03rd May2012

Attend SFFO in Halifax! Win an iPad!

by admin

Taped in Halifax, this program shows 3 great short films an episode and interviews the directors. The studio audience votes on the best film of the night to compete for the final $50k prize so PLEASE come out and support Mr. Crab and director Faisal Lutchmedial. To get FREE tickets, call 420-4752. Ask for Episode 2, May 16th. Bring as many people as you can, and vote Mr. Crab! Everyone who shows up to gets a chance to win an iPad too!

https://www.facebook.com/events/419746661371221/

Category : Mr. Crab, short film
25th Apr2012

Mr. Crab invited to CBC Short Film Faceoff

by admin

CBC Short Film Faceoff is a great national competition of some of the best short films made in Canada. It’s the second year of the program nationally (they had a more Atlantic version previously) and the whole Mr. Crab team is excited about this opportunity. It’s pretty rare to have a short play on television at all, but playing on this show in prime time across the country is fantastic.

The basic idea of the show is 9 different films (and their directors) face off against each other, judged by a panel of film professionals and a studio audience. The three top films from this round move on to a final round that allows the public to decide who wins the grand prize. The prize itself quite generous, a $40,000 rental / services grant, and a $10,000 cash grant toward your next film.

Keep your fingers (and claws) crossed for Mr. Crab! More news about broadcast time when we have it.

 

 

 

 

Category : broadcast, Mr. Crab, short film
12th Apr2012

Mr. Crab at Reelworld in Toronto April 13 & 15

by admin

Mr. Crab, will be making its Toronto premiere on Friday the 13th of April at the ReelWorld Film Festival, Canada’s premiere festival promoting and fostering racially and culturally diverse artists. The Gondry-esque Mr. Crab follows Rishi, a ten year old boy that idolizes and fears his imposing father, who tells him stories about the crystal clear waters of Trinidad & Tobago.

Mr. Crab plays in the Short Program 2 of ReelWorld. Check out the festival website for information: http://www.reelworld.ca/festival/program-2012/

Screenings:

Friday the 13th at 4pm (Cinema 4)

Sunday the 15th at 3:30pm. (Cinema 5)

You can buy tickets online at http://www.reelworld.ca/ or at the door, 2190 Yonge Street.

Category : film festival, Mr. Crab, short film
06th Mar2012

Bell Media Diverse Screenwriters Program

by Faisal

I was recently accepted into this program, run by the Writer’s Guild of Canada. The program will be guided by mentors that will help me develop the script and bible to my television drama series “Welcome to Trinidad” for the week I am there, and then for the following three months. The series has been in development over the last  year, and actually was what brought me to Barbados in March 2011 for the Caribbean Tales Symposium and Film Festival. The seminars in Bridgetown helped me develop the base idea, which is I am sure a reason why I was able to get noticed by the Bell Media program. Big thanks to Caribbean Tales and the  workshop leaders for that!

A great deal of the work I have been writing lately has had a Trinidadian or Caribbean connection, including my short film Mr. Crab, which will be playing in a film festival in Toronto just before I participate in the Screenwriters Program (more information on that in the next posting).  The rich culture of the region is unfortunately unrepresented on our screens, and I hope to be part of a wave that changes that.

For more info on my short Mr. Crab, including screening times,  ”like” the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/MrCrabMovie

And here’s a synopsis my  series in development:

Welcome to Trinidad is a 1-hour television drama-thriller series following a family at war with itself, as the secrets a father left behind in the old country are uncovered by his two sons. Long forgotten horrors return to terrorize the brothers and before long threaten the entire family.

For more information on the Bell Media Diverse Screenwriters Program:

http://www.wgc.ca/action/bellmediadiverse.html

Category : Mr. Crab, short film, Trinidad, Welcome to Trinidad, writing
24th Sep2011

Where the Heart Is

by admin

Watch Adam Reider’s new short film DP’d by Faisal Lutchmedial.

Category : cinematography, short film
15th Aug2011

NSI Online Debut of Useless Things

by admin

Useless Things makes its internet debut today after a successful festival run. The script, directed by Green Dragon’s Faisal Lutchmedial, won the Writer’s Guild of Canada English Prize at the Festival du Nouveau Cinema Montreal when it was competing in SODEC’s Cours Ecrire Ton Court.  The film is playing in the National Screen Institute’s Online Film Festival (click for link).

Lutchmedial is currently developing the feature “Path of Light”, which follows some of themes explored in his award winning short.

From the director: “Useless Things, my first professional short fiction, follows themes I began with my feature documentary, My Cultural Divide (2006). You could say I am seeking a better sense of place, of where I am as a Canadian and where my family finds its roots. When does our family’s expectations and history fade and become fused with us? What part of their culture do we take when they are gone and all we’ve known is the new world?

Useless Things is not an autobiography. The character Shashin is not me, although physically I inhabit his space. I think in some ways the Hindu subtext is more real, the larger than life gods and demons that I identified with in some way and wrote about.

Throughout the film there are visual references to Rahu, the serpent demon attempting to swallow Soma (the moon), the elixir of eternal life. Shashin finds himself in shadow, as the moon does during the eclipse, and is always trying to move toward the light of both his mother (Savita – or Surya) or his girlfriend Agnis (Agni).

To enrich the film beyond the surface story, my team and I attempted to use these and other metaphors throughout all of our planning of lighting, art design, and shot composition.

Now that I look back after having recently completed my second short film Mr. Crab (2011), I am very proud of the work we did here. Our goal was to create something intimate, dreamlike, and touching, and I think we succeeded.”

