Tyler Gibb – Writer, Director, Editor, Filmmaker

Back in December, while driving, I was chatting with a new friend and mentioned that I would soon be putting winter tires on my car. He asked me why people did that; changed their tires for the winter. I was a little surprised by the question. Though I supposed it was a justifiable one for a life-long city dweller who would have no need for car ownership let alone seasonally appropriate radials. So I did my best to explain to him my understanding of tread patterns and varying rubber densities. Not to mention that here in Quebec, it’s the law.

After dropping him off, I reflected on the common adage “there are no stupid questions”. It’s a good one. The only thing that keeps us from asking questions – questions that for some reason we think we should already know the answer to – is pride. And I’ve never been a big fan of that measure of pride. Never the less I still often fall prey to this arrest in learning myself. It’s something I’m going to focus on changing in the new year. Mostly because I’m embarking on a new project, a new film, which will likely bring me into contact with people who have a lot to teach me. I hope to make “I don’t know, tell me” my new mantra.

It wasn’t until I got home that something occurred to me regarding my new friend’s inquiry about winter tires. It wasn’t that he’d never owned a car, or even ever seen a television commercial for Bridgestone Blizzaks. It’s that…

He’s from Toronto.

Toronto, a city less a part of the “Great White North” than many states to the South. A city beleaguered by our nation’s ever lasting (and mocking) memory of a particular winter that saw their mayor call in Canada’s armed forces to help clear the streets of snow. A city where, indeed, people could feasibly grow up never having purchased a set of winter tires. Well, it’s January now in Montreal and if I hollowed out the snow bank outside my window I could use it as a garage. I just hope my friend got a good pair of boots by the first snowfall.

There are no stupid questions. Just different routes to the same eventual destination of knowledge. “I don’t know, tell me” or maybe “Ask now so you don’t get snow-jobbed later.”

PS. This I do know: Refrain news coming soon.

The year of the Lion & the Gazelle is upon us. Well it’s a upon me. And as such, I’m wearing my writer’s hat these days and already neck-deep in the script (re)writing process. Unlike anything I’ve done previously, what this means is my drafts will be going out to a bunch of people who will all likely have an impactful opinion on it. My writing is good – I know, because I write it – so I’m not worried about opinions. Unfortunately however, this protective arrogance cannot shield me from the lack of control I have over one thing: How people read my script.

Getting someone to read your script is a pretty big deal, whether it’s a producer or your best friend. I think first-time writers have a false sense of how hard this is to do. Sure, your mom wants to read your script, but all those people who say “oh, you’re a writer? Cool, I’d love to read your script!” they don’t actually want to read your script. They just don’t know it yet. Your script is long, it’s formatted in a way that they don’t understand, Dancing With the Stars is on at 9… So believe me, getting someone to read your script is pretty tough. And getting someone to read your script properly is next to impossible.

I haven’t been doing this long, granted, but I’ve been doing it long enough to know that if I’m getting odd questions about continuity or lack of foreshadowing (that I know is there) from a reader there’s usually one reason for it: They didn’t read the script properly.

Properly, to moi, means the following:

You have to read a script the same way you watch a film: In one sitting. It’s not a Popular Mechanics article, you can’t just pick it up every time you sit down on the bowl. It’s not a novel, layered with detail and deep internal character building that you can ingest in little morsels every night before bed. It is the blueprint to a movie. Therefore, I declare!: That a screenplay must be read when you are fully awake, preferably in the morning. It must be read from a comfortable chair in a room no warmer than 21 degrees Celsius. All phones must be turned off. If you must eat or drink during the reading this food and beverage must be prepared in advance and be non-alcoholic. For best results you must only read a maximum of two scripts a day. Also, in this fantasy the sky is orange and people ride flying carpets to work.

All I’m saying is the entertainment industry completely sucks the instinctive artistry out of creative writing through the application of a regimented drafting process wrought with two-centsing notes from everybody and their dog so… The very least the lowly writer can demand in return is that a standard for reading be applied to their scripts.

Flying carpets to work…

Thanks for reading.

