Already time to look back?

Now that IN THE COOLER has been launched, I have been busy registering the film at the short film depot site, and sending it out to festivals. After the holidays, I will actively be seeking a distributor, and taking care of various accounting details.

I am a creative person by nature and daily practice, but film history is filled with examples of creators who produce. And I find that, the older I get, the more it is becoming apparent to me that there will be no substitute for rolling up my sleeves and getting my hands dirty. This is not only true re: COOLER, but on other projects that I hope to be able to blog about in due course.

In the meantime, here is a short clip I shot with my Sony Mini HD camera back in September, at the Corona. It shows Jacob directing the crew and the cast, and give the viewer some idea of just how smooth the process was.

In The Cooler shoot from tony babinski on Vimeo.

Thanks everybody!

We premiered our film to friends, cast and crew last night. We were completely spoiled - many came out despite the first snow storm of the year, and, worse, one of the metro lines breaking down,

Laughter and warm applause, lots of encouragement, and universal appreciation of the cast's work.

Exhausted today. But this is just the beginning. There are special people to send the film to, festivals to enter, the Bravo! broadcast in Spring, and there was talk last night of lining up a distributor.

But for now, we'll let the Cooler hum quietly by itself until the New Year.

Here is a shot of the theater at Concordia, plus a couple snapped by my son Max, who was running around after the screening with my camera.

IN THE COOLER launch!

We will be premiering our film for friends, cast and crew on Wednesday December 9, 2009, at the Concordia Fine Arts Building in Montreal: 1395 René Lesvesque, room VA-114.

Meet and greetL 6:00 pm
Screening: 6:30 pm


See attached for details!

BRAVO! broadcast will be in Spring 2010

I just heard that Bravo! will broadcast our film "sometime in Spring 2010."

In the meantime, we will be submitting to various festivals. We have already been short-listed at Clermont-Ferrand based on a work-in-progress we submitted.

There is still some technical short-stroking to do on the festival version. Once we're done, we'll have a better idea of when the launch/premiere for cast, crew, friends and family will be.

Stay tuned!

In the meantime, here is a copy of our promotional postcard artwork.

Sign, sealed, delivered

A copy of IN THE COOLER sent off to Bravo! yesterday. Off to New York City for a little perspective reboot.

Foley and out

We were back in at Boogie studio yesterday working the sound mix for the film. We have our extra 50%!

The sound for one of our scenes was totally unusable. Last week, I ADR'd my character's voice. Yesterday, we did Foley - incidental sound, post, to picture. Unexpected fun: me in the recording booth shuffling various papers around and snapping my fingers, Jacob rubbing two pillows together to simulate the natural sound of character movement (from clothing.)After years of experience, he is an expert in frottage!

Ended the evening with a finished film, sound and picture wise. Really enjoyed seeing the almost-almost final product while sipping red wine with the mighty Denis Eric.

There's some business with frame rates to adjust, and then striping.

We hope to deliver a final version to Bravo! by the end of next week.

Then it really will be all over.

Except the blowing up to 35 mm, DVD dubs, labels, festival entries - and, oh yeah, a launch party! Starting to look like it will be in early December now.

A world revealed

We spent the greater part of the day yesterday at Vision Globale doing color correction.

Wow! For the first time, we saw the images we shot on the RED on a large screen. Really, really nice. This thing looks like a film, a real cut above anything we've done before (and all of which was pretty good, too, may I submit humbly.) When a 35 mm print is struck this thing will be a real knock-out. We had been working with the offline files for a long time, at way lower resolution, and I had got used to looking at images that are maybe 20% of what you the viewer will see.

Speaking as an old-timer once again, it is a marvel to see what has become possible with digital technology - colour correcting just a small part of the image, or changing the correction in mid-shot after a camera movement. As Jacob said yesterday, this used to be possible optically in the analog world, but it would take forever and cost tons and tons of money. With the wonders you can do digitally in sound and image, it's no wonder so many are tempted to "fix it in post."

But you must resist! If you've got a great script, performances, and images to work with from the start, it's all so much better. Sound, too - but that's another story, for our next chapter.

Tomorrow we go back to Vision Globale for the final online. Next week, we should stripe final sound.

Working the other fifty percent

As I wrote before, what you hear in a film is 50% of what you see. Lately, that's what we've been working on.

