Photos are up!

Day Two went great! A little longer day than Saturday, but we knew that was a possibility. The scene between the two principals was terrific, and after 3 tries, we got the big exploding coffee mug scene to work!

At the end of the day, it all felt a little unreal - suddenly it seemed to have flown by so quickly.

Photos from the shoot are now up - click HERE

Now just need to pray everything goes well with shipping and processing - we need a lab in Winnipeg, so we can drop it off in person! (And stand there and watch if possible...) Can't wait to start editing - there's so much great stuff waiting there for me - plenty of great choices!

A shout-out to my awesome crew, who made it all possible!

Marjo and Tracey: You guys were amazing! Thanks for providing such beautiful performances and making it so easy!

Heather: We're gonna make you a stah! Thanks for stepping in!

Kevin: Thanks for keeping me calm and keeping us on track - without raising your voice once!

Andrew: It's gonna be gorgeous! Let's make another one! But get some rest first...

Jonathan: Above and beyond the call - hope you had a safe drive on Monday!

Cam: Thanks for coming in! Nice to work with you!

Jeff: Thanks for putting such thought into creating Ann's home - and the breakable mug!

Kellie and Mike P.: Can't wait to hear the great sounds you caught for me! Thanks for coming out on such last minute notice!

Mike L.: You rock - thanks so much for loading in and out - saved my back and hours of time!

Ariel: Without you, the crew would have turned on me - thanks for keeping our spirits and energy up with delicious food and cold drinks!

Harlan: Glad you could make it out on Saturday - continuing our streak of working together!

Chris: Thanks for all your support before, during and after - and for the runs to the store and Tim Horton's!

Tracy, Kathleen and Rene: Thanks for sharing your houses, yards and electricity with us!

And thanks to Dianne & Bill, and Jay & Tessa for the loan of key items!

Most. Satisfying. Day. Ever.

My first day of shooting was all I could possibly hope. The rain held off for the outdoor shot (with the exception of one moment that sent us all scurrying, equipment protected under our jackets). We were able to use the back yards and alley without incident from the neighbourhood - our local city rep even dropped by. Me: "I'm Polly Washburn, the Director. Welcome to our community film studio. "

Sooo many satisfying moments, but a few include:

• Seeing my name on the slate in the Director slot


• Hearing the assistant camera call and mark the first shot


• Working with the cast and DP through a few moments that weren't quite what I wanted until I got what I was going for.


• Watching the Machine at work - a dozen talented and hard-working people collected for a single purpose - to transform the vision in my head into a silicon 'reality'


• Sitting around eating with the crew at 6 p.m., fulfilling my promise to them that we would have days of reasonable length


• After a particularly long setup and hold for the exact right cloud cover, getting the Exact Shot I wanted - I've been able to watch on a hand-held monitor - sweet.


• Seeing how beautiful the actresses look through the viewfinder


• Realizing there's going to be lots of gorgeous moments for me to choose from in editing

Another thing that's been great is to gain a further appreciation for shot lists, story boards, and my role as Script Supervisor on other people's sets. Until going through it myself, I could never fully appreciate how easy it is to get "lost" in your own shoot. Several times I had to go to the side with my Assistant Director before moving on from a set up, to make sure we'd covered everything I had said in pre-production that I wanted to cover.

Fun to fall asleep in a house filled with film gear...

Pics and The Conclusion of the Story after day 2 of 2.

Open City

Went to the Open City conference last week. Interesting stuff.

I was officially there representing the University, where I act as digital copyright clearance advisor. But as a creator, was definitely interested in the dialogue about balancing the rights of content creators and those wishing to use and manipulate content.

Unfortunately, attendance was very low, but the presenters (Russell McOrmond, Liza Sabater, Diana Thorneycroft,Members of PLUG) were excellent, and we had a lot of good round-table discussions. And I got an introduction to Open Source and Linux - where have I been all these years?

Was definitely won over to the point of view that artists, educators and the general public need to definitely not swallow Bill-C60 as a good solution. Need to study its implications more, and will try to comment here. In the meantime, there's a site KillBillC60.com that presents some of the dangers.

But a little distracted by making my film this weekend... Trying to stay calm, but not easy. Lost a few crew members, but gained some crucial new ones this week, so overall, I think it will all go well... Just the little details that are making me nervous (Will power hold up or will we blow a fuse? Will the weather hold up for the outdoor scene? Will we have enough food for the crew? Will we get stuck in a 3-hour lighting change? Will the much-used film group camera develop a strange tic? Will we run out of film?) Definitely need a production manager next time around...

Did buy production insurance to ease some of my fretting, and the DoP and I are going to check out the equipment today, to make sure it's in working order. Don't think we have time to do a reg test on the camera, so we'll just have to have faith...

