This particular project has two different incarnations, most of which will be posted soon. This was originally part of the NDP’s 50th Anniversary showcase during the 2011 convention. It highlights the history, achievements and leadership of New Democrat federal leaders from Tommy Douglas on through to Jack Layton. As a City Councillor in Toronto and as the Leader of the NDP and MP for Toronto Danforth, he championed issues in the LGBT community. This piece was modified for the INSPIRE awards; it highlights Jack’s activism and leadership.

I was able to work on the 2011 Provincial campaign for Ontario’s New Democrats. These ads in order…

• “Inspired Choice” Director, writer, editor, animator
• “Positive Choice” Director, writer, editor, animator
• “Choice” Director, writer, editor, animator

“For war rooms, perhaps. Voters might be less inclined to pop the champagne corks. If only they had a choice. By coincidence, on the day before the auditor-general kerfuffle, the NDP started running an ad called, “You Have A Choice.”
At two minutes long, the ad aired only at NDP rallies and in those late-night free-time ad slots nobody watches. It did not produce the shift in attitude toward the NDP. But it almost certainly can help us decode it.

The ad is all text. For the first half, the background is Tory blue or Liberal red and the music is ominous. Blocks of text spell out the message. “For too long in Ottawa, scandals and political games have gotten in the way of getting anything done,” the text said. A little later: “And now other leaders are telling you that you have no choice. That you have to vote for more of the same.” Who could this be about? The screen helpfully displays a blue door and a red door, just as Ignatieff described them in his flop-sweat scrum. “Doesn’t sound right, does it?”

The tone of the music changes—to celestial trumpets. “They’ve been telling JACK LAYTON the same thing for over EIGHT YEARS,” the text reads. “Jack Layton has proven them wrong.” The blue background switches to orange. The doom music becomes peppy acoustic guitar, Layton’s preferred instrument for serenading trapped reporters on the NDP campaign plane. “Fighting for our families. Our veterans. Our seniors.” Here the content of the pitch changes, from hope to accomplishment. “New Democrats sit first or second in 104 ridings across Canada . . . ridings where only New Democrats defeat Conservatives.”

We’ll spare you the rest, except to note that in the ad’s remaining 45 seconds, the words “You can choose” appear five times.”

- Paul Wells, Macleans (May 2011) “The untold story of the 2011 election: Chapter 3 ‘The velocity of indignation’” Page 29.

This piece started as an intro piece to the Platform launch event in Toronto and then morphed in an activist piece and our free time ad.

A short Recruitment Video.
Job Title: Editor, Animator, Post-Production Management.

Synopsis: Lindsay is an abscess human laying within dire margins few of us would understand. She is changing. It is this change, and the threat she feels it presents, that catalyzes her decision for self-imprisonment. Equipped with only a camera to record the artefact of her struggle and the bare essentials for survival, a literal video diary is produced documenting her battle with things larger and potentially greater than herself.

Lindsay the Alchemist is a 20 minute exploration of a disease developed through a combination of medical, theoretical and heuristic research. A lot of attention is paid to the character and themes of isolation. The medical research was organized around symptoms of Schizophrenia. The symptoms and the disease itself pattern the film’s narrative; a kind of fictionalized case study is transposed into film. The sole character, Lindsay, is designed without the application of our most common assumptions of gender, mental illness, sexual orientation and ethnicity. The ambition here is to disseminate a compelling character story without perpetuating or condoning the misrepresentation of abject people that is too often reproduced through the marginalization and defamation of an individual’s circumstance.
Lindsay is an undifferentiated Schizophrenic. This is the foundation for every movement throughout the film. Each scene is constructed around how the character reinforces the Schizophrenic’s primary conflict (the core delusion or hallucination the Schizophrenic combats), with dialogue and incident contextualized through the variety of symptoms of Schizophrenia (i.e. disorganized thought, speech and behaviour; Alogia, avolition and social dysfunction).
I wrote, shot, scored edited and directed “Lindsay the Alchemist”. This may seem like a huge undertaking and indeed it was not easy, but one of the many benefits of my formal art school training is that, by necessity, I’ve developed the habit of doing everything on my own. In this way, I have dramatically expanded my skill set. Lindsay the Alchemist is the marriage of all these acquired skills. By the same token, it’s the first time I was able to work with a professional actor in a collaborative and immersive way to really bring the character to life.

“Movies are regarded in the sequence of Mythology, Stories and Drama, as expressions of often obscure fantasies in the people among whom they are produced and diffused.” -Martha Wolfenstein and Nathan Leites. From “Movies: A Psychological Study”.

This is a teaser trailer for the film.

My Featured Cinematography work from selected films and videos.

Featured Music:
“Who Knows What Love Is? (Reprise)” by Strawberry Switchblade

I did the title design & animation for this short film directed by Jordan Canning, produced by Sam Pryse-Phillips