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TORONTO AMAZING

Suresh Doss

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/suresh/?hl=en

Suresh Doss, a Toronto-based food writer, has been telling stories about small, "mom-and-pop" food shops for 20 years. He was drawn to documenting places where menus were not always in English, as he felt this type of storytelling was lacking in mainstream media. Suresh regularly runs food tours throughout the GTAs, aimed at highlighting the GTA’s diverse suburban pockets.

Has a weekly column in the CBC where he narrows down the story to one neighbourhood, one intersection, one place, one person, and a couple of dishes that tell the story of that persons journey.

Reddit User

"Had the pleasure of joining an event he ran for free and he told us that biggest problem with Toronto restaurants is inconsistency. He can have a delicious meal and recommend it but the friend who goes weeks later could have a very disappointing meal."

Sangjibaotoronto

SUBSTACK

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GOSHDAMN directing duo of Josh and Dan

'Crapomatic' storyboarding technique

https://www.instagram.com/goshdamnduo/

BTS: https://lbbonline.com/news/A-Woman-Frantically-Searches-for-Her-Phone-in-Short-Film-Lost-Without-You? They opted for a 3:2 ratio, reminiscent of medium-format photography. This gives each frame a composed, portrait-like quality—great for performance-focused storytelling. DP: Tim Fok

Colorist: Karol Cybulski

Practical filming philosophy: Late Shift, the production company behind the film, emphasizes practical, in-camera effects over CGI whenever possible. As John Hollingsworth (Late Shift’s executive producer) puts it, they favor methods that bring real, tactile authenticity to the screen, because “the audience can feel it” https://lbbonline.com/news/late-shift-stays-up-to-get-production-right-for-brands?

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Production Breakdown

Sky, Not For Everyone. For The Fans directed by Elliot Power

https://lbbonline.com/news/Sky-Bet-Not-for-everyone-For-the-fans

Photographers: the campaign features photography captured around real matches by Jane Stockdale, as well as participation from another photographer/fan, Daniela Spina, who captured spontaneous, authentic fan moments

DoP: Łukasz Żal

Repped by Lux Artists

Polish cinematographer

Ida (2014) — His breakout work (co-shot with Ryszard Lenczewski), filmed in black and white with a 4:3 aspect ratio that evoked early 1960s Polish cinema.

Cold War (2018) — Reunited with director Paweł Pawlikowski, using meticulous composition and subtle contrast to build emotion.

Other acclaimed works include Loving Vincent (2017), The Zone of Interest (2023), I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020), Dovlatov, and The Here After.

Famously opts for black-and-white photography and classical aspect ratios (like 1.37:1), drawing inspiration from vintage cinema to craft timeless, evocative compositions.

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Casting

Breaking down emotion in voice acting

Vikas Adam is one of the most prolific narrators working today, recording over 400 Audiobooks in his career, so far! Audible challenged a professional voice actor and narrator to improvise voices while receiving prompts on the fly.

2:50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwhNoztm7ig

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Casting

Breaking down how to voice emotion

Vikas Adam is one of the most prolific narrators working today, recording over 400 Audiobooks in his career, so far! We challenged him to improvise voices while receiving prompts on the fly. Watch him jump from emotion to emotion, character to character, while he breaks down his process along the way! (Audible)

Key words used: suave, dark, open, sinister, movement

2:50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwhNoztm7ig

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Casting

Hollywood Reporter’s Drama Actors Roundtable featuring Pedro Pascal, Evan Peters, Kieran Culkin, Damson Idris, Jeff Bridges, and Michael Imperioli.

Role immersion, emotional residue, character boundaries, post-project transition, creative challenge vs. market optics, future role aspirations

https://youtu.be/GuqnPFL8-E8?si=v6_tb4YVPE2v7FIO

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https://variety.com/2025/film/features/jacob-elordi-oscar-isaac-frankenstein-interview-makeup-netflix-1236492420/

Jacob Elordi and Oscar Isaac on Netflix’s $120 Million ‘Frankenstein’ Gamble: 10 Hours in Makeup, a Misunderstood Monster and Why It’s Not a Horror Movie

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Casting

SAG-AFTRA - Casting Directors Youtube Playlist

Conversations with Casting directors about how they casted their parts, shows such as Severance, Adolescence, movies such as A Real Pain.

Numerous casting directors, stars and new talent, all from successful series and features.

