Pages

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Beating Around The Bush



OK so after some discussion it is still up in the air if i should be writing about the pilot episode for the show about me ... regardless i am gonna beat around the bush a bit and keep you guys interested . Its been a busy couple weeks especially once we found out we should go shoot a pilot . We were already planning out a nice trip to Montreal but we had to spice it up a bit with some crazy visuals and when the time came we provided ... lets just say we played some hockey in a cave :)

The picture above is from a friendly game we organized with the help of the Moroccan Ice Hockey Association . It was an early morning match between the Ghetto Blasters & Morocco ! No i am not gonna give away who won or this or that ... as i said , i gotta beat around the bush a bit :( It was great to have former Ghetto Blaster Alex Charette back in the red & white ! I also have to thank Adil El Farj for all the patience he had helping us organize this trip and event especially on such short notice .

At the moment we are working on editing the pilot and we hope to be able to begin releasing footage as soon as possible but in the mean time stay patient . I know you are probably more excited then i am to see me make an ass of myself on TV LOL ! And trust me I'm pretty sure you will . At the moment i am trying to organize my next trip with the hopes of bringing my crew with me to Europe and getting our next episode shot . It's not as easy as it sounds , i am really lucky to have some great people to work with and really lucky that we have a lot of good friends in the "business" hahaha. I guess all those years' of being a PA are working out ???? *PA is Production Assistant if you are wondering*


Gonna keep this short and sweet but before i hang up the phone let me thank Vince Fazio , my Canadian Italian Paesano that i got to hang out with in Montreal . Brother as usual you came through (wink!wink!) I'm dying to show you all the footage ARGH !!! stay tuned ....



Thursday, March 5, 2015

The Trailer


This is gonna sound crazy but here we go ... some of my friends that i work with in the film business firmly believe that this blog could be a TV show . I am not saying i don't believe it also but its not something i had exactly planned on when i started doing this . Don't get me wrong i am excited as excited can get but at the same time i wanna stay humble about it . The process all started over a year ago when we started planning to shoot my trip to South Africa which was a serious long shot but we aimed for it ... in hind sight i should have taken more video when i went on that trip but regardless my camera went missing anyways so it was meant to be this way .


So you are probably wondering who these crazy people are that willingly want to travel with a psychopath goalie like me ? Well they are a couple nut jobs themselves LOL ! Liam & Katelyn Couture are 2 great friends that i work with in the film biz and they are both big parts of my Ghetto Blasters team ... Liam plays D and Katelyn is one of our only fans that actually shows up to our games (yes i know Ashley's wife comes out too ) regardless on a good day i might see 3 people screaming out names of my team mates while we play the game we love :) 

Back to the story at hand ... when i got back i needed a new camera and Kathleen bought me a Go-Pro for my birthday which was right before my next trip . The idea of the show was picking up a bit of steam but we really needed some form of footage so off i went to Europe with a new camera and the idea to shoot some interviews and other video to catch what i do .... first video was a drunken video of Rainer rolling around on my bed in Skopje,Macedonia and buddy i didn't use it trust me LOL ! hilarious shit :P Along with that i got a lot of other great footage interviewing the President of Macedonian Ice Hockey Federation , IIHF refs in Hungary & Serbia , footage with Greek team mates messing around and best of all i got footage of me approaching the Whiskey Robber ... which i will personally cherish . When i got back home i passed on the footage to Liam and he cut it and made a video to present to people that needed to see something . That somehow worked and got us a real camera man and things started rolling really fast and next thing you know i was asked to find us ice time within a few days outdoors here in Toronto ... you would think that is not a problem right ? Here's the deal , we have hundreds of outdoor rinks in Toronto but to use them you need a permit . That is if you want the ice to yourself , some may think well you can go on the ice early in the morning and that in theory would be great but where do you get the nets from then since they store them ? also most rinks with boards have fences to keep people off them overnight as it is a liability to the city if someone is injured on them overnight with no supervision ..... that left me in a conundrum . 



The 3 of us were all on set that day working for our favorite PM Petri Stepanoff . This guy is a madman that makes crazy comments whenever i post stuff overseas but is a great guy that i am sure anyone would get along with ! Pumping hip hop in his office or watching Ric Flair videos WHOO! He also is one of the Fairmount Park Ice Masters https://www.facebook.com/groups/51607789318/?fref=ts ... These guys are amazing , wicked story of how a community pulls together to keep a local ice rink alive . About 20 years ago or so this neighbourhood in the east end was about to lose their local ice rink and the people pulled together and got the city workers to teach them how to maintain the ice and petitioned to keep it alive and were granted full permission to build an ice rink every year since . There are about 80 members and you don't need a permit to use it :) to boot as i said Petri is one of the Ice Masters ... that day he allowed us to step off set and we went to scout it , loved it and used it for our commercial shoot :) 


So we headed out nice and early on a cold Saturday morning with our camera guy ( Jesse McCracken ) i guess you can call him our D.O.P. also as he really has the vision we need to make this happen . We went out to the east end set up shop in Fairmount Park and shot an awesome trailer which we now would use to pitch the idea for a show to people . Petri met us there and his kid came out for the skate and dinged me in the head a couple times ... i think his old man told him to LOL ! We had a lot of fun , the ice there was great for a rink without a real Zamboni or anything . I think they have a tractor or something but didn't get to see it as it was so early . We caught the sunrise while everyone peppered me with shots then we came back to my house to record some voice over stuff . The voice overs weren't all so great so a few days later i had to head out to Liam & Katelyn's to re-record some stuff which is tough for me cause like most people i hate the sound of my own voice but whatever ! its' something that needs to be done :) 

The commercial was edited within days and the next thing you know we are getting the green light to go on our first trip to shoot the pilot episode .... i will start talking about that tomorrow ! But yeah really i can't believe how swimmingly this is all coming to fruition ... who would have thought eh ?