Category: Movies

  • LadyScientist Rocks My World

    Susan as collaged by Margaux Williamson.Susan’s birthday is today, and last night she finished off the last academic assignment for her doctorate. That’s only one of the many things she’s pulled off this year — being her husband I might be biased, but I think her 33rd year was pretty amazing.

    As a biochem grad student, Susan has pretty much a full-time job at a lab where she’s been publishing papers, training students and doing real science type stuff with gels and microscopes and a labcoat of her own. Last year she started a group on campus and a zine (LadyScientist) to talk about the issue of women in science. (Interesting fact that we just discovered this week: University of Toronto has the widest wage discrepancy between male and female professors in Canada.) This year she’s been dealing with the same issues, just in a fantastic variety of ways… (more…)

  • Infest Wisely Screenshots

    screenshot-thumb.jpgWe wrapped the shoot over a week ago and I’m still reeling with how much fun it was. I’ve been dipping my toe in with making little vids over the past five years, but this gave me the full immersive movie experience. I found it really interesting work that I’m pretty well suited to — it engages my social, logistical and creative nodes and was actually less stressful than I expected.

    Mostly I was coordinating, but I was on set as an extra pair of hands on about 75% of the shoots. We shot it over six weeks (pretty great considering our seven directors’ busy schedules) and we should have it edited in the next few months. (UPDATE: Check it out here!)

  • Roll Your Own Boom Pole

    Click to zoom.Benny had told me we could use a paint-roller extension as a boom pole, but I figured I was going to have to tape on my shotgun mike somehow. Much to my delight this was not the case. The day before the third Infest Wisely shoot, when I got my $15 Home Hardware Extension Pole (8′, #4538-682) back home I noticed there was a small hole in the removable black tapered tip. My Rode VideoMic has a shock mount that connects to a shoe mount for use on a camera, but I saw that the shoe mount was screwed in. I removed the screw and threaded it through the tapered tip of the paint roller and it actually fit!

    The next day, we did an eight hour shoot and it was rock solid and sounded sweet — when I was perched on a rusted-out catwalk high above an abandoned factory floor, I was glad I didn’t also have to worry about the mike falling off.

    Of course this is almost ridiculously specific to Rode VideoMic owners living in Canada, but it’s too neat a trick to keep to myself. For some more generally useful DIY Sound tips from my sound guru Carma, keep reading!
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  • The LoFi SciFi Movie

    The lion one was clearly cooler.I’ve finished a first draft for our lo-fi sci-fi movie script Infest Wisely (UPDATE: Check it out!). It’s got a Voltron-inspired story structure, with seven segments that stand alone but come together to form a feature length piece. Since we’re planning to shoot it next month, I’d rather just release it than talk a bunch about it, but if you’re curious you can peek behind-the-scenes — it’s our unofficial “whiteboard” website where we’ve been amassing ideas/considerations.

    Talking about unusual shorts, McSweeney’s has put out a “DVD magazine of unseen films”, Wholphin, and were nice enough to trade it for my DVDzine Novel Amusements. I did a phone interview with the editor Brent Hoff where we discuss subtitling foreign sitcoms, trailblazing with distributors, cepholopods, films about beards, not wasting people’s time, and the world’s most illegal game of volleyball — press play to hear it.


    No Flash? Get the MP3 here.

  • Videogame Jam Session

    Laura, Sandy and Benny b jammin -- pic by Patrico DavilaFor the shameful headstanding scene in my machinima piece Yoga Deathmatch I used something called Gary’s Mod. It allows you to spawn and arrange Half-Life 2 objects really easily, a surreal 3D sketchpad. Immediately it started me thinking how neat it would be to introduce more visually creative people to it, and thanks to Digifest I was able to arrange a “jam session” with a half dozen artists.

    We took clips of the jam in progress and it’s going to be screened this Saturday, as part of dorkArmy’s monthly event at the Gladstone Hotel (Sept. 9, 8pm, $5). They’re bringing their Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero gear (out of the basements and into the bars!) and I always enjoy myself. If you’re not in Toronto, however, you can check out one clip from each of the artists by clicking through. (more…)

  • Freeware Rebellion

    Raigan BurnsI’ve done a fair amount of writing about Raigan and Mare, two indie game developers I know. This 10 minute documentary I made was a bit of a revelation, however: instead of writing about how fun and stylish their game was, I could show it. Instead of talking about how they’re not your typical nerd coders, I could show them in person. It’s the cardinal rule at writing school — showing, rather than telling — and with this project I realized that video was really good at this. As the kids say, it’s a powerful medium, but I seem to always have to learn these trite truisms myself before I believe them.