Last week, Jacob and I drove out to Robert's house/studio, somehow taking the most circuitous route possible through the suburbs. We spent a few hours with V Bob working on the final details of his score, which is now completed and works beautifully.

Yesterday, we spent several more hours in Boogie Studio, with our favourite engineer Denis Eric Pednault. Denis' first professional job was sound engineer on LEONARD,LIGHT MY CIGARETTE! which his training could not have prepared him for. He's been working with us ever since. Now he's a Dad and owns his own place - a big man.

We were there for a few reasons. My father Tom came in to read his parts as Narrator, bringing the voice we loved from ARTIE'S FILM to the mix. I also ADR'd one of my scenes that hadn't been recorded properly. And, finally, we started mixing, mastering, etc... But time ran out and Denis will continue to do it on his own.

Attached: photos of Jacob and Denis-Eric in the studio at Boogie, and Jacob with my father in the recording booth.

We're almost there!

And now you can hear the Demo!

Robert has posted the IN THE COOLER demo at his MySpace page. It's the last selection inthe Music player.

Here is the link:

http://www.myspace.com/robertmarchand

Enjoy!

Bob's open - pass the puck!

My friend the musician and composer Robert Marchand can take a lot of credit for IN THE COOLER. After all, it was his putting the poem to music at first that got the project started.
We met at Jimmy Lee on Friday to view the currently incomplete offline edit, so he could start thinking about scoring the film.

Robert has been a close collaborator since 1994, though we actually met in 1992. He's always been very open to new ideas and the expression of same, which made our working relationship a huge pleasure when he produced my various compositions and noodlings over the years. We've also written together (the score for POINGS D'APPUI.)

But his score for CORPS was all Bob, and so, too, will be what you hear on in the cooler. And as he likes to say, what you hear is 60% of what you see.

I mentioned this before, but will close by mentioning it again. Bob has done a lot of work with me in the last year, particularly for the live events we put together with Circo de Bakuza. For a guy who claims to have played at Expo, it's cool to see him hitting his stride now.

And that original music? Maybe Bob will post the recording we did with Jesko to his Myspace page, so you can hear it ! And I think it would go great over the end credits....

We could have been much greener

Jacob is now well into his offline edit - I've watched the first three minutes, and it's cutting well. Onscreen, René is wonderfully funny and soulful as I expected, just more so. Jesko will love himself. And why single them out? It's all coming together smoothly and artfully.

So, while I run around taking care of production accounting details and other things, I reflect on one part of the experience that maybe wasn't so great. And this is that, sustainability-wise, the production was so wasteful. All of the plastic and paper and styrofoam used in craft service alone was many orders beyond what it could be ideally. We produced a nice film, but also produced many, many bags of garbage.

I wonder if anyone out there has thought of a greener, cleaner way to service a production?

The poem: bouncing off a moving target

So Jacob is now editing IN THE COOLER, and it will be completed in a few weeks.

In the meantime, let's take a look at process, shall we?

This whole project was sparked by a poem written years ago. The script for the film we shot transforms the poem into mise-en-scène and dialogue. There are other bits of dialogue, too, suggested in the script or improvised on set. The see how the poem informs the script, then becomes part of the script, which then becomes incarnated by real actors on location, it's good to go back to the source.

Some may think: "how did this inspire that?" And the answer to that question is the mystery of the creative process. I think I know what I was on about when I wrote this thing. I think Jacob and Jesko and Robert and René totally got it, too. I think Actor Tony understood, but when I was confused and asked Director Jacobsomething about why we were doing a thing a certain way, he chided me, saying something akin to: "pay attention to what you wrote! "

Ultimately, even this is ink on paper, or dots on a screen. A moving target, which we may have succeeded in hitting, but not pinning down:


IN THE COOLER

Through a small slot in the heavy metal door

Hauptmann and The Doctor

Observe The Writer at work.

He scribbles desperately:

If He is the Great Physician

Is this God’s Waiting Room?

Are we being admitted to the Final Examination?

Oh, these lives

Piled like so many old magazines

To the infinite ceiling …

Maybe, maybe in those eternal pauses between seconds

When we sit here, frozen like statues

He comes out of His Office

His meaty thumbs absent-mindedly peel back

Page after page after page…

Hauptmann giggles, and points a bony finger:

“Words are his cage, Herr Doktor.

