“Close to the Bone is a true hybrid film and music project,” shared Foster in an exclusive statement to The Herald.

“Written concurrently over the last few years, the film features over half of the new album’s music and that music helps to tell the film’s story about family, chronic illness and how one wishes to be remembered.”

Starring Alison Moira Kelly, Bridget Wareham, Darryl Hopkins, Des Walsh and directed by Foster himself, Close to the Bone, the film, will launch at the Nickel Independent Film Festival this June, with an album on deck for the latter part of 2022.

“I’m excited to start the project’s journey right here at home at the Nickel Film Festival, running in St. John’s from June 13-19. After the last few years, it will be great to be back in a theatre, experiencing the film with others in person.”

For more information on Close to the Bone and the Nickel Independent Film Festival visit nickelfestival.com and infoster.ca

The Duds are Melanie O’Brien and Philip Goodridge, two artists from St. John’s, Newfoundland who have been working together for the past ten years. After touring Atlantic Canada in 2019 they released their debut album, “These Words I Can’t Forget” in March 2020. The Duds were subsequently nominated for two MusicNL awards: Bell Aliant Pop Artist of the Year and MDIIO Rising Star of the Year.

Produced by award-winning producer/songwriter/filmmaker Ian Foster, the record combined The Duds’ folk-tinged roots sound with bright pop beats, resulting in something elevated, elemental, spicy-sweet and fully their own.

Separately, Melanie and Philip have each carved out their own paths in the music industry. O’Brien’s debut solo album “Shining in The Blue” earned her three MusicNL Award nominations and as a vocal coach she holds the 2017 MusicNL Award for Music Educator of the Year. Goodridge is a multi-faceted artist and a seasoned professional theatrical performer, working in Newfoundland for over 20 years. Together, The Duds are versatile, playful-yet-confessional, upbeat-yet-balladeers ? they’re undeniably meant to be on stage

Not slowing down in isolation, Melanie and Philip used the time to write and record – they released a brand new pop single, “Til We Run” on Sept 10th and now they have four original holiday tunes coming this November and December. In classic Dud fashion, they have found a creative, fun way to release the songs. The theme is a “Dudvent” calendar – building momentum with one song landing on streaming platforms each Friday leading up to Christmas.

Also produced by Ian Foster, the three worked together to create music that captured the wonder and mystery of the holidays while also bringing a very honest, heartfelt perspective of the season. Wrapped in romance, truth and the seasons own magic, The Duds hope that these stories will resonate throughout the winter holidays for years to come.

Song Release Schedule
-Friday, November 26th
– Before The Night (Tibbs Eve) A Song that is a reference to Dec 23rd, a special date where people start to celebrate just a little early and end up romantically tangled in a time out of time moment.

-Friday, December 3rd
– Solstice An upbeat pop tune that reflects on winter seasons past andpresent and the life and light the darkest times can bring forth.

-Friday, December 10th
– The Party. A moving ballad that recognizes the joy while acknowledging the stress the season can bring, reaching out to those who suffer during the holidays.

-Friday, December 17th
– Christmas Daze. A bittersweet recalling of holidays past full of love and life and the hope for more to come.

Songwriters – Philip Goodridge and Melanie O’Brien
Production and arranging work – Ian Foster at If and When Studios
Mixing – Scott Hammond at The Blue Room
Mastering – Richard Bradley at Long Range Mastering
Graphic Design and Photos – Jerry Stamp at Jerry Stamp Creative

Melanie and Philip are currently working as resident artists with Terra Bruce Productions and are performing and touring in the Musical, No Change in the Weather coming to Mirvish Productions in Toronto November 20-27th.

https://www.facebook.com/duds4life
https://www.instagram.com/duds4life/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3uEhjVdxyjCd_rlPVW6STg

https://music.apple.com/ca/artist/the-duds/1499586201

https://soundcloud.com/duds4life

Ian Foster told The Herald in a recent interview that he’s worn a different amount of hats in his artistic career in Newfoundland and Labrador. Quite so.

