Somerset News: September 2012

SOMERSET NEWS: SEPTEMBER 2012

The Huntsville Film North International Film Festival came to a close on September 22, and I was honoured to be in attendance on the closing day to present our short film "Missing".  For those of you who have been fortunate enough to attend the festival in the past, or even this year, it really is a well-organized and artist friendly event.

We were there for the first annual event in 2010, and were fortunate to take home the antler (the trophy bestowed upon winners) for our short film "The Lake" at that time.  This year, "Missing" did not afford us a repeat victory, but I was thrilled to see the award go to Lewis Hodgson for his film "Morning Zombies" - a film that featured cinematography by Patrick Gilbert, and a starring turn by none other than Kevin Hoffman as the lead zombie (both of whom contributed to "Missing" as well).  Congratulations again to all involved!

The Film North festival is one of my favorite to attend.  The organizers are extremely accommodating and hospitable, and it truly does provide an excellent opportunity to meet and engage with other film makers, both the professional and established, and the similarly situated up and comers.

The post-screening Q&A session featuring (from left to right):

Myself, Lifetime Achievement Award Winner Sheila McCarthy,

17-year-old Director Ben Brook, and Ken Cunningham.

Following our screening, was a Q&A session with the attending film makers, 17-year-old Ben Brook, with "Ostrichsized", and animator Ken Cunningham, with "Zen and the Art of Distraction" (Jim Calarco's "One Wish" also screened, but unfortunately he had to miss the Q&A).  Also in attendance was Lifetime Achievement Award Winner (and incredibly accomplished Canadian performer) Sheila McCarthy, whose outstanding breakthrough performance in "I've Heard The Mermaids Singing" screened during our showcase.  It's always nice to feel like part of the film community (even though I referred to myself as a "hobbyist" during the testimonial video I shot).

I am a film maker, and while I might have a hard time admitting it every now and then, it is something that I am most definitely proud of: when our first film won a cinematography award against an Imax movie; when we won our first International award; and every time our work is accepted and acknowledged by people of discriminating taste - every one of those moments justifies my hobby and makes it worth the crazy amounts of effort that we put in to each production.

So with all the excitement, positive feedback, and networking of the Film North festival, what could possibly be next?

Planning in progress for the weekend shoot.

Up next on the agenda, is a new shoot this weekend on a project called "How To Save A Life".  I wanted to shoot this about a year ago, but I am glad that plans fell through (and then again in the Spring, and the Summer) because we are back to the right time of year for this particular piece.

It's going to be an ambitious shoot, and a quick one with any luck, but I have been thinking about it all week and it is shaping into a solid piece - if the weather holds out.

I'll have an update ready sometime next week.

Festival Bound with "Missing"

The One-Sheet for "Missing"

I am excited to announce that our latest short film "Missing" has been selected as an official entry at the 2012 Film North International Film Festival in Huntsville, Ontario.  This is the third year for the festival, and we were selected out of over 100 submissions as one of 42 films that will be screened over the three festival that will take place September 20 to 22, 2012.

Back in 2010, we were fortunate to be a part of the innagural festival, where "The Lake" won the award for Best International Short.  I had some family and friends there when I presented the movie and Patrick Gilbert joined me later in the day for the awards ceremony and after-party.  It really is an amazing, festival and after the great time and the great hospitality we received at the 2010 festival, I am really looking forward to being back in Huntsville, and a part of Film North's truly unique celebration of cinema.

Film making is a laborious process, one filled with commitment and passion, but it is an awarding one as well.  For me, the true joy of film making is the ability to share my storiies in a unique fashion with a broader audience.  Being in a darkened theatre and seeing our work on a big screen, with an audience full of people, is a truly rewarding experience.  I have yet to see "Missing" with an audience, but I have seen "The Lake" at festivals in North Bay, Sudbury, and Huntsville.  Seeing the reactions of the audience as the story unfolds is an electrifying experience, especially when you are able to see how complete strangers react to our work.  It is one thing to see family and friends react but let's face it, for better or for worse they tend to be a little biased.

 Accepting the Best International Short Award in 2010.

One of the great things about this year's festival, is that there will be an impressive amount of North Bay talent represented.  I will be there to represent "Missing" of course, but there are also a pair of other films in the competition with North Bay connections, both of which Kevin Hoffman worked on:  Jim Calarco's "One Wish", and Lewis Hodgson's "Morning Zomibies" (which Patrick Gilbert also worked on). 

It's going to be a great time for sure, and it is nice knowing that there will be three very different, unique and dinstinct films screening at the festival that will showcase the amazing amount of talent that Northern Ontario, and North Bay in particular have to offer.

I love the festival expereience.  The opportunity that a festival like Film North presents, especially the ability to discuss the process of telling stories on film, is truly unique.

I am a huge lover of cinema, and as much as it has always been a dream of mine to be a bigger part of the industry, it is a great feeling knowing that festival juries approve enough of my work to present my projects to a wider audience.  It is also cool having my own quiet little corner on IMDB (the Internet Movie Database) where I have credits as an Actor, Producer, Director, and most importantly, a Writer.

