Introduction The tent poles snapped with a sound like dry spaghetti breaking. 2 AM. Rain hammering the campsite at Cypress Provincial Park. My neighbor’s brand-new six-person shelter folded in on itself while he was still inside it. I could hear him yelling from three sites over—sharp, panicked yelling that wakes up half a campground. He’d … Read more
When LEGO Became Cheaper Than Therapy I bought the LEGO Millennium Falcon after wrapping Maid on Netflix. Ten episodes as a set dresser means ten episodes of watching Assistant Directors yell at grips for putting C-stands in the wrong corner. By episode eight, the effective communication on a film set we’d established in week one … Read more
Introduction The air in Victoria at 4:30 AM smells like sea salt and industrial-grade espresso. I spent 10 episodes as a set dresser on Maid, moving furniture and aging practical locations to look lived-in and worn. “Budget” isn’t a word you hear on a union set. But “efficiency”—that’s the only religion that matters. Three hours … Read more
How to Capture Emotion Without Dialogue in Film A few years ago, I was shooting a short called “The Space Between” with basically no budget and an actor who’d never been on set before. The scene was simple: a guy discovers his wife left him. No big monologue. No tearful goodbye. Just him, an empty … Read more
Introduction – Smartphone Filmmaking Guerrilla Style You don’t need a $10,000 camera rig to make a film. The smartphone in your pocket is a filmmaking powerhouse, and guerrilla techniques let you shoot anywhere, anytime, on a tiny budget. Fast forward to my festival-screened projects Two Brothers, One Sister and Doggonit, both shot guerrilla-style on an … Read more
The Tripod Incident and What It Taught Me About Solo Filming The tripod hit the ground at exactly the wrong moment—mid-sentence during what should’ve been a clean establishing shot on a ridge outside Squamish. I was alone, twenty minutes from the trailhead, watching my rented A7 IV cartwheel down granite. The camera survived. My shooting … Read more
Mastering Slow-Motion: A Beginner’s Guide to Capturing Stunning Slow-Mo Video As a filmmaker who’s worked on sets like Netflix’s Maid and directed shorts that required frame-perfect slow motion, I’ve learned the expensive way that slow-mo is a lighting game, not a camera game. The $800 Lighting Lesson We shot the pivotal scene for Going Home … Read more
The $847 Mistake That Taught Me How to Budget We wrapped Dogonnit at 2:47 AM on a Sunday. The smell of cold pizza mixed with that specific metallic fog smell you only get in Vancouver alleys. My DP was packing a $1,200 cinema lens we’d rented for one “hero shot” that ended up unusable—the actress … Read more
The Hook It was 5:47 AM on a Tuesday in November. We were halfway through a 10-episode run on Maid — a Netflix production that does not slow down for anyone, least of all a set dresser trying to quietly move a floor lamp across a living room set while the 1st AD is already … Read more
Mirrorless or DSLR: Which camera truly empowers your indie film vision? Get the answers, expert insights, and top recommendations in our definitive guide. Find your filmmaking perfect match!