So, hot on the heels of a screening at Fantasia, RE-WIRE is now getting some proper hometown love from the Toronto After Dark Festival – they’ve made it the opening film for the closing night gala presentation of the very twisted, cult-hit, “The Human Centipede.”
The screening will be at the Bloor Cinema, 9:45pm on Friday, August 20th.
Tickets go on sale today and can be bought here:
Well, it’s official. RE-WIRE will have its North American premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal on July 19 and 20.
SCREENING TIMES
July 19th, 2010 • 7:40 pm • J.A. De Seve Theater
July 20th, 2010 • 1:00 pm • J.A. De Seve Theater
http://www.fantasiafestival.com/2010/en/films/film_detail.php?id=422
Canadian Society of Cinematographers
The award is in the category of Short Dramatic Fiction for 2010, and interestingly enough, the only other film that was nominated was shot in 2007! It seems that the CSC allows films to be entered based on their calendar year of completion – which makes sense – but also allows films which have been exhibited or broadcast in the previous year…
Does that strike you as a bit odd? It does to me…
The film that Re-Wire is up against for the award is called, “Next Floor” and it one of my favourite short films – probably ever. I saw it at TIFF in 2008 and again at WWSFF in 2009. It’s a great film with stunning visuals, great special effects, great acting, great writing, great directing, great art design and definitely great cinematography. I read an interview with the director where he talked about how great it was to work without financial constraints.
“Next Floor was made with total freedom; there were no worries about money. It became about the total pleasure of cinema.”
How lovely!
Along comes our film – furnished with found furniture and trash carpets, rented computers, hacked interfaces, nintendo DS remote-controlled projections and a hand-made helmet of Active Surplus parts. The film was completed ONLY with the incredible generosity of the 50+ people that worked on it, all for little or no money.
While it might sound like I’m griping (and yeah ok, I am for sure… a teeny bit… itsy, teeny weeny) it is at the same time a huge honour to have our film in competition for a cinematography award against a film of such calibre! It’s a testament to the raw talent and skill of Greg, who will hopefully get a huge career boost from all this.
The award winners will be officially announced at a gala event on March 27th in Toronto.
Here’s hoping for a little underdog upset on March 27th! 
So the Re-Wire trailer is done. I cut it over the weekend. Thanks to Tim Kirkwood for the inspiration and Greg Bennett for the aspect ratio purism.
Re-Wire (2009) Trailer from David Fernandes on Vimeo. This is the trailer for Re-Wire, a new 14-minute psych-fi film and the directorial debut of Toronto filmmaker, David-James Fernandes. The film follows Harley, a late 30's man suffering from severe, debilitating anxiety. On a tip from his psychiatrist, Harley seeks out the help of Dr. Adrian Vanuz, a renown but disgraced neuroscientist whose experimental equipment has allegedly been used to cure epilepsy, Alzheimer's and possibly even mental health issues. Harley is determined to get better, whether or not the doctor is ready to see him. And at any risk.... --- The film was shot digitally in 4K resolution (4X HD) on the RED camera in Toronto last August by Director of Photography, Gregory Bennett. The film has been submitted to ten film festivals so far and the filmmakers are waiting for responses. Please see the website for more information about the cast and crew: Please also see our IMDB page for more information:
Also, Twitch Film did a little piece on the trailer:
http://twitchfilm.net/news/2009/12/she-said-you-could-get-rid-of-it.php
Re-Wire is finally done! yay! We held a private screening with cast, crew and friends on Thursday night and are just totally overwhelmed with all the great feedback!
Thanks so much to Corby Luke, Paul Shikata, Gregory Bennett, Nic Murray, Tim Kirkwood and Steve Munro for helping get the final done in time for the screening. It looks and sounds fantastic and we can’t wait to start doing official screenings in film festivals.
Thanks also to all the great local business who donated items for our raffle and auction, as well as all the friends who donated services and pieces of art. We had a fantastic turnout. Thanks for making it such a great night!
We hear back from Sundance on December 7th and will let you all know ASAP as to our status.
Cheers!
So, in record time, Re-Wire was edited, composed, sound designed, animated, colour corrected and mixed and a copy sent off to Sundance for consideration in the 2010 festival. We managed to get it in on the LAST day for shorts submissions. Woo!
The next step for us is to take our very near final copy of the film around to some key folks for feedback. Based on that, we’re going to make a few tweaks and enhancements and have a new exhibition ready copy by November.
The website is nearing completion and the trailer should be done next week sometime, so look out for a new update about those.
Congratulations to everyone involved for making it all come together in time to enter Sundance. Best of luck!
Here are some more screen grabs to wet your appetite:
Wow, what a month. We’ve completed filming on my first short, “Re-Wire”. A truly talented team of actors and crew pulled together for a really fabulous and hard two days of shooting, with possibly the best and most nutritious food to ever grace a low-budget film set.
The film stars Brandon McGibbon as Harley, Shawn Lawrence as Dr. Adrian Vanuz, and Marnie Robinson as Joanne.
Principal filming happened around the corner from our house over at the Centre of Gravity, which we rented out for four days from the very friendly and supportive owners.
The film is now in post-production and is being edited by Tim Kirkwood (who amazingly also lives around the corner from me).
The footage from the RED camera is just so amazing. The direct result of an extremely talented camera crew headed up by Greg Bennett
Scott Wise is currently working on a little website for the film which we hope to have up by early next week. I’ll be cutting a trailer this weekend.
In the mean-time, I present to you the very first public screenshots from the film.
Lots more to come soon.
Enjoy!
Hey folks, thanks for visiting my new website!
For those who’ve been out of touch for a while, I no longer do graphic design work and am happy to recommend my friends at the Public Studio in Toronto.
For the last two years since leaving Ottawa I have been working on building a successful video and film production company called Leslieville Production and Post Inc. We work with a number of clients including labour unions, the Government of Ontario and the United Way. The business is owned jointly with Gregory Bennett and soon, Sarah Kapoor. We provide a full range of production services for TV commercials, PSAs, campaigns and more. Check it out and subscribe to our newsletter if you’d like to stay in touch.
CURRENT PROJECTS
Since January 2009, I’ve been working closely with Sarah Kapoor and am currently co-producing two feature-length documentary projects with her:
The first one, about birth, follows Sarah’s journey as a new mother to find an alternative to the medicalized system of child birth that we’ve come to know and fear. The film explores a growing movement of women, doulas, parents, educators and activists who are forming a number of viable alternatives to painful, medicated hospital births.
The second film takes an historical and critical look at school – the babysitter of the masses. The film explores the history and structure of compulsory schooling, how it got to be this way and how stuck it is in a centuries-old paradigm that no longer works well in a modern context. The film also explores the vast network of schools, educators and parents that have taken back control of their children and are experimenting with new ways of learning and teaching.
Finally, I’m working with an amazing group of people on a 12-minute sci-fi short that I’ve written and will be directing. Re-wire is about Harley, a worn down man in his 40′s who suffers from severe, debilitating anxiety and Dr. Vanus, a disgraced but brilliant neurologist, who claims he can fix him. No analysis. No drugs. Just an hour on an experimental machine that uses computer-controlled electromagnets to re-wire the structure of Harley’s brain. But when the re-wiring doesn’t go quite as planned, Harley must face his deepest fears alone, and Vanus must come to grips with what Harley has become in his care…
The film will be shot on the RED camera by Gregory Bennett (CSC). We are shooting in late August and will be submitting the film to the Sundance Festival for the 2010 season. Casting is being done during the last week of July under the ACTRA TIP program. Wish us luck!