The Indiegogo Care Bear Share Factor

You might have seen a lot of shameless self promotion for Drowning on social media recently. To explain why this plugging probably isn’t gong to stop for the next month, my care bear friends would like to explain to you the “gogofactor”.

The gogofactor is an algorithm that tracks activity on campaigns – everything from the total funds contributed on your campaign page to how many times your campaign page is viewed. This means that the more your project gets shared on social media the higher its gogofactor, and the more your campaign is promoted on Indiegogo. A higher profile on Indiegogo will lead to a wider reach for the campaign.

To get a higher gogofactor factor you need frequent campaign updates, a large crowd that signed up to be a part of your Indiegogo campaign, page views for your campaign, and % of goal completed. The more people share and contribute early in a campaign the higher your gogofactor rises, and that determines how often you get featured in Indiegogo’s networks and on their main web page.

So please be a care bear and share our campaign. Literally every like, favourite, and share is a contribution to our gogofactor.

http://igg.me/at/drowning

How to give a good interview

So you’ve made a few films, got into a few film festivals and managed to get some press. Now what? You have to learn how to give an interview. I’ve never been comfortable on camera; as a filmmaker you’re always behind the camera, and an interview puts the camera and lights on you. It makes me feel like the world is upside-down, like I don’t belong there. What can I do to make this better? The only thing I can do is practice.

Practice: Come up with a list of possible questions you might be asked and create answers. What is your film about? What inspires you? Why did you pick this story to tell? Practice saying those answers aloud to yourself or to someone you know. Like a politician, you can prepare talking points and stick to them. No matter what question you are asked loop your response into one of the answers you’ve prepared. And whenever possible promote your next project.

Have a story to tell: When you are being interviewed, you should focus on telling a story. What is your story? What is your brand? If you’re working with a PR team, you should help create your story to tell. Don’t expect other people, even those you hire, to tell your story, because it might not be the story you want to share.

‘On Camera’ rules: Look at the person asking you questions; don’t look in different directions and don’t look directly towards the camera, unless you are told to do so. Do not, under any circumstances, touch your face during an interview. (Don’t touch your clothes or adjust your blazer either...see photo below.)  It’s a good idea to find out as much as you can about the interviewer before hand. Always thank everyone.

blazer

Ask for help: If you ever feel shy and awkward when giving an interview, be honest about it to the interviewer before hand and they’ll help you out. If your budget allows it, consider a media training class or enlisting the help of a PR professional to prepare you. And when in doubt and short on cash, a good Google search will always result in plenty of advice.

The MISE Dining Experience

Redefining ‘Dinner and a Movie’, MISE combines your favourite movie with a gourmet meal inspired by the film. Cook Jenny Chan and host Alvin Campana craft an evening of entertainment and a riveting meal for you and your guests to accompany a film of your selection.

Mise photo1.jpg

When attending a Surprise MISE, the only hint at the movie you are about to see is the logo projected onto the wall and a chance to peek at the menu before the evening begins.

At the most recent Surprise MISE, the movie is revealed to be Jurassic Park. As it starts, the guests giggle as drinks are poured. About 15 minutes in the first course is served, timed to match a reference on screen to the turkey in the salad. The menu matches the topics and images in the movie, creating an immersive experience for your brain and stomach.

The combination of a gourmet meal and film creates a new experience that introduces you to aspects of the film you may have never noticed. Having a goat curry with house roti and coconut rice as a T-Rex runs across the screen chasing a Jeep creates a sensory experience that completely envelops you in the film.

I highly recommend MISE for your next special event. MISE will provide a dining experience you and your guests will remember for years to come. You can visit their webpage for more information. www.misetoronto.com 

MISE Video:

Music Video Camera Testing Theory

My ‘Music Video Camera Testing Theory’ is related to my ‘Crew of One Theory’ in testing how many locations can I get to one day, how many shots can I get and how many days I can shoot in a row without getting sick. Right now, results indicate that a 3-4 day shoot week can work with the limitation of one location per day. This will only continue to work if I stay healthy and avoid more back injuries, so we’ll see if I can manage that.

