This is my fourth-year thesis project, completed for the Multimedia component of my degree.

One night, Mike and I decided we were going to walk from Toronto to Niagara Falls: we were going to videotape everything, and see what would come out of it. I decided to make the video my thesis project.

I sifted through 30 hours of raw footage for the project, and managed to narrow my usable footage down to 9 hours, then to 5 hours, and then 45 minutes. At that point I started presenting the project to friends and family to see their reactions to the film. I specifically tried to screen the video to people that wouldn’t understand inside jokes between Mike & I. With my viewer’s feedback, I managed to cut it down to 17 minutes & 30 seconds without losing what I consider to be the most vital elements.

Two technical issues; the first is shaky camera and the next is audio. Shakiness of the camera lends itself to the theme of the film and so was not avoided in the editing phase, but there are times when I wish that the shaking had not been so great. If I were to undertake a project like this again, I will use a wide angle lens on the camera & be more conscious of camera shake generally. I’ve noted that swinging the camera in my walking stride is no good. The second problem, audio: Mike & I were equipped with microphones for the entire walk. Keeping the mics (& their recording equipment) powered for the entire walk was a challenge which led to our packs being weighed down by batteries. This was very uncomfortable on our backs to say the least & the batteries still ran out. To cut down in the future, I’ll need a more efficient recording apparatus. And next time I won’t try to record every second of audio, which I tried to do in this project. The majority of the audio that I did get for this project would be uninteresting to most people except Mike & I anyway.

132 k was filmed in HDV format on a Canon Vixia HV40. All things considered, the budget to make this video was very low.

Screens:

Going into more detail:

I wanted to think about life. My life. I had been keeping video journals (between April & October of 2009), and I intended (and still do intend) to make a video that could help make sense of it all. In late August of 2009, I went on a spontaneous walk with my good friend Michael Scholl. I documented as much of it as I could.

My thesis project was originally to take aim at religion and its poisonous effects. It became apparent, by early March of 2010, that I wouldn’t have enough material to complete “Brainworms” (the working title of my anti-religion doc) in a fashion I could be proud of. I changed my thesis to “Personal Experiment.”

This project sought to bring various stories together around some narrative “glue;” – I’d originally intended this walk, from Niagara Falls to Toronto, to be the central theme to which all “streams” related to. (A stream is just a storyline that I follow with my video camera.) For example, my wife (with my encouragement) moved to St. John’s to pursue a great job opportunity in St. John’s, Newfoundland. I had to finish up my degree in Hamilton, Ontario, so I could not join her right away. I filmed the entire process – her hiring, apartment hunting, and the 3000 km trek to St. John’s with various belongings (including Robot, our cat). Another “stream” was the private video journals I kept during this time. Also, video footage taken in Niagara Falls during Jessica & I’s first wedding anniversary (and tenth year together). Add in the boisterous escapades of my friends & I at the Toronto Molson Indy (of 2006), plus the reflective conversations between a close friend and I on a 132 kilometre walk, and I thought I had a video that amounted to “ruminations on life,” with the potential of being quite interesting.

After sifting through 30 hours of raw footage, I had approximately 9 hours of footage that I figured could be used in this project. Five hours (from the “nine-hour bin”) were of my walk from Toronto to Niagara Falls (the direction had become reversed for a number of technical reasons). After cutting these five hours down to about an hour of “favourite takes” – I realized that the spontaneous adventure I had embarked on, and documented, would not turn out to be the narrative “glue” I had hoped. This was a project all its own, and in order to do it justice in the time available, I needed to focus.

The result is 132k.