Octoberfest

Word up.

For the interests of anyone who saw 6 hours away, either at this summer's Drop Your Shorts festival, or on DVD: Graham and I are working together again on a new film, to be shot next year. All other details are secret. Mainly because I don't even know them yet myself.

Drop your shorts is coming up again this month, and I will be submitting something perhaps the newest LumberJerks bit, which will also be available on theoffline.com by Sunday night. This newest one is by far the shortest, but funnily enough, took the longest for me to work on. Those assholes out in BC (I know you're reading this!) sent me an 8mm film reel, and I had to, surprisingly for the first time in my life, go and get it transfered to DV.

Corey Stevens, Ben Cooper and myself shot a little short recently. It's a little... risky. And by that I don't mean subject matter, but rather process. It might just be a giant, self-indulgent turd, or it will be a very clever, simple and fun piece. Updates on that as they come.

Paul and I are putting together a very epic short film about... internet memes.

That's all for now. Enjoy the video Corey and I submitted for the Halton Skills Competition when we were 17. SPECIAL NOTE: OUR VIDEO GOT THIRD PLACE. TAYLOR NORRIS' VIDEO LANDED FOURTH.




Cheers.

Naked City - Speedfreaks

The LumberJerks Trailer is out if you haven't seen it yet, check it out @ theoffline.com

A new episode is coming up this weekend, and another one two weeks after that.

I'm also working on putting together a new weekly show, hopefully I'll be shooting that with Ben Cooper.

The Say Anything interview I mentioned earlier is about to go up as well.

On to talks about music:

I've been listening to John Zorn since I was in highschool, but lately, I've been really into it. Here's a great Naked City song; it's been one of my favorite Zorn compositions for years.

LumberJerks - COMING SOON

Bill the Manager acting cool. lol.


Alright dudes, duds and dads.

Soon on the offline.com we'll introduce a new show. It's not so much of a show as it is a compilation of content, all produced by LumberJerk Film Co.

The LumberJerks are a film collective from some small logging town in BC, and "LumberJerks" will feature their content as it arrives to us in the mail. (They don't have regular enough access to the internet to use ftp) They make shorts, trailers, documentaries, and whatever else. Basically it's some goofy shit, and we're always happy to include other work from people who show promise, energy, and grassroots attitude.

I'm currently working on setting up the php and xhtml to get their material connected into the site, but it's a steep learning curve for me; it's been about five years since I've done any coding, and that was java and C++!!

Anyway, peace out and check theoffline.com often; we're about to explode with a whole bunch of sticky content!!

Behind My Eyes - Trailer

Here's a trailer to a movie I shot earlier this year.

Behind my eyes teaser trailer



edit: New video. (myspaceTV instead of youtube)

RIP RUSTY: We love you.

It's been nearly two months since I've updated my blog! Mister or Misses (I assume that I have one regular reader, and that they are at least a man or a woman) I am greatly apologetic.

First order of news, until the next blog (c'mon just being realistic here): RIP RUSTY



RUSTY CHEWBUGS BAXTER: (other known aliases: Roostor, Pusty, Russ, dog) Tuesday August 5th, a day that will live in infamy for the Baxter family, and for others as well Although for the others it'll live in infamy in the same way that Pearl Harbour does... I mean, can you actually off the top of your head tell me what day of the year the Japonese attacked? It's okay, I don't expect you to remember Rusty's death day. Err.... Moving on.

Anyway, he was a wicked bad ass and slightly wimpy dog. I loved him. He died 12 years old, an average age for a dog of his size to die. Earlier this year he had a terrible skin condition where he lost a lot of his hair. When the condition passed, his hair re-grew as richly coloured as it was when he was a puppy. It really was amazing. At the same time though his lungs and heart were getting worse. On Monday the 4th, him and I went through our regular 2am routine of me coaxing him out of my room so he doesn't wake me up four hours later. The next morning my sister and I woke up to the sound of Rusty trying really hard to keep his breath. We drove to the emergency animal hospital, and he died in my arms on the way. I experienced it shit, piss, death slobber and all. I hand my hand on his heart when it stopped beating.

My sister is really strong for being able to drive and get us to the hospital despite her dog dieing right beside her.

Here is the last photo of him ever taken, by mister Ben Cooper:



I stay up late most nights. Every time I get up to go to the restroom or get a snack, I open the door to the dark hallway and am surprised to not see rusty waiting outside of my door, trying to get in my room to sleep at the foot of my bed.

Leave comments for rusty; I heard canine spirits can access the internet.

Late June Update

List of things:

- LUMBERJERKS the first two of many LumberJerks segments are finished, and waiting on a few minor technical delays before they'll be up on the site. If you haven't heard of this series yet, let me tell you it's HYPE. One of the bits is a trailer, and the other is an old silent film that was found in some old case with a projector in an attic.

