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is this it

8

I learned that the mea­sure of a man is his abil­ity to stir-fry bok choi hearts.

That High Fidelity is the new (500) Days of Summer.

That it’s nice to be needed.

That I still won­der if I’m forgotten.

That it’s not so much that I don’t have any­thing to write about, but noth­ing ever seems impor­tant enough to put down on paper nowadays.

That I say oh my god a lot.

That food poi­son­ing is like a lax­a­tive for both ends.

That I’m allowed to miss her.

That it’s okay to think oth­ers are cute too.

That I’m doing the whole Swingers thing with Lisa, where she’s try­ing to con­vince me I’m a big fuck­ing bear.

That I can’t read signals.

That it doesn’t mat­ter whether or not you’re invited, as long as you’re happy where you are.

Date  January 6, 2012
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Categories  Random Video

perpetual eve

6

This day is the same every year. The streets are dead and filled with slush, the stores all closed. No mat­ter where I am, it seems peo­ple are look­ing for a chan­nel on TV to watch a corporate-sponsored count­down, and I always feel alone even though I’m sur­rounded by friends.

If it’s the same every year, it’s strange that my mem­o­ries of New Year’s Eve are so mixed. Jocks harass­ing me on the bus. Bundling up in big coats to share petit coro­nas out­side. Panic attacks. Blonds and red­heads. Rich foods and too much drink. And some­how the peo­ple I love and the peo­ple I hate end up at the same parties.

Sometimes it reminds me too much of my child­hood. My fam­ily hosted the same count­down party every year that became the only real time we spent with other peo­ple, and the only time we ever caught up with our “friends”. Numbers would be shouted in uni­son, cham­pagne would be toasted, noth­ing would change. An empty rit­ual for empty peo­ple. Maybe that’s why I never feel like I belong any­where on this day. It’s like I’m wait­ing to feel what every­one else around me is feel­ing when the ball drops.

Date  January 1, 2012
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Categories  Daily Life Video

Anne + Haran — Wedding Day

5

Anne and Haran had a Vietnamese-Pakistani wed­ding, which was a delight­ful blend of two cul­tures with their own tra­di­tions and cos­tumes. Included in this day were three tea cer­e­monies, four dress changes for the bride, and one giant roasted pig.

When Haran first told me the funny story of how he asked Anne’s par­ents for per­mis­sion to marry her, he was sure to include the detail that Anne’s father was ex-military. This fact made him very hard to read, and Haran didn’t know how he was tak­ing the news until Anne’s mom started firmly rub­bing his shoul­ders, and this iron-grip mas­sage ulti­mately lead to him giv­ing the approval. After hear­ing this, I thought it may be a chal­lenge to cap­ture emo­tion from Anne’s father, but now I know a daughter’s wed­ding can bring out the emo­tions in any man, and he wore many ten­der looks that day.

Date  December 31, 2011
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Categories  Video

Elizabeth and Jane promo video

4

I was very excited to be work­ing with Liz again when approached me to shoot a promo video for her pho­tog­ra­phy busi­ness. Since she does engage­ments, wed­dings, and pet por­traits, we decided to film all three types of sessions.

Liz lists some of her favourite things as her hubby, her pups1, her shoes, and her Apple prod­ucts, so I included lit­tle bits of each to give it a per­sonal touch. I also kept the grad­ing crisp and clean with colours that pop out of the screen to match Liz’s style of vibrant pho­tog­ra­phy, of which I’m a huge fan. My main goal, how­ever, was show how fun it is to be one of her sub­jects because she has a per­pet­ual smile and bub­bly per­son­al­ity that puts any­one at ease.

  1. She’s Ottawa’s own dog-whisperer, and it may be safe to say that she loves dogs as much as I love cats, per­haps even a lit­tle more. [↑]
Date  December 20, 2011
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Categories  Random Video

a horse is not a home

6

Toronto may be my mis­tress, but I still flirt with the idea of mak­ing her my wife. Wondering if I can escape the life and the mem­o­ries I have in Ottawa. I make the trip a few times a year, and some­times it feels like it’s more often than I see my friends here. If I still call Toronto home, maybe it’s time I should make it my home again. But I know it’s a dras­tic step for the sake of closure.

