Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | T | Take One

On the Fly: my (brief) life as a Johnny Depp look-alike at the Toronto shoot-and-edit-a-short-film-in-48-hours festival.

Article Excerpt
LAST YEAR, I decided to apply for On the Fly, a Toronto festival/institution that offers filmmakers the opportunity to shoot a short film in 24 hours and edit it in another 24. It was clearly a whim. I hadn't used a movie camera since my Grade 11 stop-motion opus for my Man and Space course; in the 1970s, you got credit for stuff like that.

Plus, I'm weirdly terrified of cameras. Besides, the odds I wouldn't get selected were pretty overwhelming. Acceptance was based on random ballots--and there were countless applications. On the Fly, for those not in the know, began in 1996 as the brainchild of aspiring filmmaker Andrew Bee, who figured if he got friends together on weekends he could shoot something for no money. As he's said elsewhere, he told too many people. By 1999, there were 300-plus applications and a host of artists and filmmakers had participated, including Sarah Polley, Clement Virgo, Sudz Sutherland and Jennifer Holness.

Eventually, I did get selected and my reaction was mixed. It's a helluva lot easier to talk about something than do it, plus I instantly forgot every idea I ever had. I considered adapting one of my wife Kerri's short stories, but I'm even more terrified of actors. Instead, I decided to write something myself, based on a practical joke played on me at the 2003 Toronto International Film Festival. While I was out of...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!