    I’m going to be screening this video and my six other videogame shorts at a screening of Pleasure Circuit Overload at the megacool Blim Gallery in Vancouver. Monday May 8th, 8pm, $5-7 sliding scale. If you can’t make it, click through to see my mini-doc.

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  • Take Our Taste Test

    winking-thumb.jpgMy pal Scott lent me his copy of The Winking Circle, a DVD made by some kids in small-town Ontario that documents their attempts to “eccentrify their lives.” More than anything else I’ve seen, it reflects the essence of the cut-n-paste photocopied zines — it’s an hour long piece that masterfully mixes the visual eye-candy of skateboard stunts and crazy haircuts and artbikes with stirring music and non-idealogical philosophy. It’s spectacle reclaimed, really: spectacle given a soul.

    So it’s not so strange, really, that Coke wanted a piece of it. And why go to the trouble of buying something you can just steal?
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  • Pleasure Circuit Overload

    A man alone with his unit.My series of short movies about videogames is being screened together for the first time as part of a really fun event on Saturday April 8th in Toronto. It’s put on by the dorkArmy crew at the Gladstone Hotel (1214 Queen Street W., 7:30pm, $5) — come for the vids, stay for the Drunken Dance Dance Revolution & karaoke! There’s also a screening at the Blim Art Gallery in Vancouver on Monday May 8th. I’ll be going to both and really looking forward to them — as well as six videos I’ve released on the site and elsewhere, there’s a brand new minidocumentary piece about two indie game makers. Click through to see one of the series, “Mark Slutsky Reviews the Nintendo DS.”
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  • Million Dollar Gamer

    Girls don't play videogames.For those of you who’re still in an Oscar mood, Susan and I made this fake movie preview that asks: what if the plucky heroine from Million Dollar Baby was into the Dance Dance Revolution videogame instead of boxing?

    This is one of the pieces from my new video series about videogames, Pleasure Circuit Overload. I’m looking for screening possibilities over the next little while so let me know if you know of a good series — I have DVDs I’m sending out. I’ll be posting other new shorts from the series in the next few weeks so stay tuned!

    Click through to watch the three minute vid.
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  • Creampuff and Red Licorice

    So what if I look like Gene Wilder?Lisa Smolkin is a friend who’s responsible for some of the funniest and saddest drawings I’ve seen. Simple graceful lines and watercolour give her illustrations a beautiful and fragile quality, but they’re grounded in her rough-hewn style of zine-making. So when she asked me earlier this year if I wanted to collaborate on something, I was delighted. We ended up making this little piece that you can launch full-sized in its own window or click here for the direct link (you need Flash).

    It’ll also be on display tomorrow (Dec. 6, 8pm) at the Toronto launch for Lisa’s Apology Accepted, a book of new drawings being published by 2×4 To The Forehead. It’s at the excellent venue Cinecycle (129 Spadina, down alley) and features the band Pink Leotard and special guests. Free.

  • Mario’s Pain

    Mario at the doctors.Novel Amusements #5, my DVDzine, is available online now. [UPDATE: Sold out.] This issue’s theme is “Games and Shames,” and it’s the biggest issue yet: 85 minutes of short vids, two digital toys to play with, and comes with a 16 page booklet with interviews with the creators. Click for a close-up of the front and back covers, featuring art by Shannon Gerard.

    I’ve got two vids on it, Yoga Deathmatch and the brand new Mario’s Pain. To watch the played-out plumber talk about his back problems, click on through.
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  • Time Management for Anarchists: The Movie

    none of the above.I’ve just finished a Flash adaptation of my Time Management for Anarchists seminar. I started doing the talk a year and a half ago at Canzine and have done it a half-dozen times since, mostly at infoshops and political bookstores (Austin, Montreal, Berkeley, Vancouver) and also at a couple of events (New Orleans Book Fair, the Vegetarian Food Fair). It’s based on the paradoxical notion that anarchists have to be more organized than average if they don’t want to depend on power structures, and presents some ideas on how to kick the boss habit.

    To see the eight-minute presentation–complete with cartoon sounds, fake graphs and historic guest stars–click on. Feel free to add your tips and opinions to the comments afterwards.
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