Jeffrey R. Fish — “Fish”
Storyteller, Director, Editor, President
While finishing up my Fine Arts degree in Film and Television at York University my grandmother, Cora, passed away. I didn’t really know too much about my grandfather, Ted, who had passed on years before I was born. But among the things Dad gave me from his family home were all my grandfather’s cameras and gear. I was 20 and well into finishing my degree when I learned that my grandfather had an extensive and well-preserved collection of still cameras and lenses including the original cases, boxes and manuals. Up until then I had no idea he took such an interest in photography. On top of all that there was a well used 8mm movie camera, projector and reels upon reels of meticulously edited family movies (most were in full colour dating back to the 1930s). Sitting in the basement and watching these carefully organized and edited time capsules of family life (that hadn’t been viewed for over 20 years) I felt a sense of destiny that movie making must be “in my blood”. This, I thought, was where my urge to edit must come from.
But hindsight has given me a wider perspective. My mother Lynn was a talented artist and craftsperson and I must have inherited a gene or two there. Then there’s Marilyn, my other mother who raised me and who shared with me a deep and unbiased love of hundreds of films from all eras – my first film school, if you will. There were the teachers in high school who gave me carte blanche over the school’s antiquated A/V department. There’s the TV generation that I was born into and fed a steady diet of drama, comedy and documentaries. And last but not least there’s my father, Dick, who handed me my first 35mm still camera for my 16th birthday. Dad is still the best storyteller I have ever known.
So my whole life has molded me to be a visual storyteller–and to tell them well.
And now, I want to tell yours.
Catherine Brown
Visual Designer, Director, After Effects Artist, Vice-President
CC Brown believes sunrise and sunset are overrated when compared to noon and 2 am. She was born with an incurable affliction which causes various items she walks by on the street to follow her home. It may be related to her ever-expanding talent for killing products she likes. Or not. In any case, she can only break the gravitational attraction by twisting and warping objects into new shapes that finally achieve peace. Sometimes this process spans years. She has a fundamentally cat-like distaste for being seen, but if you wait patiently, she may suddenly appear beside you as if she has been there all along. Try not to react as this will scare her off. She does likes treats in the form of genuine complements. Given privately. At a distance so she can enjoy them probably later if she feels like it. Someone once told her she had a fine sense of the absurd and that has been her off-and-on motto ever since.
All of this is true today but may be subject to change without notice.