Whenever a camera test can be turned into something, it’s a good idea. Lately I’ve been disguising camera tests as music videos (or was it the other way around?). I’ve grown accustom to the Canon C300 work flow but I’ve never really been able to push it till now. In my most recent camera tests, I wanted to find the limitations of the latitude of the C300. How dark could the shadows be? How does the camera handle highlights? I wanted to check different light levels to see how the camera responded to darker areas and shadows. To test this, I set up even lighting with a strong base level of light in the first video I shot. In the second, I went with darker side lighting so I could compare results and see how much darkness I could get away with.

Still 1: Bright image

Music Video still.jpg

Still 2: Dark image

The range of stops is great compared to most digital camera, but highlights still burn out pretty quick. There’s a new look digital films have now where we are supposed to just accept that we don’t have the same amount of highlight detail anymore. We have a latitude range we have to work within. You have to decide; do I want detail in my highlights or do I want details in my shadows? You can’t have both. I want both but without bigger budgets for cameras that can handle that kind of latitude I’m stuck lighting to the limitations of the camera. The trick is to work within those limitations in such a way that makes it look like you didn’t have any limitations to begin with... easier said than done.

How many escapes does it take?



When structuring a story, you can get lost in the details. You can fall into traps that slow you down. From time to time reality, can get in the way. It can punch you in the face. The same questions follow you down the page as you’re writing; Does the character have a middle name? Can one shot replace this whole scene? How many characters is too many? How many times does the character have to escape?

Am I writing another movie that I’ll never make? That’s a big one. 

When you believe in what you’re writing it feels like the film has already been made. You can see the scenes and the story keeps growing. The uncomfortable questions will keep coming up and working your way through the answers is what will lead you to the next page.

Film as Therapy

Sometimes when you make a film it is because you need to get it out of your head. It has to be written down and it has to be made. It feels almost as like if you don’t make it you’ll go crazy and as a result the process of making a film can be a lot like therapy. You end up revealing parts of yourself that you’ve kept hidden, the parts of you that are screaming to get out. It is like you can’t sleep until you can let go of what inside you. Filmmaking is a very expensive form of therapy but it’s all I know. I’ve felt this way about Measuring Tape Girl and about all my other films.

For about a year now Measuring Tape Girl has been used by Deneen Ollis, a Child and Youth Mental Health Clinician for MCFD in Penticton, B.C. Deneen works with young people ages 5 to 19. Measuring Tape Girl has been used with a girl’s group called ACE (Adolescents coping with Emotions). Deneen has use the film to start discussions with the girl’s group and in one-on-one sessions in her office. “For the most part the girls and one young man who viewed it nodded in agreement with what was said and understood the darker humour as well,” Deneen said, “It was helpful as many of us tend to be the same as Measuring Tape Girl and when we compare ourselves to others find ourselves lacking. It was great to talk to the young people about not judging ourselves so harshly, and how we can be our own worst enemies, thinking things about ourselves we would never even say to someone we did not like.”

I’m looking into other ways to get Measuring Tape Girl in front of the audiences that need to see it the most. As an experiment I’m going to put up Measuring Tape Girl on YouTube for awhile so that it can be seen by anyone who might be interested. The process of writing and making Measuring Tape Girl taught me that ‘I was allowed to be happy’. Hopefully the idea that we control our own happiness can find it’s way to others who might need to hear it.

