Pastime Productions

We would like to take this time to apologize to anyone who tried to view our website over the past few days and was unsuccessful. The servers where our website is hosted experienced a DDoS attack therefore rendering the website unusable. Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused anyone.

To make things better we would like to offer 10% off any new video production services booked in October. Just mention the code DDOS in an email, or when speaking to us and we'll gladly discount your October services 10%. That'll show the people behind this attack who's boss!

Thanks again for being patient with us.

- The Pastime Productions Team

For those who have never heard of the Make It Short Film Project it's a community driven filmmaking project in Thunder Bay that raises money for local charities. The Make It Short Film Project uses local talent, both in front and behind the camera, to produce a short film that gives people who have never been on a movies set before a first hand look at what making a movie is all about.

The project was started five years ago by filmmaker Lee Chambers, and he has done a wonderful job securing well known filmmakers to be Executive Producers on the projects. Some of the noteworthy filmmakers to date have been Denys Arcand, Paul Haggis, Andrew Currie, David Cronenberg and this year it's the great Roger Corman.

Filming on the fifth annual Make It Short Film Project begins tomorrow and I wish them all the best. I should also mention that this year Lee Chambers has brought in Hollywood actor Basil Hoffman (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Ordinary People) to participate in the project and to also give the local aspiring actors an acting workshop. For more information visit www.makeitshort.ca.

Looks like Canadian director David Cronenberg is going to be remaking his popular cult film The Fly...again! He clearly wasn't happy with The Fly II so instead of giving the project to someone else, he decided to helm it himself. There isn't much more details about the project as of right now, but rumors have it that the director is putting the opera version of The Fly on hold so he can turn it into another film. A little more on the subject here.

Many people believe that the Toronto International Film Festival is the start of Oscar season. Any why not? Last year's winner Slumdog Millionaire came out of Toronto, and many nominees from last year, and years prior, have also emerged out of TIFF.

I'm going to be sitting down and thinking about what films up to this point deserve to be recognized by Oscar this year, but until I compile my Oscar list, have a look at this article that points out their favorites up to this point. Read the article here.

In case you haven't noticed, our website has added a new feature on the homepage. We thought it would be fun to have a weekly poll, so this is the first of hopefully many. Every Monday you can check back to see what the weekly poll question will be, and if this becomes successful, we may decide to have a new poll question more than once a week. Enjoy!

It can come from anywhere, at anytime and from anything. That's the funny thing about inspiration. For instance, music is a great source of inspiration for me. The last few shorts I've written were inspired by listening to a song. Yesterday for instance, I was driving to my office in the morning listening to a song when all of a sudden it felt like inspiration slapped me in the face. Now I didn't get inspired to write a short yesterday, but rather the song I was listening to helped me come up with a title for a film I've been working on. It's weird how inspiration works, and many people ask me how do you become inspired? To that I just simply answer...it'll come to you.

In case you haven't noticed...I love movie lists! There are so many it's tough to keep up, but I find it interesting to see what certain people think about different movies. This morning I came across a list that claims to be the '25 Best Movies of All Time' - somewhat of a bold statement. After reviewing the list I must say, this is one of the more accurate I've seen in a long time, again in my opinion. I will mention however, this list only contains ENGLISH language films, and those who are movie buffs know that some of the best cinema is foreign. Check out this list right here.

Ok so I just came from an outstanding social media workshop which had a key note presentation by Amber Mac. Not familiar with Amber Mac? I suggest you become familiar, especially if you're into the whole 'social media' thing. Go ahead, try googling Amber Mac and see what you get.

What's even more interesting is that this workshop couldn't have come at a better time. Yesterday I posted an edgy social media webisode and when we made that webisode we weren't sure if it was going to work because, well, it was different. Apparently, from what I gathered today at the workshop, edgy works. Great! So I won't stop there, below you will find a second webisode we produced that does continue to poke fun at our video production. Enjoy!

People who know me personally know that I'm easy-going and have a sense of humor towards practically everything. We've been in business for over four years now, and have forever used the internet as our main source of advertising. The advent of new media has allowed us to use our creativity a lot more, and since we're in the creative business, it's basically a match made in heaven.

A little over a year ago, we here at Pastime Productions produced a couple comedic webisodes to help promote our business. The one thing I did NOT want to do when producing these short videos is showcase how 'good we are'. Instead, when I sat down to write, I told myself that I will poke fun at us instead, something you practically never see from businesses. And from the feedback we got I must say it worked. People remembered us not for the 'greatness' of the videos, but rather because the message we told was simple and it made them laugh. Below you will see the first of two webisodes we produced. Enjoy.

I really wish I was at the Toronto International Film Festival right now. Even with the 'economic crisis' worrying some organizers, TIFF still continues to spit out some of the finest movies produced. This year 6 films in particular have a great chance of starting some bidding wars. With this 'economic crisis' hindering many wallets, including the studios, I'm thinking these films probably won't get what they should, but none-the-less look for them at a theatre near you sometime late this year. To see which 6 films I'm speaking of just click here.