makers. Again he was there every day and did what ever we needed him to do. If I’m not mistaken, he left the set at the end of the day quite abruptly because he was starting to get choked-up and perhaps didn’t us to see him that vulnerable.

May 27th 2007
Leanne and I drove back to Vancouver today. Actually all of the cast is traveling today. There is still a day of shooting in the Okanagan, plus a schwack of clean up, but someone needs to be in Vancouver to get things in place for once everyone returns.

May 28th 2007
Uh oh. I feel a cold coming on. Damned change of climate.

May 30th 2007
I’ve found options for the locations that we need to add to Vancouver – except for a marina and a secluded beach… if it wasn’t for the loss of those first two days, we might have been able to push through and get the scenes for those more easily in the Okanagan. In any case, the rest will get us through the first week, and then we have several things secure for a few days before we need to have the last pieces in place.

June 2nd 2007
Well, the cold hit me like a tonne of bricks. I was of little use for the last two days. But this morning we shot the bar-scene up the street from my place at my local watering hole – Falconetti’s. Leanne’s husband, Bob, then got us into his school as a good alternate place for the ‘press conference.’
On the first take of Paul’s breakdown, David brought a tear to my eyes. A combination of missing Keith and David putting it out of the park – leaving me as the writer feeling guilty that I have done this to this man, this fictional character. I caught a shuddering breath which drew a sharp look from Caroline – a well deserved one, I was much louder than I expected to be.
We finished up the day – it was a long one – at Craig’s agent’s where we shot the Tony Hashimoto scenes. As predicted Aki Nagai was spellbinding.
At the end of the day Shari pulled me aside. She’s shooting tomorrow, but is then off the project permanently. Luckily tomorrow we have Naim Sutherland coming by to check out the set. He was going to step in for the four days Shari was going to be gone, but perhaps we can convince him to stay for the duration.
It was nice to have an experienced 1st A.D. on set too. Caroline is awesome and with all due respect to Ian, who did come a long way, there wasn’t a crew member who didn’t comment upon it.

June 3rd 2007
VMPP. Another day where I get to be nothing more than a crew-member. After all my grousing about not getting to do any meaty acting at the start, today was kind of nice.
Gordon is sleeping on my couch for the Vancouver portion of the shoot. We woke up this morning and hauled the trailer down to the postal plant. Scott met us there and we loaded into the basement.
These are the earliest scenes in the movie we are shooting today.
Scott had his roommate Jill cater the weekend for us. Janet and Garner had us eating well in the Okanagan, but I think Jill is out-doing them. Spectacular.
Janet, Keith’s wife came and played a small role today. That was cool.
Mark Leiren-Young, our original story editor, also joined us for a cameo. But the real gem was Caroline. When we were doing a schedule shuffle a few days back we realized that there had been a miscommunication with our actor playing the University Dean, she wouldn’t be available on the only day we could shoot her. Caroline declared that she wanted to get back into acting. I was amused and laughed. I think she thought I was scoffing and immediately started reading the scene. She was good. And we had little time to look for other solutions, so this made it pleasantly simple. Today she was great, very belittling and funny.

June 4th 2007
Day Two at the VMPP. Gawd! Bertam Park was hot, but holy heck! The classroom we were shooting in most of the day today was outrageously hot. A long day.
The VMPP has been good to us though. It was an exciting place to shoot and we were able to shoot in places which may never be filmed again as the building has been sold and is almost certainly going to be razed.

June 5th 2007
Sizer house. The first of four days in one location. We’ve never been able to settle in like this anywhere before.
Today we shot-out the basement.
The highlight for me was the ‘going to bed’ scene between me and Roger. There were a few things that had to happen in it, but for the most part he and I were allowed to just play. Every take we took it a bit farther, and every time Craig called ‘cut’ the release of laughter was bigger. The final take had a happy accident as in the last moment a pile of previously un-noticed books which must have been being agitated a bit in each take chose that last moment to collapse upon my head. We had to call it done then, there’s no way we’d duplicate that moment. I just hope there’s a take where the fact that everytime I turn away from the camera I’m laughing my guts out isn’t obvious.
Most fun I’ve had in a scene since we shot the speed boat.

