Easy Come...

Frequent visitors to the blog may have caught the very fleeting appearance of a costume designer in last week's posting.  Unfortunately, almost as soon as we got her, we lost her. Francesca had to withdraw from the project due to scheduling restrictions. Mostly self-imposed, but they're to be respected nonetheless. Also to be respected is her reasoning that she would be cheating me out of the time and attention my film deserves if she took it on while trying to respect other commitments.

Who can argue with that? And even if you could, what would be the point?

But it still leaves an unexpected hole in our already incomplete crew.

The very unwieldy thing about our subsidized filmmaking system in this country is that every successful production demand receives its funding at exactly the same second. And then it's this mad scramble to crew up six or seven projects at once.  And as much as we here in Quebec are blessed with an abundance of talented, big-hearted (does it sound much like I'm kissing butt?) crew and department heads, there is only so many of them to go around.  

What that really means is that twice a year there are too many jobs for the amount of people who can do them. And then barely any jobs for anyone the rest of the year. 

Anyway, while we've been blowing on our dice in the costume department, we've also been booking flights out to Winnipeg. Barbara and I leave on Wednesday to meet our prairie co-producer, Liz Jarvis and the rest of the Buffalo Gal team face to face for the first time. Then on Thursday, we'll be joined by Normand Sarrazin our illustrious Quebecois production designer.  A veritable  master at his craft, Normand will be out there for two main reasons: meeting/interviewing local art directors for the Manitoba section of the shoot, as well as scouting locations with Barbara, me, D.O.P. Claudine Sauvé and Manitoba scout, Sarah Jane Cundell.

We'll be there for five days total and since everyone's time is at such a premium during the season we'll now just call, Production, our schedule is PACKED! I'm going to ask Theresapedia to post our itinerary up here in the next day or so to give you an idea of what we aim to accomplish during our short time in and around that great city.  But because our visit coincides with FolkFest, we might end up aimlessly wandering the streets - during the nights at least - as there are no hotel rooms to be found!

I know those folkies can get pretty crazy and all, but if Barbara and I don't get a solid 8 hours nightly - The Peg ain't seen nothing yet!