As many of you may have noticed, during this year’s Toronto International Film Festival I couldn’t stop gushing about Canadian short film-maker Jamie Travis and his sheer genius. His short film The Saddest Boy in the World was my favorite entry at the festival (yes, even better than Borat) and remains my favorite short film I have ever seen.

Luckily for those of you who missed it at TIFF, The Saddest Boy in the World will be screening at the Royal Theatre this Sunday as part of the Resfest schedule. I spoke with Jamie shortly after this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, and he shared some insights into his films, his process, and his thoughts on Toronto.

Both the Patterns Trilogy and the Saddest Boy in the World are remarkably unique: where do you get your ideas?
That’s always the hardest question to answer. I am a deeply obsessive and analytical person, so it’s easy for me latch on to ideas and take them to the next level. Getting the ideas in the first place, however, is this weird, inexplicable thing, as I am sure most people would agree. The Patterns Trilogy was an exercise in burning through my long list of visual and thematic obsessions. With Patterns, the things that crept into my mind every time I attempted to write - pipes, unattended appliances, self-conscious suspense, hand washing, wallpaper - I could finally exorcise from my mind. Seriously, everything I was writing at one point had a hand-washing scene. For me, a very clean person, the POV of washing my own hands is one that I see many times a day, so it makes sense that this image would make an imprint on my psyche. I found myself getting sick of my own ideas and my own scripts - and of course, it has often proven difficult to entrench my ideas within sound narrative frameworks - so I decided to make a film that unabashedly showcased my persistent obsessions while eschewing traditional narrative techniques. Why not make a film ABOUT someone washing her hands? One thing you learn in film school is the difference between action and activity. Action is what moves the story along - an important decision, for example. Activity is just the inconsequential stuff that people do - like peeling cucumbers or washing hands. Before Patterns was Patterns, it was called Activity - why not make a film that is all activity and no action?

The trilogy is a self-conscious set of films - much of the writing process involved anticipation of viewer response. How will the audience react when this happens? How can I surprise the audience now? I tried to be hyper-aware of the audience with these films. As the Patterns movies are loose collections of what thrills me, it is no surprise that the films feature some heavy filmmaker references. With Patterns 1, I remember thinking how cool it would be if the film were a combination of Svankmajer (Jabberwocky is one of the most thrilling films I have ever seen) and Japanese horror, featured some formal Kubrick and Hitchcock references and had a Cassavetes title. I don’t know if that’s how it turned out, but that was certainly present in my loosely remembered fabric of intentions.

The Saddest Boy in the World proved similarly therapeutic to me. It’s donning on me now that all my films are reactions to my struggles with writing. While The Patterns Trilogy was an attempt to exorcise my nagging preoccupations, Saddest Boy is a response to struggling with a feature script I was working on called I Hate White Rabbits. After years of writing agony, I condensed the ideas into Saddest Boy. I Hate White Rabbits was an epic whose subject was an eleven year-old boy consumed in a suburb plagued by fires. A sort of hyperbolically overpopulated suburbia with some prepubescent homosexual experimentation. I was getting bored of my stabs at suburbia, and so I dove into a short script that could very cleanly, very concisely and in almost essay-like fashion, delineate the shortcomings of suburban life. The Saddest Boy in the World grew to be more than just that (yes, many of the episodes are warped visions of my own childhood traumas) - like with Patterns, Saddest Boy became for me an exercise in audience response. How do I make the audience laugh at a kid to whom they can sort of relate and then, in the final act, make them feel guilty and question why they were laughing at all?

Each of your films is meticulously crafted, and the choice of color palette seems to be extremely deliberate: what kind of impact do you hope to convey with the colors in your films (especially the lush greens which I can’t seem to get out of my head)?
Colour is often the first thing I think of when designing a movie. So far my films have featured not-quite-real worlds. A consistent and deliberate colour scheme is an immediate method of communicating such artifice. I’ll take you through my colour choices for Saddest Boy. I knew I wanted to open on a wide shot of an empty room. For me, Timothy’s story could be told completely in that shot, by the pictures on the wall, the matching patterns and, of course, the child-size noose. The obvious choice for a little boy’s room is blue, but this was too obvious. Pink would have had too much sexual meaning. I liked that green and yellow weren’t gender-specific and that they both would hold false hope for Timothy. Whatever colour I chose for Timothy’s bedroom, I wanted to see nowhere in the film’s other interiors or costumes - except with the mother’s birthday dress. I don’t know how effective the result is, but I wanted to connect this alternately adorable and disturbing bedroom with Timothy’s mother. I wanted to make it clear that she designed the room, that she was responsible for infantilising her son. The other colours all stemmed from this formal conceit. The two-tone gold balloons for the birthday party, I thought, communicate that the party is more for mother Barbara than for Timothy; on a purely aesthetic level, I thought gold was an unexpected colour for a story like this. The exteriors were a given, since sky blue and grass green would automatically communicate the simplified storybook world I was trying to create.