June 7th 2007
Our second day of shooting upstairs at the Sizer house. Fairly short day there actually. By mid afternoon we were shooting in the forest, and then breaking before moving on to the beach for a guerilla night shoot.
The campfire beach party scene was a challenge. The first part needed to be at sunset, and the clouds were not co-operating. When we finally got a good break in the clouds we had about 20 minutes before the sun disappeared behind the horizon. Somehow we managed to shoot a four-minute scene about seven times in that window – even with an ill-timed visit by the beach patrol. The second half of the scene was easier to shoot. It was pretty free-form and was shot by campfire light after dark.

June 8th 2007
Our exterior day at Sizer house. I totally screwed up. My costume got set aside last night where I wouldn’t forget it. Well, guess what? I guess I could blame my head – the cold is getting worse. I really can barely think straight, but either way it is still me who blew it.
In Vancouver traffic it’s over a half-hour drive each way. I also didn’t notice until I’d been on set for over an hour. It was scheduled to be a long day already.
Apart from the pressure of trying to get everything done the day went mostly smoothly. One complex jib-shot took a lot of takes to get right.
Gordon again breaking hearts with his wounded Clive, dancing with Christina on the lawn.
With one scene left to shoot we were pretty much running out of light. We could go for it and hope for the best, or we could re-invent the scene and move back inside. Craig and Naim, on Caroline’s recommendation, opted for the latter and concocted a one-er for a three page scene. The shot is now a focus-pulling tour de force… or I imagine it is. I have yet to see the print.

June 13th 2007
Four days off to allow for people’s schedules – we thought that things would be easier once we got to Vancouver, but real life is seriously impinging upon our ability to keep momentum.
Four days has allowed my cold to get a bit better. I think I passed the zenith yesterday – the pressure peaked and eased in one day, but got bad enough in that time that it was loosening teeth on the side where my sinus was worst! Poor Gordon has had to live with my hacking and grousing over my misery.
Four days was barely enough to find a marina in, Craig found one yesterday while I was convalescing. But it’s going to cost us. We can muster the money, but it’s not really in the budget.
Today we shot on Seymour mountain. It was the Juanabees Van’s last day. Up and down the mountain four times in a day. Three different scenes.
Then we splintered. Craig went and shot Neville finding civilization and getting kicked in the shin. The only thing on hand to protect his leg was a rolled up copy of the UBCP agreement. As it was stuffed into his sock Roger quipped “this is the most the Union has protected me in years!”
Meanwhile, David, Fabrice, Rob and I got some second unit footage of the van in transit before we lose it forever. David was like a little kid directing shots. We found some nice stuff – I’m sure the prettiest stuff will prove to be the least appropriate for the film.

June 14th 2007
Janet joined us on set for the last day.
DJ nixed paying for the marina. So Craig found a rock jetty and I re-wrote the scene in the afternoon. As night fell we met and began to invent how we were going to shoot the thing. DJ and Naim went and bought a bunch of 1K flashlights. We shot the entire scene practically, with the team using flashlights to find Paul in the dark. At the beginning of the night I was thinking that we were just shooting this so that we’d have something to edit in and that we’d take another crack at it in reshoots under better circumstances. But by the end of the night I was thinking that we got it. I think there is a great little scene there.
We wrapped around 2am with very little ceremony. I didn’t have the energy to be emotional. I took a brief moment kneeling in the sand to take in the sensation, but that was all I could manage. I don’t think I had another take in me. By the end it was all I could do to croak out my lines. Those four altitude changes yesterday were brutal on my cold. Shooting at midnight at the beach isn’t going to make things any better. I’m sure it’s not going to kill me, but it does appear as though I am Ahab. We may have got the picture, but this film got me too.
I suppose that we managed to finish pretty strongly — I am sick as a dog, but apart from that, strongly – and while there were inevitable issues to deal with along the way, we feel really good about most of what we accomplished in this past month. The fact that things have gone well perhaps makes this less emotionally charged than the uncertainty of the beginning was. Back when we were told that we were idiots and that what we were attempting was impossible.

But there we go. We are done. …shooting.

Apropos of Nothing - Stewart's Music

2007-08-08T15:09:00.000-07:00

I'm a bit shocked by how long this has taken me to do...

