Another sold-out house at Wakefield-La Pêche Community Centre was treated to the final and probably the most powerful film of WIFF 2012. The audience was transfixed by Jennifer Baichwal's riveting 2011 documentary Payback and also clearly enjoyed Algonquin Short Sax Appeal by Wasim Baobaid.

Baichwal's documentary based on Margaret Atwood’s bestselling book Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, offers a fascinating look at debt as a mental construct and traces how it influences relationships, societies, governing structures and the fate of the planet. Baichwal: "The first thing I learned, which was a great relief, is that the book wasn’t about money… What it was about was the idea of debt – a fantastic, complex riff on all the ways we are governed by owing and being owed in human society and beyond. ‘I owe you one.’ ‘You owe me one.’ And so on."

Also on hand was Jarrod Goldsmith of Ottawa-based saxophone quartet Sax Appeal, the subject of Algonquin doc student Wasim Baobaid's short subject documentary that opened for Payback.

And so ends another season of compelling documentaries at WIFF. Thank you to creative directors Robert and Brenda Rooney for bringing this fabulous boutique film festival to the community And congratulations to documentary production students whose Algonquin Shorts were selected by WIFF programmers to open for a strong line-up of international docs. A heartfelt thank you to the Rooneys for offering Algonquin's emerging documentary makers this career-launching opportunity to showcase their work. Un grand merci.

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At the beginning of winter term documentary production students are sent out to Ottawa's annual Winterlude event for their first story exercise after Christmas break.

Here's the drill: Students go out in crews to focus on a Winterlude event of interest and bring back actuality, interviews and visuals to produce a five minute story. Each member of the crew directs a particular story element or segment and edits it. The final touch is assembling all segments which are crafted together in the edit suite to produce the group's mini doc.
Winterlude Challenge is a warm up exercise for the big one, students' final group productions of their long form documentaries.

Doc makers Justin Nalepa, Tae-eun Kim, Eric Archambault and Jean Kim-Butcher decided on a profile of Sophie Latreille, founding member of Fire Weavers, an Ottawa/Gatineau-based fire performance troupe.

As in all documentary shooting, the objective of the exercise is to come back with actuality and visuals that give the audience a sense of what it's like to be there.

Hard core occupier and documentary production student Amin Habbal is "embedded" with Occupy Ottawa. To find out why Amin is not in class, click on the image for the Algonquin Times article.

It's a tradition: Every fall documentary production students are sent out into the Byward Market to shoot their first actuality sequences and interviews.

With material they capture students create short subject docs on local characters and landmarks in the historic part of the nation's capital.

On their Market shoot, Eric Archambault, Tae-Eun Kim, Wisdom Sanni,  and Justin Nalepa set out to capture the story of local stables owner, John Cundell.

Located just on the edge of the Market, Cundell Stables have been in operation since the late 1800’s and are the only stables still left in the city’s core.

The crew rotates through various positions, everybody gets to direct, shoot and record sound.

The name of the exercise is to capture actuality, visuals and interviews and to bring back these elements to be cut into a short human interest story.

The documentary production program launched into year four with a diverse group of aspiring doc makers. Students were quickly immersed in video production fundamentals with in-class assignments shooting their first sequences and two-minute profiles of their colleagues. Next on the doc bootcamp itinearary is the annual location shoot in Ottawa's historic Byward Market. Several students have already been thrown into the baptismal fire of documentary, crewing for a doc on the college support workers' strike and shooting the tar sands action on Parliament Hill in September. Over two semesters of intense hands-on production activity students will be developing and producing short form and long form documentaries on wide-ranging topics from vanishing swans on the Rideau Canal to personal journeys of discovery. Under the guidance and tutelage of a seasoned team of doc instructors the crew of 2012 is headed for documentary adventure and discovery.

Algonquin College Documentary Production students showcase their end-of year documentaries.

The second annual Algonquin docfest brings to the screen emotional stories and a rainbow of audio visual delights from "Poutine Nation" to "Chocolate Shaman."

Meet and greet the documentary makers. Look forward to seeing you there.

Where: Ben Franklin Place - Centrepointe Theatre, Nepean
When: April 30, 2011
Time: 5:30 pm

To follow Graham's production log, click on the picture.

http://glawford.blogspot.com/

Click on the picture to follow Nicole's documentary adventure.
http://caminonicole.blogspot.com/2011/03/only-got-5-minutes.html

Award-winning documentary maker Peter Raymont of White Pine Pictures graced the halls of Algonquin this week with a most instructive presentation on "openings."

Raymont walked a full house of documentary production, TV broadcasting and scriptwriting students through several opening sequences from his documentaries including Shake Hands With The Devil, A Promise To The Dead,and  Genius Within: The Inner Life Of Glenn Gould.

Openings in any film are gateways into the story. Raymont says the filmmaker's objective is to engage the audience by making them care about the character and the story right at the beginning of a film and to make them curious and interested enough to want to watch the rest of it.  Raymont emphasized the delicate balance of weighing the elements and ingredients that typically unfold in the opening of a documentary: exposition and background information, introduction of the main character(s), establishing the world of the character and setting the tone and style of what's to come - how much to include, what to leave out. In the end says Raymont, "Keep it simple and to the point."

The Academy Award nominee was most generous with his time playing selected clips several times and sometimes with the sound off to drive home a particular point about designing effective openings.

Born in Ottawa, Raymont is the president of White Pine Pictures, an independent film, television and new media production company based in Toronto whose most recent doc is West Wind: The Vision of Tom Thomson.

(Click on the image for an interview with Peter Raymont recorded by the National Screen Institute)

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January was a busy month for our group, with six of our short films from the first term selected to open for the features at this year's Wakefield International Film Festival. Here's the roster of films that are showing:
Feb. 13 - 'Thursday Girls' by Marta Perez
Feb. 20 - 'Forged' by Josh Holmes
Feb. 27 - 'Charitable Rebels' by Camille Maheu
March. 6 - 'Karen Bailey: A Portrait' by Graham Lawford
March. 13 - 'Guard Team' by Nicole Godwin
March. 18 - 'Inapprowepriate' by Chris Plecash

Tickets can purchased  at www.theatrewakefield.ca

C.P.