September 25th, 2008
Halifax –Toronto-Halifax
I am flying home after a very bizarre and interest-filled trip to the T-Dot. A few days ago, or should I say Monday, I made the 4 hour drive to Saint John and immediately MacCormack and I started re editing the music video, it looked good but needed major TLC. Andrew as we speak is in Halifax at Power Post doing the color correction on the video, so right now I & I will be driving straight to the edit suite to give it I & I’s final thumbs up! You see, tomorrow night we are premiering the video in front of a couple thousand fans at Harbor Station, a big release! And Chris Cummings will be cranking out a few of his rock solid country tunes in a set that I’m sure will not be quickly forgotten…Welcome Back! Oh my, the captain just came over the ole speaker system and said we are starting our decent…15km hour winds in Halifax, balmy 19 degrees, not bad for Hali in the fall…I will try to write this quickly so I don’t have to let it wait, sometimes when you don’t write in the moment you miss out on gems and holograms.
I drove the long trek back the next morning after our mad video fine cut session, then I worked as a camera operator on a home renovation show for HGTV called “Home Sweet Reno”, via Ocean. It was crazy, there is a family who is living in their house as it is being renovated, 8 people are living in the bare bones of a house, the drama and technical is great television! I might do some dailies on this show. It was a big work day, we shot with the new Sony EX3, great little camera, full HD. Sweet.
The next day I wrote my little butt off, I prepared 30 treatments for 30 TV series projects that we have in development.
Here is a list of full on shows I prepared…my wrists hurt…
Creators,
Etiquette Guy
SEMA
Psalms 67
Film Cruise
Melting lands
Worlds of Change
Wrestling Reality
Kardinal Sinners
Grave Concerns
Dead Poets
Airplane Journals
Timelapsing Earth
Eating Italy
Drawn in Blood
End Games
World of Wonder
Aztec Enigma
Checking Out
Eureka
Worlds Apart
Kid Sing
Global Fusion
Heads!
Happy Hour
Baldini
Dog Slay
Extreme Snowmobile
World Cup
Chasing the Sun
I would write a quick synopsis on these shows but alas my time is limited on this flight, suffice it to say It was a huge job to get these ready for our MIP dry run in Toronto yesterday. We met with CTV, Discovery, Travel, CanWest. We also met with my distributor friends Jenna and Natalie from Buzz Taxi! Always great to see them, we had great lunch together, nice little tradition we have fostered over the last 2 years, whether it be in France or Toronto. Then we met another producer Milan Chotai who is producing a doco similar to Melting Lands with another cat I know named Liam Morgan (I worked for Liam’s dad Steven many times in the distant past on films, he is a great actor and a set carp…he also lives in St Andrews, and his daughter Alice is an old friend of mine as well, this is important information! J )
I am looking into possibly exec producing this doco for them…it was good to meet face to face. Then Matt and I cruised to Microtainment to see Garry Blye, who is one of my “mentors”, he has always been good to me, spending time going over my projects to see if we can work together on something in the future.
The variety of meetings was extremely eye opening, we now know what the broadcasters are looking for…we have a lot of work left to do on all 30 of our projects. I ended the night by checking out an hour of the Signs and Wonders conference at the TACF…like I always say, Toronto Airport fellowship is a revelation experience every time I go. This time there where probably 2000 people. I wanted to stay for the whole night because it was a very interesting conference, but after an hour of heavenly tunes of the Yiddish influence, I felt my cold getting worse.
What cold do I speak of? Well a couple nights ago I drove from Halifax to Hampton to go to my friends’ Colleen and Ben’s wedding. It took place at Ben’s folk’s homestead. It was really nice, and the barn party was a lot of fun. Ben is an electronic music producer and he spins the freshest of beats. It was fresh beats... what else can I say? The meal was great, pogos, vegetables, mushroom soup, lots of cake, man I ate a ton, I weigh a ton, I’m a fatty…it didn’t stop me and Tidby from cutting a rug, hanging with good people (my dearest Phemie was there as the maid of honor!!! So good to see her), and jumping on the trampoline till 3 in the morning as the bonfire settled to embers and the beats continued to blare through the cracks in the wooden barn. Thing is, Tidby and I set up his tent, and it is officially fall now, and I had nothing but a thin summer sleeping bag to sleep in…so due to the late night and the wetness of the fall midnight air, I got a nasty cold. Our Intern was at the wedding as well, his name is New-Steve. New-Steve is actually the second New-Steve of the company so I call him New Steve-2. New Steve-2 wrote most of the text for our website! Great job number 2. He is also charged with the challenge to go through this whole blog and fix any grammar or spelling errors, which this blog is rich with. I explained to him that when I write I like to exchange my present thoughts immediately onto type. It makes for a very scattered un-edited “Airplane Journals” but as long as my grammar and spelling are kosher then that is all a guy could really ask for isn’t it?