Wait! Back up... context on this wanky indulgence:

Before going away to shoot in the Okanagan I filled up two MP3 players with music. The first, a convenient and (key word!) little iPod Nano. I filled it with a selection of my absolute favourite songs of all time - a nice little audio oasis for when I needed it. Somewhere in the second week I needed to wash some clothes (for the record it was my second laundry of the trip)... when they came out of the dryer - there was my Nano... TOO SMALL TO HAVE NOTICED in the bottom of some cargo shorts pocket. It was nice and clean, it even took a charge again - once, and then died forever. Boo hoo.

The second player was a cheap-o 512mb player which I filled up with somgs that I specially selected as "Stewart's Music." I actually took quite a bit of time in selecting the songs, and there was a lot of criteria - much of which I've forgotten.
I can say this:
I think I nixed any song over four minutes.
I spent no effort in trying to pick songs with lyrical content that had any relation to the film - which doesn't mean there aren't song which could be construed as relating to the film. ("Is She Really Going OUt with Him?" springs to mind among several.) It's pretty inevitable when you consider the number of songs out there that are about unrequited love or disenfranchisement.

It has always struck me as odd that in an otherwise balanced mix (within a certain range) that there are not only FOUR Husker Du songs (The Clash is the only other band with four songs.) two of which are covers, but there are two covers of Husker Du songs played by other bands. I'm not even much of a Husker Du fan!
There are also a number of songs on here which also would have qualified as 'all-time favourite' for inclusion on the other player ("London Calling" for example.) but were disqualified as I already included them on the smaller player.

Musically there's some unity to the songs - it's kind of hard not to see that, but there's also some range. Dust Brothers and The Animals are worlds apart. Dead Can Dance and Anthrax? Not even close. Black Sabbath and Billy Bragg... you get the idea.
When I was feeling like I was lost and out of character I'd often turn to the music for inspiration. Sometimes the feel of the music itself led me somewhere - though that was usually the easiest course and not the most interesting. Other times it was the lyrics, which as I had tired to ignore that when programming the player, was often very random and interesting and often served up the occasional thought that was simultaneously obvious in retrospect and provided more depth than the surface-skimming I'd been stuck with.

In any case, it has been close to two months since we wrapped and I really wish I'd had the time to refresh the music in the player by now... though I haven't. But it is now time. I'm really starting to tire of this mix. But for posterity I'll leave the track listing here, perhaps there's a cool discovery for someone else out there:

(One last disclaimer: Don't ask me to explain the occassionally alphabetical nature - I haven't got a clue why I put it on in that order, or why any given artist's songs are all clumped together (with the inexplicable exception of Bootsauce), not shuffled - I just did it this way, that's all.)