Takeaways - Details matter; the more information the better, have a genre based description, background motivations, the simpler the better, character's quirks.

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Casting

"The Influence of Each Facial Feature on How We Percieve and Interpret Human Faces"

The study aims to quantify how different facial features (eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth, jaw) influence our perception of traits like attractiveness, dominance, happiness, and femininity.

Researchers leveraged a combined feature-based and image-based methodology. They applied principal component analysis (PCA) to real male face images to automatically classify each feature by its overall appearance—yielding a set of meaningful facial attributes.

Eyes emerged as the most influential feature overall—exerting the strongest impact on face perception across a variety of traits.

Other traits are shaped by more specific features:

Mouth is notably influential for perceptions of happiness and femininity.

Nose plays a more significant role in judgments of dominance. PubMed

Trustworthiness: Strongest predictions from "happy" resemblance.

Dominance: High predictions based on "angry" resemblance.

Attractiveness ranked second for perceived trustworthiness.

Babyfacedness, familiarity, and facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) were relatively poor predictors. fWHR, despite much interest in prior research, proved especially uninfluential.

 Though emotion resemblance remained most central.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/19485506211034979

Key words:

“Warm / trustworthy eyes”

“Strong / dominant jawline”

“Happy / open smile”

“Feminine mouth shape”

“Babyfaced / youthful features”

“Familiar, approachable look”

“Angry or intense resemblance”

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Casting

Lisa London x Robert Peterpaul for this post. Lisa is a veteran casting director with over 30 years of experience who is credited with discovering and casting some of the biggest names in Hollywood, including Emma Stone, Jennifer Aniston, Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Miley Cyrus, and Selena Gomez.

In this podcast episode (How We Role), she talks about the importance of focusing on process over outcome, why authenticity and bold choices matter more than being “perfect,” and how casting directors often act as allies who champion talent across their careers.

Resource: How We Role Podcast – “Casting with Lisa London” Link: Apple Podcasts

Relevant Names Mentioned:

Lisa London (Casting Director)

Emma Stone

Jennifer Aniston

Brad Pitt

Jonah Hill

Miley Cyrus

Selena Gomez

Key Takeaways for Us:

Process over outcome: Casting directors respond more to authenticity and presence than perfection.

Bold choices > safe bets: Risk-taking leaves stronger impressions.

“Booking the room”: Sometimes it’s not about this project, but building relationships for the next one.

Casting as allyship: The best casting directors think long-term and support talent in growing their careers.

Keywords: Casting directors, Authenticity, Bold choices, Process over outcome, Collaboration, Self-tapes, Audition mindset

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Casting

La Singla x inspiration for this post. Antonia Singla was born in the suburbs of Barcelona and became deaf shortly after birth, so she learned to dance flamenco without listening to the music. At the age of 17, she revolutionized the world of flamenco, but before she turned 30 she disappeared forever from the stage. Fifty years later, a young woman finds some old archives and is fascinated by her.

TVO Documentary: https://youtu.be/CqwmC1BwR2c?si=4ZfhPzqRiyWan0nh

For Deaf & hard of hearting make up approximately 3.6% of the population use sign language as a way of communicating. Are they're ways for us to weave in this form of communication into our commercials?

Resource: Performers with Disabilities: Inclusion, Authenticity & Allyship: https://www.sagaftra.org/videos/performers-disabilities-inclusion-authenticity-allyship

Commercial Examples: Harshey's Crush: http://crdt.tv/NDM5MTEw

Facebook Deaf Hoops: http://crdt.tv/NDM3NzUz

Music Video Examples: Dan + Shay - Tequila: https://youtu.be/c4qgqNS_20s?si=EANGVzmqUHbLiDs8

Starring Nyle DiMarco: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyle_DiMarco

Resource: Greater Vancouver Association of the Deaf: https://www.facebook.com/GreaterVancouverAssociationoftheDeaf/posts/casting-call-deaf-male-actor-feature-filmlocation-vancouver-calgary-canadashoot-/638366039240624/

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Casting

TV Casting Directors Roundtable: The Bear, The Patient, Big Door Prize, Bupkis, Shrinking, Ted Lasso

Link to view

Panelists:

Jeanie Bacharach (The Bear, The Patient, Black Mirror, Zach Bryan: Nine Ball)

Gayle Keller (What We Do in the Shadows, Hustlers)

Allison Estrin (Inventing Anna, Billions)

Debbie Romano (Shrinking, One Tree Hill)

Theo Park (Ted Lasso, Lord of the Rings, Our Flag Means Death)

Keywords: matchmaking, instinct-driven, gut reactions, memory, multi-generational

Jeanie Bacharach touched on the TV series Pachinko and highlighted how incredible the multi-generational casting was in that

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Canadian Work

Canadian Tire - Out of Publicis - directed by David Quinn

https://www.instagram.com/p/DL8PmC_Mtwk/

DOP | Misha Petrenko @myhappyhippos

Repped by Mantl

https://www.instagram.com/myhappyhippos/

PRODUCTION DESIGNER | Sarah Wilson  PRODUCTION DESIGNER | Tamara Rushlow ON SET PROPS | Allen Pavela

Production design is simple, however shooting something like this would require a lot of resetting.

https://pinkcalculatordesign.com/contact

Directors they've worked with include: Nolan Sarner, Matt Rhodes, Brigg Bloomquist, Maggie Carey, Peter Martin, Jonathan Krisel, Jono Holmes, Victoria Granof(f), Shawn Z, Adam & Dave, Air Castle, Joe Vanhoutteghem, Rob Fiocca, Lloyd Lee Choi, Ante Kovac, Javier Aguilera, and many more.

Previous work:

Party City (directed by Jono Holmes)

Domino’s Pizza (director: Peter Martin)

Kellogg’s (director: Victoria Granoff)

Freedom Mobile, Shaw Communications, H&R Block, Best Buy, Cracker Barrel, Lysol, Home Hardware, Crown Royal, Dannon, Canada Drugs, and more—all with various directors. Pink Calculator+1

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Canadian Work

Kit-Kat - Break from Politeness

Agency - Courage (Toronto)

Media: Thrive Media

Producer: Veronica Coles

Editor: Jon Garofolo

Post Production / VFX: Feather -

Music/Sound: Eggplant Music/Sound

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Canadian Work- McDonald's "All Dressed Up"

https://lbbonline.com/news/Shania-Twain-Gets-McDonalds-Sides-All-Dressed-Up

Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, Toronto

Production: Imposter

DP: Damian Acevedo https://www.damiandp.com/ Director: Kinopravda https://kinopravda.tv/

VFX: Feather Studio Audio Company: osoaudio

Voice Director: harryknazan

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Canadian Work — KFC x F1

Courage for KFC x F1, out of Someplace Nice, Dir. Spencer Riviera

DP: André Pienaar

International Publication of the American Society of Cinematographers, Aug 2025 ed.: F1 DP Claudio Miranda and Dir. Joseph Kosinski:

Built custom camera w/ Sony they called The Camen

Stripped down, modified Sony FX6; Voigtländer Hyper Wide Heliar rectilinear aspherical 10 mm lens to capture drivers preferred (also used 12 & 15 mm); good geometric distortion correction.

https://phillipreeve.net/blog/review-voigtlander-10mm-5-6-e-hyper-wide-heliar/ (See Specifications/Version History section)

Used iPhone technology; capable of shooting 4K raw; took out In-Body Image Stabilization because didn’t agree with high-frequency vibrations and g-force

Effect: Achieves verisimilitude; capture high speeds inside the car (looks slow in other racing films); captures kinetic energy.

#CanadianWork

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Canadian Work

"Scary Furnace" out of Toronto, ON for ATCO out of McCann Canada & Directed by James Haworth

Producer: Erica Parks

Has worked on multiple Circle/McCann jobs with James (Petro Canada, Coffee Mate, as well as the previous ATCO campaign we've recently watched in our meetings)

DP: Jackson Parrell

Repped by Sesler, worked on the previous ATCO campaign as well

Other recent jobs include Egg Farmers of Canada for Impossible Studios

Production Designer: Dillon McManamy

The “go-to” for Walmart jobs

Worked with James Haworth on Coffee Mate, Specsavers, HSBC, EQ Bank

Did a full build stage in Toronto recently for Boss

Casting: Jigsaw Casting Ltd.

Recent work: TD for Leo Burnett with Luc as Dabrowski, Petro Canada for Circle/McCann with James Haworth, KFC x Box out of Courage with Spencer Riviera

Currently holding for The Salmon on 2 jobs: Tide & IKEA – has been strong in providing numbers, being flexible with our schedule   

https://lbbonline.com/work/141644