Our Story

Regardless of education, class, or experience everyone has something to say about love all you need to do is ask. 

It was our hypothesis that anyone who has experienced love, or has at least taken the time to ponder it, is in their own way an expert. So, this past November Ode Productions drove from Halifax to Vancouver to ask professors and kindergarteners, doctors and disenfranchised, Rabbis and Atheists, queer and straight if they thought they could define love. We ended up filming a feature length documentary with no funding, no grants, and no reservations: it is fittingly entitled, "A Documentary About Love".

This documentary illuminated many interesting opinions and stories about what love is and how it can reveal itself to people in different ways. We at Ode Productions were flabbergasted by the wisdom and sincerity we encountered in total strangers. We were invited into homes, given meals and beds, let in on personal stories and given great advice. Basically, with over 75 interviews and hours of amazing footage we decided that one documentary wasn't going to cut it. 

We decided that we would try to depict some of the love and generosity of these people and stories in a fictional film about two lonely travelers who become dear friends. We dove into writing it immediately upon our return to Toronto, burning with excitement and inspiration! The working title is "Rambling".

"A Documentary About Love" is now being edited but the "Rambling" screenplay is only just reaching the end of its first draft. Although we still have no funding, we are determined to begin filming for the feature this summer, retracing the very path we traversed this past November. It is our hope that our story can capture at least a glimpse of the love and adventure we found along the road.

The Impact

"Rambling" is an exploration of love and its evolution through the ups and downs of life. The story follows two friends who make their way from Eastern to Western Canada and is broken into five parts: birth, wide eyed wonder, a false sense of maturity, resistance, and contentment. We've found that this examination of the life cycle accurately describes the course of any loving relationship in the stages that it undergoes as it develops. 

There are so many "love stories" that claim to explore some feel-good, abstract concept, but present only two dimensional perspectives of the word in a romantic sense. People are in desperate need of learning how to love one another. We get so caught up in the romantic definition that we forget love as an innate, empathetic concept that draws people together, heals wounds, and produces inspiration for all who taste it. We wrote "Rambling" to depict these processes of life and love in a concrete way.

What We Need & What You Get

Having tallied up our costs from the documentary we know exactly how much it costs to drive from Toronto, to Halifax, to Quebec, to Winnipeg, to Banff, to Vancouver, turn around and come back. Truth be told... it's not cheap.

Over a month our crew of three spent: $1700 on gas 

                                                              $700 on food

                                                              $250 on accommodations

                                                            +$700 on auto repair (we've only got a 96' Taurus)

                                                              $3350.00 

With the glide cam, lapel mics, other equipment expenses, and post-productions costs our documentary will cost around $10,000.00. We aim to release it in Toronto in mid April (which hopefully brings some money in) but we expect the filming of this feature to cost us even more. 

We are trying to keep this project as organic as possible: we are staying with locals we've befriended during the documentary filming, and all of our actors will be locals from our shooting locations (to save us shipping them all over the country), and we travel with a small but versatile crew. 

We are asking for $5,000.00 to cover our travelling costs for June as we are filming across Canada for the month to get the necessary establishing shots and site specific footage. We will then return to Toronto for the remainder of the filming. 

We do not have funding yet for this film but aim to do some promotional video work for local NGOs and non-profits before we leave. It's our hope that this money will keep us a float. We are not trying to make money off of this, we are just passionate about the project, the cause, and its creation. We will find a way to make this film no matter what!

Other Ways You Can Help

We are currently re-constructing our website but the updates will include production stills of the documentary, a filming schedule/calender, and links to some of the footage we've been compiling along the way: 

www.ode-productions.com

We also have a facebook page that you can feel free to check out for some photos and updates on script and filming progress.