"Nova Scotia Open to the World article with Greg Hemmings"

This has been an abnormally great year for free publicity! I have ZERO marketing dollars for HHP, so I am always stoked to have some press opportunities. Recently I have been featured in three differencet magazine publications; Nova Scotia Open to the World, Halifax Magazine, and Innovations Magazine! Take a read, if the words are too small just click on the image and it will expand!

"Article about PARTY CULT HOST beginnings of Hemmings House Pictures in Halifax Magazine! haha!"

Very cool, Halifax magazine published a pretty major spread about what we are doing at HHP and where our roots were at Acamac. If anyone wants to know what Acamac was, ask any cabbie in Southern NB...its where Hemmings House Pictures was born, a place where working hard so we could play hard was our code, I would never consider myself a "party cult host", not even sure what that is! haha, but its funny and I'll roll with it! If the magazine scan is to small click on it and it will expand. I didn't crop any of the ads out, sorry, just no time!

"My Arctic Adventures in INNOVATIONS MAGAZINE!"

Innovations magazine hosted a few pages from this very blog! Here are the scans! If you want to read more check out the original blog entry HERE and more about my arctic travels HERE. Hope you enjoy, if the words on this scan are too small just click on the photo and it will expand!

"NBYO / Matt Andersen DVD Blues on the Boulevard DVD release party!"

Hemmings House Pictures is kicking out the jams this year with great concert DVD releases from the Jimmy Swift Band, Matt Andersen, Jessica Rhaye, Thick 'n Thin (Ross Neilson / Matt Andersen), New Brunswick Youth Orchestra, and more in the pipe! Please come join the celebrations as we release our latest concert film for the New Brunswick Youth Orchestra!!! This film features Matt Andersen and Les Muses! For a tease check this clip.

http://vimeo.com/6699503



Matt Andersen New Brunswick's Matt Andersen has a larger than life showmanship that has been earning him a fervent and steadfast audience wherever he graces the stage. Matt's sprawling blues, roots and rock musical hybrid with his sorrowing and soulful voice has sparked a phenomenal buzz.


The New Brunswick Youth Orchestra A recent winner of ECMA 2008 Classical Recording of the Year, has been described as “one of the best Youth Orchestras in Canada”. They performed for Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II and on the most legendary of stages in New York City, Carnegie Hall. In July 2005, NBYO performed and recorded the program Virtuoso Italia, at the Auditorium Paganini in Parma, Italy. And in July 2007, NBYO completed a tour of China.


Les Muses This female vocal quartet has captured everything good in music and song. They were met with enthusiastic appreciation wherever their love of music has taken them; from Acadie, to Québec, Ontario, Louisiana, as well as France, Belgium and Switzerland. From 2000 to 2005, they presented well over 500 concerts and today, although the quartet no longer exists, they still get together for their annual Christmas concerts and are delighted to reunite for the NBYO’s fundraising concert. Isabelle Bujold, Nadine Hébert, Monique Poirier and Isabelle Thériault make up this dynamic group. Their great love of harmony, words, and beautiful melodies, has helped these four young women to effortlessly evolve into a unique style that makes their songs come alive.

“RIP MAC TONNIES”

October 22^nd, 2009

"Godspeed Mac Tonnies!"

I was saddened to hear that my friend Mac Tonnies, a legend in UFO research, died of natural causes, man he was so young, only 34. I read the news HERE

A while back we were shooting a series for Vision TV about the paranormal; one of the episodes was about life on other planets. You can read some of context earlier in my blog HERE and also HERE

The host of this episode was UFO researcher and respected blogger Mac Tonnies. Man we had some great times on the road, he awkwardly fit in with the film crew just perfectly as us filmmakers are just as up in the stars as the UFO community are! Mac Tonnies introduced me to Twitter, I remember driving up to an astrological observatory atop a mountain outside Laramie Wyoming, he was leaning out the window taking a picture of me filming him, he told me this was for his twitter. I had no idea what he was talking about, but as the man was far more in the future and ahead of the times as I ever am, Mac introduced me to social media phenomenon that wouldn’t take real grip for another 12 months! Unreal!

Check out some of Mac’s blog about our trip together HERE as well as HERE

Check out Mac’s blog about our time at the University of Wyoming at our visit the SETI Institute HERE

Check out the video trailer for our show “Supernatural Investigator” with Mac as the “Life on Other Planets” expert HERE

Check out my friend Mike MacDonald’s blog about Mac’s passing, Mike was our director for the episode, check Mike's post about Mac HERE. Also referenced from Mike MacDonald’s blog, check this:

Here's a link to Radio Misterioso. Paul Kimball,

Greg Bishop, and Nick Redfern remember Mac Tonnies.

Smart men talking about a wonderful guy.

Here are Mac’s internet homes:

http://www.mactonnies.com/

http://posthumanblues.blogspot.com/

Mac you made an imprint in my life buddy! I wish I kept the drawing we did together, I know you said you were going to hang it up in your apartment. Be at peace on the other side my man!

Mac and I both drew this picture on the paper table cloth of a random bar in Laramie, this was moments before the Jagger, Mac never drank alcohol, so he was very kind to drive us back to the hotel.

This was our Twin Peaks ballroom moment! Agent Cooper joined us for Cherry Pie soon after.
Meal together on the road somewhere outside Denver?

