In Guelph Ontario, there’s a little place known as the Ed Video Media Arts Centre. The member-funded organization assists local filmmakers with training and production. It’s a Guelph establishment and still going strong after 30 years. A few weeks ago, Ed Video held a night of screenings called “Beaches, Bellies and Psychos”. It was a celebration of local filmmaking and was the premiere for three new film projects to come out of the Centre; the existential Life’s A Beach by Richard Higgins, the belly dancing doc Raqs Sharqi, It’s No Hootchy Kootchy by Mary Lalonde, and the black comedy Day in the Life of a Psychopath by Peter Sazabo. All of them are first-time filmmakers, all of them were nervous before their big debuts. We got a chance to talk in the Bookshelf Green Room before the show.
Adam A. Donaldson: How did these movies screening tonight come to be?
Well it started with the moviemaking 101 project which was last February I believe.
Peter Szabo:
Actually, it started with Screenwriting 101 in February and it wrapped up in May I think. Then the next half was ‘who wants to turn their screenplay into a movie?’ (To Richard and Mary) Were you two in the screenwriting workshop? (Both nod.) Okay, they were in the screenwriting workshop, I wasn’t, I parachuted in when they said ‘It’s now open to anybody, who wants to make a movie.’ We got the funding through Ed Video in a grant from Imperial Tobacco.
Richard Higgins:
So good things do come from tobacco.
Mary Lalonde:
Fortunately, I didn’t have to have all my dancers smoking in my movie.
What do you hope people will get out of the movies screening tonight, whether about the films specifically, or about filmmaking in Guelph generally?
Mary Lalonde:
I think it’s great that Ed Video’s in the community and giving access to anyone. I had never picked up a camera except to tape my kids on vacation, but I learned so much over the year that I can now actually put together something like we’re watching tonight.
Peter Szabo:
One thing I’m hoping people will see is that these are really good quality films and raise some awareness that you can make films fairly easily and inexpensively with equipment and expertise that’s right here in town.
Where did your ideas come from for these movies?
Richard Higgins:
With mine it was funny because I started out with a completely different idea, I wanted to do a documentary and I found that as it progressed I was getting farther and farther away from what I wanted to say. I realized that there was no way I was going to do it with the time I had to do it. The trip to the beach was, not spontaneous I guess, but much more spontaneously formatted than the original idea. I still have all kinds of footage for it and I still plan to do it, but for a first project it started to get a little too complicated.
Tell us about belly dancing.
Mary Lalonde:
Right, well when I started out with the screenwriting course I had in mind something epic in proportion and I thought that I’d better start off with something more simplistic. As it turned out, when I actually had to make the movie it wasn’t simple at all. It gave me a great opportunity to work with someone I already knew in the field, a belly dancing instructor, and help her get a message out about some of the stereotypes about the form. It’s been great, I got to interview a lot of well-known performers, and people were so helpful and forthcoming when I asked for interviews. It was pretty amazing.
And you did psychos.
Peter Szabo:
Yes. Yes. I read an article in the Globe and Mail about a specific psychopath and there were quotes from various experts who found what the criteria were for what a psychopath is and I thought, ‘Wow, there a lot of people in society that can fit those criteria’. Then I heard something on TV and I thought, ‘what if you took all those qualities and created a little movie where you showed somebody demonstrating all of them in an everyday situation, people might really recognize that anybody could be a psychopath’. So it wasn’t really about trying to create something violent as it was about the psychological syndrome in society that’s actually celebrated in the corporate world.
As independent filmmakers do you find that with a budget and time constraints you sometimes have to censor yourself?
Peter Szabo:
The first script I brought forward was for a feature film and I censored myself by scrapping the whole thing and I said ‘I’m not going to do that’ because it was too much to take on time-wise and budget-wise. I just decided to write something short and not get into anything too complicated like effects or costumes. I was conscious of it when I wrote the script to make it simple and relatively inexpensive.
Richard Higgins:
Was it the same idea?