Your films have a great feeling of suburban desolation. This may be reading too much into the movie, but the house number in ‘The Saddest Boy in the World’ is 905, which is the area code synonymous with Toronto’s suburbs. Intentional?
It’s funny that you would mention that, since Pauline’s phone number is a 905 number, too! This was not in the script. The actor, Christopher Redman, just dialled some variation of his childhood number. Coincidentally, this is the house number of the Saddest Boy location and the area code of Ontario’s suburbs. I am from BC and I have never dialled a 905 number. But I like that there is special meaning for Ontarians. Would anyone really believe Pauline lives in the suburbs? Possibly she is a suburban girl all grown up and moved to the big city.

Why the Anderson Children Didn’t Come to Dinner and The Saddest Boy in the World are clearly satires of suburban ritual. If suburban malaise has crept its way into The Patterns Trilogy (this certainly wasn’t my intent), then maybe I’ve been more numbed by the suburban experience than I previously thought.

How important is it for you, as a Canadian filmmaker, to have your work showcased at the Toronto International Film Festival, and what kind of opportunities does that open up?
It is essential! I don’t know where I’d be without the Toronto International Film Festival. It holds more cache than most film festivals in the world, and so it has the capacity to get even a small-time filmmaker like me loads of attention. Through the festival I have met agents, managers, producers, distributors, fellow filmmakers, friends. The Toronto audiences have been consistently responsive to my work; and so premiering at Toronto has proven great for my ego.

How are you enjoying being in Toronto for the festival? Have we been playing good hosts?
Like I said, Toronto is the best host for filmmakers. You blog people are amazing!

You’ve made five successful shorts: any plans for a feature in the future?
I, of course, have plans for a feature. I am working on a script right now for a twisted little suspense thriller - well, a self-conscious suspense thriller. After working on a script for years that proved too personal, I am excited to be moving into genre territory. So far my films have all had as their emphases design and composition. It is impossible for me to divorce myself from such tendencies, but my feature will be much more character-driven. Since, as I described, my last four shorts have been responses to the first failed feature script (and to my growing boredom with my own ideas), it should come as no surprise that I want to make something completely new to me. I think people have certain expectations of what my first feature will be like - I would really like to surprise everyone and give them something they didn’t see coming.

The Saddest Boy in the World screens at the Royal Theatre on December 3, 2006 as part of Resfest. Visit modernfamily.ca or resfest.ca for more details.

(Cross-posted to blogTO)

A little while ago on vidTO, Jerrold featured a video by Torontonian Alex Chung: actor, martial artist, stuntperson, fight choreographer. To be honest, I was intrigued. The rapid rise in popularity of parkour and tricking in mainstream culture — and especially here in Toronto — has always been fascinating to me, so I decided to go out and find Alex Chung and find out what really makes him tick. And kick.

How did you get started with martial arts and stunts?
For quite a few of us (including myself, Steve Clarke, and Joseph Jamili) martial arts was something introduced to us at a very early age (picture small eight year olds doing karate kicks). Eventually it grew into a passion. A lot of the stunt crew members are trickers, so martial arts was definitely a great influence on many of us. Myself and DL MacDonald treaded into stunt work when we started making our own short martial art films in 2001. The formation of the stunt team in July 2006 marked our coming together to do stunts as a unit and to support one another.

What kind of training and practice goes into the work you do?
Since we have a lot of time devoted to school and work, we aren’t able to train as often as we’d like to, but we do train consistently. A few of us do weight training on our own time, but we also meet up as a team to work on tricking and stunts at a gym. Two gyms we visit most often are the ones at Scarborough Gym Elites Gymnastics and Steeles West Gymnastics (with Team Ryouko). Their facilities are excellent for us to work on dynamic kicking, acrobatics, break falls, creative stunts, etc. Our training will consist mostly of the flips, falls, and kicks that you see in our vids. For “screen fighting” in general (reactions, timing, speed, the acting itself) we gain through experience in making action scenes.

Is there a large community of people who do this kind of stuff in Toronto?
Yes. Both parkour and tricking have become very popular especially in Toronto. One of the most well known trickers, Joe Eigo, lives here in Toronto. Also, Team Ryouko is possibly the most popular group featuring XMA (Extreme Martial Arts) around. Members of our team often meet up with members of Ryouko, Joe Eigo, or anyone else interested in martial arts and tricking. People with varying ages and skill levels get together all the time to engage in the dangerous but exciting sport of tricking. More and more people have been trying out martial arts and stunt work to expand their horizons and to see what they have to offer in the entertainment industry.

How has the popularity of sites like YouTube — where people can see your work — effected the amount and type of stunt and martial art work you do?
Sites like YouTube have given us great exposure. We’ve been getting a lot of appreciation for our work and it also gives us a chance to see others. It pushes you and makes you work harder in order to improve and to outdo what you’ve done before. We try very hard to raise the standard in action film-making. Each time we take on a project there’s the task of coming up with fresh and innovative choreography as well as exciting new stunts. Thanks to sites like YouTube, we are able to get feedback and find ways to reach other people out there who love doing what we do.