I look forward to the day where I have the resources and finances to do this full time, and to be a fixture on the global film festival circuit, but for now, I am thrilled that my work will once again be presented to an audience of unknowns.  And with any luck, a few friends, family, and supporters.  I hope to see you all there.

The festival runs from September 20 to 22, 2012.  No official screening dates are available at the moment, but when they are, I will let you know...

Thanks again for all the support! 

Welcome Back to... Somerset

It has been a long time since I have posted anything here, and I apologize for the absence.

Of course, the usual excuses apply:  I've been busy with the job; I've been busy moving; I've been busy with the other job(s); I've been busy trying to find time to cram everything into a 24-hour-day, and trying to cram 7 of those into each week, and 52 of those into the year.

In the end, so many of the things I view as important have fallen by the wayside.  I feel like it has been ages since I have seen many of my friends; since I have spent a day engulfed in a good book; and especially since I have made a new film...

North Bay Nipissing Life Profile First Page

I have been interviewed about my films though, and it was a pretty big honor to be included in a 5-page spread about the work that I do "for fun".  I was interviewed by Margaret Parker and photographed by Shawn Moreton for this article and their incredible talents have brought a great deal of exposure to my work, and the close partnership I still enjoy with Patrick Gilbert and Kevin Hoffman.  If you haven't yet, you can read the article, "Humble's Gift", right here, where you might discover a little known fact:  I am a self-professed "Idea Guy".


It was a flattering (and in all honesty, somewhat embarrassing) profile, but mostly, it was a reminder that I need to make sure I live up to the promise of the guy in the article: the guy who is very much me, albeit a slightly heightened version of me who is not encumbered by the many distractions and obligations that are part of this life.

I have been reinvigorated though to make a stronger effort to focus on what has always been one of the most important things in my life:  Stories.

Working for The Nugget has helped with that, but it extends into all corners of my life.  I am actively plotting multiple projects, everything from a cookbook and the coffee table book spin off of the "Story-A-Day" component of this blog that first put my words out on a global scale,to additional short and feature length films and the publication of my first novel "I Land".

I am quite fortunate to have many co-conspirators in my artistic endeavors and the list of potential partners in crime continues to grow with each new idea, concept, and flight of fancy that flutters through my mind.

It has been a long time since I have posted anything on this blog, but I will do my best to keep everyone up to date as far as the progress of the various projects and concoctions that I am constantly shuffling, adjusting and constantly putting back into context.  That being said, there is definitely more to come.

Thanks for tuning back in!

    - Michael Humble
      (self-professed idea guy)

BTS - Making Bad Into Good

You know those behind the scenes features on DVDs where you get all that cool insight into the process of making a film and how much work it can be? Consider this our first behind the scenes feature - in written form.

When we were shooting About The Girl, we encountered a challenges and setbacks that could have threatened to derail the entire project. For starters, our first day of shooting was in early September, a time of year where the days are generally warm, and the evenings cool. We were shooting some "summer" footage and planned to hold off a bit to capture some great fall colours for the primary outdoor scenes, but we soon realized that shooting a no-budget film was a rather time consuming endeavor. Any number of factors can affect your production, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. He are a few of the bigger obstacles we had to deal with...

1. Scheduling Life
Favours were called in and a cast and crew formed with everyone generously participating on a voluntary basis. This meant that a wide range of work and familial obligations had to be factored into our shooting schedule. There were many late starts, few rehearsals, and fortunately only one day-long hangover that resulted in a last minute recast of a major speaking role on the day of shooting, and subsequently some last minute "summer" re-shoots in early November.

2. Water Temperatures
In the opening scene, the camera slowly pans across an ominous structure, slowly drifting down to a dramatic final reveal: a pale redhead lying face down in the coppery waters of a slow-flowing river beneath a train trestle. We filmed the shot a dozen times but wound up using the first take, the only one where our corpse wasn't shivering too violently to be convincingly dead. It worked out beautifully, thanks to the stalwart dedication of our "dead girl". She was a trooper through and through.

Rebuilding the audio in studio
Michael Humble and Ed Regan

3. Bad Audio
We spent a cold October afternoon huddled underneath a dripping bridge, struggling to get the words to spill forth from our chattering teeth. It was a fantastic location, but on that particular day, it was like being in a wind tunnel, assailed by a constant barrage of icy rain pellets that were driven in sideways on the gusting winds off the lake. When we got back to the studio to review the footage, we soon realized that the only sounds our boom mic had picked up were the howling winds and the hollow clang of the microphone cord pinging off a metal support beam. Still, not many people realized that the voices, cars, flowing water, wind and cackling crows in that scene were all added in post.

