Monday, July 10, 2006

Funding for Post

Ok, I am still feeling slightly overwhelmed by the whole trip. And my bank account is even more overwhelmed. That last month of traveling was made possible by VISA, and now they want their money back. So I’ve gone back to work at a local post-production house for a while to pay off this debt and replenish the piggy bank for my own post-production. I’m a scanner assistant, and I got assigned to Smallville which just happened to start filming again as I got rehired, so I get to be on the series from the beginning of season 6. After the day’s shooting, they drop their film off at the lab downstairs where it gets processed. We take it up to the telecine, where it gets transferred from the negative to HD. My big job is to make sure it’s in sync. I also write out the paperwork on the takes we transfer, the timecode, and problems with the negative. The downside to it all is I don’t start work until 1 or 2 am. So it’s going to take a bit of getting used to.

Monday, July 03, 2006

Some stats on the trip

We’re just taking a look at the last five months. Here are a few stats we're using to get our heads around what we've done and where we've been:

2 filmmakers
1 HDV camera
2 microphones
10 provinces
2 territories (sorry Nunavut!)
30,000 km covered
130 hours of footage
200+ people interviewed
3 languages (French, Inuktitut and English)

Saturday, July 01, 2006

Happy Canada Day!

We’re home. Got in last night, just before our bus passes ran out. I feel like I could sleep for a week. The whole journey was so big and all-encompassing, it’s hard to really process. It’s hard to remember what I was like before I started the trip, so it’s hard to say how I’ve changed. I know so much more about Canada, and yet, I feel like it was only the tip of the iceberg. There were so many towns that we passed by on the bus. So many places there wasn’t time (or energy) to visit. But I think we did as much as we could. I feel Canada’s borders a little better, a little easier. I think before I didn’t know what Canada was physically. Having grown up on Vancouver Island, and visited family in Saskatchewan, I knew that the west ended with the ocean, and the east trailed out somewhere beyond the endless fields. Now that I’ve gotten past the last field, seen the Canadian Shield, the St. Lawrence, the Atlantic from the Maritimes, it’s no longer just a line on a map. And, more importantly, the people are no longer just news stories and statistics.

A lot of people helped us get across Canada and back again. So many people were willing to open their homes to a couple of weary strangers with not much to offer besides a jar of jam or a story or two. So many people were willing to go on camera and answer all our personal questions about why they existed, what was important, what life meant to them. I hope this film will belong to all of you. It is your story as much, or more so, than it is ours.