DINX and ROCK POCKETS Shortlisted for the Iris Prize
2008-08-13
Look! The first time we've been sent an "official laurel" for anything! I remember standing in the video store, wondering how people got those. Now I know: they just email it to you.
DINX and ROCK POCKETS have both been shortlisted for the Iris Prize in Cardiff, Wales. The winner will receive the largest prize for a gay and lesbian short film in the world - valued at £25,000. The prize, generously sponsored by UK post production companies including Barcud Derwen, Goleudy and Sounds in Motion, will allow the winner to make her or his next short film in the UK.
To view the shortlist, go to www.irisprize.org and cross yr fingers, mates. (Do people call each other mates in Cardiff, I wonder?)
Rock Pockets gets into the Slamdance Festival!
2008-06-18
Our short film ROCK POCKETS was online as part of the Slamdance Festival's Anarchy competition. Thank you to everyone who watched and voted for it! It got the most votes in the month of June, so now it goes on to finalist competition later this year. Also, it gets into next January's Slamdance in Park City, Utah.
The Island
2008-03-20
We've just completed principal photography on our new short video "The Island", written and directed by me, Trevor Anderson, and produced by Julia Rosenberg and Tyler Levine. Director of Photography Wes Doyle, C.S.C. and I (pictured above) traveled to Cold Lake, Alberta along with Steadicam Operator Brett Manyluk. We had a surreal day of shooting out on the ice and snow of the frozen lake. Now, John Blerot will create a soundscape, Scott Davidchuk and Dwayne Martineau will score it on drums and lap steel, Justin Lachance will edit picture, and Kim Clegg and Jeff LeDrew will animate it! It is being produced with the assistance of Bravo!FACT and FAVA's 2Bits Commission.
ROCK POCKETS Scores in Seattle
2007-10-25
Zow! The jury for the 2007 Seattle LGFF gave ROCK POCKETS an Honourable Mention for Innovative Short Film. Their statement was, “Wonderfully timed voice-over and soundtrack that synched cleverly with the images. Through humor and objective observation of a personal story, the film subtly speaks to a broader audience.” Hear that? They think I'm subtle. Hey, everyone! I'M SUBTLE!
Wrapping DINX
2007-08-29
It's A Typical Movie Set
Comedy set in gay strip club
by Fish Griwkowsky
Edmonton Sun, August 24, 2007
Local playwright/director/musician Trevor Anderson is, as usual, busy as Beowulf and Charles Nelson Reilly put together.
"Look at this! I have my own truck!" he yells outside the Starlite Tuesday night, spreading his arms and falling backwards onto the biggest film-set prop he's ever brought into his circle - and that includes a lot of serious actor egos.
As we speak, the multiple award-winner is working on his new project. DINX, a love story set in, as he puts it, "a gay strip club of the near future where everybody goes to hang out. Trannies, straight rockers, my people.
"It's a 13-minute comedy being produced through the Drama Prize Program at the National Screen Institute, with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Edmonton Arts Council and the National Film Board," he explains.
"What this means is there'll be a full professional crew, we're shooting on real film, and when we're done, it'll be broadcast on the CBC and at international film festivals, hopefully even on Logo, owned by MTV, like my previous short film."
After Anderson set out a general APB in the arts community for patrons, dozens showed up, including members of Frosted Tipz, other musicians like Ted Wright and Travis Sargent, and visual artists including Andrea Lefebvre and Amelia Aspen, formerly of the rock band the Skinny.
"The extras are patrons at DINX nightclub, my fantasy bar we're creating in the Starlite Room," Anderson continues.
"Local rock/art stars Lyle Bell, Al Camino and Luke Gallivan-Smith are playing the male strippers, and Miss Vanity Fair, Miss Bianca and Miss Krystall Ball are playing the drag queens."
Bell, a.k.a. Whitey Houston, is also with Anderson in the Wet Secrets, a band doing very well on national radio, thank you very much. In short, it was scenesters' paradise.
Fascinated, I went down. At the club, the scene was backstage at a typical movie set - mainly a lot of waiting and quiet, harmless grumbles.
People were asked to show up at 7 p.m., but as the night wore on, it was clear this, like every movie set, followed its own watch, so an exodus to Hawkeye's Too resulted in, seriously, a 40-ounce bottle of Jack Daniels being drained and several extras vanishing as the hours passed.
Back at the rented-out Starlite, the crew upstairs was indeed real, pro and circling around various protagonists, including one playing a waiter in hot pants about to abandon his post to go home with an old friend.
Take after take, he passed his shooter tray off to a happy drag queen.
Finally, the crowd of extras was allowed down to the front of the stage to cheer and whoop for the male strippers, including Camino in a butterfly outfit and Bell, who looked dazzling in a white cowboy hat, still going on about how he had to manoeuvre certain body parts to get the spray-on tan "everywhere."
This seemed odd, as the cameras wouldn't be probing his depths, but never question a good method actor ...
What was impressive about the night was how Anderson - who's won the mayor's award for emerging talent - once again managed to bridge so many disparate worlds.
This is, indeed, his conspiracy - not to dominate, but assimilate as all his straight friends collaborate. And in this he is never alone.
(*note from Trevor: I love this article, but it made me think. Assimilation isn't my goal. Collaboration, certainly. Coalition. Subversive integration, I'd say, but not assimilation.)
