Sunshine Shoot

i'll make you a star, baby!

This past week, we skipped right over Spring & landed feet first in Summer.  Today marks one week of continuous sunshine from sunrise to sunset.  i am deLIGHTed.

We used the sunshine well...we were making a short-film.  Antoine's part of a college film collective & i got involved.  After realising that playing the lead in fluent French, is really asking a bit too much of me...i was happy to take on the role of organiser. It felt really crazy to take the Project Manager part of me off the dusty shelf & go fully into that clipboard, schedules, logistics, people management world.

filming outside the museum

Gaspé is a dream place to shoot films.  The community here are so supportive of all projects.  Tim Hortons (Canadian dunkin donuts) gave us free stuff for breakfast, the Museum let us shoot inside for 4 hours, a local junk yard stopped their machinery & we filmed inside a scrapped yellow school bus.  The locations were so perfect.

One of the 'sets' i dressed, inside a scrapped school bus for a crazy scientist. 
photo credit: Jean-Sébastien Pelletier

What i realised was how great it is to work as part of a team.  Being one who genuinely loves spending time alone, i can forget how fantastic it is
to be "involved".  i also observed how far i push myself when working on a common goal, compared to solo-projects.  it also seems part of a whole winter-spring-summer thang.

Antoine in his Director's hat ;)

 

Rolling around in the dirt, getting the costumes all apocalyptic!  Which was great because we ended up having enough extras, so i wasn't even needed!

i loved also that we were a really mixed cast - Lebanese,  Colombian, French, Quebecois, Belgium & Scottish!

i did take a small role, just so i could wear a fancy dress & make faces like a soap-opera actress!

There are photos of the shoot on facebook (& i'll post them below)
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152746655425136.1073741827.877510135&type=1&l=aecad668c2 

We were so lucky to be working with a pro from Montréal, who guided us, without taking over.  He's now devoting this week to editing the whole thing for us.  Not sure when it will make a vimeo appearance, but you guys will find out!  (UPDATE: watch the trailer here!)

Last night was Beltane...

meditation was better than photo!

...so i held a meditation circle in the yurt.  13 of us piled in, which was incredible.  it was quite a few people's first time meditating & i feel so honoured to introduce folks to meditation, especially in an environment like This Canadian Yurt.  The yurt's buzzin' today with all those great vibrations!  It will become a weekly meditation circle at least until the college year finishes in a few weeks.

Squirrel News...
We haven't seen Dodo-Rouge since before the shoot.  We were gone for so long & didn't put scraps out for him.  i'm concerned that he may've taken it personally.  Antoine thinks he's out searchin' for da ladies.  i can just imagine him trying to describe his pad (& neighbours) to all the squirrel-lasses!  i hope he comes back soon.  However, there are now an orchestra of birds surrounding the yurt & a cacophony of frogs in a tiny pond next to the house.  i thought it was some kind of weird siren last night, but they are frogs.  i hope antoine doesn't start eating them...what with being French and all...  

There is also another crazy noise.  It honestly sounds like someone starting up a lawnmower, or trying unsuccessfully to get a car engine running.  i listened to it for an entire Sunday admiring their diligence to get the thing going.  But when i heard it at 2.30am i asked Antoine.  Apparently it's a bird, which is stomping its feet to create vibrations which attract the ladies.  i love nature!  

i feel so unbelievably grateful to be here.  and also a huge thank you for all the positive feedback & comments from those of you who read this; each message is really touching.

Here's some more photos from the shoot: