PETER EVANCHUCK's article in the NB FILM CO-OP Newsletter July 2018

July 19, 2018

Peter Evanchuck likes to be free flowing and in the moment to keep the purity in his art. (Photo by Helene LAcelle)

CONNECTING - PETER EVANCHUCK 

'KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID.''
By Peter Evanchuck
I was recently in Toronto watching a buddy, and his musician pals lay down tracks of their original music. These guys are all, and most were, in their day quite famous.
Shawn O'Connor, (originally from Saint John ), gathered all the musicians for the event and hired the sound studio.
Very pro, very impressive I thought as my gaze drifted over the sound mixing board. These days, I seldom get to 'sit in' on significant studio events. Even in today's world of everyone having a mini-studio connected to their computer. I thought this was unusual -  seemed too big; looked like a setup more for established pop musicians feasting in the glory of fame and fortune than these guys who had their day.
Anyway, there they were laughing, joking and tuning up their instruments in one of Toronto's major sound studios.
Shawn, bless his creative soul, was at 60 still plugging away not giving up the creative life for the humdrum life of safety, security and a large RRSP.
It starts, it goes. We all enjoy the atmosphere, the skills. All the guys are looking and sounding so pro. At 1G a day it sounded fine.
Then, the catastrophe that so often destroys the spontaneous originality of exceptional music 'of the moment' began. One musician wanted to tweak a riff then tweak more and a bit more until the unique quality of the spontaneous originality was gone.... more tweaking and more tweaking. The hours built up and, the overtime started and the 1G became 1.5G and grew.
'Keep it Simple Stupid' was gone ... gone into the oblivion of intellect of too much thinking that led to too much tweaking and well the day was over, and I had gone back to my little world where tweaking is not allowed in my original work anymore. Yes, long ago I tweaked too like all tweakers and ruined many a scene.
Here in Chipman, New Brunswick, my partner Helene Lacelle and I are keeping it very simple (I'm living with cancer ).  We create small art films, significant short docs, larger simple films crew of two (me and her) and ideas that float through my head like stories that need to be told. No fluff, no silly derivative stories - pure and simple images, sounds and, in a way, some are full of fury.
for those interested, please go to 4 of our sites: 

movieshandmade.com, goopmailart.blogspot.ca, neonmatisse.com   marvelousrealismcanada.blogspot.ca