Reay Jespersen

This Sunday the planets finally aligned, and we were able to get the shoot done for Barry’s camera test. Hopefully he’ll have a sweetly edited version available soon, which I can post here.

He’s heading to Europe next month to get more shot for his documentary, which makes me jealous. No word yet on whether or not he’ll spring for Jackie and me to go with him, though it would be a swell gesture of friendship.

Jackie: even in full-on winter gear, the sexiest Production Assistant ever.

Barry with his home-made stedicam rig. He will make you one for $8000.

You ever get the feeling you’re being watched?

There’s a new Bill being pushed by the Conservative government here in Canada which, in short, gives the government the right to deny publically-funded tax breaks to Canadian-made movies and television programs which are deemed not morally suitable. Ostensibly, this is in order to prevent overtly obscene or exploitive movies from being made here; or at least doing so while taking advantage of tax breaks for the production.

Aside from the blatant censorship of the proposal - what else could it be when any governing body takes it upon itself to approve or deny the merits of art and the benefits that its creators should receive as measured by a self-determined system? - what’s odd about it is the fact that the Bill only extends as far as Canadian-made productions go, as per the proposed change to Section 125.4 of the Income Tax Act. Meanwhile, a Hollywood production, under Section 125.5 of that same Act, could very realistically shoot a movie on Canadian soil which would be deemed obscene or exploitive by those same standards, but the company would still be within its rights to request - and receive - tax breaks for filming here.

Canadian-made films being scrutinized under a microscope for arbitrarily determined qualities when other countries are free to film what they please here at the same time makes no sense at all. In either case it’s censorship so shouldn’t happen, but if you’re going to claim something’s being done for the greater good, at least propose it apply equally to everyone involved and not just to a select group.

Barry Sanders is a friend of mine who’s got various and sundry things going on in his life at any one time, and each one he adds himself is invariably creative.

His latest thing was to construct a poor man’s stedicam device, literally constructed out of material you can buy at home renovation stores, for his video camera. While the point of the device is actually for a larger project he has in mind (for which he’s going to Amsterdam next month; my creative notions have taken me as far as downtown, while Barry’s takes him to the other side of the world), he wanted to give it a small scale test run to see how it, and his various audio equipment, worked together.

He approached me and asked if I’d be up for writing a short monologue script, and either act it out in front of his camera, or get someone else to do so. A few days later, I’d written a couple of monologues, and a few days after that, we’d decided upon which one to use.

Problem being, while we were initially going to shoot the thing a couple of weekends ago, I asked to put it off a week due to unexpectedly late hours at work, and the lack of prep time that left me with. Then we were going to shoot it yesterday, but Barry discovered a problem with one of his mics which has to be dealt with before the bit can be shot properly.

Hopefully we’ll have a chance to shoot it this upcoming weekend, though with plans already made for the bulk of it, the window of opportunity is relatively small.

Fingers crossed.