So back to Toronto, I leave the TACF party and call 4 or 5 hotels in the area, they are all booked. Wow, I couldn’t believe it there are so many hotels around Pearson International. None the less my spirits weren’t broken yet. I had a rent a car with my I Pod and driving the 401 later at night when there is no traffic is lots of fun with good tunes. The next morning my meeting was to be at 9am down by the Don Valley 404 highway, so I decided to check out hotels enroute to that general area…EVERYONE IS BOOKED SOLID! I checked at least 10 hotels. I had cash in pocket, no problems spending the dough, especially that night as my cold was getting really bad, it was almost 11 pm and I needed to sleep. It didn’t happen. I gave up. I pulled into a parking lot beside the 401 and slept in the freakin rental car...mental car…lentil soup. I was discouraged but too tired and sick to do anything. So I woke up every hour, turned the car on for some heat, trying not to “exhaust” myself, and made it through the night. I got even more sick.
I had to pull a trick from my past so I would be presentable for my meeting at 9, so I snuck into the Raddison hotel pool, had a shower, a hot tub, and shaved. As to not mess with karma, I bought a very expensive breakfast from the Raddison restaurant, you know, kind of for payment for me using their facilities. This is something I used to do all the time in high school and university…with no regard to karma…I have always been so in love with hot tubs. Strange fascination…also it is strange how much I love motorhomes and scotch as well. But what are we without love? NOTHING!
Sleeping in places other than beds is something I have become quite good at in my life…from living in my tree house, to sleeping in snow forts with scouts, to hammocks in trees, on rocky beaches, under airport benches….pretty much anywhere, its no big deal. I remember once at a Freshwind conference at TACF, my brother, Tidby, Shannon and Jason set up our tent in a ditch beside the 401. It was a beautiful campsite. Ditches are extremely private places, who else sets up tents there? No one really, so it’s a pretty stylish choice if you are in the middle of an urban concrete jungle and want just a little piece of nature to set up camp…there’s always grass and wetness in ditches.
I headed down the Don Mills road to Hi Fidelity HD (RUSH HD) for my meeting. Had a very progressive meeting with Mr. John Panikkar who has agreed to license our next evolution of Wrestling Reality; The Kardinal Sinners. If all goes well we will be filming the Kardinal Sinners in November. So here we go! Another show to put under the belt. Very much looking forward to doing it this time around and hopefully perfecting it, my goal is to keep it tight. We have learned a lot from experience and from mistakes with our previous TV shows, now is the time to have a goal to be quick, efficient, and successful…and make a kick ass show to boot.
As it turns out an old film school friend of mine named Meaghan works at RUSH HD…man I have really lost touch with all of my friends from those days…I guess I should get a personal Facebook account sometime? Hmmmm. Not really in love with that idea. We will weigh out the pros and cons…when I say “we” I am actually talking about I & I. I thanked John for having faith in our project and bid him farewell. John just happens to be the older brother of my good friend from NSI, Raj Panikkar! It truly is a small world. Raj is the producer I wrote about a few times in the past who has the “Rent-a-Goalie” show on Showcase. I was hoping he would be at this upcoming MIP but alas I will be there with no NSI comrades. Matt, our newest member to the team in Halifax has been rocking the MIP scene hooking up fantastic meetings….I am committed to coming home with a sale. I need one, it will be my forth MIP...no more messing around. The pre-meetings I just had in Toronto where a great start, long ways to go, marketing materials, more meetings, logistics….oh and I am on an alcohol free challenge right now, so that will be interesting in the center of wine country being dry as the Nevada desert. Anyway I am always up for a good challenge, I will write more about this very interesting challenge in a later blog post…timing has to be right! J
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