4. Real World Locations
Sometimes a passing car or plane would drown out our shot, or people would walk around a corner and find themselves suddenly on camera. These were fairly easy issues to deal with compared to the evening we decided to shoot our dive bar scene in an actual dive bar with actual dive bar patrons in attendance. While the crew set up the dolly track and equipment, the two principal actors rehearsed their lines, including a scene where a brief skirmish erupts. Despite the congenial approach, the rehearsal was quickly broken up by the owner who didn't want any trouble and who was clearly confused when we explained that we were just practicing our lines. After sorting out the misconception, we started rolling cameras, but were shortly after interrupted when one of the patrons fell down the stairs on her way out and we had to break while the bar was flooded by the flashing red lights of the ambulance that had come to her rescue. Still, despite all the confusion, the background smoke coughers added a lived in feeling to the production, and they were very accommodating of the "movie people from New York". It was worth the extra time we invested in that scene, and just as well we didn't need re-shoots because the bar wound up closing the following day.

5. Inclement Weather
We arrived on set for our the last day of shooting, anxious to have the last scene in the bag, and surprised to find almost three inches of snow had fallen overnight. We were scheduled for a 10am start, and it was 1pm by the time we had shoveled, swept, and flooded the snow from the dock and reestablished our autumn time line. It was more work that we anticipated and by the end of the day, we were racing the setting sun to get our final shots. We did in the end though, and it couldn't have worked out better.

Adapting to change and last minute crises is part of the thrill of film making. We the shooting done, we settled into the editing suite and the hours bled into days, and eventually weeks and months. During that time, About The Girl slowly took form and after a quick pick-up shoot in the spring to smooth out a bumpy scene transition, we were ready to add the permanent soundtrack.

I'll tell you about that next time...

"Re-adjusting" the setting for our "autumn" shoot

Kevin Hoffman and Ed Regan

A Good Plan B Should Be Your Plan A

Like most things in life, it started with an idea. Instead of dead end novel attempts and overly ambitious life-swallowing comic book concepts we decided to change our approach - why not try something smaller, something a little more self-contained and collaborative? Why not try film?

About The Girl was our first project, a simple story of lost love with an investigative twist; a murder mystery that intentionally bordered on cliché and proved to be a much more ambitious undertaking than we had initially planned. Early drafts of the script leaned towards a film noir set in a small Northern Ontario town sensibility, a concept that proved to be conceptually appealing, but somewhat beyond our range as a starting point for what we were dubbing “our experiment in film”. And that really is what the film was to us, an experiment to see if we could bring together the people, technology, and artistry required to produce something that would not be a cringe-worthy and abject failure.

Keep it simple, was the request from Kevin Hoffman, our elected director. After nearly two weeks of back and forth deliberation about the merits of concept vs. the benefits of practicality (primarily conducted as an internal dialogue with myself), the script was completed – now re-purposed with 50% more simplified dialogue and a streamlined story. Attentive viewers will notice that a few of the initial noir elements remain in the script, mostly in the form of some of the more colourful wordplay. I think it makes for a nice everybody-wins compromise, and a handful of entertainingly awkward line deliveries.

Our First Day of Filming
Ed Regan and Michael Humble

With the shooting script finalized, we were ready to start filming and on a chilly evening in September of 2007, we filled a small apartment bathroom with lights, cameras and the slightest hint of action – and were hooked right away. The first scene we filmed was a pensive bathroom mirror scene, a last-minute addition to the shooting script that was designed to create an added layer of intrigue in the story. It was a small scene, but a perfect test of everyone’s mettle, from the acting, to the direction and technical aspects of film. We spent the better part of an hour rigging up light reflector panels; angling and repositioning lights; testing sound levels and ambient noise; and setting up a simple yet dynamic shot. It was not an overly exciting process, and it took an insanely long time to capture the ten seconds of footage that appeared in the final scene, but it was exhilarating, methodical, thrilling and above all immensely satisfying.

Everything exploded from there and we spent the next several weeks jumping from location to location; shooting and re-shooting scenes; uploading, reviewing and editing footage; and planning our shoots days in advance to ensure that we were able to cover all the angles. Having multiple speaking parts and a single camera to shoot with meant that even the simplest scenes required multiple takes to get all the coverage and multiple angles we would need to build a dynamic scene. Our baptism into film was never destined to be a smooth procedure and we hit a number of bumps along the way. Here’s the thing though, each time we did hit a bump we came up with a quick and effective Plan B.

Here is my first piece of advice to any budding film makers in the audience today. If making movies is something you think you would like to do, make sure you plan everything in advance and know that your plans most likely won’t play out the way you anticipated.

Inclement weather, technical issues, wayward cast members, medical emergencies… There are any number and combination of things that can and will get in the way. I would even say that you would be wise to make sure you have a Plan B… for your Plan B. Improvising is a great skill to have in film: it can be used by actors to build a better scene and rapport, and it can also be used to achieve equally wonderful results by directors, cinematographers, producers, editors and writers.

This post seems to have turned a little educational – I’m still figuring out the voice. Next time I promise more laughs, more explosions, and some dramatic insight into some of the many insane things that nearly kept us from finishing About The Girl. Again, comments and feedback are always encouraged. Thanks for tuning in!