101ers - 5 Star Rock 'n' Roll Petrol
Age of Electric - I Don't Mind
Age of Electric - Remote Control
Alice in Chains - Them Bones
Alice in Chains - Would?
Alien Ant Farm - Smooth Criminal
The Animals - We Gotta Get Out of this Place
Anthrax - I'm the Man
Urge Overkill - Never Known a Girl Like You Before
The Flaming Lips - Buggin'
Art of Dying - Get Through This
The Trashmen - Surfin' Bird
The Ataris - I'll Remember You
Trebel Charger - American Psycho
The Winstons - Amen Brother
Modern English - I Melt With You
XTC - The Mayor of Simpleton
The Violent Femmes - Blister in the Sun
The Violent Femmes - Kiss Off
Tool - Lost Keys
Tin Machine - Baby Universal
Tin Machine - Sacrifice Yourself
The Replacements - Attitude
The Replacements - I Hate Music
Porno for Pyros - Tahitian Moon
Porno for Pyros - Pets
Blur - Song 2
Bootsauce - Scratching the Whole
Mollie's Revenge - Humble
Mollie's Revenge - I Wanna Be
Ministry - TV II
The Monks - Johnny B. Rotten
The Monks - I Ain't Getting Any
The Monks - Nice Legs Shame About the Face
Primus - Jerry was a Race Car Driver
Sam Roberts - This is How I Live
Screaming Blue Messiahs - I Wanna Be a Flintstone
Rollmop - Motra Diem
Rollmop - Picture Perfect
The Sex Pistols - Holidays in the Sun
The Sex Pistols - Liar
Sonic Youth - Lights Out
Split Enz - Hard Act to Follow
Split Enz - What's the Matter with You?
Split Enz - I Got You
Sponge - Go Speed Racer Go
Sons of Freedom - You're No Good
Sons of Freedom - Super Cool Wagon
The Strokes - Hard to Explain
The Stooges - Cock in My Pocket
The Stooges - Down on the Street
The Subways - Rock & Roll Queen
The Subways - In Love
The Subways - With You
Public Image Ltd. - Seattle
Public Image Ltd. - Public Image
Pulp - We Are the Boys
Three Doors Down - Kryptonite
Mother Love Bone - This is Shangri-La
Nerf Herder - Sorry
The Ramones - I Want to Be Sedated
The Ramones - Blitzkrieg Bop
The Ravonettes - That Great Love Sound
The Ravonettes - Untamed Girls
Midnight Oil - Read About it
Midnight Oil - I Don't Wanna Be the One
Manic Street Preachers - Suicide is Painless
The Meat Puppets - Lake of Fire
Pluto - Black Lipstick
MC5 - Kick Out the Jams (Live)
Jane's Addiction - Standing in the Shower Thinking
Jane's Addiction - My Time
Jane's Addiciton - Been Caught Stealing
Lenny Kravitz - Are You Gonna Go My Way?
Kula Shaker - Hush
Les Dales Hawerchuk - Dale Hawerchuk
Les Dales Hawerchuk - Abuse de Moe
Les Dales Hawerchuk - Mais Ou est Donc Carnior?
Husker Cu - Sunshine Superman
Husker Du - Love is All Around
Husker Du - New Day Rising
Husker Du - Never Talking to You Again
The Headstones - Unsound
The Headstones - Fuck You
The Headstones - When Something Stands for Nothing
Harry Gregson-Williams - Training Montage
Harry Gregson-Williams - Spygame Theme
Gordon Downie - We're Hardcore
Gob - Oh! Ellen
Gob - Give Up the Grudge
Gob - I Hear You Calling
Goldfinger - Is She Really Going Out with Him?
Frank Black and the Catholics - Jaina Blues
Frank Black and the Catholics - Western Star
Frank Black - Old Black Dawning
Frank Black - Brackish Boy
Ex-Models - We Can't Put it into Words
Faith No More - From Out of Nowhere
Faith No More - Be Aggressive
Faith No More - Easy
The Faces - Ooh-La-La
Evanescence - Heart Shaped Box
Evanescence - Everybody's Fool
Evanescence - Going Under
The Eels - Souljacker Pt. 1
The Eels - That's Not Really Funny
The Eels - Mr. E's Beautiful Blues
Eagles of Death Metal - I Only Want You
Eagles of Death Metal - You Keep Talkin'
Eagles of Death Metal - SanBerdoo Sunburn
The Clash - Should I Stay or Should I go?
The Clash - London Calling
The Clash - Rudie Can't Fail
The Clash - Death or Glory
Bootsauce - Masterstroke
Catherine Wheel - Don't Wanna Know if You are Lonely
Catherine Wheel - Show Me Mary
Collective Soul - Gel
The Cult - Wildflower
The Cult - Rain
Devo - Through Being Cool
Concrete Blonde - Days and Days
Cypress Hill - Insane in the Membrane
Dead Can Dance - Ocean
Dead Can Dance - African Journey
Dead Kennedys Anarchy for Sale
Dead Kennedys - Too Drunk to Fuck
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Nature Boy
The Offspring - Next to You
The Offspring - Nothing from Something
Panic! At the Disco - The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage
Panic! At the Disco - Time to Dance
Papa Roach - Last Resort
Papa Roach - Scars
Paul Westerberg - Waiting for Somebody
Paul Westerberg - Someone I Once Knew
Lou Reed - The Raven
The Dropkcik Murphys - Dirty Water (Live)
The Dropkick Murphys - For Boston
The Dropkick Murphys - The Wild Rover
The Dead Milkmen - Punk Rock Girl
Comeback Kid - Wake the Dead
The Buzzcocks - Ever Fallen in Love?
The Beastie Boys - Intergalactic
The Beastie Boys - Sabotage
Chalk Circle - This Mourning
Billy Bragg - A New England
Billy Squier - Everybody Wants You
Billy Talent - Standing in the Rain
The Black Halos - Some Things Never Fall
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Love Burns
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Black Flag - Rise Above
Dust Brothers - Corporate World
Ming Tea - Daddy Wasn't There
American H-Fi - The Art of Losing
The Arctic Monkeys - I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor

- Kennedy

Goodbye Hitler of Green Gables

2007-06-15T16:00:00.000-07:00

It’s the day after. Time to take down the tents and sweep out the cages.