Christmas gathering

 

Sweet and creamy…Simon’s two great­est alco­holic adversaries.

It’s strange to have too many peo­ple to see and never enough time. Growing up as a socially awk­ward guy, it’s a prob­lem I never imag­ined I’d ever have. There hasn’t even been enough time for myself, although I sup­pose that’s the way I wanted it. I just don’t feel safe when I’m by myself nowadays.

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Date  December 18, 2011
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Categories  Daily Life Photos Video

Jenny + Dave — Wedding Day

4

A spe­cial film for a spe­cial couple.

I was given the chance to film the wed­ding of Jenny and Dave on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Everything about the day was gor­geous, from the trop­i­cal weather to the bur­geoun­ing cen­tre­pieces1 to the torch­lit recep­tion. It all came together to cre­ate an atmos­phere of sub­lime charm, and I had so much fun cap­tur­ing it all.

I make each wed­ding film as acces­si­ble as pos­si­ble, so any­one can get a sense of the day even if they weren’t there. But I also include cer­tain things that would be under­stood by only the peo­ple involved. In this film it was shots such as an uncle doing an hilar­i­ous bump-and-grind on the dance floor, or the bride tear­ing up while writ­ing her speech, or the father-in-law say­ing a few words while firmly hold­ing the groom’s hand dur­ing the tea cer­e­mony. Details such as the lat­ter may not seem like much to an out­sider, but fam­ily and friends at the wed­ding would under­stand how such a small phys­i­cal dis­play of affec­tion can mean so much.

This was by far my most chal­leng­ing wed­ding film to make, but it was well worth it. For a while, it became my rea­son for liv­ing, the one I wanted to be remem­bered for, and my goal was to deliver this film before I died. There’s a piece of my soul in it, so I can’t say how lucky I am to have been given this oppor­tu­nity to cre­ate this for Dave and Jenny, and how I happy I am to know they deserve it.

(A big thank-you to wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Mike Adrian, who was a delight to work with, and taught me a thing or two about how to pack for des­ti­na­tion weddings.)

  1. The Four Season’s now has a rule that lim­its the size of the cen­tre­pieces, because they would some­times catch the wind and fall over. This was the last wed­ding at the Four Seasons to have such mas­sive ones, the rule being grand­fa­thered in, as Jenny and Dave planned the wed­ding right before it came into effect. [↑]
Date  December 13, 2011
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Categories  Video

Vikki & Dan — Wedding Day

1

Filmed another lovely wed­ding in the Fall. The cer­e­mony was small and inti­mate with only a hand­ful of peo­ple invited, tak­ing place at the tiny look­out on Rockcliffe Parkway, while the recep­tion was a great big party at the RA Centre. One of the most unique things about this wed­ding were the paper lanterns given to all the guests. By the end of night the sky was full of them, drift­ing away beau­ti­fully above us.

It was another chance to work with the won­der­ful Liz, who is always on the top of my list of pho­tog­ra­phers I rec­om­mend for wed­dings. Not only do her pho­tos end up look­ing amaz­ing, she always works with me when cap­tur­ing all the impor­tant details, instead of against me, as I’ve noticed with some pho­tograpehrs. Check out the pho­tos in her sneak peak.

candy sushi

 

Also of note were the wed­ding favours, each box con­tain­ing a pair of candy sushi. The maki was made by rolling a flat sheet of Rice Krispie squares over a fill­ing of Gummy Worms, wrapped with Fruit Roll-Up. The nigiri had gummy sharks as the fish, also tied together with a strip of Fruit By The Foot. Small, bite-sized packs of cute and delicious.

Date  December 4, 2011
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Categories  Photos Video

this same flower that smiles today

2

I find myself resigned to someone’s care. It’s not an easy kind of con­trol to relin­quish, but lately I trust as lit­tle as pos­si­ble in the future and do my best to go along for the ride. As the old poem goes; be wise, strain the wine, or as Zorba would put it, “DON’T BE DELICATE”. I didn’t plan on liv­ing for­ever anyway.

