This film was penned over a 48 hour period. I remember once reading in an interview with Ben Gibbard that “the best songs tend to come out in the shortest span of time” or something to that effect. I think that this holds true with “Conversations”, it feels like I didn’t have to force anything, it just sort of flowed naturally and it comes across as so. At least so says me.

This film, like many of my others is basically a hybrid of myself and those around me. To not get totally lost in a fantasized fiction I like to make my main characters have similarities to me. Hence, Vera being a singer/songwriter. This seemed like a great excuse to have some musical numbers in the film but ended up being a bit of a challenge having to find an actor who could play guitar and sing. But of course, Regina Efendieva came through in all departments.

The “Dream Song” was written specifically for this film but I later decided to rearrange it and record it for my EP “Fall In Love” that I put out last November (2015).In the film the song is a much more stripped down version, with of course only Regina’s vocals.

Aleksandra Maslennikova, who plays the cynical friend Marina initially was a different character. A worse character. Aleksandra added a certain sort of sophisticated assholery to the character that made her actions in the film even more diabolical. The accent definitely helped.

Kate, the younger, optimistic friend in the dynamic was played by Laurel Brady who definitely brought a lot of colour to the character.

Florian Francois WAS Jean Claude.

This film took 2 days to shoot. One day for interiors and another for the back patio.

We shot chronologically and most of the shots were done in long takes, so the days were pretty short.

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The project took much longer in post production that originally anticipated. Because the film is very dialogue heavy, it was important to get the pacing just right in the final cut. Producing and arranging the score was an important element of the film too, as a major theme of the story was the music.

All in all, I think this might have been my most straightforward narrative to date, which in itself was a challenge.

I can only hope people are able to extract something out of this story. Whether it be optimistic or not. I think there are many different sides to a coin than just the two and I think ultimately that’s what “Conversations” is about.

The film that I have been working on for almost a year and a half has finally reached a stage of comfortable completion.  “How To Drown A Wolf”

During the winter of 2014/2015 for whatever reason I felt this strong desire to make an abstract film. I had dabbled in abstraction before but never really gone full tilt. Inspired by the colours of films like Spring Breakers and 2001: A Space Odyssey while spiritually guided by films like Animal Collective’s ODDSAC or anything by David Lynch, I started shooting bits of random imagery here and there. The first footage I got was of snowflakes.

After a month or so of just compiling disjointed visuals I finally put together the script. Which ended up being about 3 pages long.

I’d worked with Grace (Munro) before on “Sweet Dreams” and I knew that she would be perfect for the part in this. Originally, after auditions I had chosen to go with Kyle Bell as the lead opposite Grace.

We ended up shooting a good deal of the intro portion of the movie with Kyle, but unfortunately due to scheduling reasons, he wasn’t able to continue with the project. So we scrapped the footage and began again. This time, casting JD Smith as the lead man.

Over the course of about 3 months we shot bits and parts, here and there of what eventually would become the film. In a way I’m glad we did end up recasting as JD added something special to the role that I had not even intended.

Most of this film was just JD and Grace. We did one scene at Mel Lastman Square in North York with Terry Tyler. This scene was particularly fun as we had Terry mouth his lines at double speed so that we could have the scene play out in slow motion and still sync with regular speed audio.

There were a handful of other shoots that were done separately to those with JD and Grace. The first of which was the belly dancing scene with Stacie Noel and Rick Cordeiro. We shot this in the green screen studio at Centennial College. This shoot took a day and was loads of fun. Stacie had figured out a belly dance based on an early version of the track “Meat” that I had sent her prior to the shoot.

Another stand alone shoot was with Terry (Tyler) at Burnett Park. This was a real trip down memory lane for me for a couple of reasons. One: I shot “The Picnic” in that same park with Terry two years ago. Two: I ended up using the “Baphomet” mask that was never used in “Sweet Dreams”. I told Terry to dance around like an insane beast. He did for a bit but then he got extremely claustrophobic in the mask so we were only able to film in short bursts.

The last stand alone shoot was actually filmed in Haliburton Heights, Ontario. I found a wolf reserve online and wanted to get some shots of real wolves for the film. I called them up and let them know my intentions. They were very accommodating. I drove up soon after on what was the morning after a terrible thunderstorm. When I arrived after the 3 hour drive, I was told that all of the wolves had run off into hiding due to the weather. Utterly disappointed I decided to wait around just incase one or two decided to come out anyway. Lo and behold, two wolves came out for just about 5 minutes which was all I needed.

The music in the film took a long time to develop. I had created demo recordings of all of the tracks before I had even begun filming but each time I put the visuals and sound together I had a new sense of inspiration for the sonic textures. The songs became vastly different to what they had started as, much more dense and layered. Very psychedelic.

On the other side of the camera, I had some great help. Zack Alexander, Ruben Meitardjian and Xavier Lewis all helped out with camera work and managed to capture some amazing moments.