More information on Alex Chung is available on his personal website or on the Eclipse Stunt Crew website.

So here’s my admission. My initial exposure to Robert Altman’s movies was the remarkably awful Pret-a-Porter, and saying that I was less than impressed would be saying it lightly. Luckily, a friend of mine urged me to see MASH only two weeks later, and it was then that I realized that even great directors can make mistakes.

I’m a bit of a novice when it comes to Altman films, having only seen twelve of them, but they were all as good, if not better, than MASH. Altman’s style of interweaving dialog and multiple thematic strands was perfectly suited for my movie-watching tastes, and I came to love his eccentricities and particularities that permeated every single one of his pictures. I followed up MASH with McCabe & Mrs. Miller, and since then I have come to love classics like A Wedding, Nashville, 3 Women, Vincent & Theo, Short Cuts, and The Long Goodbye, as well as contemporary wonders like Dr T and the Women, Gosford Park, and A Prairie Home Companion.

I still have trouble trying to figure out which of his films I like best — it’s definitely a toss-up between Nashville and Gosford Park — but in the end, it isn’t Altman’s individual films that stick with you and resonate inside. Instead, what stays with you is the intensity and dedication that Altman puts into his craft, a resolve that is clearly demonstrated in the detail in the dialog, the intricacy of movement, and the powerful storytelling power that is characteristic of every Altman movie.

I remember telling my brother when Altman received his Honorary Academy Award last year that it felt as though Robert Altman would never die, and I was glad that he wouldn’t because I enjoyed his work so much. Now that he is gone, the film world has a lot to grieve for. Rest In Peace, Mr. Robert Altman.

During my recent trip to San Francisco, there came a time when I had a bunch of work to get done, and sitting in the hotel room just didn’t cut it. I needed to find a place where I could work independently, but still have access to resources such as a wireless internet connect, a kitchen, and somebody to grab lunch with. Following the recommendation of Chris Messina, I decided to spend the day at The Hat Factory.

The Hat Factory is a coworking (more on that later) location in San Francisco where people in a variety of creative fields can come together and work both independently and in collaboration. With a huge kitchen, great meeting spaces, ample work space, and a very comfortable lounge area, The Hat Factory is the perfect locale for a self-employed worker who doesn’t quite want to be working from home. The daily space-usage rate of $10 (or $170 monthly) helps offset the costs for the space and resources (like the internet connection) and ensures everyone is fully vested in the proper upkeep of the facility.

I later learned that The Hat Factory is but one example of the coworking phenomenon spreading across the continent. As more and more people work remotely from their place of employment, the need for good workspaces is at a premium — after all, working out of a Starbucks is not for everyone. Websites like Om Malik’s Web Worker Daily, which distribute indispensable information for the new remote worker, have proliferated because of the trend to work at home, but even they acknowledge that working from home is not always the most productive of settings. And this is where coworking shines. Essentially acting as office space for the office-less, a coworking location allows workers to enjoy the benefits of office space without all the hassles and added costs. It’s a genius idea, and I wholeheartedly support it.

For more information about The Hat Factory, visit its website, as well as the Coworking wiki. In Toronto, David Crow seems to be doing some good stuff in supporting the coworking scene and is creating the Innovation Commons.

Yes, I know you’re all complaining about how I haven’t updated the blog in over a week. And I apologize, but to tell you the truth, I’ve got about seven half-written posts done and I just need to find some time to finish each one and tighten them all up. With work being super crazy right now, I haven’t had the chance to do that, but hopefully I’ll find some time over the weekend.

In the meantime, here’s a look at some of the posts I’m working on that are sitting in my ‘drafts’ folder. Not all of them will make it as published posts, but I guess this might be a good way to look at a few of the things I’m working on and some of the thoughts running through my head.

• Toronto Votes: a look at the election that’s coming up this Monday and what everyday Toronto residents need to know about picking who runs this town.
• Coworking: a quick take on the phenomenon of coworking and the merits that it presents for people in the creative sector.
• Art on the Street: a short showcase on street art as an expression of culture, and the street art scene in Toronto.
• How to be Interesting: a brief response to Russell Davies’ post on how to be interesting, and things that I do regularly that coincides with his thinking.
• Yam Roll: a little tribute to one of the funniest animated television program in Canada, and a salute to its creators.
• Creating User Interfaces: a post on the process that I’ve been following on creating interfaces that encourage interaction and provide a fruitful and simple user experience.
• Alex Chung, Stuntman: there’s a guy in Toronto that has some fantastic videos on YouTube of him doing some great stunts, so I’m working on getting an interview with him.
• UsabilityCamp: a brief breakdown on the things I learned at UsabilityCamp, a conference that I’m attending next Tuesday.

There’s a few more that are in the works, but those are all the posts that I’ve started and are sitting in my drafts. And for those of you who are wondering what’s going on with eloquation.com, I promise that once my work schedule gets a bit lighter (one day, I hope), I’m going to devote tons of time to getting that all set up. I promise it’ll be good.

Aright, back to work I go, hopefully I can get some of those posts up soon!