ImagineNATIVE 2013

Super excited for this weekend opening of my partner Tyler's NFB Interactive Doc "Similkimeen Crossroads."

The opening will be happening on Oct.18th at Gallery 44 in the 401 Richmond St. Building in Toronto. The opening is going to be extra awesome because it will feature some beautiful prints of the photography used in the doc as well as some 16mm footage projected (shot by yours truly), and music by the very gifted Eric Powell. The site will launch that day so take a break from your daily grind to check out what Tyler's been chipping away at all year.

Transatlantic Talent Lab

Just got back from a whirlwind visit to Iceland with my good friend and colleague Liz Cairns (of Gentlemen Bandits) and our long lost collaborator, the incorrigible DP and Director Derek Howard, where we spent the last week participating in the Transatlantic Talent Lab at the Reykjavik International Film Festival.

Though we didn't have much time off from the lab to see films, from what we did see, the festival programming was really strong, and I managed to catch some great ones by Laurent Cantet and Daniel Dencik, as well as Lukas Moodyson's "We are the Best!" which would charm even the sourest of souls. "The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear" by Georgian filmmaker Tinatin Gurchiani was another captivating watch. We did get to sneak into the country, up the east coast for a couple of days, and the landscape was pretty unreal.

And yes we saw Bjork and went to the blue lagoon, which may be touristy but it sure is relaxing as heck. To conclude: Go to Iceland! You'll love it.

iThentic!

Good news of the day: Our first film It's not as if we haven't been here for a while... is now featuring on iThentic's new online distribution platform. Come check it out here! Tweet about it! The more views we get the better of course.

Withering Heights!

We're proud to have been a part of another wonderful film shoot last week with the Gentleman Bandits and "A Land That Forgets" cinematographer Knesha Yu! It was great to get back on set again with all the old crew. Keep an eye out for this one, coming soon to a festival near you: Withering Heights by Elizabeth Cairns and Joe LoBianco

Atlantic Film Festival!!

GCP is proud to announce that A Land That Forgets will be screening at this year's Atlantic Film Festival!  If you happen to be on the east coast in September, or have any east coast friends, you can find our screening time and dates here.  We do have some free passes to give away, so do let us know if you can make it.

And in celebration of this lovely news, we have a little clip to share. Wonder how we got the canoe under all that ice? Take a look at some top secret behind the scenes footage of the very talented Chris Mennell working his magic. Shot on super8 by post-supervisor extraordinaire Tyler Hagan.

Behind the Scenes ALTF from Glass Curtain Pictures on Vimeo.

P.S. As you can tell, our new website is now up and running!

Website renos

So it seems that our previous web host is no longer functioning so we are currently transitioning to a new one. Please be patient with us as we work out the nuts and bolts of it all.

We should be back up and running shortly :)

In the meantime come visit us at our Vimeo page:

www.vimeo.com/glasscurtainpics

MIFFEST!

Just a quick announcement to say that ALTF (a new abbrev I'm trying out) will be screening here in Toronto at this year's Moving Images Festival on October 15th!!

It will be a part of the Moving Image Showcase category, which I'm really grateful for, because it allows the film, sorry, I mean the video to be viewed in an alternative context (a more appropriate context I believe, for this particular work, than that of your standard short film program).

This, the context, is something my co-producer Meghan and I have been thinking about with regards to our work... you know, what influence does it have on our perception... We'll soon find out how this particular framing alters audience reaction, or if it does at all.

Anywho, I don't know too much about this festival, but I really love their mandate, and I'm excited to see how our little film is received in the big TO.

The exact screening time is not yet announced but I believe it will be in the Annex Live Theatre at 296 Brunswick Ave. More details to come.

Official Premiere!

It is officially official: A Land That Forgets will have its Canadian premiere in late September at this year's Okanagan Film Festival in beautiful Kelowna, BC!

It's pretty exciting considering the role the Okanagan landscape has played in this little project. We're really happy to have it start off its festival run at such an appropriate venue.

Come check it out if you can!

The end is near!

Hello again!

We at Glass Curtain Pictures are proud to announce that our latest short film A Land That Forgets is now in its final stages of post-production!

It's been a challenge and an adventure, but it's time to get this one off of our hard drives and onto the screen. And so, without further adieu, we would like to extend to you an invitation to our celebratory screening at the Western Front on Tuesday, May 17th.

In addition to the film screening we will be joined by our fantastic musical guest: Andrew Lee of In Medias Res for a solo performance that you won't want to miss! And after the screening join us for drinks and mingling. It's going to be a great night and we would love to see you there.

Once again that's:

Tuesday, May 17th at The Western Front (303 East 8th Avenue, Vancouver), from 8-10pm, musical performance at 8:30pm, screening at 9pm sharp.

Thank you again from all of us at Glass Curtain Pictures.

Sincerely,

Kathleen Hepburn, Meghan Armstrong and Gorrman Lee

Winter shoot a success!

Well that's that! We just returned from the winter wonderland that is Cawston BC, where our skeleton crew spent the weekend picking up the final scene of A Land that Forgets. Equipment has been returned, files have been backed up, and beers are in hand.

No more heavy lifting for this shoot! Hurrah!

Anyway, it was amazing up there, as you can see below. I won't say much more than that. Here's a little sneak peak at how things went:

Tyler shooting some behind the scenes super8...

Mennell. Man of many knots.

Portage.

Not bad eh?

Thats all for now!

All quiet on the eastern front.

Well it's been a while!

So I thought I might give you folks an update. Update is: we're still at it!