He thinks they might form some key,

Dig some clever underground passage.

But look at his feeble, womanly attempts!”

My words, I think, are bluish dots on Bounty white clouds

Who opened this blue door?

Who let out this torrent of word upon word?

I know they’d like me to dissect this poem

And rearrange the words upon words

And still your eye and my heart

Never satisfied with unmeaning

Would construct a new meaning.

I would love so much to reach out beyond these words,

Hold your yearning heart next to mine,

And lay out our hearts and souls

Like childish treasure bracelets

In the angels’ careful, grateful hands.

Listen, you!

This is the pouring out of my noisy self

These scribbled words are my mumbled testament

This is my sleepless yearning, yearning, yearning…

Hauptmann ran a white sleeve under his dripping nose

And laughed:

“This trap of yours is ingenious Herr Doktor

Words will never be meaningless to him

Which would be his only escape

Instead every newspaper,

Every empty advertising gesture

Will create a nightmarish world of his own imagining.”

“Yes, Hautpmann,” the Doctor whispered coldly,

“We will break this Polish cur yet.”

What an incredible experience

So, after three days of shooting, we've concluded production of IN THE COOLER. It was a wonderful experience: no tension, no problems, a smooth road all the way. The performers were all superb, the crew efficient and professional. Everyone was in good, uncomplicated cheer, giving 110%. We are very, very lucky to have been supported this way!

Our third day shoot was in one of the coolers at Moishes in Montreal. I spent a lot of time on camera - this was the Poet's lair. A lot of fine two-handed scenes with Jesko and René. If nothing else, this will be a funny film thanks to them.

Here a few shots from the day. Jacob starts editing next week. We predict a launch in mid-October.

DAY 1

An incredibly smooth shoot so far — we are working at a whole new level. Jacob is focused like a laser and cool as a cucumber. The cast and crew are flawless.

Here are a couple of screen captures from the RED camera.

Rehearsals are done

We just finished two nights rehearsal for our shoot. Jesko was working with the members of our cabaret troupe ("Zirkus Foxglove,") while Jacob and I went over various production details. While they danced, he and I also spent some time alone going over my performance as the Poet. Very exciting- we can see this thing taking shape before our eyes. We used the offices (empty at night) of Montreal/Amsterdam/Paris Commercial Creativity company Sid Lee, which has been very supportive (especially its video production arm, Jimmy Lee, which is co-producing with us.)

Here are a couple of iphotos from rehearsal, plus a title card by my old friend the artist Paul Abraham, who has been lending his considerable talent to these adventures since 1994.

Tomorrow, we head into the Corona Theater for Day 1 of shooting.

IN THE MAKING video

As promised, my brother Bob has shot and edited a series of interviews with us to see if a clearer picture of what we're doing might emerge. You can watch it here:

One week Out

We shoot a week from tomorrow. We're almost ready. Our cast and locations are nailed down, and most of our crew and equipment.

Earlier in the week, we visited the theater again for a technical requi with our DOP Alex, and lighting/gaffer king Walter Klimkyw, who has shot in the theater many, many times. (I have known and worked with Walter since 1985 - he is ageing very gracefully.)

As we get closer, we're nailing down certain aspects of performance.

René Bazinet has joined the creative process. Jesko, Jacob and I met with him at Cafe Shaika in NDG last week. It quickly became apparent that the cabaret performance at the Corona should be centered around a two-step between René and Jesko. René was bringing a lot of enthusiasm, energy and intensity to the process. I think that, for Jesko, collaborating with René in this way is an unexpected career challenge and delight. René is a kind of mentor for him. I hope the result on screen will be exciting and unique, and especially interesting for those interested in clown work.

The pictures you see came from that session. Sans René, we had just finished a series of videotaped interviews with my brother Bob, for this site and for an eventual EPK. Boy, do we like to talk. Bob will have a huge editing challenge. You can get a sense of how relaxed we are - it's a good process.

Jacob has delivered a final, revised, script. I am still unsure of The Poet's motivation in certain sections, and we will need to work on this together before we shoot, so I don't completely suck.

Jacob and Jesko are off to Quebec City this week to buy costumes.

I'm pleased to note that my cousin Alec Gieysztor and my friend and co-worker François Lacoursière have confirmed that they will be part of the cast.

Once again, a short film becomes a snapshot of a life, trailing back for decades, in progress.