Last night around 2AM, Craig declared “Ladies and Gentlemen, that’s a wrap on
the Beast of Bottomless Lake!” I had a very brief moment of emotion – sadness and relief – but I had somehow expected it to be more. I figure that I had anticipated that moment so many times that I had, by the time it actually
happened, already processed those emotions. We picked up our things and headed for the cars. Shook some hands and said “see you in the morning” or “see you
on Sunday” – depending upon who was talking.

I ordered Craig to take today off. So far all evidence suggests that for the most part he has.

Today we inventoried equipment and returned the various bits and pieces. Lights and grip equipment, mics and of course our equipment trailer.

We got a great deal from U-Haul on a trailer. You may be familiar with the current U-Haul corporate image: each of their vehicles has a painting on the side of it, each one representing a landmark from some place in North America. Wyoming: Devil’s Tower. The VLA in Virginia; the CN Tower in Ontario and… as appeared on our trailer… Anne of Green Gables, except a previous renter had spray-painted a Hitler moustache on her — something which continued to amuse us right through to the end of shooting. I hope someone has a photo of it [image below right courtesy of the author].

I drove Gordon out to the ferry, and on the way home had a little chat with Keith. I’d had a chat with Keith on my solo trip to the Okanagan which made me cry. It had been a good way to start the production. I figured I end it the same way. It wasn’t as emotional as the first talk had been. Not even close really. I suppose that we managed to finish pretty strongly — I am sick as a
dog, but apart from that, strongly – and while there were inevitable issues to deal with along the way, we feel really good about most of what we accomplished in this past month. The fact that things have gone well perhaps makes this less emotionally charged than the uncertainty of the beginning was.

But there we go. We are done. …shooting.

— Kennedy
Writer Dude

The World's Biggest Steel Welded Building!

2007-06-05T15:41:00.000-07:00

Or Vancouver's biggest postage stamp helicopter landing pad? David/Fabrice had a few more descriptions...

I was lucky enough to be able to help out with the weekend shoot at the Vancouver Post Office building, so I thought I would throw down a few notes about my experience.

First a little background on who I am and how I fit in this picture: I have been writing screenplays and short stories for too many years to mention. I have shot many short films/videos since I was a teenager and have always dreamed of working in the film industry. My first passion was for makeup effects, but that soon turned to writing… fast forward many years to 1995. I met Craig through our mutual friend Martin Conde, with whom I had written and shot a few shorts. Craig and I hit it off and we started writing together (Craig - remember the script about three friends that decide to smuggle drugs to fund a movie about three friends smuggling drugs to fund a movie idea? Still has legs baby!)

Anyway that script was a bit too ambitious, so Craig and I wrote Jerry's Day, a feature about a guy turning 30 who is having relationship-family-friendship issues. We shot the movie over the summer of 1999 with Craig directing and me operating the camera. I didn't have much camera experience and the equipment we were using wasn't very good so the sound and picture quality wasn't quite there, although the actors gave fantastic performances, the crew was great and the story itself was pretty solid. I was stressed out the whole time thinking that I was not doing a good enough job for what the project deserved, and by the end of it Craig and I were barely speaking (my fault…). Even with all the problems we had, the experience is still one the highlights of my life.

The only advice I can give everyone that is working on this project is to keep going and stay as positive as you can, even in high stress/problem times. You will look back at these weeks with a HUGE amount of pride in the future, so keep going!!! As for Jerry's Day, we made a preview/trailer but that was as far as it got. I still have the digital tapes waiting to be edited in case anyone out there wants to give it a try - contact me through Craig. Really. I'm serious!

When Craig and Kennedy started working on this project, I was thrilled and jealous at the same time. I offered to do whatever I could to help out, except I was broke and was working full time so I didn't have much to offer. My wife Kerry did manage to get her Dad to donate the use of his house for part of the shoot, so that was something. But then Craig said he was shooting on the weekend! Yeahoo! I could help out after all!!!

Although it took a little persuading to get my wife and kids to agree to lose me for a weekend… I was able to help out at the post office.

How was the shoot? In on one word - HOT! Temperature, quality of work, some of the crew… it covers it all. The dolly shots using a mail cart were very cool. I actually got to be an extra for a scene!

