Fast on the heels of their success with Spent and the Toronto Star’s proclamation of Ravi Jain as a Person To Watch in 2010, Why Not Theatre is hard at work crafting I’m So Close, which will be shown as part of both The Theatre Centre’s Free Fall, as well as Harbourfront Centre’s World Stage.

Ravi hired me to make the marketing and promo materials for the show and after a few meetings discussing space, orbits, technology, love, loss and a whole bunch of other things, along with sharing references and YouTube videos, I went into my lab and came up with a bunch of ideas for our photoshoot.

The shoot was a lot of fun, we did a lot of experimentation and ended up with a lot of great shots to work with. I rented the beautiful 24-70mm f/2.8 lens for my D200, which was so versatile and sharp, I didn’t need anything else.

I really wanted to get my good friend and amazing illustrator Chris Simonen involved in the process. We discussed a bunch of ideas, including tracing photos, using watercolours, and particularly agreeing that hand-drawn fonts were something we wanted to experiment with.

Chris came up with a handful of beautiful font samples for the title and the body text and after deciding on one, I sent him off with some of the photos and a brief synopsis of the play as I knew it to get creative and make some illustrations for the main poster.

In the meantime, I came up with the idea of making several teaser posters after looking through some of the cool shots we got. Aside from creating more work for myself, I only had a rough idea of how I wanted them to look. The only thing I knew I was going to start with was the watercolour/space backgrounds. From there, on a rainy Saturday in California, riding in the back of a car on the way up to Napa Valley, I started to experiment, and by the time we got to Bouchon Bakery I had more or less designed the postcard. I was really excited about the direction the design took and knew right then that I was going to use it throughout the promo materials. From there it was just a matter of refining the technique, getting all the copy straight with Ravi and the various producers, and formatting them for print.

Apparently Harbourfront Centre and Theatre Centre were both so excited about the design that they’re using the postcard as promo for their respective festivals as well, so you could be seeing these designs all over the place in the coming month.

The show opens on March 23, 2010 at The Theatre Centre. Check the postcard and the various websites mentioned above for more details. I’ll be in attendance and hopefully I’ll see you there.

The design was arrived at through a couple of meetings with Alison where we discussed the importance of her being able to control the content of her portfolio on her own and broad ideas of how to divide that content into logical, digestible sections. From that point, I went into my lab and started creating.

From a design standpoint, my minimalist leanings and the current cleanliness of the site design pushed me toward creating a grid. We had decided on a three level hierarchy, landing page, project overview, and ending at project details. After a bit of playing I found a natural progression where as detail increases, the block sizes decrease accordingly.

From there, I did a lot of research into image gallery plugins for WordPress. I was looking for something that had a lot of features and flexibility, particularly in terms of establishing albums and galleries visually, as well as image resizing, but more importantly, I was looking for something that was easy to use for the average user. I ultimately landed on the NextGen Gallery (which I was initially skeptical about because of the somewhat goofy name), which provided most of these features out of the box. After playing with it for a while, I ended up making a few customizations to the plugin to simplify the workflow for Alison, and wired it up to the designs I had created.

Overall, I think that the design works really well with the site and gives Alison a lot more flexibility to define which of her many amazing projects will be featured on her site at any given time.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

The focus with this design was to get something clean and functional and to get it done quickly. I drew out a design on Friday afternoon and spent Saturday afternoon getting the design into code. Since it was meant to be a simple portfolio website where people could come and watch some of Catherine’s amazing work, I made an extra effort to ensure that no matter how you came at the site, whether it be iPhone, IE6 or with Javascript turned off, you could still get at the videos, while providing a cool viewing experience for the majority of users.

I also wanted her to be able to add new work to the site easily so I added a WordPress backend to it and a few plugins and techniques that I learned recently while deep into the WordPress codebase for several other sites, my own included. Of particular usefulness is the Custom Fields Template plugin that allows you to easily setup a set of fields that are easier to use for the average user than the completely opaque default WordPress custom fields thing. I also used the post thumbnails feature, which is brand new in the latest release of WordPress.

I’m pretty happy with the end result and I think Catherine is as well, which was the goal. As a fan of her work, it’s cool to get the chance to turn the tables and get her to be a fan of mine. Hopefully it helps her make connections while she’s at Sundance and beyond.

After 8 years of hard work, the BeautifulCity.ca initiative finally comes down to a vote tomorrow morning at 9:30am at City Hall. If passed, a new tax on billboards will be created to fund art in public spaces, greatly increasing arts funding in our great city, which is far behind the funding models of other burgeoning metropolises.

If you’ve got the time, come out and support the passing of this historical new tax that will revolutionize the city we live in.

For more information, visit beautifulcity.ca

There are a few projects that I plan to continue or start up this quarter across the board in web, film and photography.

Web

There’s a massive number of improvements and new features that Ryan and I plan to incorporate into tiffr.com, to hopefully one day turn it into the de facto standard for simple event scheduling. We’ll also be looking into priming the pipeline on several of the hundreds of ideas we’ve brainstormed over the past few years, in the hopes of bringing more simple and clean solutions that save people time and frustration. We want to incite curiosity and unlock potential in our audience.