We made it to Haight Ashbury, Mike and I ended up in the bar asking folks where the Grateful Dead house was, but decided to just stay in the bar instead of continuing our search, Mac wondered the hippie mecca taking photos of the interesting people and places of the area.
Mac did not drink or smoke, but for the camera an unlit cigarette ended up in his mouth.

Mike MacDonald, Steve Outhitt, Mac and I.

A composite ooglie and punch!

I think this was Santa Ana California the night of our filming at the SETI institute.

Our fearless producer Jenn Adcock, me and Mac.

Please take the time to read some of the links I posted about this amazing guy. If you knew him please post links in the comments section.

“ #VIFF and the Rheos ”

October 15th, 2009

Vancouver

Picture: "Califonia Dreamline"

Sound Track:

Artist – Rheostatics

Song – “Claire”

Ahhhh, sweet Claire…that takes me back a few years, it must have been 1992 when the Paul Quarrington’s book “Whale Music” was made into a feature film. Of course all the Rheostatics fans of the world were stoked to find out that the Rheos would be recording the soundtrack for the movie. Of course the irony of this is that the Rheos released an album a few years previous named “Whale Music” in homage to the book! So yes the Rheostatics have two record releases by the same name! Two very different albums, and two very fantastic albums. “Clarify me, Clarify me Claire, C-L-A-I-R-E confide in me!”.

Here is a random question, how does the Rheostatics relate to Purolator Courier? Great question! A fantastic artist named Scott Guigze many years ago took a picture of me filming the Rheostatics at the Evolve Festival. It was a shot of my on the hybrid dolly filming Martin Tielli rocking on stage.

The photo ended up back in Scott’s art studio and many years later (6 months ago or so) a friend called me from Ottawa telling me that he saw an art piece at an exhibit and I was in it! I thought this to very cool, so I contacted Scott to see if I could buy it, he was very happy to send it to me, but now many moths later Purolator has closed the account because they lost the package…no compensation, just a “sorry we lost your piece of art, oh well!”. This isn’t the first time Purolator has boned me, I bought a DVCAM deck for $2500 USA, it got here mashed….they gave me $100 and said sorry. Wow. Anyway, this blog is not about the Rheostatics, Purolator or DVCAM Decks, this blog has everything to do with my trip to Vancouver!

Jessica, Kaiya and I are on yet another flight together across the country, travel is non stop. We just spent a few days in Van because Jessica had a medical conference and I tagged along to be a daddy sitter, have a couple meetings, seeing some friends and hitting the Vancouver Film Festival. I got to see my friend Raj Panikkar’s film, it was fantastic…I got to watch all of it with baby Kaiya until the last 10 minutes when a loud crash happened in the film and woke Kaiya up and she screamed. Ha ha, it was hilarious, no one in the theater knew there was a baby in the back row…I dashed out as fast as I could. I try to take Kaiya to as many things as I can, she made it through 2 hours of films at the Atlantic Film Festival the night they screened Papikatuk, she did great, I assumed she would here as well, she did pretty well however. My friend Emily Davidson joined me for that film, then joined me again later that night for the film festival closing night party, it was wild. My other great friends Erika and Miller (the models as they are known) joined us with one of their other actor friends, it was a night of Bollywood and red wine.

I love Vancouver, the last night before we had to go home I hooked up with one of my favorite people in the world Sarah Hedar, Sarah is an awesome editor in the city, and she was my “trailer” mate in film school. Yes Sarah and I were so broke in film school that we ended up buying a motor home for $800 and lived in it for almost two years parking it in vineyards, orchards, and friends driveways. Every time in rained or snowed there would be multiple leaks through the roof, and our propane furnace didn’t have a fan to blow the heat around, so instead the furnace casing would glow so red hot that you could almost see through the metal, if the motor home wasn’t so water logged, I’m sure it would be a lovely fire hazard. This motor home was named Ethel. In fact to bring this all the way back to the Rheostatics, Sarah and I painted a scene on the side of the motor home of the two of us on a beach with palm trees. On top of our portraits were the words “California Dreamline”, Rheostatics fans would appreciate. One more random Rheostatics moment now that I’m on the topic, no wait two more…

1. Where were you the night Princess Diana was killed? I was at the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto standing beside Tragically Hip’s very own Gord Downey as a pumped audience was breathing in the Rheostatics vibrations “Do you get the urge when winter comes!”. Above the stage was a small TV that probably typically has the “game” playing on it, only this night it was a closed captioned shock to me as Tim was singing “It’s a bad time to be poor”…Princess Diana was just run over by a jackass paparazzi, what’s with our pathetic culture…why do we give a damn about seeing a picture of celebrity doing every day human things? I guess Diana’s real killers were the billions of grocery store line up tabloid magazine cover addicts.

2. The Evolve Festival filming of the Rheostatics was never edited. We shot 6 cameras with a killer dolly wide. James Shaw from Red Fish Audio multi tracked the whole show as well. Problem is I haven’t found the time or money to edit this together, or to get James to do the audio mix. I should let the Rheostatics know we have this raw footage. Maybe someday we can put it together. That would be awfully nice. “No matter who you vote form, you always end up with a king, bon Bob, do do do do, Peas and Rice”.