Worth It

Shew, emotional day.

I was freaking out getting all the details set for the film shoot, that is suddenly, thanks to an impromptu road trip that took me out of town for 5 days, next weekend. I even asked myself at one point if this was all worth it. Wondered why I'd applied for the funding in the first place. Wondered why I take on these creative projects - why can't I just be satisfied with lying on the couch?

I haven't felt this stressed out since I quit my job last year, so just feeling that old familiar anxiety was adding to the pressure.

Had to remind myself that yes, I could have a normal job and day to day worries instead of things like "Will the film get here in time?" "Can I find a truck at this late date?" "Who the heck is going to record sound?" "Can I figure out how to make the scenes work with my actors?" But I've chosen this. Some inspiational speaker said "The only time you won't have troubles is when you're buried in the grave." Cheery, in'it? The point being for me that figuring out details is part of the package. It takes work to make a movie, and I'm not (yet) in a position to waggle a finger at someone else to do that work for me. It takes work to do almost anything creative, and I just have to rise above the genetic tendency to stress.

But even with all these rationalizations, at 6 p.m. my stomach was still tight and I wanted to crawl under the bed. Except I had to clean the house for rehearsal.

And then we had the rehearsal. Three and a half hours flew by. I'm exhausted but it was worth it. I know again, now that I'm again in the True Work of it, that it is all worth it. Incredible moments when I was able to step in and fix something that we all knew just wasn't going right. Amazing to get confirmation that yes, I do have the intuition to make those calls. Though admittedly other moments where I saw that I need to get more experience working with actors, to develop a language to communicate my proposed solutions. But that can happen.

As we were going through the scenes, I began seeing the cuts: "We won't need to shoot her walking across the room to do X, we'll just go right to the close up of Y" (scintillating script, eh?) I'm meeting Sunday with the DoP to finalize the shot list together, and now I have a much clearer understanding of what I want and need, and what we can probably skip, so I'll be able to verbalize that much more coherently than our last meeting.

Soooo thrilling to see that this is actually going to happen. Because part of the stress was fear - that it wouldn't happen at all somehow, or that it would suck. But faith has returned. While I can't guarantee that every second will be gold, there are going to be some beautiful shots. Just as I imagined them from the beginning, 8 months ago...

R.I.P. WWG

For three years, I met about twice a month with 4 other writers. Last year, one of those writers departed for other creative ventures, and over the course of this year, the rest of us have gotten increasingly involved in other activities and projects, so we haven't met as often. This week, we finally decided it was time to put the group to sleep. We drank wine, ate cake and thanked each other for all the support.

As you can see at this news page, the last four years have been productive for all of us. Between us we reviewed and edited three novels, several reams of poetry, a bushel of short stories, a screenplay and a whack of applications for grants and programs. We helped each other stay on target with writing goals, and bucked each other up when the unavoidable rejection letters came in. We shared our words, and ideas about writing, schedules, books we were reading on The Craft.

We created a chapbook, and had a couple of readings, which was definitely a great step in feeling like a Real Writer.

I'll definitely miss the camaraderie and the deadlines, but I've gotten pretty dang good at setting and fulfilling my own deadlines for projects. The group served its purpose, and I will certainly thank them in the acknowledgment section of my first novel, when it's finally published...

One of the other members, Ariel, has also written a tribute in her blog.

Geeking out!

YES! Made my first MySQL database and queried it via PHP and fixed connection problems and actually extracted some data!

Here are the amazing results:
SOOOO proud of myself (and who wouldn't be? Did you get a gander at that data??). I'd circled around MySQL for several weeks now, trying to find out if there was something easier I could use for web database stuff, but finally took advantage of the long weekend to take the plunge and discovered I didn't need anything simpler. (used this excellent introductory tutorial). I'd been studying JavaScript for the last few weeks, so was pleased to find PHP rather accessible. By Monday, I got close to figuring it all out, but ran into a connection problem, and didn't have time to get back to it until today, but I got in there and DID it. All By Myself.

And now the world is my oyster - ANYTHING is possible. All the ideas in my head can find their way to the screen!

In another minor miracle of technology, my awesome much-utilized digital watch/stopwatch/alarm (aka Watchy), the screen of which had freaked out a week ago, came back to life today. Will make a note that it doesn't like to go in the water anymore... Maybe I can get it to talk to my Palm (aka Palmy), whose screen is also on the blink for some reason...

In less-geeky more-cool but no-less-exciting news, the first rehearsal last week was an amazing experience. Total collaborative and creative process. We improvised some back story and I was actually moved to tears by these two women adding weight to the characters I had created...