We've got a cooler

On Tuesday night last week, Jesko and I took a look at one of the coolers owned by a contact of mine - a fellow who owns a landmark Montreal steakhouse. It's roomy enough for us to shoot in, and the look is right. But boy, it's COLD. This will not be the most enjoyable part of the shoot, and the poor bastard who has to spend a long day acting/freezing in there is...me! This is conviction, I suppose.

(The shoot will be three days, two at the theater and one in the cooler. Plus two night rehearsal for our cabaret performers beforehand.)

We also met up with most of our cabaret cast and talked them through the project. Andrea got to meet Jesko, and I was happy to meet Sandrine, a dancer friend of Jesko's who performed in Celine Dion's A NEW DAY show in Las Vegas for five years, and more recenty had a briefish stint with Cirque du Soleil's KOOZA.

By Friday, Jacob was back from New York and the three of us met at his apartment, talking about the cast and adjustments to the creative. Very civilized, drinking coffee and smoking cigars before noon (cigars = a habit I had dropped for almost a year before this meeting. Bad influences.) This week, Jacob and Jesko should meet together to go over the choreography in detail.

My brother Bob read this blog and told me, in essence, that I write too much about logistics and not enough about intention. That is, he wonders, what are we hoping to achieve with this project? How are we going about this? But this is far too oblique a question for me to answer - to me, the process is intuitive and organic and telepathic. We know, and we're doing it.

So, I've invited him to interview us on camera and see what we say. Hopefully, I'll be able to post the results soon.

Enter Jesko

Jesko arrived from Berlin last week, bristling with anarchic energy after a long transatlantic flight. Here is a screen capture from my brother Bob, who Skyped me about 10 minutes after Jesko blew in like a Teutonic tornado.

As it turns out, we have been hired to work on a pitch for a major international brand together at Sid Lee (the agency) , and so are spending a lot of time in one another's company, dealing with matters apart from just IN THE COOLER. In fact, it looks like we may also be working together on at least one upcoming event as well, this one in Abu Dhabi in December (for Circo de Bakuza.) It's fun to be off the screen and face to face (or at least side by side.)

IN THE COOLER is, nevertheless, bubbling on the front burner. We will be meeting various members of the cast this week. This past Saturday night, we went to see a cabaret show performance by Shana of les Sept Doigts de la Main, at the Scena in Montreal's Old Port (lousy room, but they put on a good show. Faon Shane is devastating as always in her chain act.)

The MC at the cabaret was a veteran clown: René Bazinet. (He created and performed the roles Jesko ended up playing in SALTIMBANCO for 8 years. As I told Jesko, now I know where he copped his moves.) René and I had met, briefly, at the Paris airport last year, while we were transitioning from different points in Europe to Montreal. He has a captivating world-weary attitude combined with a charming sense of humour and compelling physicality that, for me, recalls both Buster Keaton and Fred Astaire at once. Jesko suggested him as a cast member, and, to my delight, he's agreed to be in our film.

Tonight, I search for a cooler to shoot in. I have a new client who owns an iconic, storied Montreal restaurant, and has offered his. I will take photos.

Jacob returns from New York, where he is producing a shoot for Cirque du Soleil and Sid Lee, in a day or two, and then we nail down our technicians. A little more than two weeks out, and we are just about good to go.

So you see how life and art and the business of creativity that is artful but something less than art continue to sineously interwine. It's not hard, this. It's like breathing.

Music and Faces

Things are moving along nicely.

Robert Marchand has created a wonderful demo for our cabaret performance sequences, delighting Jacob and Jesko, and reassuring me after two weeks away. Robert and I have been working closely together on a lot of live performance and longer-form projects with Circo de Bakuza and Sid Lee over the last couple of years. I really think he's found his strength. (If anyone knows how you can post music to blogspot, please let me know!) We met in 1994 working on advertising, which can be great because it encourages discipline and creativity on demand, but awfully constraining and even soul-destroying for some.

We've also found our cast - an eclectic mixture of new and old friends, performers and non-performers. Here are two - Matthew, known as Andrew, and his friend the dancer Tomomi, from Japan. He's a DJ (Komodo) and plays wind instruments - he performed with us in Dubai. They met while working together on the avant-guarde performance scene in Montreal. Hopefully, we can collaborate in some way when we try to do something live with In The Cooler and perhaps some of my older poetry-based projects.

