Be careful what you wish for; it might just come true. That’s what they say. At the moment, this tired old cliché is ringing true. For a few years I’ve wanted to make documentaries. At the beginning I didn’t have the wherewithal, so it wasn’t a problem. But the more I talked about it, the more it became a reality until next thing you know, I’m balls deep in a feature-length documentary about a political event that briefly took hold of the city (Vancouver), the media, and many parts of the Western world.
Shooting The Occupation with Matthew J. Van Deventer was a real test. We spent nearly every day following the Occupy Vancouver movement as it bloomed in front of the art gallery until the physical encampment was shuffled out through a series of injunctions. Production amounted to 39 days shooting video in the damp, cold Vancouver autumn. It was a grind.
But wouldn’t you know, the real test had yet to come. Matthew and I have had to turn our (roughly) hundred hours of raw video into a coherent narrative about a movement that was anything but coherent. We’re tasked with making a doc that is fluid and entertaining to watch, while maintaining authenticity, honesty and editorial balance.
Now the final product is starting to emerge. We’ve essentially roughed-out the entire thing, but there’s still heaps of polishing, cutting, segueing, etc. to be done. It’s very difficult to stay focused and to continue to move the project forward. Case-in-point, rather than working on it now, I took a photo of the edit timeline, edited the photo and then wrote this post about it.
We’ll continue to slog through the edit. Then we’ll figure out what the hell we’re supposed to do with an independent Canadian documentary, then who knows what. We’ll probably just start another one. Yikes.
