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August 22, 2011

Orientation: "Just Do It!"


One move and several hundred shamelessly voyeuristic photos later, I am yanked rudely from my slumber by the familiar sound of Bob rummaging through the dumpster outside our bedroom window.  Finding my glasses, I notice he’s wearing two different shoes and recall with a twinge of regret that I gave three pairs away before leaving Alberta and, calculating his feet to be roughly the same size as mine, I now wish I had held onto at least the Adidas runners, and what time is it anyway? 

Seven-fifteen, my phone tells me.  August twenty-second.  VFS Orientation day.
Having stacked everything I need to bring on the dining room table the night before, I stare at the ceiling for five sweet, luxurious minutes before scratching my ass and rolling over to kiss Melissa gently on the cheek.

“You want to come today, hon,” I whisper.  “It’d be great for you to meet everyone.”

“Yeah, I’d really like that.” 

We stop at a grocery store along the way for a pack of gum to ensure good first impressions and to give us something to do while we stand in the inevitable line leading us to the inevitable table where we will process still more paperwork securing my enrolment in the writing program at Vancouver Film School.  I’ve been waiting for this day for six years.  For the moment, I straightjacket my natural impulse to douse the red tape in starter fluid and move slowly through the massive crowd of restless new students like me, shaking warmly the hands of strangers who will soon be colleagues and closer than family.  

Eventually we shuffle into cinema 7 and take our seats near the front.  It takes several minutes to sink in, but I’m finally here, finally standing inside Wonka’s factory and not merely peering jealously in through the gates.  I’m surrounded by students of all ages from seventy-two countries, each having forsaken other pursuits, proximity to family, and some degree of financial security to embark on the riskiest, bravest, most important of adventures: the satisfaction of a lifelong passion, the realization of dream.  As the last of us file in, I grin stupidly and bask in our collective hope and anticipation, knowing I will never experience this particular moment again.

The lights go down and we are treated to a video montage of the school’s recent successes. VFS graduates participated in all 10 of last year’s highest grossing films, as well as top-rated games like God of War, Assassin’s Creed and Red Dead Redemption.  Student works have been featured in up to 200 international festivals annually, garnering nominations or wins that include Leos, Golden Globes, and Oscars.  Graduates have gone on to work for Disney, Weta Digital, and George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic, to name a few.  I’d discovered most of these realities in previous presentations, but it was good to hear again.  

Then out walks Stephen Webster, VFS’s marketing director.  He’s from Dublin and somehow this makes the whole presentation cooler and more ingratiating.  He welcomes us by continent and country then gets straight to the point: At VFS, results matter.  Not sales pitches, not ego, not talent alone, but actual resultsEnd product.  Accomplishment.  Perusing the student handbook, I land on a similar sentiment expressed by founder and president James Griffen:  “The culture of Vancouver Film School is the culture of doing – doing every day, with relevant knowledge, relevant tools and relevant outcome.”  


This is, for me, the final nail in the coffin for those (few) critics who suggest VFS is a kind of puppy mill simply looking for student numbers and dollars.  From my own experience as an educator and college administrator, "graduate factories" simply don't (and can't) talk like this unless they plan on putting their money with their mouths are, and pronto.  In the long term, no school can maintain its credibility or sustain its success unless it produces a notable number of quality graduates who succeed in their chosen industries, and demonstrates a genuine commitment to hold students accountable for their own success while supporting them to that end.  VFS has clearly aimed at and achieved both.  No school can guarantee a specific outcome, and it would be naive to expect this.  What I am super jazzed about at this point is the idea of walking into an environment that will force me to produce, and help me get better and better at what I produce.  Now that's what I'm talking about.         

Next, the school’s student services manager takes the stage and tells us the entire faculty is here to serve and help us.  It’s a promissory note I have faith in, and not blindly.  I’ve simply had too many personal conversations with my academic advisor, admissions people, housing director and department head to believe otherwise.  In every conversation thus far, I've been spoken to like a real person everyone seems sincerely interested in helping.  And I’ve never felt it necessary to be disingenuous or kiss anyone’s butt to get direction or answers.  Clearly, this isn't a favourites game; it’s about how effectively we’ll all be able to build industry relationships, and fundamentally, how good we are at what we do.  Which is, of course, the way school should be.  I need guidance and a relatively level playing field more than I need special favours.  So far, so good.

