BEYOND THE FRAME

January 2026 Newsletter From the Producers’ Chair Hello Reader, "The best shot is the one that makes you uncomfortable." 2025 was full of uncomfortable shots - both literally and metaphorically. The kind where you're not quite sure if you're brilliant or insane, but you know you can't play it safe anymore. That's where we lived most of last year. In the discomfort. In the space between "this is impossible" and "we're doing it anyway." The Stoics had it right: "The obstacle is the way." Turns...

There's a moment in the original Star Trek that always bothered me. Kirk and his crew, supposedly representing humanity's enlightened future, never seem to have any contemporary art. No pop music from the 23rd century, no modern literature, no fresh creative voices. They're perpetually nostalgic for Shakespeare, classical music, and ancient Earth cultures, as if creativity itself had fossilized somewhere between our time and theirs. I used to think this was just lazy writing - science fiction...

There’s a moment in every aspiring filmmaker’s journey when the harsh reality hits: making movies is really, really hard. Not just the technical side - though that’s challenging enough - but the sheer audacity required to believe you can create something meaningful with whatever resources you can scrape together. It’s the moment when you realize that all those film school lessons about proper crew hierarchies and union protocols might actually be holding you back from just getting the damn...

Last week, I found myself on the other side of the microphone for once. After months of interviewing fellow filmmakers for Off the Lot, my co-host turned the tables and put me in the hot seat. What emerged was a conversation about something I don't often talk about publicly - the winding, sometimes uncertain path that led me from selling insurance to making movies, and why I believe Canadian cinema needs to chart its own course. The Late Starter's Advantage I didn't follow the traditional...

I’ve been thinking a lot about casting lately, especially since we are in the thick of reviewing hundreds of auditions for The Quiet Canadians. One of the books I read recently on independent filmmaking is Dan Mirvish’s Cheerful Subversive’s Guide to Independent Filmmaking. It has made me think about revisiting one of the most famous casting stories in cinema history. You know the one - how an unknown Scottish actor with a thick accent and working-class background became the most iconic spy...

I was chatting recently with a Producer friend who’d just wrapped a micro-budget feature. “You know what killed us?” he asked, “We spent half our budget on crew positions we didn’t actually need because, well, that’s what the call sheets always look like.” That got me thinking about something I’d heard called “zero-based thinking” - this idea of stepping back from how we’ve always done things and asking: if we were starting fresh, what would we actually need? It’s a concept that’s...

It's 5:30 AM. I'm on my second Americano, staring at the rejection email from Telefilm that landed yesterday. Three cups of coffee won't wash away the sting, but they might fuel the anger-typing that follows. Look, I'm not going to sugarcoat this. Getting that "Unfortunately..." email hit like a sucker punch to the gut. After six months of application prep, budget revisions, and endlessly tweaking that pitch deck - the suits in Toronto decided "The Quiet Canadians" doesn't deserve their...

So you want to make a movie? Great! But here's the million-dollar question that most of us filmmakers skip right over in our excitement to get behind the camera: What exactly do you want to accomplish with your film? Trust me, I've been there. When we made "13 Miles," our triathlon-focused first feature, we were so focused on telling a great story that we hadn't fully clarified what success would actually look like beyond "finish the darn thing." It wasn't until later that we realized how...

“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” — Marcus Aurelius Admittedly I had a different article in mind for this week... I was writing it on Sunday until a news piece changed what I wanted to talk about this week... So you're getting this Monday morning instead of on Friday or the weekend, as usual. But hey... Life happens. By now you’ve likely heard the news that sent tremors through our industry: President Trump has announced plans to impose a 100%...