In no particular order of importance:

10: January – The year ahead looks hopeful. Just waiting around for all the film festivals to start beating down Refrain‘s door. Even developing a feature project with a couple producers.

9: February – Got invited to be a guest speaker at a local college, that was cool. Started MTLR.ca. Building new things, recognition for old ones, not bad at all.

8: March – Refrain not the festival darling I was hoping for. Feature project that I was developing crumbles. Gun in my mouth but no money left for bullets. Shot short film Straightforward instead of myself. Gotta keep the juices flowing.

7: April – Refrain accepted into World Film Fest. Finger off the trigger.

6: July – After a couple months buried in desk work, finally started launching all the amazing Refrain and Side Project music. Also began work on Lion & Gazelle and met producer.

5: August – Press, press, press. Promoting Refrain like a carnival hustler and finally our disastrous festival screenings. Disastrous for technical reasons despite which the audiences loved it. Vindication.

4: September – Rest and – oddly enough – job offers for unrelated work.

3: October – Producer wants to apply for development funding for Lion & Gazelle. I’ve been here before so, whatever… Prepping Refrain for DVD/VOD distribution. But most important, it’s mushroom season.

2: November – Holy crap we got into the Telefilm program. Also shot a music video.

1: December – Telefilm workshop nearly kills my poor delicate, introverted self but it’s great to be working on a new movie. Time to eat sugar and fat and catch up on sleep. Next year’s going to be doozy.

Happy holidays everyone. Let’s each make something cool in 2010.

I heard a funny story once about a small community in Wales that needed to post a road sign. They wanted to post the sign in both English and Welsh. To this end they sent the English text to a translator via email. The text went: “No entry for heavy vehicles. Residential site only.”

The town council immediately received an email in response from the Welsh translator. They copied the translated text and had their road sign erected. Soon after they learned that what their sign read was:

“No entry for heavy vehicles. Residential site only,” in English.

Followed by:

“I am currently out of the office. Please send any text that needs translating,” in Welsh.

Now that’s funny.

The reason I was recently reminded of this story was that I’ve been working on a new Refrain trailer and I just found a typo in some text I was including in it. The text in question is a snippet from one of Refrain‘s glowing reviews. The text had been copied from the DVD artwork which is a pain because now that’s got to be changed. And the DVD artwork was copied from the website, which also had to be corrected. And the website text was, you guessed it, copy and pasted directly from the website where the review originated…

This was all less funny to me than the Welsh sign.

I’ve read this text a gazillion times over the past few months and simply never noticed the typo. I would surely have spotted it however, if not for the handiest of handy computer features, the ol’ copy/paste. Mark my words: Memories of Y2K have faded quickly my friends but one day… One day copy/paste will doom us all.

So yeah. Refrain DVD in revamp mode. New trailer coming in the new year. Get your lips revving, we’re going to need some of that good old fashioned word of mouth in the next few months.

Not too long ago I was asked if I would edit an acquaintance’s short movie. Knowing the filmmaker to be a run and gun type of guy who’s shorts always followed a punchline driven format I thought it might be fun. After all, I’ve been editing for years but never someone else’s work. I’d never acted as just the editor, with no other input into the film than that. Not the kind of position I would normally think about putting myself in which is why I immediately said “yes.”

I’ll do anything once for free if I haven’t done it before just for the experience.

Going in I was asking myself the most obvious questions: What will the director, Radu, be like to work with? and Will I be getting the footage I need to make this work? But what I started to question as I got into the edit was what am I really contributing here? Or more specifically will this movie, when it’s finished, be something I can at all lay claim to and include in my portfolio of work? Will it bear my signature?

Final cut completed I came to the conclusion that no, of course it won’t, and that’s the point. Editing is only good if it doesn’t bear any signature, if it isn’t noticed at all.

That said, I did enjoy being the editor for hire on this project. There is something satisfying about contributing to something in an almost anonymous way… With the exception, that is, of prefacing it with a big self-indulgent editorial on one’s own blog…

I’ve embedded the video below. Good luck watching it without being tainted by all the foregoing!

Decompression a short by Radu Juster:

(There seems to be a sound hiccup near the end… Not my department. Ooh, deferred responsibility, a fringe benefit.)