Film

I currently have two short scripts in the draft stage that I hope to produce in the coming year or so, and I’m building collaborations with a lot of amazing people in an effort to assemble a powerful team of creative professionals to ensure that these productions are realised to their full potential.

I’m also going to be working toward finally getting the footage from Jamaica edited into several pieces, probably some short teasers and a short documentary based around our visits to Nine Mile and the people who live in that community.

Photography

On this front, I’m keeping things simple, planning to organize and share more of my backlog of photos, as well as finally making prints of the better shots in my archives. I think that through the pre-production stages of the film projects I will be producing some amazing images that I’ve dreamt up over the past few years.

Montage

This probably could have gone under film, but it’s big enough to be on its own as well. We’re going to start planning a fall & winter slate of Montage events, showcasing more local filmmakers, with fresh, new art installations and potentially a newer, bigger venue.

Stay tuned.

As self-proclaimed cinephiles, my friend Ryan and I attend the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) annually, and have always hoped for a way to make the process of selecting from the 300+ films on hand every year and making a schedule simple and clean. Following the old adage, if you want something done right, do it yourself, we did just that and built our own solution. The result?

http://tiffr.com : The simple way to schedule your festival.

We’ve tried our best to make it simple and intuitive to use based on our experiences. You still get all of the info about the films from the official TIFF website, but through the magic of a simple little bookmarklet (similar to the one people use to post to Tumblr and Delicious), when you find a film you like you can shortlist it on tiffr with the click of a button.

Once you’re done going through all the films, you can head over to tiffr to see your shortlist, rearrange and start scheduling. We plot out all the screenings for the films you shortlisted and all you’ve gotta do is pick the ones that fit into your lifestyle!

When you’ve got everything the way you want it, you can print it out, add it to your calendar, and share it with your friends and family.

Hopefully our hard work will help you save time and frustration. We think the site is pretty kick ass and we hope you will too!

We had a really great night of film under the stars, with a really solid line up of films that we, as the organizers, stood behind with pride. The general vibe was really great and the weather couldn’t have been better for an outdoor screening. I had a blast meeting filmmakers and film lovers alike and am really excited to keep MONTAGE going, hopefully getting bigger and better with each one!

We have tentatively set the next MONTAGE night for Thursday, October 1st, leading into Nuit Blanche, with fingers crossed that the weather can hold out for us one more time. We’re committed to making some improvements to the night, like getting a microphone and a light of some kind so you can see and hear me when I’m up front, and any comments and/or suggestions are very appreciated.

I made the bonehead move of leaving my camera at home in the hustle and bustle of getting everything ready for the night, so if you were there and have any photos you’d love to share, they would be extremely appreciated!

Thanks again to everyone who came out and we hope to see you at the next one!

Spread far and wide!

Manifesto, fightingtheboss and Honour Rebel continue

MONTAGE
A monthly spotlight on local independent filmmakers

On Thursday August 13th, MONTAGE returns to transform the parking lot of the Manifesto Space at 358 Dufferin into an Outdoor Urban Theatre as we celebrate the work of our city’s (and the world’s) independent filmmakers and artists, minus the barriers of genre, scene or subculture. Featuring short films from the worlds of animation, documentary, avante-garde and the far reaches of our collective imagination, MONTAGE aims to bring together the inspired and expressive, the audience and artist, in all of us.

More than anything else, MONTAGE is a celebration. With music provided by ANDY CAPP (Bang the Party), art installations by Phillippe Blanchard and Sean Procyk, an artist market and refreshment stand, this night is about coming together to bask in the independent spirit of Toronto.

You complete the picture. Be a part of the MONTAGE.

Thursday, August 13th, 2009
358 Dufferin Street, Toronto
8 – 11pm
$5 or PWYC

Rain or shine.

We’re also still looking for submissions for more outdoor screenings later this summer so if you or anyone you know has a film they’d like to show, get in touch.

Spread far and wide!

Manifesto, fightingtheboss and The Alt continue

MONTAGE
A monthly spotlight on local independent filmmakers

with an OUTDOOR SCREENING in the courtyard at the Manifesto Space (the same people who just brought you the amazing Canada Day Michael Jackson Tribute at Dundas Square). We’ll have many short films and installations by local artists, popcorn, and drinks. Join us for a fun evening of movies under the stars!

Thursday, July 9th, 2009
358 Dufferin Street, Toronto
8 – 11pm
$5 or PWYC

Rain or shine.

We’re also still looking for submissions for more outdoor screenings later this summer so if you or anyone you know has a film they’d like to show, get in touch.

Manifesto and fightingtheboss have partnered up with the good people at The Alt to bring you MONTAGE this summer, with outdoor screenings in the courtyard at the Manifesto Space. MONTAGE is a monthly showcase for local independent filmmakers and that’s where you come in.

If you or someone you know has a film they’d like to screen at one of our events, get in touch with us and we’ll work to make it happen (details are in the poster).

Our first event is being planned for Thursday, July 9th, with more to follow through the summer.