- THRICE. An interview with them. Expect one.

- SAY ANYTHING. An interview with them. Expect one of those, as well.

- VIDEO BLOGS. I've been having formatting issues with my blogs. Really it's not a big deal, but I have picky (ie: detrimental) standards. I'm re-rendering them all and re-uploading them. So episode 1 will be back, and episode 5 will be done as well (Oh wait, you didn't know about episode 4?)

- A WALK THROUGH THE ALLEY. Remember that old short that featured Brian Morgan falling in love with a bowling ball? We're re-shooting it the second I get back from NY.

- NEW YORK FUCKIN CITY I'm going to NY tomorrow morning. I will be there for a week. Perhaps some of this will manifest in interesting video content.

- BEHIND CLOSED DOORS a surreal horror short that I cut is wrapping up post production, and will be screened, many times, in many places, in the near future. Check out my video blog, episode 3 to see behind the scenes stuff.

- 6 HOURS AWAY I shot a short directed and produced produced by Graham Sheppard and Vanessa Jung. It is also wrapping up post, so stay tuned. It's pretty much some of the best DV footage I've ever shot. I'll post info on screenings as it wraps up.

- BEHIND MY EYES I wasn't going to mention this one because it's still in early post, but I shot a cerebral horror for Bob Barrow, and damn, I hate to toot my own horn, but it looks sexy. Well, as sexy as a shirtless man pulling his own teeth out can be, anyway. Again, I'll post links/screening dates when I can, but just hold tight since it's so early in post. Fellow OFFLINER Steve Leck is rumored to be editing it...

That's all. It's 3am and I start driving at 9:30 am. I should start packing, shouldn't I?

A Bridge on the River Que

A bridge on the River Que is now on youtube, on the theoffline account.



For some reason lately youtube has been having trouble recongnizing 16:9 video. I'm going to delete and re-upload my blogs as 4:3 with 16:9 tags, as well as adding episode five. w00ters. That'll be a fun four hours.

Video Blog Episode 3

Another belated Video Blog.

Video Blog Episode 2

Here's my next blog episode, from April 4th. This sat on my computer for a very long time. Next week we'll see Episode 3, a behind the scenes on the short film "Behind Closed Doors"

I present to you a video blog for... March 21st.



My video blogs have been delayed by a software slowdown, so I'm a bit backed up. Over the next two-three weeks, a bunch of these will be released, to bring me up to date. From there I will post a new video blog every two weeks.

The blogs are about whatever I feel like making them about. They are generally just an observation of what I'm up to. A little slice of life. Many of them so far have been about behind the scenes on movies, so that might be interesting to you guys. They all end with jams.

Enjoy a two month old blog!

The Cheddar Connection

I threw up two old Cheddar Connection trailers onto my Confused Director youtube account. The second I finished high school I wanted to make a movie. A big movie. I had a concept for a movie: A cheesy-addicted junky hallucinates a giant cheesie who convinces him to perform evil deeds. I contacted Max Goodis to co-write it with me, and after many nights of writing sessions downtown Burlington (including getting kicked out of a parking garage) we had a movie.

Making The Cheddar Connection was wicked. We got a good chunk of BCHS theater students and alumni (Tom Hart, Myke Dukich, Simon Livingstone, Martha Sachs, Danny Difiore, Kirsten Hess and Roy) to act and help us out. These guys were of extremely high caliber. Maybe it was the school, maybe it was Helen, but everybody was so professional and dedicated to the project that it most likely wouldn't have been able to come together if I wasn't working with them.

Over the next 8 months in college, I worked on cutting The Cheddar Conenction whenever I had the time. When classes ended I spent a good two weeks working full-time at the shool on The Cheddar Connection. Finalizing the edit, doing the sound mix (which sounds atrocious now) and assembling a very in depth DVD, took so long that I was still in Oakville when my lease ran out and I ended up sleeping on a couch at my friend's place for a couple days.

In Burlington, there were a surprising number of people waiting to see the film. I knew nearly half of the staff at a nearby Block Buster, so I would go in every day, asking a different friend who worked there, if they could spare me some empty cases, and after about a week or so I had thirty or thirty five.

I just got bored of writing. Watch the damn videos.

Sean Messenger

A bit of a random piece; I found some video I shot in Vegas on Sean Messenger's blog:




Check out his blog, it's very insightful.

http://seanmessenger.com/

Confused Director Productions

I created a new youtube account for my old highschool videos.




One day, in twelfth grade, I stumbled into the cafeteria, about an hour after class would have started. My friends, who also should have been in class, were hanging out, eating their breakfasts. I got a coffee, and sat down with them. I stared into the wall. I was unshaven and my eyes were at half-mast. I was wearing the same leather jacket that I wear today.

