Tree Guru

One of the heroes on The Green Chain has been John Wiggers (aka The Hermit).
He's been an inspiration, a karmic connection and a true friend. We've billed him in the movie as "Tree Guru."
Here's his memory of how we met.
I swear I said "somebody" and not "some big guy," but I'll share my version of this story another time...
MLY
PS I just returned form the Banff TV Festival. Here's my take on the world of TV 2.0.

Green News

Check out the latest story on The Green Chain and... if you're hooked into Digg... Be sure to Digg It!

What's a green chain?

I hate coming up with titles.
But I love finding the right one. And this title hasn't changed since we first started talking about making this movie in 2004.
I hope this title works on all sorts of levels. But if you're not from a lumber town, you may not know there's a literal definition.

Here's a nice definition from Wikipedia (of course, being Wikipedia, it may change by the time you look).

Green chain is a type of lumber delivery system that can be used in a sawmill. The green chain's purpose is to collect the final product of the mill and move it at a controlled rate. In the 19th and early to late 20th century, the green chain was used by people. Men would stand alongside and pull lumber that matches the required dimensions and place it in piles. In short, the workers sorted the lumber. Modern sawmills use automatic systems, such as the lumber dropping through the chain into large slings, where it can be picked up and moved to a staging area to dry. Most likely called the green chain because the lumber is green and has not been seasoned.

And this is from a site on the history of the Columbia River.

Timber-related work attracted all kinds of people to the area. The jobs paid well but they required skill and were quite dangerous. Young men often started mill work on the "green chain" where they would sort outgoing lumber according to quality and size. Better jobs and, for decades, job security awaited them in the booming mills and surrounding forests.
I was working on, they call it the green chain now but didn't call it the green chain then. They just had some rollers there that push the lumber down. We'd slip it over there and put it out on the pile and then a guy would come around and straighten it up a little bit so they could haul it. . . The green chain is a flat table with a whole bunch of chains on it that they put all the lumber on as they cut it and it comes down on there and they sort it for size. . . They had two trucks hauling it away faster than we could stack it up.
--Charles Plummer, logger and mill worker, 1999.

If you've got any other on-line definitions -- or want to add one -- please add a comment or zap us an email.

Green Team Roars at Leos

The 2007 Leo Award nominations (celebrating excellence in BC Film and Television) were just announced and it was a golden day for the Green Team.

One of our stars, Jillian Fargey, scored a nomination for Best Lead Performance by a Female in a Short Drama for her work in Nostalgia Boy. This is Jillian's third Leo nomination. She's a previous nominee for Protection and Hotel. Jillian plays Jenni Holm, the waitress in The Green Chain -- the character who keeps the chain together.

Our cinematographer, Kirk Tougas, was nominated for Best Cinematography in a
Documentary Program or Series for Shameless. A shameless plug for Kirk. He has received two previous Leo Awards for Best Cinematography, most recently for Obachan’s Garden.

And Michael George -- one of the unsung heroes of The Green Chain, the guy responsible for way too much work in the editing suite... scored a nomination for The Sparkle Lite Motel. It's a contender for Best Short Drama that Michael produced with Cory Kinney, Peter Dashkewytch and Mel Weisbaum).

And the winners are... announced June 1st and 2nd.

Last year Tricia Helfer was nominated for two Leos -- one for her role as Number Six in Battlestar Galactica (which she won) and another for her guest-starring performance in an episode of The Collector written by Mark Leiren-Young.

Meanwhile... one of our other Green team stars just finished a super guest-starring role. Tahmoh Penikett played a super-powered soldier - and Lois Lane's ex -- in Smallville. But even Lex Luthor couldn't turn Tahmoh into a true villain. Tahmoh switches from fighting Superman to fighting fires in The Green Chain.