Satyajit Ray-The Music Room (1958)

There are films that entertain you, films that change your life, and films that change your perspective on filmmaking, among many other things. The films that are considered to be masterpieces can change your perspective on filmmaking, and they can change your life, but they don't always entertain you, and that’s okay. Our perspective on what is entertaining has been drilled into us by the Hollywood machine. If things don't explode every seven minutes then we might actually notice that most the films we're watching have no character development or story structure beyond the template film entertainment has been following since the early 1980's. There are also films that are good for you but don't entertain. Like a big plate of vegetables, these films may make your mind healthier but they don't always deliver the carb coma you're hoping for. A film that provides you with a different perspective from the norm on anything can be hard to find because you need to look beyond the mainstream delivery system. Lately I've been seeking those films out, and that search has lead me to the films of Satyajit Ray. The high praise of Scorsese and Kurosawa helped lead me toward his work:

‘In sheer terms of content and cinematic excellence, I rank Ray amongst the top ten directors of the last century...Ray's magic, the simple poetry of his images and their emotional impact will always stay with me" - Martin Scorsese 
“Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon.”  - Akira Kurosawa

The Music Room (1958) is a story about a man who refuses to change with the times. Music is a character in the film; it is used to help us hear the transition from one era to another. The film shows us the differences between the old feudal system and the new independent money, the new world slowly taking over and replacing traditional belief systems. In the end I had to take this film, that is in a different language and uses music as a metaphor, and watch it like a silent film. It was only then that I began to understand what it was about. I was overwhelmed by what I didn’t understand. There were some definite cultural barriers created by the difference between North American and Indian cultures and music. The strong use of metaphoric images helped me find my way through the story.
Here are some sample images:
A reflection of the lead character as he’s forced to look up at all the paintings of his ancestors and then look down to himself.
After a tragedy strikes the lead character the film starts to look more like a film noir.
Rain falls on statues after a dark moment in the story.
Seeing past the culture barriers can be difficult, but the performance of Chhabi Biswas and the use of the camera and lighting in the the last half of the story helped me more fully appreciate the film. The film slowly engulfs you in the music as the narrative moves the lead character to his eventual downfall. The poetic use of lighting and music lead me to embrace a film that I thought I could never find a connection to.  

Experiments in Crowd Funding


I’ve been afraid of crowd funding for a long time but it seems like it’s time to take the plunge. I’ve run out of credit cards and it might be time to find a new way to fund my films. The funding will be used to help complete and market the short film version of ‘Words to Remember’ and to help with the pre-production and writing of the feature film version. 

Funding will be required for the following:

Post Production for ‘Words to Remember’ (Short film)
Marketing and Film Festival Services for ‘Words to Remember’ (Short Film)
Film Festival Travel and Pitch Sessions 
Script Writing and Story Editing of ‘Words to Remember’ (Feature Film)
Pre-production of ‘Words to Remember’ (Feature Film)
Production and shooting of ‘Words to Remember’ (Feature Film)

I’ve reached a point we’re we can’t move forward without a little push.

Here’s the link to our gofundme page: http://www.gofundme.com/27f6ug
You’ve already helped us send the film to festivals in France and Spain. With your help we’ve also been able to make the 200 DVD copies of the film we’ll need to send out to festivals over the next year. Special thanks to everyone who has already donated.
“Today and everyday of my life, I stand on the shoulders of everyone who has ever helped me. I stand on the shoulders of all of my friends, on the shoulders of every member of my family and without you I am nothing.”
- Pasquale Marco Veltri - 

Words to Remember - Synopsis
What if there was a cure for Alzheimer’s? What would recovering patients have to tell us after so many years of silence? Alzheimer’s can interrupt the passing down of wisdom from one generation to the next. What would they tell us, not knowing how many minutes of lucidness they might have? ‘Words to Remember’ examines the desperate wisdom that would be passed down to us if our friends and family members with Alzheimer’s could share their reflections on life. The feature film version of Words to Remember will examine what happens at a retirement home where the cure for Alzheimer’s is being tested.

WHAT IF THERE WAS A CURE FOR ALZHEIMER'S -Words to Remember a Film By Pasquale Marco Veltri-





When there is a cure for Alzheimer's, what will recovering patients tell their friends and family after so many years of silence? Pasquale Marco Veltri’s latest film Words to Remember examines the answer to that question. 