As a crew member I only managed to screw up one take by being caught by the camera, so the damage was minimal. Unless of course, that was THE TAKE, and I'll feel guilt for the rest of my life.

Big thanks to Jill and Scott for being so amazing — Scott arranged for the locations, helped out with everything as a crew member (and extra!) and Jill and Elaine provided four star meals for everyone. I like food. I spent lots of time on Sunday snacking, but mostly during the scene in the meeting room where the temperature was hovering about 110. I'm sure some people sweated-out a few pounds over those hours! Well, I gained them back to balance it all out.

I'm excited to be able to help out again on Wednesday, and I'll be the first in line at the theatre when it comes out!

GO POGO GO!

— Kevin Bennett

A Speech from the Father of the Groom

2007-06-01T03:08:00.000-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to thank Lara’s father for allowing me a couple of minutes to say a few words, it’s just very sad that he can’t be here with us this evening, but please be assured that both my wife and I will be visiting him at the Intensive Care Unit first thing in the morning after giving a statement to Transport Canada.

Apart from that unfortunate incident — well, actually plus several others — what a wonderful day it was!

Considering my wife and I only met last month, at the Ramala Ranch resort (with much thanks to the Craig March dating agency, which certainly now comes with our full endorsement, what a perfect match. Craig and both his researchers Kennedy and David certainly do there homework, cleverly financing their company operation by collecting huge amounts of used beer cans — which incidentally must have been taking up the best part of 5 acres at the ranch — anyway, I digress), my wife and I never thought we would see our little Damien getting married… quite so soon… my how time flies!

I must say that we both just loved the ceremony, we noticed all the small touches, even the Commissioner and his resemblance to Patrick Swayze.

But I must take my hat off to the chef, the food was first class. I particularly enjoyed the little gummy cherry flavoured feet… actually I’m still picking them out of my teeth! And brewing a late night pot of coffee in the ladies’ wash room of the yacht club, after the failure of the boat’s generator, was a challenge to say the least! And you didn’t catch me, ladies!

Well, I think I’ve had my few minutes, I know many of you have to travel back to Vancouver.

I would like to add my thanks to all the staff who made today such a success, particularly the ambulance crew.

Finally, just like everybody else here today, we are both so looking forward to seeing the photos and video of Lara and Damien’s special day, particularly all those special little moments that the video-grapher is so clever at capturing.

So, once again, please join me in raising your glasses… Ladies and Gentlemen, Lara and Damien.

— Jerry Mason
‘Father of the Groom’

Mother of the Bride Played by Large-Hearted Actor

2007-05-29T17:02:00.000-07:00

I remember my audition way back last fall; I am fast approaching the half century mark and hoped to get the part of Paul's mom, Anna. I thought it might be a stretch, but I was feeling every bit of my age that day after a game of squash the night before. Thought I could pull it off… but no. I must say I have never been turned down for a part in such a nice way before; thank-you Craig.

I was basking in the glow of his gently and ever-so-slightly backhanded compliment (he was, after all, telling me "no"), when he suggested the part of the bride's mother. ‘Hmmm’, I thought, ‘drive 3 hours to deliver one line? Hmmm.’ I was about to say "no thanks" and, in fact, I think I actually uttered the words, when I noticed Siobhan, casting director extraordinaire, doing something profound with one eyebrow; her eyes seemed to be boring a hole right through my head. I quickly reassessed the situation and a refrain from my past played in my head: ‘no small parts, only small actors’…

"Sure! Sounds like fun" I said, grateful to see Siobhan's eyebrow settle back down.

And so, Friday May 25, I drove down and met some of the people at the Jevon ranch... I was delighted to meet my husband and daughter, her fiancé and his parents, all cast-mates from our hilarious wedding scene on the ‘Love Boat’. However, it seemed like a funny twist of fate that my "husband" (the talented Ray Bailey) and I — who are both a tad vertically challenged — had a daughter (gorgeous Jenn Kirkbride) who towered over us by at least a foot. I suppose it can happen, nutrition being what it is these days…

I had a fabulous time, met some wonderful people, and got to watch some very talented professionals work.

Hmmm… drive 3 hours to deliver one line? In a heart beat. Siobhan, thank-you! And thanks for the opportunity Craig and Kennedy. Your movie rocks!

