Brad Crawford – Strata Studios A Canadian Filmmaker's view of the industry

Current Projects

Over here at Strata Studios, we've always got lots of things on the go. I'm going to detail what i'm working on currently and my plans for the next few months.

First off, the biggest project that is always looming over my desk is of course 100 Yen, which is our feature documentary about the arcades in Japan. We've already released two trailers and a teaser for the project but we've got some more content to release before we head off to Japan in April. Coming up will be some more interview samples from our footage of the Canada Cup event over in Calgary, Alberta. These focus mostly on the Street Fighter scene with people like Gootecks, Mike Ross, Justin Wong, JS Master, Daigo Umehara and Mago as well as our gracious host Lap Chi. (Check out all the Behind the Scenes photos, Shot by the amazing Eric Au)

On the same vein, we are working on a promo video for none-other than Mr.Duong (Lap Chi) himself. This video will highlight the amazing event that was THE CANADA CUP and help promote some events that will be announced in the near future.

These two projects are more or less in the forefront of our thoughts when it comes to work.

Another aspect of 100 yen that we are constantly working on is our story edit, this means we document the footage that we've captured, sort through the types of shots we have, what kind of quotes from interviews we've captured and start to lay out the ground work for the overall arc of the story.
This organization and planning of our current footage will enable us to plan for our trip to Japan and discover what our story is lacking and what we will need to cover in-depth to help flesh out not only the visual aspects but the overall story of the documentary.

All of this is very key to making sure we get the best final product and we've begun a rough dialogue with a local editor by the name of Jaimz Asmundson who may be able to help polish the documentary and give us a fresh look at the footage that we might be too attached to.

A short film that we shot with Director Cam Patterson in 2009 entitled "Hold Your Breath" is still in post-production. In actuality it is more of a scene from a feature film than it is a short. This project is something that I would really like to see finished. It is sitting on my hard-drive screaming to be edited, I simply need to find the time to complete it. That and I was waiting to get some non-copyrighted music that I could use to add atmosphere but I may just go ahead and play with what I have to create a finished film or perhaps a nice trailer.

In October I had the pleasure of working on a Zombie/Post-Apocalyptic short film with Director Chris Vandale, this piece was shot in one day and was quite challenging. The best part

of the shoot was we had Dave Brown, our local firearms expert on-board to not only help us shutdown the street but he brought out his toys as well. Namely, a shotgun and a Mac-1o pistol. The Mac-10 was great, we shot the bullets flying out in slow-motion and the shotgun, when fired, has about a 3ft. flame that flies out of the barrel. It makes for great visuals and a damn loud BANG. Overall it was a great day that saw a lot of hard-work from people who all wanted to be there. This film is also currently in Post-Production and i'm anxious to see what comes of it.

Finally, a good friend of mine, Eric Nicholas is an accomplished musician who I met out in Japan. Having played around and shot a music video for him before, we've been in talks to take a second shot at it. This time we'll be using the song "Lost inside your eyes", check out the track, I think it has some great atmosphere and I love the change of feeling from the intro to the end, its catchy and grows on you with a couple of listens.

As far as the video for this song goes, we're planning an all-narrative piece. In other words, there will be no performance, no lip-syncing. Eric is

currently living out of province but that is not the only reason for this choice, the previous video was mostly performance and we'd both like to get more creative and have some fun making a video. This will be a small independent project shot over a number of days, I really want to shape each scene and perfect the shots, not just slap together a video for the sake of shooting something. I've begun writing the concept and will begin the story-boarding process shortly to bring my vision to paper. From there? Hopefully we can shoot this in the near future.

That's all that is really on my plate at the moment, I'm of course working on a few corporate gigs here and there along with my full-time job which is editing for the Federal Gov't (as a contractor) but I like being busy and i'll make work if I can't find any. That certainly wasn't the case in 2010, and I'm hoping 2011 will be as productive, if not more so! Happy New Year!

BRAD