In many ways Words to Remember is a science fiction film about the potential near future and how Alzheimer’s can interrupt the passing down of wisdom from one generation to the next.  What will it be like when there is a cure for Alzheimer’s? What will recovering patients have to tell us after so many years of silence? What memories are in the minds of Alzheimer sufferers? Words to Remember envisions the desperate words of wisdom from an Alzheimer’s patient that could be potentially passed down to friends and family members. To connect to people of various backgrounds, Words to Remember is told in four languages to better represent the multicultural aspects of the world and to highlight the fact that wisdom comes in all languages. The Words to Remember film trailer can be viewed at http://tinyurl.com/chtlkkg


“Words to Remember is a film project and concept I have been working on for sometime now. I wanted to give a voice to a topic that many people do not discuss or think about on a day-to-day base. I wanted the film to resonate with people who have family members suffering from Alzheimer’s but also people who don’t. I think we accomplished that effort within this film” says Pasquale Marco Veltri’s.

Written and directed by Pasquale Marco Veltri, Words to Remember stars, Naimesh Nanavaty, Virginia O'Hara, Michael Mcleister, Jasmine Sawant and Candi Zell. Veltri’s film is a continuation of his overall theatrical theme of trajectory of reflection, self-identification and his overall passion to understand the human condition. With an original score by composer Vikas Kohli, the music draws inspiration from the multicultural aspects of the film and fuses a classical string quartet with a traditional Indian bowed instrument known as the Taus. To hear Kohil’s insert in regards to composing the score, please go to: http://bit.ly/WtUzuU.



Making Pictures


        The line between theatre and film is blurred in the work of Elia Kazan. The nature of theatre allows for a direct and immediate relationship with the audience. In a film, this relationship is much harder to achieve, even with the use of close ups and unique camera angles. Throughout his filmmaking career, Kazan’s character development and filmmaking technique created strong stories with intimate performances that directly allowed his films to connect with the viewer in a way usually reserved for live plays. With Panic in the Streets, Kazan broke free of his theatrical background and created a new way of merging film and theatre to tell stories.

“Until Panic in the Streets, I’d directed actors moving them in and out of dramatic arrangements just as I might have done on stage, with the camera photographing them mostly in a medium shot. My stage experience, which I’d thought of as an asset, I now regarded as a handicap. I had to learn a new art.” - Elia Kazan (pg. 259 - Kazan on Directing)

        From Panic in the Streets (1950) to On the Waterfront (1954), all the way through to The Last Tycoon (1976), Kazan consistently created pieces that crossed the line between theatre and film, walking back and forth at will. In The Last Tycoon’s final scene, Robert De Niro directly faces the camera and addresses the film’s audience, repeating a speech he gave earlier in the film to a screenwriter in which he explains the difference between writing and making pictures. Kazan uses the last minutes of his last film to reach out from the screen and directly connect to his audience.



The summer of Elia Kazan


           My new focus toward the films of the 1950’s has brought me to the work of Eliz Kazan. When I looked back at the films of the 1940’s, I was forced to randomly watch films whenever I could find them. Instead I should have been focusing on one filmmaker at a time. Back when there was more time, I would watch four to six films from the same filmmaker and try to isolate their way of working by comparing their films. I found that there was a lot more to gain by watching a series of films by the same director. Hopefully I’ll be in a better position to learn things from the films of the 1950’s by going back to studying one filmmaker at a time.  
            I’ve always been blown away by how good ‘On the Waterfront’ still is sixty years later. It survives the test of time more than most films I can remember seeing. I’ve looked at some of Kazan’s work before but never in a clear concise way. Throughout the summer I’m going to go through most of Kazan’s films and with the help of a book called ‘Kazan in Directing’ we’ll see what I can learn by the end of the summer.  