— Kathy Rollheiser
Mother of the Bride

Jedi Master Sound Technician Speaks

2007-05-23T19:43:00.000-07:00

I sleep in the living room and I try to wake up before the majority of the populous awake for the day. This particular morning I had no such success. So I awoke to people talking and eating their morning bowls of cereal. I attempt to shake off the tiredness while Pat laughs at me from the breakfast table. I reach up and drink the glass of water above my head. This makes Pat laugh even harder as I am hidden behind a couch and all he sees is an arm grasping for a glass of water.

After breakfast and packing all the gear we need for the day of shooting, we depart the ranch, (which is particularly beautiful this morning) and head down the road to the Summerland Yacht Club. The lake today is calm and quite. A lake of glass.

We arrive and begin to set up along the dock. Luke and myself unpack the sound gear and begin the set-up. After the gear is ready, we do some stretching and kicking (we're Jedi Master sound technicians).

When I originally signed onto this project, I was assigned to "do whatever needs to be done Production Assistant" and I did some random things near the beginning, but eventually I became the "boom operator" and I have to admit that it got very old very fast. My saving grace was a few days after Luke arrived for the second time. After endless compliments on how "Fantastic" my "Boom" skills were, he decided that he was a "Jedi Master Sound Guy" and that he was going to train me in the ways which are right and just. I gladly took this challenge upon my shoulders. Within a day or two, I had become what I had always wanted to be: "Extreme Shaolin Jedi Boom Master Extraordinaire" [photo, right].

Anyway, where was I…? Oh yes: We had everything set up, we had finished our stretches, and we were ready for the day. We blew through all the scenes before lunch, and then got to partake in some delicious cake for Bronwen's birthday.

After the fine meal we went back to work, and everything went smoothly until Melanie Blackwell, who is playing the peg-leg princess, lost her tiara in the lake after casting it out into the water on the end of a fishing line in an attempt to catch the Ogopogo with it. We all had a good chuckle over that and moved on.

When we finished all the shots for the day, a bunch of us were standing around waiting for Captain Bob to show up in his slow-ass boat. He was supposed to be at the marina at 1:00PM I believe, and I think he actually showed up at 4:30 or 5:00. The plus side of this situation was that I got some hilarious footage of the gang goofing around and playing games. And Kennedy killed me with his mind powers (I forgot to mention that I have taken it upon myself to shoot the unofficial behind-the-scenes ‘making of…’. Although I do hope that it'll get used for something, like… uhhh… I don't know… on the DVD… huh, Craig? What do you say? I guess we'll have to cross that bridge after I've finished editing it). Needless to say, Captain Bob did show up in his boat eventually, and we all took off back to the ranch. I rode with Kennedy and I got some superb driving shots of him rocking out to music.

Before I get into the events that transpired in the evening, I have to say that staying at the Jevons' Ranch with all the crew and cast is by far one of the best experiences I've ever had. It's like summer camp, but we get to drink lots of beer, and we laugh a whole lot more. Every person on this project is amazing, and I feel very privileged to have met them, and even more privileged to get to hang out with them on a daily basis and share this experience of making a movie.

This particular evening I was feeling a little more tired than usual and after dinner I had a shower and was taking it easy, — I should've started writing this blog — but I was beginning to fall asleep on the “La-Z-Boy®” and the dream world was calling my name. In the back of my head I start to hear a commotion; could I be dreaming? Hardly. Raised voices, yelling, the heavy beat of horse hoofs, you know, the usual, (horses running outside is common place since we're on a horse ranch) but then Pat comes running into the house.

"Kevin, get your ass up, where's your camera, this is ‘E.P.K.’ stuff."

Or something like that, I'm still half asleep. I drag myself up, not bothering to ask questions and grab the two cameras in my bag. I hand one to Pat and we make our way outside.

The details begin to filter in. Apparently a lone horse had come running onto the ranch and through the back yard, fully saddled, and sweating like it'd been running for awhile. There was just one thing missing: a rider. PANIC MODE ON THE RANCH.

Next thing I know I'm running down the road filming or next plan of action. We have people in cars driving around, we have people on phones, we have people being split up into search parties, as our fear is that the rider was thrown from the horse and is lying broken in the hills of Penticton.

Chaos ensues. Then, just as fast as it all started, it all comes to an end as the lost rider comes walking down the road; admitting, to her embarrassment, that the horse had spooked and ran away while getting ready to go out riding. We film the joyful reunion of rider and horse, and head back inside.

