As some of you may or may not know, for the past two years I’ve been working on my first feature documentary film (this is always the go to excuse for my lack of consistency in posting here at The Documentary Blog). The project is titled Beauty Day and it chronicles the life and times of Ralph Zavadil, aka Cap’n Video. His cable access show (The Cap’n Video Show) was filmed in my home town (St.Catharines, Ontario) and spawned a small but loyal cult following. His show consisted of a series of gross-out skits (snorting eggs, eating cat food) and dangerous stunts (sliding off his roof, jumping off of telephone poles) that challenged the sensibilities of its conservative community cable audience. It’s only upon reflection (and the advent of the internet) that you realize this goofy show was truly ahead of its time. Ralph was doing his wild stunts years before Tom Green or Jackass hit MTV.

After a serious on-camera accident and a controversial Easter episode, the Cap’n was pulled from the airwaves and eventually faded away into community cable obscurity. Now, fifteen years later, Ralph has decided to revisit the Cap’n in celebration of the 20th birthday of the creation of the character. With the help of his best friend Robert, he’ll attempt to get back on the air one last time and give the Cap’n the send off he deserves. In the process, we revisit all of the ups and downs in Ralph’s life and learn that those who are truly passionate about their art always manage to find an outlet and surround themselves with like minded, creative people.

I’m excited to finally reveal some footage for our readers here at The Documentary Blog. I cut this trailer together to give you all an idea of what the film is and hopefully convince a bunch of you to help support us along the way. If you like what you see and happen to live in the New York City area, you’re in luck! Beauty Day will have its world premiere on Sunday, March 20th at the Museum of Modern Art as part of their Canadian Front screening series. Here are the details:

Sunday, March 20, 2011, 5:30 p.m., Theater 1, T1

Monday, March 21, 2011, 4:00 p.m., Theater 3, mezzanine, Education and Research Building

For our Canadian readers, Beauty Day will have a limited theatrical release this spring via Ron Mann’s filmswelike and will broadcast on The Movie Network and Movie Central later this year, so stay tuned for more details on that. You can also visit the Beauty Day website for more news and info on more screenings to come. Until then, check out the trailer above and be sure to spread the magic of Cap’n Video around the inter-webs!

For those who aren’t aware, every month or so I take part in a podcast called The Movie Club Podcast, in which I sit down with a bunch of other movie bloggers and engage in an in-depth conversation about two (or in this case three) pre-selected films. This month’s episode has just been posted and I figured I’d share it over here at The Documentary Blog, as it’s particularly relevant to documentary flimmaking. We sat down and dug into Orson Welles’ F for Fake, Banksy’s Oscar-nominated film Exit Through the Gift Shop, and the controversial Sundance darling, Catfish. We talk for almost three hours about truth in non-fiction filmmaking, documentary ethics, and manage to go off on a few related tangents. The line up is: Me (Jay), from The Documentary Blog and Film Junk, Sean from Film Junk, Kurt from Row Three and Twitch, James from Where the Long Tail Ends, and Marina from Row Three and Quiet Earth.

I highly recommend you click here and head over to The Movie Club Podcast website and give this episode a listen. Also, be sure to join in the conversation!

The following is a proposal video I put together to send off to Mr.Cochrane. Thankfully he was very enthusiastic about the project and looks to be on board. So here it is for you guys to see. Still a work in progress, and cut together from only two interviews…this video is merely an example of the sort of tone/style I’ll be shooting for. Please feel free to share your thoughts. Any comments would be much appreciated. (Thanks to the wonderful services available at vimeo.com, this video is also made available in 720p HD by following THIS link!)

Untitled Jay Cochrane Documentary from Jay Cheel on Vimeo.

The future of this project is still sort of up in the air, but i’m definitely having a good time doing it. It’s nice to know that i’m the only person counting on everything to fall into place, and if everything fails, I can walk away with some good experiences. Stay tuned for future updates as I force myself to get my blog on.

I was lucky enough to be offered to shoot in the large city hall chambers. The room was pretty awesome, with some interesting colour choices. There’s a great pink wall at the very back that i’d like to do a future interview in front of. The only real problem I had was a last minute issue with my microphone stand. I ended up having to balance the shotgun mic carefully on a dixie cup, which unfortunately, you can see in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. I should be able to work around it in editing, but I somehow find it oddly amusing. Maybe it will suit the tone of the final film?

As for myself, i’ve also been busy with my own project. I’m still building up my equipment list in preperation for shooting a feature length version of my time travel documentary, ‘Obsessed & Scientific’. I’m pretty close to being set, and hope to do a sort of test run with the camera in the near future. Possibly a short documentary on Niagara Falls, which i’ll get into a little later. I’ve also just recently purchased a ‘Steady Tracker’, which is essentially a poor mans steadicam. I’ve tried it out and it definitely gets the job done. I just don’t know how long my weak arms can hold the HVX mounted on top of that thing. I’ve also recently picked up a new ‘cool’ light, which uses three colour balanced ‘energy saver’ flourescent bulbs. Anyways, that’s about it for now. If you want to keep up with any of my personal stuff, i’m going to be posting in better detail on my new personal blog at www.jaycheel.com. Thanks for sticking with me, and stay tuned for some cool things in the near future.

Anyways, if anyone has shot with this camera or has any knowledge about any of this, could you drop me a line? I’m also trying to figure out the best way to go about purchasing one in Canada. I’d like to avoid customs/border taxes at all costs. Any advice would be appreciated. You can reach me at jcheel@sympatico.ca. Thanks in advance.

I do have my eye on a few possible interview subjects at the time being. Hopefully down the road i’ll be able to figure out what exactly I want to do with this and be able to start making some contacts. And then of course there’s the money. We’ll see how this one goes.