Other takeaways include help for international and ESL students, a vendor fair (CIBC, Car2Go, medical insurance providers, etc) and most instructively, a review of the school’s six requirements:
  • Professionalism (reliability, respect, quality)
  • Communication
  • Bringing my “full game” (health, focus, energy)
  • Commitment to myself
  • A sense of humour
  • A joy for life
It’s a reminder to me that VFS is as serious about me achieving my goals as I should be.  For the next year, I get to live and breathe film, full-time.  Vancouver Film School’s commitment to me is clear.  The rest is clearly up to me.  

August 15, 2011

Gotta-Read: Making Movies (by Sidney Lumet)

He's been one of my favourite filmmakers for years and someone I'd wistfully hoped to meet one day, so it was with a genuinely heavy heart that I learned Sidney Lumet had passed away in April at age 86.

Director of a bundle of personal favourites like NetworkDog Day Afternoon, Serpico, and The Verdict, Lumet represented that old-school mix of irrepressible passion, inexhaustible work ethic, and an unrivaled ability to troubleshoot production problems while still bringing films in on time and often under budget.

I've soaked in the sunlight of his movies for years, but I fell in love with him this past spring by reading his memoir, Making Movies.  Admittedly (and unapologetically) an actor's director, Lumet always cared as much about the co-creators of his vision as he did about the original material or the finished product.  At once a diary and a technical analysis, the book moves through the various stages and elements of filmmaking in a style so comprehensible and intimate, a reader could easily mistake himself or herself as being on set and part of the process.

Nothing essential gets missed.  Not only directing, writing and acting, but art direction, costume design, editing and scoring receive the full-chapter treatments they deserve, breaking the sum into its various parts so respectfully (and helpfully to an aspiring filmmaker), there is simply no room for ego by the time he is done.  Films are so clearly a collaborative effort, and Lumet is so clearly willing to share glory where it is deserved, one cannot help but appreciate the sheer magnitude of the profession he chose and the kind of individual he needed to be in order to execute his vision so well, so often.  Lumet was a skilled and talented director to be sure, but more than this he was a truly authentic, deeply personable, refreshingly honest human being committed to transferring his experiences and insights to anyone willing to learn.

I particularly enjoyed his rationale for determining which ideas deserved cinematic treatment: "I'm not a believer in waiting for 'great' material that will produce a 'masterpiece.'  What's important is that material involve me personally on some level. . . As long as the theme is something I care about at the moment, it's enough for me to start work."  Of course, years of theatre and television work prior to entering Hollywood undoubtedly helped educate his choices regarding what was both intuitively satisfying and commercially viable.  Nonetheless, it is always refreshing to hear a filmmaker talk as much about a story's human impact as it's technical achievement or box office potential.

Punctuated with anecdotes featuring actors like Henry Fonda, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Faye Dunaway, and his obvious favourite (and mine), Al Pacino, Making Movies strips the filmmaking industry, if only temporarily, down to its most basic elements: a process and a community of people deeply invested in making that process work.  This is not a book by an "expert" who writes about film; this is an enthralling and highly personal guided tour through a career with no guarantees and no end of adventure by someone who's been there, over and over again.

"Nobody knows what the magic combination is that produces a first-rate piece of work," wrote Lumet.  "I'm not being modest.  There's a reason some directors can make first-rate movies and others never will.  All we can do is prepare the groundwork that allows for the 'lucky accidents' that make a first-rate movie happen."

Would love to have heard more about those "lucky accidents", Sidney.  But thanks so much for putting some of them down on paper before you left.

August 14, 2011

Missing My Kids

Saw Sade last night with Mel at Rogers Arena.  Was magical.  Rocked out to "Smooth Operator" and "Soldier of Love", slow-danced to "Moon & the Sky". Wonderful to see her for the first time!

Missing the kids a lot today.  Bit of a rough morning.  Maybe it was all the Sade the night before.  Just want to touch them and hug them, getting those same panic attacks I feel when I'm stuck on a plane for too long.  I thought that was claustrophobia, but apparently it has more to do (at least partly) with an inability to access the people I love, the inability to leave where I am right now and easily move to where I want to be.  In this case, to move into the next room so I can hold my children.

I'm glad we came to Vancouver.  I remember all the reasons why this was a good idea and, of course, we never could have done this unless we really believed that.  But, man, sometimes it`s a bit unbearable being this far away from them.  Not being able to watch James play the Dubliners on his penny whistle, listen to Jenni sing a song she just wrote on the guitar, or enjoy a new drawing by Ricky of some mythical creature accompanied by one of his richly-detailed explanations.  Run down to 7-11 for a Slurpee, drive to the city limits to make a quick movie, buzz over to the mall to check out hunting gear at Bass Pro.

