Saturday had arrived upon us. The day we've been waiting for all week, because it was the day that we knew we would have some time off. We've been shooting pretty intensively all week as well as constantly talking over the project until the early hours of the morning everyday. We've had such jam packed days with PJ around because of the incredible speed and enthusiasm, he took us places we had no idea existed, and introduced us the people we never would have met, and it's been an incredible experience the whole way through, but it left us with no time or opportunity to step back, look at what we're doing with clear, well rested, heads and make some progress, plans and decisions. In short, we needed to take a break from production and start our pre-production.
It's weird because normally one does all the things we still had to do (budget, shot list, schedule, structure possible story ideas, research, etc.) well in advance of just showing up somewhere. But not us. Instead we were doing a practical fact finding mission in unfamiliar territory, but then also filming it.
All week we've been wrestling with how we would present this project, a documentary as planned, a TV series, a web series, made for TV documentary... we could do so many things with a story like the one we'd uncovered and we were largely undecided and in the dark about our own plans because we'd been so sleep deprived and busy shooting that we just never had an opportunity to sit down, just the three of us, and have one, single production meeting.
God bless PJ, he's given us so much, and moving forward, he's going to be a massive part of the project, and very intimately involved, however he was throwing a lot at us very quickly. That's how he works, a hundred miles an hour which is awesome, and just what we need, it's just something we're not used to yet. I mean hey, we did just meet the guy this week. How can you anticipate anyone's reaction or next move on a professional level after only 2 days? And on almost no sleep, no less.
This all meant that we were looking forward to saturday evening, a time to decompress, discuss and cut loose a little bit. But before we could do any of that PJ had a couple places he wanted to take us, so we thanked Lilly-Anna for her help hospitality, promised we'd return and hit the road, following PJ to an acadian town named Dennis Point, which was a little over an hour away. Once we got there he introduced us to a man named Vernon D'eon. Vernon was the man behind the manufacturing of Lobster Plugs, which are small wooden pins, which were inserted into the membrane of a caught lobster's claw, to stop it from opening. More recently these plugs have been replaced by simple and more cost effective rubber bands, wrapped around a lobster's claw. Since the plugs are now no longer in use, Vernon, among other things, owns a Lobster restaurant, named eloquently enough, the Dennis Point Cafe. While there Vernon showed us an 11 pound lobster that he'd bought to cook for a special occasion he had coming up. An 11 pound lobster is massive. Most lobsters you see in a grocery store are between 1.5- 4 pounds. This one was a sea monster. He also showed us a 5 pound lobster and even cooked it for us. We also had some of the Cafe's famous Hot Lobster Sandwiches, which will forever be one of the best things I have ever eaten OH MAN! It was so good, if you're ever in Acadia, or Nova Scotia in general, make your way to the Dennis Point Cafe and have a Hot Lobster Sandwich, it will make you rethink everything else you've ever eaten.
Vernon himself turned out to be an amazing interview, with knowledge of the Lobster fishing community going back to the 60's he talked for alost an hour about how tings are changing, not just for the fishermen, but the province as a whole. He also informed us about the many different ways to measure the quality of a lobster and the state of the lobster population as a whole (spoiler: there's a lot of lobsters), but as always, eventually it was time to move on from the Denis Point Cafe, and head to PJ's next destination, a lobster holding facility in Wedgeport, named (oddly enough) Wedgeport Lobster. There we got some great footage as well and saw the different methods buyers use to keep the caught lobster that were purchased from the fishermen on the dock nice and fresh for as long as possible. It turns out this is not easy, as lobster are not only extremely susceptible to becoming diseased, but are also cannibalistic, not an image one normally associates with this particular crustacean.
Then after a short trip to buy some extra hard drives we finally parted ways, if only for a few days, with PJ and headed back to Carl's house in Digby, to fetch the memory cards that Myles had forgotten there. It was great to see Carl again, and even better to see him sober! Carl proved once again that he was more than some random guy to us, he's our guru, basically a loud mouthed bearded Buddha, who we see very little of, but challenges us to consider more than we had thought too whenever we do.
After that we back to Myles' grammy's house, and ended up going to see a few friends of his from high school, a welcome break from the constant lobster talk we'd been partaking in all week.
Today has been referred to as our organizational day all week, and though it took us a while to get started, that's what we did. Our ducks are firmly in a row and we now have an action plan to get the funding that we need do this project any kind of justice. We also know how much funding we need, which is also key I've found. We pretty much went over all of our nitty gritty today, gear costs, living costs, long term and short term plans and much more, tomorrow we will be doing much of the same, it's incredibly important, but not that exciting to write about. It was all basically "office" work today, and will be much the same tomorrow. I can't say much, as we haven't made anything public yet, but I'm excited for the possibilities and I feel confident as of right now that we can meet the goals we've set for ourselves, in both the short and long term contexts.
We're making a film.
Film is a business.
We've finally started to treat this one like it deserves.
-Matt
P.S. We will probably go see Skyfall tomorrow, no one ruin it for me.
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