The Films of The 1940’s

For the last two years or so I’ve been lost in the films of the 1940’s. When watching older films it can be hard to see passed the wartime propaganda and sometimes your eyes hurt when they cut from a wide shot to a medium wide but it’s amazing to see how well so many of these films hold up over time. Take a look at the films currently playing at the movies, how many of those will film geeks still be talking about in sixty years? Not very many. When you get past Casablana(1942), Citizen Cane(1941) and a few Hitchcock movies you can get into some really good stuff that gets lost behind the iconic films of the decade. Pick any John Ford movie but start with The Grapes of Wrath (1940). If you haven’t see the Maltese Falcon (1941) catch that and see what film noir you can but don’t get lost in the darkness. There were many other films made in the forties worth looking out for. Here’s a short list:

Sullivan's Travels ( 1941)


To Be or Not to Be (1942)


The Ox-Bow Incident (1942)


Gaslight (1944)


It's A Wonderful Life (1946)


Roma, Citta Aperta/Rome Open City (1945)


The Bicycle Thief (1948)


Key Largo (1948)

It’s almost time for me to jump forward to the 1950’s and get lost in the films of that decade but before I do there’s a few more films from the forties I have to track down. Then I’ll be moving to the 1950’s: Huston, Cukor, Kazan, Wilder, Fellini, Sirk, Kubrick, Lean and may others wait for me. I’ve started working on the list of films from the 1950’s. Who know’s how many years it’ll take to make it through the best films of the 1950’s.

Culture Days - Retiring the Jacket



We’ve been trying to put together a local screening of ‘Measuring Tape Girl’ but it’s taken us a while. We finally have one thanks to Culture Days. Our screening of ‘Measuring Tape Girl’ is on Sunday, October 2nd at 3pm and 4pm. It will screen at National Film Board of Canada in Toronto.(150 John Street Toronto, Ontario).


http://www.culturedays.ca/en/2011-activities/view/4d86424d-54bc-4f5a-b1a7-6a994c4a89be


Over the last year and a half I’ve worn a Measuring Tape Jacket at film festivals to help promote our film ‘Measuring Tape Girl’. It’s been a crazy adventure in marketing and blatant self-promotion in a few different places around the world but I think it maybe time to retire the measuring tape jacket. I’m pretty sure this is the craziest thing that I’ve done and I don’t regret it but it’s time to move on. There’s been a big learning curve for me when it comes to marketing and I’m still only at the beginning of understanding how much I don’t know about many things but I’ve learn a few things. The most important thing I’ve learned is that you can’t do what everyone else is doing and that you have to have a story to tell. What I end up doing with that knowledge still remains to be seen. A clear sign that we’ve done at least some web marketing for ‘Measuring Tape Girl’ is that a distributor of measuring tapes from China has sent me a several sales emails because they have somehow been convinced that I am involved in Measuring Tape distribution in North America. It makes me smile whenever I receive an sales email about a chinese companies wide variety of measuring tape.

I was never really comfortable in the Measuring Tape Jacket. It make me feel like I didn’t belong. I felt like everyone might be looking at me and judging me. Which was the whole point. I was asking to be judged. I was asking people to walk up to me and give me strange looks. Becoming a visual metaphor for one of my films was a challenge. It forced me to stop hiding in the shadows and become a sales person instead of a filmmaker. It is difficult for a filmmaker, a painter, a photographer or any artist to become a sales person. One of the hardest lessons to learn is that how you market and promote your art form is just as important, if not more important than your actually art form. I know many artists will disagree but if no one knows you’ve made a film, who’s going to show up to see it? I struggle with this any time I have to talk to a group of people about my films. The difference between now and several years ago is that I can almost stand in front of a group of people and not sound quite as nervous as I used to. Maybe that was the whole point of my Measuring Tape Marco adventure. The difference between the old me and this newer version, is that I can now take off the Measuring Tape jacket and feel comfortable in my own skin. I accept myself for who I am and I’m ready and willing to continue learning and growing as the years go by. The whole point of ‘Measuring Tape Girl’ was to make a film that had no camera tricks, no fancy transitions. Just words, one person talking to the audience with no where to hide. Last year I was hiding behind the Measuring Tape jacket and I let it speak for me. I’m going to have to stop finding places to hide, though I may end up hiding behind the seats at the screening.

I would like to thank Culture Days for making a this event possible. It’s amazing that volunteers have created this movement to raise the awareness, accessibility, participation and engagement of all Canadians in the arts and cultural life of their communities. If it was up to me every day would be Culture Day.


Linear Vs. Non-Linear

Do we start the story at the end? Or do we start the story in the middle and build our way back to the beginning? Are we being creative when we use a non-linear narrative to tell a story or are we hiding the fact that our story is boring? All good questions. Non-linear story telling is not new, it’s been around for some time but our new reliance on using a non-linear story to escape story structure is getting a little annoying. Do we really need to start at the end and then jump forward and then jump back. In some ways we’ve forgotten how to tell a story. A long time ago stories would have endings. There would be a beginning, a middle and an end. It seems that not ending a story is a strong trend that shows no sign of ending. The general idea is to leave the ending open for a sequel or to use false endings that leads to another battle or conflict. Sometimes the story can spend so much time tying up loose ends that it can feel like there are ten to twenty endings. I have a deep seeded love for stories with a clear ending. It makes me smile when a story can be told without tricks and false endings. When a non-linear story helps reveals characters or in some way reveals what the story is truly about I also smile. There is a tendency to use a non-linear story as a stylistic choice, instead of using it for a narrative purpose. As wonderful as a properly constructed non-linear story can be...Please give me a beginning, a middle and an end. When we’ve reached the cathartic payoff please end the story.

The Films of Sidney Lumet

Sidney Lumet has always been one of my personal deities. His work has always been ground breaking, emotional powerful but at the same time approachable. Sidney Lumet redefined so many filmmaking conventions that it is amazing how overlooked his work has been. Modern day filmmakers sometimes think of transitions to flashbacks, low angles to build tension, lenses and depth of field being used to define characters as clichés. When Sidney Lumet used these letters of the film alphabet to tell stories he was defining the film language as he went. It’s easy to look back now and consider something to be simple and dated unless you look at his films knowing that this was the first time someone used a frame by frame transition to move into a flashback. Only then can you appreciate the simple elegance of Sidney Lumet’s filmmaking. Here are just a few examples.


‘12 Angry Men’ was basically shot entirely in one room. As the film progressed Sidney wanted the room to get smaller and smaller. The film starts with wide lenses and then the lenses get progressively longer, flattening out the room, making it seem to be more claustrophobic. The camera height also changes throughout the film. The camera starts at above eye level, then moves down to eye level and ends up below eye level for the last 3rd of the film. Simple or at least it seems simple when this film gets explained to you in film class but it’s affect on the audience stands the test of time.


‘The Pawnbroker’ uses quick cuts that last only a fraction of a second to move from the present to the lead characters past. The film uses a “flutter cut” technique which uses very short shots from different scenes to transition back and forth seamlessly. This innovated and extended a european film editing technique that we now consider to be a normal transitional element. A simple answer to the flashback that redefined film language in the 1960’s.

In ‘The Fugitive Kind’ different lenses are used on main characters to represent their way of seeing the world. Longer lenses with less depth of field are used on Brando’s character Val Xavier to give him a dream like quality. Brando’s character walks around with his head in the clouds and he is shot in a way that represent that. The lead female character is forced to deal with the harsh realities of life, so throughout the film she is shot with wide angle lenses. As she falls in love the lenses used to shoot her slowly changes to the same long lenses used to shoot Brano’s character. Controlling the the use of lenses and depth of field is an elegant way to define characters.

Most filmmakers major concern is covering the scene so they can cut the performances together. Finding a way to use lighting, lenses and performances to come together in a way that completely supports the story is something else. Sidney Lumet is one of the pillars of filmmaking who helped create film language over a long career of story telling. I hope to find the time to revisit a long list of his films over the next few months.