Watch the film here:

Category : film festival, short film, Useless Things, writing
07th Aug2011

Dog Sitter at Fantasia Screening

by admin

Adam Reider’s disturbingly funny short film Dog Sitter played at the Fantasia Film Festival last night. The screening had a great big crowd of genre loving filmgoers who loved the selection of movies. The weekend of short Quebec films was put on for free which was a really nice touch by the festival and the sponsors.

Director Adam Reider and producer Faisal Lutchmedial

Category : Dog Sitter, film festival, short film
18th Jul2011

Useless Things on the CBC

by admin

CBC anthology program Canadian Reflections will be broadcasting the award winning (Writers Guild of Canada English script prize Festival du Nouveau Cinema) short drama Useless Things written, directed and starring Faisal Lutchmedial Sunday July 24th, 2011 at midnight. This will be the short film’s broadcast premiere, and it will be playing with a short comedy called King Chicken directed by Nicholas Bolduc.

Useless Things follows the thoughts of Shashin (played by writer / director Faisal Lutchmedial), a second generation immigrant struggling to find his identity following the loss of his parents (Ranjana Jha and Anshu Pathak) . His girlfriend Agnis (Erica Smith) pushes him and asks the hard questions while we follow his thoughts about his chosen path, memories of his family, and dreams of Hindu mythology.   As he goes through boxes Shashin begins to find meaning in the seemingly insignificant odds and ends that fill the cold house that once was his home.  Taking us backward and forward in time to follow his memories, Useless Things is a dreamily crafted journey of forgiveness, enlightenment, and self-discovery.

Useless Things was produced by Peripheria Productions, and supported by SODEC and the NFB FAP program.

Erica Smith and Faisal Lutchmedial in Useless Things

The short was also accepted into the NSI Online Short Film Competition, and will be playing in that series sometime in the next few months. More information on that soon. For now, enjoy the trailer for the film here.

Category : broadcast, film, short film, Useless Things
23rd Mar2011

Only Sky & Water

by admin

A short documentary which I shot for Tamara Scherbak in Trinidad & Tobago will be premiering at Hot Docs this May. I am particularly proud of this project because of the “rich cinematography” we were able to shoot came from a very small and limiting camera, the Sony Webbie PM1. We used it because Tamara was competing in a TIFF Talent Lab Emerging Filmmakers competition, and they provided it. It’s a small and low cost HD camera that isn’t really built for filmmaking in any way, but it goes to show that when you use the tools you are given – and know what they are capable of, you can still make beautiful work.

Tamara and I discussed it for a while, and noticed a number of things about the camera. First, the compression is very high, and as a result anything moving becomes jello, or stuttered. Also, it seems as though there is a very high shutter speed when shooting with a lot of light automatically, which I assume is done to lower the light coming onto the sensor rather than stopping down. This is amazingly annoying because it looks as though everything is fast motion (even though it is not) and again stutters and strobes the footage. What we ended up doing to work with that is we went for a super 8 pushed a few stops kind of look (some of that accomplished in color correction) and I think it came out very well. Second, Tamara accented the strobe to add a feeling of desperation in the underwater (or by the waves) shots, which added a sense of uneasyness.  Along with the “haunting musical score” she created, it made the piece really stand out.

We also used an underwater bag which helped us in two ways, one obviously so we could shoot close to the water and underwater, and second, because the plastic of the bag shined from the sunlight and added really interesting lens flares to the footage. The bag itself was about $20, and we got some really nice stuff from that small investment. In fact, we used a bigger brother to that for Mr. Crab’s underwater sequence (and a DSLR), and it worked flawlessly.

Tamara and I will be attending Hot Docs this year in Toronto, so if you are around, please join us at one of the three screenings!

Category : cinematography, documentary, Front Page, Mr. Crab, short film
17th Feb2011

Deadlines

by admin

Animation by Eva Cvijanovic for "Little Girl"

Generally the films I make or am a part of take a long time, a great deal of pre-production, and a lot of loving and caring in post. Things don’t always work out that way, case in point, the music video I produced for UrbanHanded Works last month. James Hoffman directed yet another video clip for the United Steel Workers of Montreal, this one funded by FACTOR, and not from the band’s pockets which was nice for a change. The song’s name is “Little Girl” off the album Three on the Tree. Our budget was still quite tight, and we had to call in a few favours, but I have hope that this signals a new stage for the band so next time we can pay our great volunteer crew.

We went from greenlight to production in about three weeks, and James edited the piece in less than 3 days. Our reasons for being rushed were complicated, but basically we had a deadline to send back to FACTOR we didn’t want to try to extend further. It all worked out, and we got the project in on time, which I am very happy about. Deadlines are great because they push us to finally call something “finished” even if we could probably work on it for another few weeks, if not months.

My own short film, Mr. Crab, has taken a long time to produce because I waited for crew to become available and the summer to arrive to shoot. Then in post because I took my time with the picture edit, and gave my musical composer Jawad Chabaan and sound editor Emory Murchison a great deal of breathing room so they could fit in a few other projects. That and festival application season wasn’t upon us. And then… it was.

The result? Rushing at the end. I haven’t worked on a film where we weren’t rushing at the end yet, and I don’t think I ever will. Perhaps it is human nature. We need deadlines to give us a reason to move onto the next project. When you’re an independent artist it can be too easy to work on that project you’ve been nurturing forever, for – well, forever. But there is a bell curve to the benefit that extra time will positively affect the project. Some would argue too much tweaking can hurt a film, and I tend to agree. But where is the healthy balance? I say, make a realistic deadline, and stick to it.

Unless you have to break it, so you can slightly change that shot that has been bothering you for a while. Trust me, I’ve been there.

Category : film, film festival, financing, James Hoffman, Mr. Crab, producing, short film, United Steel Workers of Montreal
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