TaylorMade Films

2010-09-08T11:29:00.001-07:00

2010-09-08T11:27:00.001-07:00

2010-09-08T11:24:00.000-07:00

2010-04-20T15:33:00.000-07:00

2010-04-20T15:30:00.000-07:00

2008-09-19T10:44:00.002-07:00

2008-09-19T10:44:00.001-07:00

2008-09-19T10:44:00.000-07:00

2008-09-02T11:03:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago I was working on a Stop-Motion animation TV Series. The art director who is a friend of mine called me in to work as an assistant art director. As it turned out I was fairly fast with sketching out the ideas during concept meetings and I ended up moonlighting as a prop designer. I hadn't worked as a prop designer before, so I just jumped into it and created a ton, in fact I drew every prop on the show for two seasons, it was a great self-learning opportunity. Total beginners luck I'd say.

This Airship I designed to match a lunatic Russian gambler character (can't remember his name) who flew around the world looking for gambling opportunities; his eyes held open by a prop similar to Kubrick's reprogramming in A Clock W. O. so he could fall asleep. As a filmmaker, being able to be creative and silly like this is a amazing opportunity.

2008-09-02T10:56:00.001-07:00

Open page of my sketchbook. Started sketching out some ideas as I sat at a great little coffee shop on Dundas Street in downtown Toronto. The place is called Ella's Uncle and it's a true community hang-out. Filmmakers, artists, restaurant and bar owners, old time locals, all cram into to this little digs and cough up their change for great coffee. These sketches came after drinking past my limit of two Americanos!

2008-09-02T10:38:00.000-07:00

These are some quick shots of a concept and location survey meeting on a series TV show. I work as a storyboard artist for live action films and television to pay the bills. It's also my version of film school. These meetings are particularly informative and exiting. The models come out, the director, producers, production designers and myself, all stand around the model and develop the plan to address the scene to be shot, following the director's vision.

This sorts of models take me back to my days at art college where I was studying design part of the time. Constantly building models for architectural design class and pitching your concept. These meetings in preproduction are very similar to that process.

2008-09-02T09:39:00.001-07:00

I recently got back into using those great Moleskine notebooks for jotting down ideas and inspirations. Although I've also starting writing in a daily journal (or whenever a day happens to inspire, maybe every other day) on my laptop, there's a few interesting ideas float out onto the blank pages of the little black book. Fun to look over days later. Mostly I’m thinking, where the hell did that come from? Nothing new though, these books have been around for ages, I’m just joining the pack, but I’m finding my thoughts are far more open and free flowing from my regular writing. Certainly less structured than when I’m screen writing in Final Draft. It’s an experiment. Sometimes narrative comes out, sometimes observations, and sometimes ‘to-do’ lists. What I really enjoy about the little black book is it's physical constraints which lead to creativity; letting the mind wander, but fitting within the boundaries of the pages those frivolous ideas that otherwise wouldn't have form.

2008-08-10T16:01:00.001-07:00

A couple of weeks ago some actor friends of mine along with another who's a producer, decided to join up to the Toronto 48 Hour Film Challenge. This 8min short had to been written, shot and edited and handed in exactly 48 hours after the start of the challenge at 8pm on a friday night. The delivery deadline was 8pm sharp the following Sunday. There it was, quite a challenge. Myself, actors Adam Rodness, Ryan Hollyman, Lauren Lipsom, and Amber Harper-Young, all greatly talented comedic actors, along with Richard Rotter, our producer, saddled into Lauren's apartment and got to brain storming an idea.

The first several ideas were bizarre indeed, there after, nutty and the one we went with was just plain silly, but the funniest. It's a privilege and a hell of a lot of fun to be part of a story process, effectively improve, with a group of good actors. Funny actors. I think the key is not not interrupt and let the energies flow. Of course, a little Bourbon helped out as the night went on.

The Challenge it self was this: we had to incorporate several elements into the short. They were these:

Central conflict: Lost on a road trip

Prop: Pregnancy test

Word: Cruiseship

Location: Street Corner

Character Trait: Impatient

Now, how the hell were we to combine those in a film, 48hrs later. Well, hell had little to do with it, but we did go with a farce with religious bent to it. It was 48 hours of madness, exhaustion (I had to shoot the film since our DOP was lost to a paying gig the day before), lots and lots of laughing and a crazy race to the drop off point on the following Sunday.

2008-08-05T09:36:00.000-07:00

2008-08-05T09:32:00.000-07:00