Foster is a notable singer-songwriter, an ace producer, an author of short stories, and more recently can boast that he has completed his second award-winning short film. Many hats indeed!

Sci-fi Drama

Ian’s second short film Keystone, a sci-fi drama, follows Jack, a man beginning to lose grip on his memories, who visits Keystone, an organization with an unlikely mandate: making your most important memories truly ‘unforgettable.’ When Jack begins to recount moments from his life in an interview, he reveals the bond he formed with one particular woman, and the importance he has placed on their story.

The film will screen at the Nickel Independent Film Festival in St. John’s, which takes place from June 14-18. 

“I’m really psyched about it,’ Foster shared. “It’s been in nine festivals so far and this is the first one that will be at home. We started in September in Calgary. We’ve been sort of talking about this for a long time, but it’s our first chance to show people at home what we did a year ago.

“Calgary was our premiere and it couldn’t have been a better premiere for us in terms of the slot in the festival,” Foster added. “They called it one of the 10 best shorts of the year, which was incredible to hear something like that about the work. It’s definitely very affirming and validating so early in the stage.”

A Short Story

Foster originally created Keystone as a short story, submitting the work to Riddle Fence in St. John’s. After a time he began pondering the idea of adapting the story into a short film.

“I started to adapt it because I really liked the story. I could visualize it as a film,” Foster said. “I started to adapt the script and it got accepted into the Picture Start Program. We set out on the process of pre-production and casting and everything that leads us to production and it was shot in April of last year. There was a certain sweet poetry to it perhaps that it had been written as a short story two years before, written as a script a year before and literally we shot it April 1-3 and the short story was published in the April issue of Riddle Fence … It existed in the world for awhile, but ironically the two forms of it kind of came together in those two weeks.”

Foster shared that his appeal of the short film can be linked to songwriting or poetry, modes of artistic expression that require concise thought and planning, but pack an emotional punch. 

“I think that shorts are sort of like a poem or a song in a way,” Foster said. “You’re telling a very specific and concise story in a medium where you can perhaps experiment a little bit more than a typical feature process … there still has to be an arc of events that happen, but there’s perhaps a little bit more direct intensity because it’s 10-15 minutes long. The story has to move at a pace that pays off in that amount of time. I enjoy that aspect of it.”

Nickel Film Festival

Foster was nothing but complementary when discussing the Nickel Film Festival, and the impact the event has had on local filmmakers. Foster’s first short, One More Song, won Best Screenplay at the 2013 installment of the festival. 

“I think the Nickel was very good to me in my first year involved,” he recalled. “One More Song was really the first time I had attended the entire festival as a filmmaker. It was great. That film won Best Screenplay at that event and for me at that point making my first film it was an amazing incentive to continue to develop that part of what I do now. It was a nice first step and element of encouragement for this because it was the first place it had ever been seen by anybody. I think it’s an important part of our community and an important part for our support of filmmakers.”

A Common Thread

Foster acknowledged that while the life of a singer-songwriter is truly his first love, he is more than happy to continue to tie in other mediums of art, since they all share a common thread. 

“For me there’s a certain different amount of hats that I’ve come to wear over the last number of years and I love that it feels like it all feeds into one another … I suppose the common thread for the different things that I’ve done over the past few years has been writing. Some of my earliest memories was writing things and loving writing, whatever that is, short stories when I was a kid and poetry and all of that stuff. That of course goes into music, writing for film and short stories. 

“To me its a common thread. I’ve always loved the interaction of music and imagery. That’s how I got into the film community here a little bit, scoring for some friend’s projects and scoring for some other projects that come my way. To me it’s always been this grassroots progression of saying that this seems to be an interesting door and it feels like the right avenue for this particular creative idea so lets go that way. So far I’m really enjoying the film process and it’s certainly lit a fire on another way to express certain creative ideas.”