On a cold night, we keep the only promise made, one of those small won­ders that still make me believe. I fit some­where between needs and wants, tem­po­rary relief and long-term side effects, class and home­work, nib­bled lips and bit­ten tongues.

in a field

 

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Date  November 23, 2011
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Categories  Daily Life Photos Video

Maui Wowie

6

When Dave and Jenny asked me to film their wed­ding in Maui, there was no way I could say refuse. Soon1 I found myself in the only place in the world where Koa grows, and every tree I passed made me won­der if it would even­tu­ally be made into a ukulele or gui­tar. I was only there for two days, but it was worth every moment in the delight­ful weather, spend­ing time with some of the nicest peo­ple I’ve ever met.

The entire wed­ding group gath­ered for din­ner at Mala restau­rant, over­look­ing the Pacific Ocean and the islands of Lanai and Kaho‘olawe. At this time of year, the Maui sun­set passes in the blink of an eye.

I learned that there are only twelve let­ters in the Hawaiian alpha­bet (which is why so many of the words look the same to me), and the lan­guage uses Spanish vow­els. Each vowel is usu­ally pro­nounced by itself (Wailea is said “Why-lay-ah”). I was sur­prised to see most signs in both English and Japanese; it turns out there used to be a sig­nif­i­cant Japanese com­mu­nity in Hawaii, although most of the Japanese tourists go to see Pearl Harbor instead.

All the locals are super nice, per­haps due to the fact that tourism is one of the only indus­tries left in Maui2; it seems like most peo­ple liv­ing there are in the ser­vice indus­try in some form or another3.

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  1. “Soon” being a rel­a­tive term when com­pared to the lim­it­less of time, as it took me roughly a full day and three planes to get there, from Ottawa to Chicago to Honolulu to Kahalui. [↑]
  2. The other being agri­cul­ture that’s mostly been over­shad­owed by com­pe­ti­tion from Philippines. [↑]
  3. As opposed to those from Honolulu, who have jobs related to the mil­i­tary in some way. [↑]
Date  October 29, 2011
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Categories  Daily Life Photos Video

Geneviève + James — Wedding Day

9
Interested in hir­ing me? Check out my port­fo­lio.

Earlier this month, I had the plea­sure of film­ing Geneviève and Jamie on their wed­ding day. It was a beau­ti­ful out­door cer­e­mony in the coun­try with only about 50 peo­ple, and a vegan din­ner for the reception.

One of the inter­est­ing things I got to see was the sock dance, an old French-Canadian tra­di­tion where the eldest unmar­ried sib­ling has to don a pair of ugly socks (sym­bol­iz­ing their cold feet) and do a silly dance. People throw money at him or her, which is then col­lected for the newly mar­ried couple.

I decided to keep the grad­ing nat­ural cause there are so many vibrant colours in each scene — from tat­toos, hair dye, clothes, foliage, and dec­o­ra­tions — that I wanted to bring out for a light­hearted, play­ful mood. Goddammit I love grad­ing; it’s become my favourite part of the process. You can set so many kinds of tones with colour alone.

The colours also led me to decide on using Beirut’s “Postcards from Italy” for the song, as the ukulele and horns empha­size that fes­tive feel­ing wonderfully.

I also got to work with Liz, a pho­tog­ra­pher who’s as fan­tas­tic1 as she is con­sid­er­ate. So far, she’s been the only one to say to me, “Tell me if I get in your way”, before I could say it to her. Guess who I’m refer­ring if any­one asks me for a wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher recommendation.

Sometimes I study the films of video­g­ra­phers I admire, and I’m inspired by their style but it never feels right when I try to achieve the same for my films. They rely on edit­ing to make their films inter­est­ing, and the films end up look­ing posed or unnat­ural. I’ve real­ized that I have to fol­low my own style — telling a story by cap­tur­ing the beauty in the sim­plic­ity — because that’s what I’ve been try­ing to do in words and pho­tos my whole life.

