Yesterday morning I was at the studio minding my own business, having no idea that I would spend the night on a rooftop overseeing one of the nicest Montreal viewpoint of its numerous sky-scrappers surrounded by one of the town’s most talented crew! Then I got a call from Sylvain Dumais (or as I now like to call him: DUMAIS) and we shared thoughts on our latest ventures. He was prepping up for two ARTV IDs, one of them showcasing the creative work of Julien Vallée. These IDs also happen to be directed by Gabriel Poirier-Galarneau who I’m sure, if you read this blog on a somewhat regular basis, you’ve already heard about! So talking to Dumais, he explained to me how they were to shoot Julien’s ID on a rooftop with a dolly on a rail with projections and a smoke machine. I first asked him if he needed any help on the project, then realized I could come along and work his sweet Zacuto 5D MarkII kit to document the whole thing. So I tag along and join the team, hauling an unprecedented amount of C-Stands and sandbags up to the roof only to realize that I was also joining Film Editor Maxime Dumont who just recently tightly trimmed, cut and pasted our Orange Orange clip! And later in the evening, we were graced with the presence of Karim Charlebois-Zariffa, recently back from an internship with Design Master Stefan Sagmeister!

Stepping back I realized that not only was I amongst friends, but I was surrounded by talented artists whose work I sincerely admire and felt like I was about to be part of something special. It reminded me of the shoot we had last year when we shot GPG’s Chalk ID. The same kind of creative vibe and excitement was in the air and I was able to capture it all in both video and stop motion sequences that will be integrated to one another for a cool making of. At 3h30am, we heard the magic words: it’s a wrap! We packed the freight elevator and called it a night. I scanned through my footage and was really happy with both videos and stills. About 16 gigs of footage that should produce a colorful 3-4min making of Julien Vallée’s 10sec ARTV ID for TOXA!

We took a last breath of fresh air, looking at the incredible panorama before us. The crew shook hands and parted their way for a much needed and anticipated short night of sleep. It was 4am!