"Dude, you are such a fucking confused director," pipes in my buddy Chris.
"Huh?" I most likely responded with a bit of a delay.
"I mean... what the fuck is wrong with you? You're a living cliche. You are the quintessetial, absent-minded totally spaced out director. You are a Confused Director."

And then it just stuck. I was the Confused Director. It was my pseudonym. I designed a logo in CorelDraw: C connected to a D surrounded by a Question mark. I used this logo on the resume that got me into Sheridan. I made an e-mail address. I later made an animation of the logo; I still have the corrugated cardboard letters. My productions had a company: "Confused Director Productions"

After years of saying "I'd love to but I don't have the time" I finally buckled down and made a youtube account for Confused Director Productions, as to share the many video gems that were created in highschool and early college. There are many more videos to upload, but there are also many more that will never see the light of day again. Here's to the best of the best (of the decent)


Check out the Confused Director Channel to see more videos!


http://www.youtube.com/user/confusedDirector

Busy, busy, busy.

Yo.

I really, really, really wanted my next blog entry to contain an interesting piece of media, say a song or a video, but nothing has been 'just right'. So instead of delaying further I decided to go ahead and write a new blog entry to let everyone know I'm not dead.

I've been very busy as of late. A lot of this content you'll be able to see either on the offline, my blog, youtuve account, or my soon-to-be bi-weekly video blog.

In addition to corporate stuff (bleh) I'm cutting a short horror called "Behind Closed Doors". When my video blog goes online you'll see an episode all about special effects and behind the scenes on this fun little indy flick. You might even see some secret leaked footage! (I am the editor after all.)

I'm writing three sketch pieces. At least one of them will be funny and worthy enough to survive the rigors of story-editing, shooting and post. That one will be really really good.

My video blog will be epic. I've already shot the the first four episodes, and am in the midst of cutting the second. We discuss everything from coffee to the spice melange, to super worms, to wearing shorts in the month of April. Scattered within the blogs are also little bits of bits that never made it, were cut from other movies, were funny but didn't suit the mood, etc. It's really a great resource to get the inside scoop on EAT OR DIE Productions, The Offline, and related projects. Last, and certainly not least, every episode ends with a JAM SESSION. You'll see jams from myself, Brian Morgan, and fantastic local experimental bands such as Brunch, Sylvia's Taco Salad (feat. Paul S on kit) and The Henchmen of Xenu. You really can't lose. It's a variety show TO THE MAX!!

Tomorrow I'm doing a shoot with anybody who wants to help out. If you live in Burlington or near by and are reading this, get a hold of me and join in. So far almost ten people have said they're coming, but to be honest, although I love my friends dearly, I expect most of them will flake and it will end up being just me Brian and Corey. Who knows what it'll end up being. Whatever it is, even if it just ends up being me by myself, it'll be up on this blog in two weeks.

Peace until then.

The Florida Everglades

In December my father and I drove down to Florida to go on a canoe trip through Everglades national park. We started in Everglade City, on the west coast and traveled over 100 miles to Flamingo, on the southern tip. The canoe trip took seven days. Here are some photos!



On our first night before heading out, we hung out with some fishers. A man and his wife caught a shark! This shark was five and a half feet long. He chopped it up and put the meat in a bucket to eat later. I bet he still hasn't eaten all of that shark meat!



The Journey begins!



Brian likes the Everglades as much as I do! See those roots hanging in the air behind him? Chest-nut sized crabs would scuttle up and down the roots and keep on the opposite side to keep out of sight. That's why you can't see them!



Here is white man's bastardized version of a chickee hut! Usually these are what I slept on.



This teenaged gator decided to give us a visit. I don't know if he knew that humans are predators or not, but either way we didn't have any guns or forks, so killing and eating him wasn't an option, unfortunately. He was a really lazy gator, he just swam with his tail, leaving his limbs floating at his sides.



Nope, that's not a dirty lens. It's a gaggle of birds! It was huge! Like a rain cloud on crack! It was just like in "Fellowship of the Ring" when all those birds came flying down to spy on the not-very-hidden fellowship. I hope Sauron isn't after me!



Here's a shipwreck we found on the Gulf coast!


Here's the friendly people who were stranded due to wrecking their ship. They were stuck on a desert island for four days! They said that everyone who passed them ignored them, until the people just before us, who arranged for them to be saved the next day. They kind of look like Woody Harrelson. They had two little chihuahuas named Taco and Nacho.



Birds keeping cool by the water.



Our campsite on the coast. If you look hard enough you can see Cuba!



Here's dad making food for us to digest with our stomachs!



This is the biggest Gator we saw. He was at least 8 feet long. I call him Mr. Aligatorade. He's a thirsty gator! Every day he drinks the water in the everglades to the point that the water level drops! My dad said that's the tide, but I don't understand what laundry detergent has to do with that.



Here we are, seven days later, in the town of Flamingo. Next: Two Coronas and a bag of cool ranch Doritos!