I CAN EDIT REAL GOOD

Now’s your chance. Canadian stalwart Bruce McDonald launched Tracey: Re-Fragmented, a re-editing initiative surrounding the release of his latest award-winning feature film The Tracey Fragments. In a bold move, he has made the entire film and score (by Indie Collective Broken Social Scene) available for download for users to make their own version. Send it back to him and his favorite version will appear on the official DVD and win an Apple Final Cut Pro prize pack. Alas, for Canadians only, although anyone can download and rock it.

from the official press release:

Featuring a stand-out performance from Ellen Page as a 15-year-old girl who has lost her little brother and sets out on a desperate journey to find him, The Tracey Fragments is a daring portrayal of teenage angst, told in a dazzling style. The film, which opens in limited release Friday [in Canada], employs multi-frame editing to breathtaking effect, pushing the boundaries of cinematic language to get inside the heart and mind of Tracey.

Director Bruce McDonald explains the inspiration behind the project: “The Tracey Fragments is a film that fully embraces experimentation and teamwork. I wanted to find out if that experience exists on the Internet and give others the chance to experiment and play with some beautifully shot footage of a world class actress in a free form environment. I hope people make their own feature films, short films, rock videos, trailers, experimental films and personal manifestos out of The Tracey Fragments.”

The Tracey Fragments is distributed in Canada through Alliance Films and will be released in theatres in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal November 2, 2007. The film recently won Best Canadian Feature Film at the Atlantic Film Festival with Ellen Page picking up the Award for Best Actress at the fest. The film premiered at the 57th Berlinale and won the Manfred Salzgeber Prize for innovative filmmaking. It has also screened at festivals around the world including Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival and will play at AFI Fest Los Angeles 2007 in November.

Endnote: McDonald has seen this landscape before – when he made the failed studio venture Claire’s Hat (2001, later released as Picture Claire). The film production was a nightmare, the film was hated in Toronto in the troubled 2001 festival, and basically shelved for later dvd release. McDonald stole the original footage and made his own pseudo-director’s cut, which really works more as a director’s commentary if he was sitting in the room with you talking, running the film back and forth with the remote, adding behind-the-scenes and cut out footage. Its amazing, he reveals everything from his independent nature wanting to succeed with a $10 million budget, to the spiraling shoot where difficulties arise, like producers who may be from hell, and when an actor mouths his words but doesn’t speak to ensure he will get paid. With this underground cut, he showed the love and the corruption of the whole process as good as any doc Herzog and Coppola have been a part of. We wanted to show it at CineVegas but the studio of course heard about it and said no way. It isn’t on the official DVD, either.