THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE WILL BE FACEBOOKED

It's the zombie apocalypse! With a marching band! And Mickey Mouse!

No wait .. it's Toronto's annual Zombie Crawl. Thousands of zombies gathered at City Hall but the ravenous undead realized they would starve at that location .. ain't many brains at city hall

So they gathered themselves and began to shamble through the city, seeking  brains (and this being Toronto) lattes.

Organic and fan based, this event has grown over the years. I don't really know why people dress up as zombies and lurch through the streets. Yes, it's close to Halloween. And zombies are as popular, if not more so, than ever before.

The degree of effort and work put into these costumes always astonishes me. Anyone, apparently, is ripe to be zombified. Mickey Mouse, Batman, Elvis ... and creatures I can't even describe. People are into this, to put it mildly.

And not just costumes, but performances as well. People were more than willing to put on their best zombie crawl and try to attack me and camera. Poor things. They would starve. Everyone knows that cameramen don't have brains

Speaking of cameras: Like the Fan Expo, this is an event that brings Toronto's cameramen, professional and amateur and aspiring, out of the woodwork. There were a lot of cameras there, both still and video. Hundreds of camera phones, and dozens of more professional outfits, including some with huge reflectors and even gigantic lights. DSLR rigs with steadicams, GoPros on booms and even "traditional" camcorders like mine. We may be a dying breed but we're out there.

And a dying breed just makes sense at the Zombie Crawl

So, on that note:
Toronto Zombie Crawl 2014 from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

THINGS I LEARNED AT THANKSGIVING

This past weekend we celebrated our annual Thanksgiving up at the lodge at Nares Inlet with Collette's extended family. Always a fun event, packing up the clan on the boats and going out in the bay for some food and for some family friendly games.

This year though, our couple days up at Springhaven taught me a few lessons. So, here are THINGS I LEARNED THIS YEAR AT THANKSGIVING

1) MY DOG HATES ROCKS

Terra hates rocks. She does. She always has. I don't know why. But she hates em.

Collette took Terra for a walk in the bush. They found, as one does back there, a rough little inukshuk made from loosely laid stones. Well. A pile of rocks. Artfully done. In Terra's eyes, that means war

See, I was not exaggerating. My dog hates rocks

2) SPONTANEOUS TRICK OR TREATING

You think you know when Hallowe'en is. You know that it does happen on Thanksgiving. Think again! And be on high alert! Always have candy at hand because you never know when a Princess will show up at your door, demanding candy. And when a princess asks .. well , you know .. fork it over

3) KEEP YOUR FAMILY IN A CAGE

Well, who can argue with that. Normally Dennis and Dave et al take us to the Painted Rocks for Thanksgiving but the bay was feeling a tad .. frisky. So for safety sake we went out to the Archipeligo paddle tennis court for the snacks and games. And hey, who can argue with these images

For more lessons, refer to the video.
Thanksgiving Nares Inlet 2014 from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

NUIT BLANCHE 2014: VISION OBSTRUCTED

To make any kind of art, be it a painting or a piece of music or a video, you have to have a vision. In your mind you have an idea of the art which you want to create. It can be something fully realized, every brush stroke on the painting, the range of colours, the direction of the light across the canvas. Or the vision can be "soft", incorporeal, loosely defined. An idea, an emotion, a soft shape existing at the corner of your eye.

This part is actually easy. The difficult part is realizing these visions. That's where technique comes in.

nuit blanche is an yearly event in Toronto, an all night (mostly) outdoor art festival. There are nuit blanche events in other cities but this is the one that I attend. Duh. I live here.

I have made many nuit blanche videos. The event lends itself to the visual. Duh. It's art. Sort of.

This year I wanted to try something different. Instead of just a document of the festival I wanted to do something a bit more impressionistic. Even before I saw what the night had to offer, I had a vision in my mind. But each nuit blanche is different, which makes it worth attending but also makes it difficult to plan for.

For me, people wandering through the city all night long has become as compelling at the art itself. The intangible of nuit blanche is that the entire city becomes an art piece, and with the addition of us the people, a performance piece. And that's what I wanted to capture.

I'm not sure if the video is entirely successful. It is not my fully realized vision but it satisfies the idea very well. Technically, I'm not entirely happy with it. I decided to shoot at 24 fps (frames per second). It is not a setting which I normally use but I used it to film the exterior of the CNE video below on that setting and I was very pleased with the result, I thought the frame rate added an attractive depth and contrast range to the video

C.N.E. 2014 Day One from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

But the midway at the CNE has a tremendous amount of ambient light, the streets of Toronto not so much. Also, slow down 24 fps is not as clear and clean as slowing down 60 fps on which I normally shoot.

I did not spend near as much time at the event as I should have. The layout was very different this year and there was a lot of space between the "zones" where the art was distributed. So, I probably did not give myself the best opportunity to duplicate the vision in my mind.

Still, I was able to do something different. And at my age, something different is always a triumph.

The Dreaming City: nuit blanche Toronto 2014 from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.