The adrenaline of the hunt dies away and I feel tired again. This time I lay in my bed and watch some cartoons with the gang until sleep takes me over again, this time fully until morning, when I wake up again to the hustle and bustle of the morning breakfast rush. This time Pat doesn't laugh at me because he's still asleep. I laugh at him instead.

— Kevin Roberts
Production Assistant / Jack-of-All-Trades)

2007-05-21T20:18:00.000-07:00

Well I was supposed to blog last thursday when I subbed in for Russell Porter to play Roger!
It was wacky and wild, I spent four hours on the phone changing my flight when it could have been solved with one phone call... anyway!
I was welcomed very warmly and Kennedy and I did our first scene and it was a lot of fun!!
Crazy, crazy...
Everyone was wonderful and the local people Jonathan at the Marina was awesome, running us around in his speed boat!
Soooo much fun!
Flew back to Van the next day to pack my condo and move, came back Sunday night and while shooting today I learned a four page scene in about 5 min with the wonderful help of big K and David Nykl!!
Captain Bob was amazing and the speed boats whipping around made the day!!
The whole crew is great, just the right amount of chaos and serendipity making it magical!

Cheers, Alex Z/ Roger~

New Guy Screws Everything Up

2007-05-21T19:02:00.000-07:00

Well… I'm new to the production… I was up the first weekend to do the sound design and composition on the mini-trailer they have up, and that was the first time I met the director and most of the crew.

So here's a little background on me: in October of 2006, I decided to head out to Vancouver to start scoring films. I sold what wouldn't fit in my car, packed up my recording studio, and drove across Canada, settling in Vancouver where I now reside.

Now back to the tale…

After leaving that first weekend, and seeing how excited everybody was about the film, I decided to leave my job and head back do the sound recording on set. Having never done sound on the set of a film, I was a bit nervous to say the least. Devin gave me a run down of set protocol the night before my first day; which helped out a lot because before that all I knew was 'action' and 'cut'.

On the first day I arrived on-set on time (good start), had time to kill a butt, and then we were off to unload. I was nervous to begin with, seeing as how the first location was in an empty parking garage (not the ideal location to record sound… unless you like big, hollow sounds).

I was all gun-ho and started unloading the trailer… got all my equipment, and started to move it, when the only battery pack we had to run everything fell and cracked…

Everyone stopped and looked as all the blood rushed to my face…

5 min on set and I destroy the fuckin’ battery… loser!

Thankfully the thing still worked, but now I had to spend the next day, the first day off for everyone, fixing the thing so we don't get screwed by the rental place.

Now after the second day, it continues… in a midst of panic, rushing to get set up for the next shot, I accidentally un-plugged Devin as he was backing up the hard drive with all the footage on it.

Thankfully the hard drive wasn't damaged… but this was the second time this happened to Devin that day — not to mention the problems with the last hard drive we're still trying to over-come — and he just about lost it.

All in all I've had a great time so far. It's awesome to have the opportunity to work on a project like this, where everyone is so excited and understanding of my fuck-ups.

We've had lots of problems pop up, but so far we've managed to over-come them all.

Peace;

— Luke

Delicious Silence

2007-05-18T19:05:00.000-07:00

Usually I have the words to say, but tonight I don't. This project is something that I never thought I would be part of, the cast and crew are amazing… dedicated and professional (yet, without pay).

When you take a legend and put it on screen it is a special thing. Thank God the project has already put it in tongue in cheek… never before has $20 gone so far (who thought I was a Druggie?).

I feel blessed that Janet and myself can be part of this. Yes, we are only extras and cooks for the crew, but we have met the most creative and talented people that would dare to be an independent film company. It is refreshing to see a group of people who believe in what they are doing, and where they are going. Despite the sunburns and being dead tired, this group of actors and crew keep going… and going…

It has been our pleasure to try to feed this group and keep them nourished. Thanks to David, Craig and Kennedy and everyone else for letting us be a part of this. I want all of your autographs and eventually a DVD , if the movie sucks or rocks, I will have a great momento… lol.

Believe in what you are doing; we believe in you.

By the way, watch out Penticton: we are the un-official tour guides for the night crew (Sat 19^th) and only trouble follows us… lol

CHEERS!

— Garner and Janet Stone (your cooks)