  1. She has a pre­view on her blog. [↑]
Date  August 24, 2011
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Categories  Random Video

the path of least resistance

5

on the path of least resis­tance, you discover:

  • it is impos­si­ble to explain the appeal of dub­step to some­one who’s never heard it
  • every­thing works out in the end
  • moon­walk­ing is eas­ier to do with­out pants on
  • just hugs are com­pletely dif­fer­ent from hugs after kisses
  • no one is ever too old to eat Pocky
  • say­ing we can still be friends is like your mom telling you your dog died and say­ing you can still keep it
  • there is never enough time
  • Dolly will do any­thing for food
Date  August 18, 2011
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Categories  Daily Life Random Video

the greatest chaps

2

It was totally unfair that Shane was only in town for a sin­gle night, and then off to the next show in Kingston with Krista and Jesse and Audra the next morn­ing. I was look­ing for­ward to a week­end with him at least, but his tour com­mit­ments as bassist, backup vocals, sound tech­ni­cian, and dri­ver kept us apart.

Lederhosen Lucil

 

This was the first time I’ve seen Krista per­form as Lederhosen Lucil (and the fifth time I’ve been to her shows). It was an LL album that I first fell in love with, so this meant a lot. I totally had this awk­ward kiss? hug? kiss? moment with her when she got up to greet me while man­ning the cover box; I’ve never been very good at that. In the Fall she asked if she could have the Ottawa stop of her tour in my liv­ing room for an inti­mate House Show the Third, but that plan got derailed when I adopted Leonard, as two cats was too much for her aller­gies. Things worked out for the best. The Raw Sugar Cafe is such a great venue, with dry cider and mul­ti­ple escape routes.

These are the only peo­ple who could con­vince me to have break­fast with them at a diner on the other side of the city on three hours of sleep. At a table full of musi­cians it’s impos­si­ble not to abuse the theremin set­ting on the Bebot app, Mentok the Mind-Taker style. I was going to tell Shane to save me a seat next to him, but then real­ized I’m not in grade 2 anymore.

Date  May 15, 2011
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Categories  Daily Life Photos Video

Silk and Steel and Steve

0

I’ve always been after a more mel­low sound than what I can cur­rently get out my gui­tar. Madeleine sug­gested I try D’Addario Silk and Steel strings, so I bought a pack a few days ago and have been play­ing them since. I asked Steve to demo the strings, as well as my lovely gui­tar Larissa, cause my abil­i­ties aren’t good enough to really show her off.

Sometimes I love them cause they’re so bright and clear, other times I hate them cause the tone comes off as thin and frail; it really depends on what kind of music I’m play­ing. When Steve plays them they’re shock­ingly bright and pierc­ing com­pared to the sound I get; I’m not sure if it’s the dif­fer­ence in our nails or tech­nique (or both).

They’re def­i­nitely meant for fin­ger­pick­ing cause they’re so light1 that even mod­er­ate strum­ming will make them buzz, which severely lim­its my pos­si­ble reper­toire. On the bright side, it’s much eas­ier to fret barre chords, and cer­tain pas­sages that were a strug­gle to play cleanly only require a light touch now.

Another advan­tage is that the tone makes me feel like I’m play­ing a dif­fer­ent gui­tar. Even though it’s not quite the dry and mel­low sound of a clas­si­cal nylon, it’s some­what staving off my desire to buy the Taylor I’ve been eying2, but who knows how long that’ll last.

Steve’s the only per­son I know who lives by the gui­tar, both lit­er­ally and fig­u­ra­tively. I’ve seen such bril­liant things come out of his fin­gers. Sometimes in the mid­dle of a song I’m show­ing him, he’ll pick up the melody and go some­where com­pletely dif­fer­ent with it that’s more beau­ti­ful than the orig­i­nal. And even though he’s mainly a jazz guy (after Wes Montgomery), he can play any style from clas­si­cal to flamenco.

I’ve taken up his belief in not using a pick and stick­ing with my fin­ger­nails. “Just another thing between you and the gui­tar”, he said to me once. And when I explain how I’m stuck on some­thing he’ll say, “Have you done it three-and-a-half mil­lion times?” to remind me that anything’s pos­si­ble with enough prac­tice. He’s filled with all these tiny yet cru­cial bits of infor­ma­tion that have influ­enced how I approach the instrument.