You can see her stuff here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nhXgoGBUtg

Matthew was the man in the blue robe you can watch here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdHLnsV_pJg&feature=related

It's funny how these short film projects have evolved over the years. They're always very personal, and we seem to corral friends and co-workers pretty easily. We're fortunate that so many seem to have the time and inclination to take part in some way.You can't help but connect with the people you put in front of your camera. So the films that come out end up feeling like well-loved scrapbooks to me.

(Matthew and Totomi's pictures snapped with the same MacBook I wrote this on.)

The Theater of Our Minds

IN THE COOLER is about a poet’s internal struggle to find something meaningful to say, and to connect with his audience. We’ve set the action inside a beautiful theater in Montreal called The Corona, where a cabaret troop will be performing to a hard-to-please jury. (I play the small “p” poet, naturally.)

We’ve cast our jury and performers, and have booked the Corona. Luc Laperriere, who runs the place, took us for a technical location tour earlier this week.

This is the first time Jacob and I have worked together like this in almost 10 years. We are having a ball. Time has been kind to us, a think – the relationship is easier than it was, and I think it will produce something unique and powerful on the screen.

We shot these images with my new Canon Rebel camera – light enters where there is no light!

ichat diplomacy

I made my first short film, SPOTTING LAYTON, when I was 30, in 1994. Things have changed a lot. Montreal is no longer the slumping metropolis it was. I’m no longer a tormented and frustrated artist (or maybe not in the same way.) But perhaps the biggest change is in how technology has changed the process.

We used to meet and talk and create face to face. Since then, we’ve all honed our craft and worked on our issues. So we often find it easier and more convenient to work on our own, preparing our stuff and sending it by e-mail when ready, and then conferencing by Skype or ichat. Technology has thundered forward. Space is no limitation anymore. My studio is in Montreal, Paris, Dubai, LA, South America ....

Case in point: Jacob and I, in different parts of Montreal, are working with Jesko, in Berlin, on the story and choreography. Jesko is in and out of Montreal. He and I meet here often (we've also hung out and worked together in Koln, San Fransisco, Turin and Paris.) But he lives in Europe now. However, when we use ichat, we could be in the same room. It’s fantastic. Attached: Jacob and Jesko on my screen.

HOW THE COOLER GOT BUILT

The IN THE COOLER project started with Robert Marchand. Some years ago, he called me and said: "do you have any old poetry lying around? Something you can record? It would be cool to try something in the style of LEONARD LIGHT MY CIGARETTE!"

That film was made 13 years ago. The spoken word vibe it came out of (for me, anyway) ran its course in 2000. But Robert is a friend and an artist and I trust him, so despite my reluctance to go over old ground, I dug up a few poems from the same period and recorded myself reading them in my home studio. I sent the resulting mp3s to Bob by e-mail.

Then, at the beginning of this year, he sent me a recording of the IN THE COOLER poem set to music. What I heard sounded fresh and fun and interesting. Coming across your own work years and years after you committed it to paper, and re-interpreted in another way, is a wonderful experience. The track was full of new life, and it seemed relevant to me, this work by a younger stranger now being heard through older ears.

On impulse, I invited my friend Jesko to add his voice to a more finished track when he was visiting from Berlin in February. I attach a film of the recording process for your study hours.

From there, I sent the track to Jacob, inviting him into the process. I thought there might be a film there. He came up with a great treatment, and I said: "I think we should submit this to Bravo!FACT."

We put together some extra financing, and now here we are, getting the project ready.

Welcome to the IN THE COOLER

IN THE COOLER is a new Bravo!FACT funded film, Produced by me (Tony Babinski,) directed by my old friend Jacob Potashnik, scored by another old friend Robert Marchand, and choreographed by my new old friend Jesko von den Steinen.

Jacob and I worked together on a series of short films under the mtl/ART banner some years ago. Jesko and I created a short film called CORPS more recently. And Robert has been producing my work as a musician for years, as well as creating wonderful music for live events and other projects I've sheperded through more recently.

This is the first time we're all working together as a creative group "from the ground up", and, so far, the process has been a lot of fun.

We shoot on September 15 and 16, in about a month. I'm about to go on vacation for two weeks - however, I'm posting this blog to track the work in progress, in case anyone out there is interested.