In terms of the effects used for some of the more “trippy” bits, I spent a lot of time trying out various looks. I really love the way overlaying images looks but I also wanted to experiment with colour which is where ink drops and nebulas started to make their way into the mix.

We also had some practical “trippy” effects, such as the shot where it appears that the world is moving in reverse around our two main characters. The reality, obviously was that Grace and JD had to walk backwards through the intersection. It was actually fairly funny to see peoples reactions who were unaware of us even making a film. Ruben made a little cameo in that part too.

The trickiest shot in the film of course was the last one. Or at least it seems that way. We got it right on the second try. The scene was actually shot in reverse as one take, anyone that rides the TTC across the Don Valley bridge would know that the trains going eastbound look out towards the south side of the Don Valley. So instead of going from west to east, as it appears in the film, we were really going east to west. Grace and I hopped on the train at Chester, one station east of Broadview, where JD was waiting on the bench. We lined up the doors so that when the train stopped he would be in view. We then let the the train doors close again and Grace and I continued across the bridge to Castle Frank (one stop westbound). It was a good thing it only took two takes since it was extremely time consuming taking the train back and forth each time.

Hopefully people respond well to the film. It’s really just a fun ride. Make what you will of it, it’s clearly up for interpretation. To me it’s about relationships and how you can be suffocated through not just deceit but through worry as well.

It was a great time working with so many talented people and I hope to get the chance to work with everyone again!

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This film was based off of nightmares I’d been having last year. I’ve always been a fan of horror, especially psychological horror, so David Smith and I came up with this idea that nightmares are actually glimpses of some sort of real purgatory. We went a step further and turned it into this revolving door type thing where each victim has nightmares of the previous victim. I’ve always been fascinated with therapy and psychiatry and what it means to be in that profession, hearing the worst of people’s problems and trying to find a way to help them from within. I kinda always thought that if a psychiatrist were to be an asshole he could really turn an emotionally fragile person’s world upside down. In “Sweet Dreams” the psychiatrist is more than an asshole, he’s the devil’s harbinger.

The Baphomet is actually a mystical devil creature that was said to be worshiped by the Knights of the Templar. I read a bit about it and it’s ties with Satanism which led me to learn about Aleister Crawley. I used the name for the psychiatrist in this film but he’s not actually supposed to be Aleister Crawley, it’s just a sort of nod to him.

The Baphomet creature is usually associated with the Sabbatic Goat, a devil with the head of a goat and the body of a human, but I wanted to make something new out of it. At first I created a multi layered digital 2D version of the creature and did some test shots to see how it looked in a 3D environment. The results were good, but not great so I decided to go practical on the monster’s look. I purchased a sort of traditional devil mask and repainted it by hand. The creature was also given practical wings which were spray painted and attached to the actor’s arms. We also painted the actor’s entire torso black. In the end, I decided to go with a hybrid of the original 2D creature and the practical creature.

The film was split into three shoots. On our first outing we shot the intro scene with Frankee Wallace. We filmed the scene at Earl Bales Park in North York. We ended up with about two hours of footage for a one minute scene. This scene was inspired by the opening scene of the French film “Martyrs”. I feel like it might be my favourite scene in “Sweet Dreams”.

The second shoot took three days and consisted of shooting mostly all of the film, minus the ending. We shot all of the psychiatrist scenes/Evelyn’s apartment scenes at my condo. We used a studio space at Centennial College to do the “torture” scenes which wouldn’t have been possible without Xavier Lewis who took care of mostly all the lighting for those bits. The practical effects were a must for me so we used latex prosthetics and a real knife.

On the final day of our second shoot we returned to Earl Bales to film Evelyn’s outdoor scenes as well as the “dream scene” with Aleister Crawley that happens near the end of the film. We lucked out on the lighting. It was a combination of bright sunlight and looming rain clouds.

We took a break from the film for two and a half months before returning to shoot the final scene. The reason for the break was due to the fact that the film had a totally different ending originally. The new/final ending occurred to me while editing the film and it seemed to tie everything together in terms of the situation being a never ending cycle.

In the editing room, I decided to go for a late 70’s early 80’s classic horror aesthetic. I tinted the image to have a sort of De Palma feel and I tried to craft a Carpenter-esque soundtrack. The film was cut on FCP 7.

All in all, we had a blast making this film. I’m quite proud of it.

“Sweet Dreams” stars Grace Munro, Glen Reid, Marissa Lair, Terry Tyler and Frankee Wallace.

Here’s a video of us having fun on set:

MUSIC/CAMERA/EDITING/SCRIPT/DIRECTION BY JORDAN RANDALL

STARRING

TERRY TYLER

AND

ANA COSIC

FILMED IN TORONTO 2014

MUSIC/CAMERA/EDITING/SCRIPT/DIRECTION BY JORDAN RANDALL

TERRY TYLER AS “THE INTRUDER”

ZACK ALEXANDER AS TERRY’S DOUBLE

FILMED IN TORONTO 2014