Snakebite
2004

This short was made with 7 other people as part of the 2880 film blitz, held each year in Montreal. The only contest rules were that the film was to be made in exactly 48 hours, and that the theme of a secret and a deck of cards be worked in to the film. It was shot entirely at or around the Creative Matter office. We shot some of it on 16mm and processed it by hand. The ultra-talented kids at Fluorescent Hill managed to crank out an amazing amount of animation. It reminded me of back in the GIFTS days...It was a mad weekend, but the result was that we won the contest.

Read John's article on how we did it.

Willie
2002

Shot on 35mm, this was made with my friends James Larden and Zsolt Sandor. We had a grant from VideoFACT, MuchMusic's production financing. The clip played quite a bit on MuchLoud, the "alternative" music video channel.

View the set photography.

Right Before My Eyes
2001

Shot on 16mm, video and Super8, James, Zsolt, David and I made this during our last semester at Concordia. We told the equipment depot we were making an "experimental film", took all the gear, and had a blast shooting this clip. All together it cost about $2800 CDN. It was extremely well received at MuchMusic, and was the "Uncharted" clip for several weeks, getting heavy rotation. It also went up against The Red Hot Chili Peppers on Combat Des Clips. Unfortunately the peppers beat us.

Quebec City 2001

I went to the protests in Quebec as part of a documentary crew for the film RoachTrip. These are some images, moving and still, that I took.

Sueno de Cuba
2003

Shelley Baart's 3rd year Concordia film. Shelley and I filmed this during our 3 week trip to Cuba. It was shoot entirely on super8, using the beautiful KodaChrome 40 stock. Shelley then optically printed to 16mm, transferred her negative to video, and cut it on our home computer.

EndUser, 2001

"An eerie character study that explores pornography, voyeurism, obsession and the nature of male sexuality."

This was my third year film made at Concordia. I made this film with my friends David Halls and James Larden. We co-wrote the script, Dave directed it, James shot it, and I did everything else (im such a joker. sort of.) It was definitely the largest production I had ever undertaken, and the most challenging in terms of subject matter. I'll let you watch it and tell me what you think.

View the set photography

Decarie, 2000

(excerpt.)

My second year university film. The basic thrust behind the film is an examination of the Decarie Expressway, a highway that was constructed in the 1960s in Montreal during the cities "urban renewal" phase. I interviewed residents from the area that had been expropriated, a journalist who was raising shit about the subject, the man who was the municipal councillor at the time of it's creation, and a local activist who had been opposed to it at the time. The film played at the Montreal World Film Festival, and I was awarded the Matthew Czherny Award for Best Documentary by Concordia. It also recently won Best Documentary at the National Student Film Festival in Regina.

3000 miles/5000k, 2000

The title of this film refers to the incredible amount of room there is between Vancouver and Montreal. Shelley and I made this trip in 1999 in a drive-away van and shot tons of super8 and 16mm film along the way. When we got back, we hand-processed the black and white stuff, optically printed the super8, and hand processed it again. The result was the rough and ready road movie randiness of this movie. I sent this as part of my canada council application, along with Decarie.

Drive, 1999

As you can tell, I'm pretty obsessed with timelapse, as well as road movies. It's the central cheese at the core of my spirit, the love of road trips. This one was at the beginning of my relationship with Shelley, that georgous chick you see all over the place. She is a filmmaker, too, and we just wanted to make a film together and road trips are the perfect setting for making a film. You leave from somewhere, you take this trip, and then you get somewhere. Three act strucutre. Genius. Anyway, Drive was my first forray into hand-processing and I've been hooked ever since.

Tone, 1999

My 2nd semester film from my 1st year in Film Production at Concordia. I hand-processed the film, something my teacher was really not impressed with. This was a very hard year for me creatively, and it was somewhat of a personal triumph for me to finish this film, even though I can’t say it’s all that good.

City, 1996

This is the earliest work that I feel deserves bandwidth. I had no idea, really, about what making movies was all about. I did, however, have my trusty Canon A-1 hi-8 camera, and was shooting everything in front of me. I was 18 and had just moved from Galiano Island to Vancouver. Ha Ha. I thought Vancouver was a big city. This was one of the films I submitted to get into Concordia.

GIFTS ad 1, 1998

GIFTS was reving up an ad campaign to get kids to go the school for the summer of 1998, so I did this little 30 sec spot. It was basically an excuse to learn After Effects.

GIFTS ad 2, 1998

This spot was more like an excuse to go nuts. The 10 seconds you see in this ad is an excerpt from an hour long craziness/debauchery fest Scott and I decided to take while filming.

Record, 1997

My last pre-university film. Scott Hastings and I made this film by processing video frame-by-frame in Photoshop. This was before I knew what After Effects was. A lot of the results we came up with are not possible in After Effects, though. I liked this film a lot when we first did it, and then went through a period of thinking it was silly. When I look at it now, and feels to me like I was going through a process of re-visiting old footage and adding different meanings to it. At the time I don’t think I would have told you that was my intention, but it seems pretty clear now. This film played at the Raw Energy Film Festival in Toronto, as well as at the Blinding Light in Vancouver at a show called The View From Here.