Happy Earth Day

Happy Earth Day to us...
Happy Earth Day to us...
The Green Chain has linked up with a distributor for Canada -- Christal Films.
Christal just announced that they've picked up three new environmentally themed projects -- Alastair Fothergill's documentary Earth, Velcrow Ripper's FierceLight: When Spirit Meets Action, the follow-up to his Genie Award winner Scared Sacred and... drum roll please... The Green Chain...
I met Velcrow at the Genies in Toronto last year, just after he picked up his trophy.
A few minutes later I ran into my old friend, Babz Chula, who was also nominated for an award that night. When I told Babz about The Green Chain, she said it was a shame that I didn't have a part for her. "I'm an old hippie logging protester," said Babz.
I almost cast her on the spot.
Months later Velcrow kindly offered to provide some of his footage for us to use as transitions for the movie. We didn't end up needing his work but... I guess we're finally working together. Sort of.

Mix Masters

We have audio!
The Green Chain moved into Post Modern Sound this week and our post team -- Jana Fritsch (editor), Darron Leiren-Young (coordinator) and I -- moved in with our mix masters. So we got to watch, listen and work with Gael MacLean (sound designer), Mark Hensley (head mixer) and Don Mann (effects/foley/ambience mixer).
It was wild seeing the movie on a big screen, hearing it on a half dozen speakers and layering in the dialogue, foley and effects.
And it was even wilder to realize we're almost done...
Mixing was a new adventure for me. I've been involved in producing three albums and I've done a fair bit of radio work where I’ve seen foley artists in action, but this was the first time I've had the chance to play with the sound on screen. It was amazing working with audio to find new ways to tell our story and capture the worlds of each scene.
On our first day of shooting, Brendan Fletcher was fifty feet up a tree. During the night shoot, coyotes started howling at him. Brendan howled back. After I said "clear-cut" our sound man tried to capture the coyote howls -- but I guess they'd recognized Brendan as the alpha dog and run off. Now the coyotes are back, sounding exactly like they did that night.
But the mosquito that decided to take up residence in front of our boom microphone for a large portion of my favourite take of Scott McNeil's performance has finally been swatted.
And I've been introduced to a dozen subtle variations in the sounds of silence.
Magic.

Battlestars go Green

If you look at the credits for The Green Chain it kind of feels like we should be cutting down trees with laser beams or starting a replanting project on New Caprica...
Two of the stars of The Green Chain are also stars of Battlestar Galactica.
Tricia Helfer (our "superstar" who comes to logging country to speak out against clearcuts) plays a Cylon. Actually, she plays a lot of Cylons and what may or may not be an imaginary character in ex-President Baltar's head.
And our firefighter, Tahmoh Penikett, plays Lt. Helo Agathon, the heart and conscience of Battlestar.
Tricia and Tahmoh are the two Canadian actors that Battlestar's Executive Producer David Eick recently raved about as the show's breakout discoveries in a recent interview in Reel West Magazine (that'd be the same mag that featured Tricia and me on the cover).
Eick noted that Tricia had to "carry the miniseries" and describes her as, "a tremendous talent and someone who has been extremely important to the show."
And Tahmoh? "Tahmoh is quite a success story because he was a day player for the miniseries and he was so compelling in the role and such a natural star we recreated the role when we were trying to convince the network to give us a series order."
The Green Chain's executive producer, Donna Wong-Juliani, has her own Battlestar connection. Her son, Alessandro, plays Lt. Felix Gaeta -- one of the show's most idealistic characters (even if he did perjure himself in the season finale). When we were casting and wanted to find out whether Tricia and Tahmoh were good to work with, it was Alessandro who assured us they were amazing.
For those of you who don't watch Battlestar Galactica... go get some DVDS and catch up... It's consistently the most powerful -- and most political -- series on TV.
And since our logger, Scott McNeil, is one of the biggest stars in the worlds of anime and animation and I spend most of my time these days working in fantasy TV (my first episode of Blood Ties -- the detective/vampire series just aired on Lifetime) and animation (Pucca and Class of the Titans coming soon) I keep thinking... maybe we can be the first non- genre film ever to play the San Diego Comic Con...