almost there!

It's a race to the finish, as programs are off to the printers. Posters are being posted and and film has been shipped and returned from Niagara Custom lab (thanks for the quick turnaround!!).

Now it's time to splice onto reels and prep the projector for another great event in Regina this Thursday followed by Saskatoon next Tuesday.

We're thrilled to have had over 50 filmmakers participate this year, with many returning filmmakers.

The Regina and Saskatoon events will be the 61st and 62nd (respectively)  OTS8 events that have been hosted across North America, which is an incredible achievement meaning more than 1200 films in total.

Looking forward to seeing everyone out at the screenings (and we might have some surprise films depending on the efficiency of the Australian/Canadian postal service).

2017 Poster

We are very excited to release this year's poster design courtesy of Emily Kohlert (Dandelion) who also created last year's posters and programs. We'll be screen printing them soon, thanks to Tucker's for their continued support, and you'll be seeing them up around Regina and Saskatoon in the next week or so.

Screen printed posters mean the event is just around the corner, and we're very excited that for the first time we have full capacity in both Regina and Saskatoon with each city have 25 new films in production! With any luck everyone will finish on time and we'll get to premiere 50 new films on the 13th and 18th of July.

Catching up!

Time flies when you're trying to organize another edition of the OTS8!

We're back in Saskatchewan for the 5th annual event in Saskatooon, and our longest running edition in Regina!

Entry forms have been circulating, people have been signing up, and we're well underway towards our screenings this summer.

Films will be shot during June and returned in time for the July 13th event at the Regina Public Library Theatre, and the following Tuesday, July 18th at the Roxy Theatre in Saskatoon.

Last night, PAVED Arts kindly hosted our first event OTS8 filmmaking workshop (crazy it took 17 years to do that here). Amalie Atkins provided all the tips from her experience with film in how to make a film in a day, and there were lots of great questions from participants keen to try their hand at small gauge filmmaking. What's surprising now as we're that much more removed from celluloid is how many participants have never used a camera with a viewfinder, and how many people regularly use the term video when speaking about making motion picture. Times change!

Lots of first time filmmakers are signing up and we have been able to wrangle enough working cameras to see us through, as color reversal film becomes increasingly difficult to source (Hurry up Kodak with Ektachrome!!). Thanks to Niagara Custom Lab for making magic in getting us enough reels to make sure it's not a monochrome event.

And thanks again to the Saskatchewan Arts Board and SaskCulture through their SaskFestivals grant for providing grant support to ensure we can pay all the artists IMAA screening fees.

Ektachrome returns & 8 Fest this weekend

2017 brings with it exciting news, including Kodak's announcement of bringing back Ektachrome in Super 8 form! Very exciting, but much like the camera they announced at CES last year, we'll hold our collective breaths until we can hold them in our hands.

As Sundance and Slamdance close up their festivals, there's a little festival in Toronto dedicated to this small gauge formats that celebrating it's 10th anniversary.

Congratulations to the organizers of the 8 Fest for providing a great showcase for small gauge films for all these years, and being dedicated to showing these films in their original formats.

Over the years, the 8 fest has done a tremendous job of featuring many films from past OTS8 events from across the country.

This year, I am deeply humbled (and slightly terrified) to have been selected as the Canadian Spotlight Artist. It's been a very interesting process looking at my past films and having them curated into a program. A few of my past one take films made the list. It's been nice revisiting them again. But there are quite a few films I have never shown publicly before, and this was a good motivation to get them ready for the big screen for their premieres. It's hard to believe that a couple of the films are close to 20 years old already.

The benefit of being a part of OTS8 events is that I was able to share the anxiety with a group of 20+ filmmakers, and only had to bear responsibility for my 3 minutes (good or bad). But having 19 of my films play back to back is a real departure from my comfort zone.

In any case, my thanks to the organizers of the 8 fest for being such great supporters of the OTS8 and if you happen to be in Toronto this weekend, please check out this festival, it's one of a kind and totally worth it.