Not being able to do those things - to watch them grow up day by day, to meet their new girlfriends or boyfriend: you know, the big stuff - that's one thing.  But sometimes all you want to do is walk into their bedrooms and watch them as they sleep.  Just to make sure they're okay, that's it.  Just to stare, mystified at how they managed to turn out so well, and in awe at how grown-up they look now.  I used to do that all the time with them, right up till the morning before we left: sneak in and listen to them snore, think about how small they once were or how big they'll soon be, send up a little prayer to who-knows-who to keep them safe, plan what we'd do that day once they wake up.  I'm really, really missing that today.

I need a coffee.

August 13, 2011

The Journey West

I questioned whether we'd pull off the move to B.C. with a 14-foot Uhaul trailer, but we did it!


Well, once we sold or gave away two-thirds of our earthly possessions.  That and a solid week and a half of packing, two straight all-nighters' worth of cleaning and painting, address changes, tearful goodbyes, and an eleventh-hour BBQ move (thank you, Tom Hannam), before handing the keys back to our landlord and finally hitting the highway around noon on July 31, bound for Vancouver via Penticton.  There, Auntie Barb and Uncle Bob wined us and dined us while Finnigan (our cat) eyed Tika (Barb's dog) suspiciously and flirted with disaster on the deck of their seventh-floor condo (closest I've come to coronary arrest in years).  As coincidence or the Universe had it, it was also our one-year anniversary, so we celebrated with spirits from not one, not two, but three Okanagan wineries!  Delish!



Retaining enough presence of mind to hire two movers, we arrived in Van on the afternoon of August 2 and let them do all the dirty work.  Thank God.  Vancouverites would have read about a double murder next morning had Mel and I tried to unload everything ourselves.  Good thing we didn't realize at the time that the unloading would prove a cakewalk compared to the unpacking, or the headline would have read "murder-suicide".  I tell ya, the math has to get downright Euclidean when downgrading from 1300 square feet and a basement to 650 square feet and no storage space.  Boxed in, wiped out, and feeling like two players caught in some nightmarish hybrid of Tetris and Tron, we spent ten claustrophobic days trying to position furniture we had no room for, and nick nacks we could now admit we had no use for.  When the dust finally settled, the tenants of 1122 Haro Street had inherited 22 moving boxes, four boxes of books, a coffee table, and an unopened box of Feline Pine cat litter.  The vultures picked it all clean in three days.


But we were in Vancouver!  And nothing says "welcome to your new home" like a sunny afternoon at Kits Beach.

That and morning coffee at Granville Island Market.  And a Locarno Beach reunion with old high school friends.  And fish and chips with Auntie Betty at Rocky Point Park.  And receiving a warm reception from my academic advisor and the head of my department at Vancouver Film School.  And the fact that "downtown" is a mere step out the front door and around the corner.

And something happened to Vancouver since I lived here last.  (Actually that's a lie, I never lived in Vancouver.  I lived around it, close to it, but never in it.)  It seems cleaner, quieter, safer than it was in 1992.  We've been out on the street nearly every night till midnight or later (everything is open late), and have felt completely comfortable every time.  It's like Paris that way.  Yes, we know anything can happen (we shoulder-check instinctively), but I feel safer here than I did in Calgary.  As big and busy as it is - as many times as car horns honk, all-night partiers sing, and eyes avert my gaze -, there is an unexpected sense of community here, a politeness that seems to go beyond the simple Canadian stereotype into something more inclusive and intentional; an informal social contract that goes something like, "You watch out for me and I'll watch out for you.  Let`s all work together to keep it clean and safe, and we'll get along just fine.  And by the way, I hope you're not going to leave your cigarette butts on the street."

Maybe it's a post-riot thing, or maybe it's just me.  (I've determined to smile at or say hi to the people I pass on the street.  Call my Paullyanna.)  I'm sure time and familiarity will give us a fuller picture, but I don`t believe it will give us a wildly different picture.  Maybe it's just a West Coast thing, and I get that it's not for everyone. The laid-back, health-conscious, beach bum, can't-smoke-in-the-park thing might drive some people crazy.

But as far as we're concerned, we're home.  And we love it!