  1. 0.11–0.47, but they feel like 0.10. [↑]
  2. It just so hap­pens that Steve’s main gui­tar is the exact nylon-string Taylor hybrid I’ve been drool­ing over for months now. [↑]
Date  May 11, 2011
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Categories  Random Video

Sarah and Michael — Wedding Day

18
Interested in hir­ing me? Check out my port­fo­lio site.

I’ve been bleed­ing for a big project, some­thing to really throw myself into. Luckily, wed­dings are as big as they come, and at 70.43 GB of footage taken, this wed­ding was the biggest by far.

It was also the first Italian wed­ding I’ve expe­ri­enced, and there was noth­ing more inter­est­ing than observ­ing the cus­toms. It’s a very phys­i­cal cul­ture, with lots of hug­ging, kiss­ing, and firm pats on shoul­ders. And some­how every­one is a nat­ural dancer. How did every­one know to hold hands in equally sized cir­cles and start mov­ing in the same direc­tion? How did every­one know when to stop hold­ing hands and start clap­ping1? How did you every­one known to step in to touch the groom and mother at the same time?

This is a per­fect exam­ple of how video takes over the lim­i­ta­tions of still pho­tog­ra­phy. A lot of cama­raderie and inti­macy and con­fi­dence only come out when motion is involved, because it’s all in how peo­ple move and inter­act. Trying to cap­ture a bride eat­ing cake out of her cleav­age just isn’t pos­si­ble with a sin­gle frame.

This was a very spe­cial project for me, and I put so much love into this film, from the camera-work to the edit­ing to the grad­ing to the music. Over three hours of footage was care­fully stripped away to cre­ate this five minute story. Every moment mat­ters, every frame counts.

Sarah and Mike are so happy with the final prod­uct that they’ve now decided to send a DVD of this video out to all the guests in lieu of thank-you cards. For a wed­ding of 450 peo­ple, this is no small con­sid­er­a­tion. When I first met them, I knew they were going to be a fan­tas­tic cou­ple to work with because they were super nice and made me feel very com­fort­able. They also gave me full cre­ative con­trol, which is always the most impor­tant thing for me as an artist.

Production notes beneath the cut

  1. It reminded me of this time I saw an opera in Budapest. When the cur­tain came down and the audi­ence started applaud­ing, every­one even­tu­ally clapped in uni­son and didn’t speed up. North Americans all clap in an amor­phous din, but over in Hungary it’s like they were all clap­ping to the tim­ing of a con­duc­tor. [↑]
Date  April 28, 2011
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Categories  Random Video

Tiana + Molly (Glidetrack demo)

0

I pur­chased a half-metre Glidetrack Hybrid to get some slow dolly shots but with a much, much more portable sys­tem. Smooth hor­i­zon­tal cam­era move­ments can add a bit of depth to any footage, though the effect can’t be used too often.

So I’ve been prac­tic­ing with this new piece of equip­ment for the last month, look­ing for peo­ple to film, and luck­ily Tiana is always will­ing to vol­un­teer with one of her off­spring. You can see the Glidetrack shots at 12 sec­onds (the zoom in) and 48 sec­onds (the hor­i­zon­tal track).

It’s an extremely chal­leng­ing piece of equip­ment to use, cer­tainly not some­thing con­ducive to can­did shoot­ing. Things like expo­sure, focus, and com­po­si­tion change as you’re mov­ing the cam­era from one end of the rail to the other, and sin­gle mis­take in any one of those aspects will ruin a shot, so all those things gen­er­ally need to be care­fully planned. On top of that, sim­ply mov­ing the cam­era smoothly takes a lot of prac­tice, as there’s a cer­tain amount of fric­tion in the bear­ings, and you need to bal­ance that with the move­ment speed you’re look­ing for. At only half a metre (the short­est length you can pur­chase), the shots all tend to be slow and lin­ger­ing so you don’t run out of rail.

The per­cent­age of keep­ers isn’t great (I find it takes me about three takes to get it right), but when it works, the effect is very nice.

Date  April 17, 2011
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Categories  Video
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