We do things a bit differently here in Canada, eh.

The movie was called Death Do Us Part and I think it was financed by someone’s grandma. We were all working for free but everyone was having shit tons of fun, all living together in cabins, getting splattered with fake blood take after take, running through the woods after screaming actresses… The shoot schedule was hectic so we didn’t get many takes for each shot. We had to work fast, so most of the time my mixer would just be yelling through my Comtek: “I have no idea what we’re shooting right now, so just fuckin’ giv’er, bud.” It was a two camera shoot, and sometimes one camera would be shooting one scene while the other camera was shooting another half a kilometer away—but there was only one sound team, so we had to sprint back and forth with all of our gear.

“We were all working for free but everyone was having shit tons of fun.”

It was a blast, but there was one hoser in the camera department who they brought in from some big fancy American show, and he was always pissed and yelling about something. I think he was getting paid because at one point he yelled at the producer to dock my pay after my microphone dipped into the edge of his frame. He pulled me aside to tell me how things were done on ‘real sets’, and by real sets I figured he meant those big fancy American shows.

On Death Do Us Part, everyone was working for free, except for a couple of buds in the camera department. The location and the cabins we were living in belonged to relatives of the producers, the grip and electric equipment was mostly being borrowed from the film school, the catering was homemade, and we were all responsible for our own transportation.

It was Death Do Us Part that inspired me to make Black Mountain Side.

Continue reading!