Films
Belle Époque
Deux Productions
I began my love for the arts in the Film and Television spectrum. My films have won awards at the Student and Professional level, most recently my short BETSY has been featured in several festivals across the world. Several of my plays have been developped into films or television series, and often I use both mediums to compliment each other. Since Miss Bick showed me the films of Godard and Truffaut while I was just a boy in suburban Ontario, I have been enamoured with the power of cinema to make us feel things like no other medium. I have also enjoyed pitching concepts in the post-Netflix era where television is opening up to some more experimental ideas. I am currently working on several IPs in development. My indie company BELLE ÉPOQUE DEUX STUDIOS is currently working on several short film projects and I hope to collaborate with various partners on making film and videos with diverse artists.
Betsy
BETSY began as a short play "The Char" and I have since developped it into a short film. The film has premiered at The Edmonton International Film Festival and Intenrationally at the Oaxaca Film Festival. The film is a bitter sweet dark comedy about hope, and how we all have eccentric groups waiting for us, one must simply allow the mistakes of life to be the miracles, and follow through on them. More festivals to come in 2020!
CAFé CAFé
During the digitial explosion I produced various webseries and short films embracing the indie spirit. 150 kph, a series of parody trailers was screened at The Montreal Fantasia Film Festival.
I wrote and starred in a feature film based on CAFe CAFe my play series, the film was produced by Eric Amber and played in festivals and won awards.
This foray into feature filmmaking whet my appetite for the great art form and I set out with a group of brave artists to make a feature film about treeplanting (link to Ogoki Trailer). It remains in post-production as a possible spinoff gathers momentum in development.
A strong collaborator and someone I admire is Danny Belair, with whom I’ve collaborated on two mockumentaries about working for Montreal Sketch Comedy Festival. These were as close as you can come to a hybrid of film and promo, first with “One More Step” (link), “HANK” (link) and finally the epic 5-part “The Conch” (link)
My lesser known short films STUCK, Beautifully Rendered, The Hotel Sainte-Catherine and The Triple High Five won students awards and also garndered a small following on the underground film scene. In that same vein, I am currently finishing Le Millimetre.
Ogoki Nights
Ogoki Nights, also based on a play I produced, is a project that was produced with Zero budget, We headed into the woods and got messed up for a month and came out with some insane footage. It is a shoot that was made in mud, surrounded by bugs, and with nothing but a dream, a shovel and a 5D camera. In the middle of a treeplanting contract, we brought a bunch of artists into the woods and filmed. It is in post-production but remains a labour of infinite love, I still cannot believe we pulled anything off considering how hard the conditions were. Due to generous support from several contributors we have what we have now which I feel is a beautiful testament to this insane job. The film is currently due out in 2020.
Grinders the webseries (2014)
While working full-time at Theatre Sainte-Catherine, I collaborated with Peter Stevens of Elephant Empire, and we made a web series that we filmed by passing a camera back and forth. It was to be a celebration of “the grind”, and what it is to be a struggling artist in Montreal. We produced 12 episodes and hope to produce more eventually. But for now they remain a testament to a special time during the Montreal Comedy scene.
DéPFLIES: Télévision
DéPFLIES began as a series of plays that ran at Theatre Sainte-Catherine for several years. Joining the CBC Comedy Coup, DéPFLIES finished second and was chosen among over 300 projects as the most viable and put into development with the CBC for several years before the broadcaster balked on the project. Still in development, the vignettes that made it what it was are still available on-line and we continue to seek partners to get the show produced after incredible good will from our supporters.
The Conch
As a young aspiring Humourist, the blessig of Theatre Sainte-Catherine allowed me to also inherit the Montreal Sketch Comedy Festival, founded by Eric Amber and of which I was a participant in previous years. From this point on, tired of traditional forms of promoting, Danny Belair and I decided to team up with Lise Vigneault and others to simply shoot the behind the scenes and make that the promotion. Make a fine featurette about the festival’s trials and tribulations and the joy of it all, and this itself will be what makes people come out. Well it worked, galvanizing the spirtit of the indie fest and also bringing out the best in all of us. The third year we made The Conch which was a great work, an amalgamation of the years of work. It is a five-part series , I reccomend taking in the entire series, here is the first chapter:
I have always worked the realm of film and television, theatre was actually an immediate source of inspiration and captured my soul quicker. However, my short films garnered critical acclaim at York University and one has survived the cutting room floor and still exists here: (link to youtube for Blah).
Blah and Other Shorts
I have always worked the realm of film and television, theatre was actually an immediate source of inspiration and captured my soul quicker. However, my short films garnered critical acclaim at York University and one has survived the cutting room floor and still exists here: below. I shot it myself on Super 8, Despite some obvious “Longeurs” as the French would have it, it was an hommage to the suburban malaise I felt as a boy having moved from Halifax to Oakville, Ontario.
