If only every shooting day could be like this one. A crew of two people without a worry about sound. A paradise for any filmmaker.
On an early Sunday winter morning, I hopped in my car and picked up Caroline the Cinematographer and we were on our way to grab the images needed for this project. Because this film was a bit personal for me (I guess all of them are), I decided that we were going to drive down from Toronto to my home town of Niagara Falls to grab most of the shots.
Another reason was because I figured out how we could accomplish the Reflection of Life stage in the film and the images we needed:
- Streaming water to symbolize life's forward motion no matter how hard we try to hit pause or go backwards. It's a stream that won't stop, just like life.
- Fog to symbolize our regrets, confusions, and attempts to understand things.
- And the sky to symbolize a spiritual question. What is this life all about anyway? People tend to look upwards when we think about these things, so I figured that was a good way to end the sequence before we got to death.
In hindsight, those images are a little arty and subjective in terms of how people feel when they see them, but I figured I could get away with it because it occurred at the end of the film and if people weren't hooked in by now, then there weren't going to be hooked anyway. Plus, I knew how we could grab those shots. The place that symbolizes Canada and of course my home town - the actual Niagara Falls. I knew those falls like the back of my hand as I spent an entire summer as a parking lot attendant when I was a teenager working literally 50 feet away from it. It was looking at me everyday for almost 4 months, so I knew where to grab the streaming water and when the fog was going to come up at the right time for us to grab it with the limitations of using a 8mm camera.
Before the drive we grabbed some Toronto shots. We walked into a church I had an eye on in the east end of Toronto at 8am on Sunday. I talked to the actual minister who was working on his sermon for the afternoon, gave him $20 for the basket and asked him if we can take a few shots of his pretty church for our project. He said of course, signed a waiver and we were in and out in 20 minutes. Caroline had this 8mm camera thing really figured out as she spend a week with it and did some test shots. So it gave us the ability to not linger too long at a particular location.
Then we went to downtown Toronto to take the outside office shots. Downtown in big cities on the weekends are awesome sites because no one is around, especially in the morning. It's amazing how much the energy changes when you're there during this time compared to the usual craziness during the week.
After that, was the cemetery. A creepy place to go to in the winter time as the air is cool and so is everything else.
Next stop was my old neighborhood growing up in Niagara Falls. I wanted to start the film here because the street was such a typical suburban middle-class existence. Going there kind of freaked me out because my parents moved us to a new home when I was 15 and I hadn't been back since. So many memories popped up - mostly good. When we sat outside the home I grew up in contemplating shooting the door and backyard entrance shots there, a lady from the home popped out from the front door asking us who we were. I told her that I used to live in the house. Skeptical at first, I confirmed my story to her by pointing out the names of many of her neighbors on the street as most of them, even surprisingly to me, were still living there.
She said "Cool". As she completely changed her demeanor from cold to open and giving.
"Why don't you come inside and take a look at the place."
This was actually a secret agenda of mine as I was dying to see my old childhood home. When I walked into the house that I spend the first 15 years of my life in, I was struck how small it was in comparison to my memories. I noticed a lot of things were exactly the same, as other things were entirely different such us how they arranged the furniture. It got to be too much for me as too many moments of my childhood rushed to my heart while I was trying to make small talk with the husband and daughter currently living in the home. I got out quick and we continued our shoot.
We picked up all the childhood shots for the film, plus at lunch I figured out how we could do the virginity scene. I figured it didn't matter whatever we were going to shoot because the sound was really going to tell the story. So why not have it happen in a car! I assumed that's where the event would happen for many lusty teenagers because it was really the only place where they could be alone together.
At the end of the shoot I had my film with the exception of the interior office and school shots. But I already knew where we were going to do that: Humber College in Toronto. I was producing this crazy over-budget World War I short film and the editors of the piece were graduates of the program. Their professor gave them this empty office space to start up a post production company (talk about bad timing). The space was giant and completely empty missus their editing equipment settled in the far corner of the office. When I went in there to check out a current edit on the film, I couldn't believe my luck. I really had no idea what else I was going to do to grab these shots. I did have a backup plan, but that was a bit of a covert operation. Good thing I didn't have to do it.
The next day we drove over to the school and picked up my favorite shots of the film. I liked the way the camera moves in those shots. Then we walked around campus and grabbed the rest of the school section shots we needed.
We were officially completed with production. Now all I was hoping for was if the shots turned out. That was the world we lived in back in 2005 when you shot on film. You didn't see what you shot until the film was processed at least 2 days later. So you worried for awhile and thought the worst possible things. You had hope, but other than that you prayed that you didn't completely waste your day or money shooting it. There are too many horror stories of friends/colleagues that you heard that forced you to be in a bit of panic.
- Matthew Toffolo
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