The hardest part about editing this movie is that it all looks so damn good, it's really hard to know what to cut. This is the first time I've strayed from 16mm in a very long time, and I was hesitant. I still wonder what it would have looked like had we had that option... But man, Red looks good. We got to use these new Japanese 35mm lenses that are basically a cheaper equivalent of the Cooke S4i's and I have nothing but rave reviews for them. They're sharper than Zeiss Superspeeds and are 100% colour matched! Amazing.

Anyway, enough geek talk. I'm editing slowly, in part because I'm simultaneously working on my master's degree, and in part because I think if you do things slowly enough you often make decisions that surprise you in exciting ways... does that make sense? It takes time to get to know a film at this point. You really have to dig deep and figure out where the heart is.

Thats my excuse anyway!

That's all I have to say for now. Hope all is well with you and I'll keep you posted! (no pun intended)

In case you were wondering how the footage looked...

Well, its been a few weeks since the shoot and I'm sure you've all been on the edge of your seats wondering how it went...

So I'll give you an idea. Here are a few quick frame grabs... Not bad if I do say so!

Featured above is our lovely Mrs. Takeda (played by Theresa Laverty). Who performed tremendously, and put up with all of us like a saint as we slogged through the longest and hottest day.



It was not the easiest shoot. It was hot and we had a lot a lot of shots. But with our amazing cast and outstanding crew, we got through it without so much as an epi-pen incident, and things are looking smashing.


Our little rising star Caleb Surface turned out to be a real gem. A master of improv and a real ladies man to be sure!


And of course, our young lead, Dagan Nish, the most considerate and talented actor we've ever had the pleasure of working with, did us all proud as you will all soon see :)


That's all I can tell you for now. Stay tuned.

Similkameen Valley, who woulda known?

With locations like these how can we go wrong? I have resorted to my cheap point and shoot digital camera for these most recent location pics and even so, they still look great.

Here are two examples of where we will be shooting a couple of the scenes in the film. It's always an adventure to source out locations, and these were no exception. The bottom one was especially challenging, but here it is! And isn't it wonderful?

The look of the film is constantly changing as we go from concept to reality, dreams to practicality, but one thing is for sure, it's going to be beautiful.

You may have noticed that our locations have moved from Bella Coola to the Similkameen Valley. This has mostly been due to financial and logistical reasons, but in the end the arid feel of the Okanagan re-enforces the scripts undertones in a way that is actually quite wonderful.

Bella Coola is a magical place though and someday I will find the right script for it.

Wow! Our new canoe is being built!!!

The thing I love about filmmaking is that no matter what the film is about there is always one task that must be surmounted where you find yourself figuring out how to do something you would never have done otherwise.

And this film is no exception. One of the biggest challenges and most wonderful parts of this film is that the secondary protagonist is a cedar strip canoe. Now this canoe must not only be beautiful, but it must go from being derelect and worn out to being restored all within 5 days of shooting. Or so it would seem... But AHA, you say, what if you had two canoes?!

And that is what we shall have. This is the secret reason that I wrote this film, to see this process unfold. I am in love with these canoes. And hopefully soon you will be too.

Feature it!

Exposure! Damn this stuff is time consuming.

I know you're probably sick of hearing about us by now, but if you have a moment, zip over to our indiegogo page, scroll down to the bottom right and hit the "feature it!" button.

This tells the admin that you want our project to show up on the first page of the indiegogo site, which gives us much more exposure and I'm going to say quadruples our chances at meeting our fundraising goal.

We had auditions this week and they went pretty well. It was actually super fun. We hadn't been down that road for a while. It's a weird thing to have people come in one at a time and perform for you... I won't make any announcements yet because we haven't informed the cast who they are, we'll be getting down to that later this week.

In an attempt to make this blog a little more blog-like I'm going to try talking about my feelings!

So I'll be honest, since we started this crowdfunding thing, I've begun to feel the looming pressure of having outside funding sources, even though it's mostly been family and friends. It raises the stakes for the entire project... It's weird because when you invest 3 or 4 grand of your own money, somehow it doesn't have the same effect. There's a constant need to justify the film, to say to people ya it's worth the money and it's going to be great! When it's your own money you can say, I'm not sure if it's worth it but I find it interesting and I just want to do it anyway...

But when you just can't afford it yourself, you gotta start believing that it's always worth it. And I think it is. And if other people believe it to that shouldn't be a stress, that should be a relief. And in the end it's all just make-believe so I try to remind myself to relax and enjoy it.

As Adrian would say "Holy Moses girl! Don't sweat the small stuff!"

A Land that Forgets

GCP is excited to announce the launch of our new project page on Indie Go Go. Come check it out to find out more about our upcoming film "A Land that Forgets".

We are super excited to be preparing for another great shoot! A Land that Forgets goes into production on July 23rd, 2010.

Wahoo!

Watch our film online at Vimeo

“It’s not as if we haven’t been here for a while...” is now available for viewing online through our Vimeo page.

INAF Wins Best Dramatic Short!

Glass Curtain Pictures is proud to announce that “It’s not as if we haven’t been here for a while...” has won best short drama award at the 2010 DIY Film festival in Hollywood, CA!

GCP on the air

Kathleen Hepburn was interviewed today by Evolution radio 107.9 about GCP and our ongoing projects. Check out their site to listen!

Gorrman Wins Praxis Competition!

“Golden Delicious”, a feature film screenplay written by Glass Curtain Pictures co-founder Gorrman Lee, has been selected as a winner in this year’s Praxis Fall Competition.

Press Release