Pulling an all-night edit at Night/Shift for 'Killing Art'

When a filmmaker hires you for an all-day job, you know you're in for some fun.

Last weekend Duncan Finnigan and Lyndon Horsfall from the 12 Angry Filmmakers group took on the challenge of shooting multiple short films in one day. It was all part of Night/Shift, a nuit-blanche festival of art in KW. One thing that the gents wanted to do to spice up the night was to have me on-location to edit one of the short films to show that very night for an audience.

Editing setup at Night Shift for 12 Angry Filmmakers

9 a.m.: I arrived on location at the Walper Hotel and set up my editing suite while the cast/crew arrived and prepped to shoot. By noon I was receiving footage from the camera crew and started to cut the short together.

Yes, that would be my rubber ducky sitting atop my computer monitors. It goes wherever I go. Rubber ducky just gets me and is such a positive influence on my work.

Every time the crew returned to home base to swap batteries, warm up and grab a snack, Duncan (el director) sat with me to look over the edit briefly and give some feedback.

By 1:30 a.m. we had a 10-minute rough to show to those who had gathered to watch it. And of course, free popcorn for all.

Before the film gets released online, Duncan and I both agreed we wanted to tighten up the edit and give it a few extra touches.

The 12 Angry Filmmakers are a mad bunch of folk who are always up to something awesome. Like their Facebook page and check out some of the other shorts they work on.

Thanks to Michael Malko and Erica Robinson for snapping the pics of me working. One request I have while working is if you're going to watch me edit then you might as well take a couple of pictures for me to use.

Introducing the Camera Crew for IG4

This year marked the 4th time Merc Media sponsored Ignite Guelph, a speaking event similar to TEDTalks where each speaker has 5 minutes to speak about what their passionate about.

And so for this year the camera crew and scope of the video series expanded to a slightly larger-scale production. This meant more cameras and more crew.

Thanks to Joel Mieske and his photography skills, I can introduce you to the team that helped capture the evening for the video series.

Tyler Sloane and Tom Robitaille lent a hand by manning camera angles off-stage while I controlled three cameras (two on tripod, one GoPro remotely via my iPhone).

Thanks to them the videos have the benefit of more angles to cut together which in the long-run makes it easier to edit (more choices to choose from, better angles to use based on the action on stage) and will boost the production value of the video series (more angles used = bigger production). When you cut between 5 solid camera angles, it ultimately makes for a better viewing experience to your audience and shows the extra effort that went into capturing your event.

Check out some behind the scenes shots of the camera crew in action. And check out the links for Ignite Guelph to catch news of the next event when it comes out. Plus news of the video series to see what went down at IG4.

Ignite Guelph Official Site for event details

Ignite Guelph Facebook Page for news and announcements

Follow the excellent eye that is Joel Mieske on twitter

A Steadi walk down memory lane on UoG Campus

Last weekend we got a break from production on Antisocial 2 to head home for some R&R. So of course I threw the Glidecam on for the day.

All of the students returned for another year of schooling and the University of Guelph asked me to cover their move-in day and make a video showing all of the emotion and excitement.

There was a special highlight for me: revisiting my original residence room in 1st year. It's been 11 years since I had been in that room (Good God!) and a wave of nostalgia hit me in the face when I saw it.

The rest of the day was spent racing around campus capturing clips of parents hugging their all-grown-up-now children goodbye, students meeting their roommates for the first time and all of the hard-working volunteers welcoming everyone to their first year at Guelph.

And now back to editing!

Leanne and Chantelle from Student Housing Services were my smiley guides around campus for the day.