Some good news! After quite awhile I've finished the last short I shot in Ottawa entitled "The End." Great cinematography and editing were provided by Paul Crivellari, a good friend an collaborator on two of my other shorts. My other friend Matthew Rosen provided the sound design and the score for the piece, which really brought the entire piece together.

The film is about the mental state of Steven Scythe, played by the capable John Dagenais, who is a whistleblower for a major pharmaceutical company. It focuses on his own turmoil about doing the right thing as he has become a shut in within his hotel room. My influence for this short was mostly based Michael Mann's "The Insider," which was the inspiration for the subject matter, but also my friend Paul Crivellari's own short "Portrait of a Woman" which influenced how the narrative was structured.

The reason the film took so long was based on a few different reasons, there was a point in the film where we wanted to have the character see himself, but because of the way it was shot we were unable to composite him in. So, we then attempted green screen but we were unable to evenly light the green screen which resulted us dumping the shots.

Then came the search for the light source, I wanted to show Hotel sign or neon sign on the out side, so the search for that was on. Paul, while passing through Carleton Place saw the sign and snapped a photo of it showed it to me and I was sold. We took a trip there and I got a number for the land lord, and cold called her and got the location. We threw the shot in and were pretty happy with what we got.

At this point other business crept in and things got postponed. Paul came up with a new cut of the film, which was much shorter and was more dynamic but still encapsulated all of the thematic elements that I wanted, which is the final cut we see.

It took quite some time to get to this point because during this post production process I moved to Oakville and went to Sheridan, completing other projects along the way, and now I'm glad that I was finally able to come back and put this project to bed.

This project represents a change for me as a filmmaker it was my first attempt to show that I was able to work within other genres. It provided a new challenge for me as a filmmaker which propelled me into moving outside of my comfort zone as a director and trying my hand at new genres like comedy.

I'm not sure weather or not I'll be putting it online as I would like to put it into a few festivals so stay tuned I'll keep you posted. Needless to say it will definitely be a part of my demo reel.