Tyler Gibb – Writer, Director, Editor, Filmmaker

My DVD player is dead. Well, “dead”; let’s just say it appears to have come down with an acute debilitation that has made it as good as dead to me. I can hear it whirring, skidding, trying hard to spin into life but coming up short every time now. I’m not sure what to do. I tried everything that comes to mind when dealing with glitchy high-tech home entertainment machines; I’ve tried cursing, smacking it, blowing into it with varying intensities… Nothing has worked.

This wouldn’t bother me much beyond the usual inconvenience of having to go out and purchase a new soontobeobsolete devise if it weren’t such a fitting metaphor for the future of home entertainment as a whole and its inevitable evolution toward solid state, digital downloads, and the like.

Moving parts. We hardly knew ye. If I had any business savvy at all I’d be taking a good long look at what’s making it to people’s curbs these days.

I’ve often gotten the question “where do you get your ideas?” and nothing insights more incoherent babbling from me. I’ve never had a good answer… Until now:

Ideas are born on the highway between Montreal and the Ottawa Valley.

I didn’t say it was a great answer. Probably not what the interviewer is looking for per se… But literally, I’ve come to realize, this is where I get my ideas.

I just got back from a 10 day writing retreat to the country. That was the plan anyway. In truth not much writing got done. More exploring, kayaking, mushroom hunting and television watching than anything else. I saw a beaver. Not on the TV either – in real life. Come to think of it, it was very much like one of these so called “vacations” that I’ve heard so much about. I can’t say I liked it much. I tend to be happier when I’m working. But you can’t get blood from a stone and I think that I was so jazzed about getting some writing done that I stalled my brain. In textbook irony it wasn’t until the drive home that things started percolating again.

Joke’s on you, Irony. I don’t have a day job, so I’ll still get to write now that I’m back!

I think it’s the monotony of driving. Compared to the usual cacophony of hat juggling I’m used to it’s a real change of pace for my grey matter. It tricks my brain into doing something else with its time. I suppose if you’re the opposite and your day to day is a little on the bland side you may need some action to generate those ideas. Like a mental backwash. If you’ve got a bit of the ol’ blockage just do the opposite of what your brain is used to.

Probably a little bit of an obvious tip but hey, it can’t hurt to remind ourselves that there’s no secret formula for inspiration. Just different ways of coping with the lack of it.

I’ve just been going through spindle after spindle of DVD-Rs testing things out for the Refrain DVD and I’ve got to tell you – I’ve got a pretty sizable coaster collection at this point.

Have you bought a blank DVD-R these days? What’s going on with this industry? I’m calling you out Fuji! I don’t like to point fingers but c’mon! And don’t look so smug Memorex. You either Virbatum… I may have switched over brands but I’m not unpacking my bags.

Where is the love? Where has the craftsmanship gone? Is hardcopy media so far gone now that these manufacturers just don’t care anymore? I remember when DVD-Rs where made by men. Handcrafted by artisans of a bygone era… I remember when you had to go out and mine the bauxite yourself, haul it to the aluminum refinery, polish the disks by hand… Those were the days. You knew what you were getting. A 1x write speed and desktop burner the size of a car battery.

For shame…

It’s been a long day. But don’t worry! I’ll make sure the Refrain DVDs are encoded by hand. I’ll do it myself with a magnifying glass and a needle.

Welcome to the party VOD.

In the wake of Refrain’s premiere at the Festival des Films du Monde I’ve been busy putting together a DVD of the movie. I will also be making the movie available by video on demand (VOD).

Not sure when it will be officially launched yet but I just wanted to let those of you who email me wondering about it know that you will get a chance to see the film eventually.

More soon!

The question is always what’s next?

I bet the minute those guys who faked the moon landing got back someone asked them “so, what’s next?”

And it’s a valid question. It’s nice to glance over your shoulder every once in a while and see how far you’ve come but mostly that kind of retrospection is best left to your subconscious and the writer of your obituary. The question of what’s next? is really the forward thinking way to go.

For most career oriented humans I would imagine what’s next? is a pretty straightforward setup. Like climbing a mountain, what’s next is whatever’s going to get you closer to the top. But to those of us cursed with the creative drive it’s a little less like climbing a mountain and a little more like trying to chase a squirrel across a lawn. The path is a little less obvious.

What I’m trying to say is there may come a time when you feel you’ve chased every whim you’ve ever had and that maybe you need more of a calculated course. You need to move things up a little, not just side to side. You need to escalate.

I recently decided to postpone shooting a new feature project. A new no-budget, balls-out, flying by the seat of my pants feature. I was almost set to go but there was something weighing on my mind. It was the question of what’s next? The easy answer was: This new feature project, that’s what! But that’s only window dressing. The real question of what’s next? goes beyond that. It asks: What would I be bringing to this project that I haven’t done before? What would make this project a bigger success than anything I’ve done previously?

Escalation. You’ve got to have it.

It sounds a bit megalomaniacal, I know, but that’s not what I’m getting at. I’m just saying, if you don’t up the challenge every time then all you’re really doing is working on an assembly line. So I’m reassessing. Re-figuring.

And that doesn’t mean I won’t chase the occasional squirrel just to keep my senses sharp. But there’s a mountain top out there with my name on it.

God, I wish I worked on an assembly line.