Peter Szabo:
No it was totally different. It was 90-minutes and set in a hotel and I needed it to be in the summer…There were just all kinds of conditions to it and I just wasn’t ready to line them up.
Richard Higgins:
Do you plan on pursuing that film?
Peter Szabo:
Yeah I do.
Richard Higgins:
So you probably found this experience helpful.
Peter Szabo:
Oh yeah definitely.
So what were some of the other challenges in getting these first films made?
Richard Higgins:
Editing. (Laughter)
Was that a technical thing for you?
Richard Higgins:
Well having no experience at all with editing and not being particularly computer savvy, I found it very challenging. In fact, most of the editing was done by other people.
Mary Lalonde:
For me it was the shooting part of it and scheduling was tricky: finding time to talk to a person, finding people to help and checking to see if the equipment was rented out at that time. Juggling that kind of stuff was tricky, but definitely editing was a huge, huge learning curve. I had never even turned on a Mac computer before that. (Laughs) I was in over my head in a big way.
Peter Szabo:
I had minimal experience with a lot of the technical stuff. The biggest obstacle for me was audio, sound, and not realizing how critical it is to telling the story and how important it is to make sure how you’re set live on location to make sure you’re getting a good recording. I had a couple of scenes where I didn’t take into account at all what kind of audio conditions were there and the dialogue came out not very audible. That drove me crazy, but I’ll never make that mistake again and not just take into account the visual.
What made you guys decide to take up filmmaking now?
Richard Higgins:
For me it was something I’ve always wanted to do. I was always interested in filmmaking, especially scriptwriting because it seemed to be something that was doable since I didn’t know the first thing about filmmaking. The accessibility and opportunity that was presented by Ed Video was the primary factor for me in getting involved.
Mary Lalonde:
I’ve always loved movies too and I finished a university degree a few years ago where I took some film courses while I was doing my degree. I was really inspired by those and I knew that when I was finished that I wanted to pursue film in some way. I just didn’t know if I wanted to do it academically or learn something more practical about it. So I became a member of Ed Video and I took all the workshops they offered and found that I was really enjoying the practical side of filmmaking. But when I started taking the screenwriting course I had no idea that I’d end up making a movie this year. (Laughs) Not at all.
Peter Szabo:
Yeah, it came up pretty suddenly for me too. I’ve been a writer since I was a kid, so I’ve done screenwriting for years. I realized that I needed to do something more than just write it, I got involved with Ed Video and thought that I should learn all the other aspects of filmmaking. Then I did Change Now and got a lot more experience and I thought that I’d really like to try this myself and not just give my stories to someone else to tell. That’s sort of evolved over the last year or so.
(Turns to Richard and Mary) I’ll be interested to hear your opinion on this one, what is the intention for your film or your filmmaking career? Is it to express yourselves creatively and put it out there or to generate income, or a combination? Because obviously, there’s no income generation directly; I mean if Spielberg happened to see it and say here’s $5 million, want to make a movie? That’s a peripheral possibility, but in terms of the direct income-generating option, I haven’t figured that part out yet.
Richard Higgins:
I honestly don’t really have a direction. This just sort of let me convey something that was meaningful to me and I don’t know if it’s going to be meaningful to anyone else. I would obviously like it to be something people relate to because that’s what I think art is all about. I just wanted to do this for myself and I had a lot of fun doing it, I really enjoyed it. I don’t know where it’s going, but here we are.
Mary Lalonde:
I think it’s more about creativity for me than an income generator, income’s always nice but that’s kind of foreign to me anyway. (Laughs)
Peter Szabo:
Well I definitely want to do both. I’d love to do this as a career and drop the tech writing and have this as how I generate income. It doesn’t have to be billions of dollars, but I love it so much and I’d love to do it all the time. I like the idea that the whole independent option is there so that I don’t have to get swallowed up by some giant studio that can manipulate and distort your vision or the story. For now I like this idea of pursuing the independent track with the mind to find a way to at least cover the costs, so that’s my next challenge.
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Show/Hide comments
Show/Hide comment form