Inspired By: This American Life

One thing I love about the television version of This American Life is it's a lot of bang for your buck. They manage to squeeze so many interesting stories into each episode without ever leaving the audience overwhelmed. The series is like the ultimate storytelling mix tape. You depend upon the good taste of the producers as they present these interesting stories in a cinematic format that utilizes top notch visuals and music. It's great stuff. If you haven't caught the show, it's currently available on DVD. Also, of course, the radio show has been going strong for quite some time now. Visit www.thislife.org for more information.

Assembling the narrative structure of Beauty Day will likely be the most challenging task of the filmmaking process. It's always helpful to revisit a show like This American Life to get a sense of the possibilities of storytelling and draw inspiration from what they've done with their TV format and how they take full advantage of the visual/audio real estate. This leads me to a great series of videos features Ira Glass talking about storytelling. An insightful and inspirational tool during this stage of the editing process. Check them out below:

Inspired By: The Wrestler, Rocky Balboa

I've been doing a lot of thinking recently about non-fiction films that fall under certain dramatic genre conventions. The most recent examples, The Cove and Man on Wire, have found great success by aligning their stories with a sort of espionage/thriller presentation. It seems to me that although documentaries provide a opportunity for non-traditional story telling, the films that seem to stand out as true accomplishments are those that naturally follow a classic narrative format. How many times have you seen a documentary that's blown you away simply because the story was like 'something out of a real movie'!

Early on I'd thought that Beauty Day could also fall under certain genre conventions. In my eyes, the story feels like a sports drama, even though Ralph isn't a sports athlete. I've always been citing films like The Wrestler and Rocky Balboa in reference to Beauty Day, and it's definitely been a helpful reference point while sorting through all of the possible directions the film can go in the early editing stages. Having said all of that, the film is first and foremost a character piece and the 'plot' exists only as a thread to hang the individual characters stories on.

Electric Bike/Chair Dolly Cam

During the shooting of Beauty Day, Robert rigged up a sweet dolly by attaching a trailer with a chair stuck to it on to the back of his electric bicycle. I made use of it to get some sweet shots of Ralph on his electric skateboard. Check it out:

Inspired By: Werner Herzog

Although there are many filmmakers that I draw inspiration from, Beauty Day does have a few films to thank for some generous guidance throughout the production/editing process. The most obvious inspirations are definitely worn on the films sleeve; Errol Morris' Vernon, Florida/Gates of Heaven and Chris Smith's 'American Movie'. There are, however, some that might not be so apparent. Werner Herzog is one of my favourite filmmakers and it's no surprise that his work has also informed some aspects of this film, both in spirit and in style.

This past week I decided to revisit some favourite films of mine to gather some motivation/inspiration. After revisiting The Thin Blue Line and Goodfellas, I decided to sit down with Herzog's non-fiction, sci-fi fever dream 'Fata Morgana'. It proved to be a beneficial experience as one of the sequences ended up stirring my imagination and sent me rushing for my Mac. This would prove to be a minor, somewhat superficial inspiration, but a great starting point for what I think will be a promising sequence in my own film. The scene:



When Ralph first started discussing ideas for his 20th birthday special, I had one request to ask of him; total chaos. I wanted his skits to be tumultuous; total bedlam and as visceral as possible. I immediately drew from Herzog's filmography and his ability to put the viewer in the middle of chaos, giving you a sense that even the camera man is in danger. His wide angle, roaming handheld camera heightens the sense of pure disorder. This immediately came to mind:



Another great scene from the same film, along with a still from Beauty Day:





UPDATE: It seems as though YouTube has pulled my uploaded Even Dwarves Started Small clips due to copyright infringement. LAME.

SECOND UPDATE: The clips are currently back on line. I've disputed the copyright infringement, but I don't know how long it will last. Down with the man.

Approaching the End Of Production

First off, I can't believe it's already mid-November. Second, I can't believe we're almost done filming Beauty Day! You -- as in the two of you reading this -- may have noticed a lack of updates around here. Well, if it's not sheer laziness that keeps me from posting it's the fact that I've been trying to spend all my 'working' hours shooting or editing the film. As some of you may know, we're now working with Primitive Entertainment out of Toronto, so I've also been keeping busy cutting together promo videos and writing a synopsis for potential broadcasters/distributors. I must say that I'm very excited at the potential of this project and I am extremely confident in the film itself. This thing is going to be really fun to watch. What more could I ask for?

I'm actually pretty shocked at how smoothly the shoot has gone. No real problems along the way (outside of Ralph's hernia and Roman's emergency wisdom tooth removal) and the footage has all turned out great. It's been really fun documenting Ralph's 20th Birthday Special of the Cap'n Video Show. He and his friend Robert Buick have worked together on some really fun skits that should bring back some memories for those of us who watched the original show 15 years ago.

So what do we have left? Well...a final interview with Ralph, some additional b-roll footage and the presentation of the new Cap'n Video show to the local cable station. Outside of that, it will be the odd pick up shot that I might need in the editing stages. Speaking of which, I hope to be editing full time for the next few months starting in December. Should be quite the challenge. Stay tuned for more updates!

Some New Beauty Day Stills

It's been a while since I've updated the blog, so I figured I'd throw up some new Beauty Day stills for everyone to check out. We've been keeping pretty busy shooting throughout the last month and we've got about another month to go. Time is certainly flying by though. Before we know it, the film will be totally shot and I'll be spending my days and nights piecing things together while listening to American Gladiator Season One DVD commentaries for inspiration. Until then, have a look at some of these shots from the film and stay tuned for more posts!

Obsessed & Scientific

So now that I've got this Vimeo Plus account, I figured I'd take advantage of it and upload some of my previous work. Over the weekend, I decided to go back to my third year film school documentary short 'Obsessed & Scientific' and finally try and put it up online in one giant file. I wasn't able to get a full HD version online -- not that it would've looked that great anyways -- but I did succeed in not having to split the film up into two parts. So for anyone interested, you can check out the film below. I was pretty happy with the final product at the time, but looking back at it now I think it's something I'd like to revisit in the future.