Happy St. Patrick's day! (insert fiddle music here)
I spent St. Patty's day in the Eaton centre where every single teenager in Toronto was loitering through their March break. It was kind of fun to hang out for an afternoon, although sadly the day is now over and I did not drink one glass of green beer.

Things have been busy this past week. On Monday we went to London, Ontario to visit Ewald Rentz's son. He gave us permission to use a variety of personal photos and news clippings about Ewald. It was a very productive visit, and now I have some really great images burned onto CD that will help flesh out some of the personal recollections about Rentz and his work. We also have footage of Ewald's son talking about his father that will provide necessary background info on Rentz's life and how it affected his art.

This week I also began serious work on a new business web site I'm designing for a client. My client is a children's musician and educator so his desire to appeal to children as well as adults is allowing me to be fun and playful with the site design. I hope (fingers crossed) to have the final site up within a few weeks.

Finally, today the guy from Rogers came and hooked up our digital cable box. We finally gave in to their incessant promos about the amazing world of 900 channels; not because I love TV that much, but because now I have the Documentary channel. Oh, and CoolTV which is, appropriately, pretty darn cool... and MuchMore Retro. Seriously though, it was all about the Documentary channel.

The first official interview on the Rentz documentary is in the can... or... on tape. In a little plastic box. My point is that the first interview is done and it went terrifically well! We shot in a very impressive corporate office that was full of folk art. The CEO displayed numerous important pieces of Rentz among her collection. We used natural light, which gave a very flattering effect. The sound was clear but a bit thin because we didn't use a lav mic. I think I'll consider buying one for the next project. Still, for the first day I was very happy. My co-producer and I had all our questions ready and our interviewee (who is a lobbyist so she's used to public speaking) covered all our ideas like a pro.

Later on that night I went to a Doc Soup movie. Doc Soup is a series of once monthly documentary screenings that occur throughout the winter. The series as a whole has been getting better, and the size of the audience has almost tripled since it began three years ago - good news for anyone making docs. Tonight's film was entitled "Tom Dowd and the Language of Music". It was a biography of music engineer and musician Tom Dowd. Upon entering the theatre I had no idea who Tom Dowd was but now I will be hard pressed to listen to music without thinking of him.

Tom Dowd captured and recorded the music of an amazing array of artists from the Forties to the 21st century including John Coltrane, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Eric Clapton, The Allman Brothers Band, and many more. The film uses a lot of archival footage of these legendary musicians performing their classic hits and that alone is wonderful to watch. Beyond this, the connection between Dowd and the musicians is strengthened through interviews with the artists and the record execs who praise his talent. Dowd was a natural musician, a true lover of all kinds of music and a great technical mind as well; he pioneered the use of 8 track mixers that revolutionized the way music would be recorded. In the film's many interviews with Dowd he exhibits a kind of humble warmth and humour that makes him one of the most likable people I've ever seen in a documentary. I read the film makers shot on 16 mm cameras and had to conduct the interviews over a period of six years because they kept running out of money. I admire their perseverance and am thankful for their efforts. I really enjoyed this film and would highly recommend it to anyone.

Well, off to bed. Holla out to Anson and his family in beautiful BC. I'll think of you while I'm enjoying another cold front and maybe (just maybe) walking to work tomorrow morning with hail blowing in my face.

My web site is up at last! Thank you, thank you! Please hold your applause. The hardest part of designing this site (although it now looks kind of easy) was getting the blog to work within my page template. In the end, the "trick" was mind numbing html manipulation. Many thanks to Anson for helping out when I needed a boost.

I'm shooting the first interview on the Rentz doc this Wednesday. I have camera tests to run before then and I may consider buying a small light. I'll check out the deals at Vistek since I'm going there to buy short VHS tapes for a music video I edited. If you haven't been, Vistek is a Toronto store that carries everything (cameras, lights, audio) for video production and post production. It's my favourite place to drool over the newest Apple products I can't afford and argue the merits of Final Cut Pro versus Final Cut Pro Express.

For the record, I know that sounds geeky.