Mimetic Productions has brought Michael onboard as cinematographer to shoot their dramatic feature film 'Still Here'. Scheduled to shoot for 21 days starting August 10th, the HD feature will be shot on location in Windsor, Ontario and surrounding areas. 'Still Here', the fourth feature film by writer/director Gavin Michael Booth, is an emotion driven story about Aidan, a teenager struggling to cope with the premature and rather unexpected loss of his girlfriend, Natalie. Stay tuned to michaeljaridavidson.com for exciting details and photos from the production.

Hot on the heels of his invitation to the 2008 HotDocs film festival, Michael flies out this week for three-weeks in Eastern Europe where he will be researching material for a forthcoming documentary film. His destination is the city of Varna, Bulgaria, situated on the coast of the Black Sea. Bulgarian folk music has captured Michael's imagination for several years now and he plans to pitch the project to broadcasters after some initial development. Michael hopes to have the film wrapped for a 2010 release. Stay tuned to this website for more information.

Always one to keep sharp with training, Michael heads off today for a series of cinematography workshops, starting with the CSC Intermediate Lighting workshop this weekend in Toronto. From there, Michael heads to Ottawa for a five-day HD cinematography workshop at the Canadian Screen Training Centre. Michael hopes to apply the techniques learned over the next few weeks to his upcoming narrative short. More news on that project in the near future.

As a new project announcement, Michael has been brought on to provide motion graphics for the new short film entitled Winterbourne by Toronto-based artist extraordinaire Paul Steves. Now while Michael is primarily a cinematographer, he is equally confident working in the realm of post and broadcast design as well. For more on Paul Steves and Winterbourne, check out www.motionspersecond.com and click the 'Paintings / Illustration' link.

Michael's super16 short horror film Run Like Hell received multiple screenings in March and April. The film first debuted at the 2008 Western Film Festival, March 14-15, Rainbow Cinemas Galleria, London Ontario.

Subsequently, Nicholas A. Longstaff who played Jean Laslow in the film and now CFC New Media lab resident, invited Michael to do a private screening at the Canadian Film Centre in Toronto.

And finally on April 19th, in association with Vagrancy Films, Run Like Hell was paired with Lucio Fulci's 1979 cult classic Zombie for a midnight screening, again at Rainbow Cinemas Galleria, London Ontario.

The fifteenth annual HotDocs documentary film festival and conference in Toronto invited Michael to attend DocU. Through a competitive selection process that was open to emerging filmmakers from across Canada, Michael was among a group of fifteen invitees to be mentored by award-winning filmmaker Min Sook Lee (Tiger Spirit) for the week. Participants gained valuable knowledge through a series of workshops and intimate meetings with leading doc professionals and filmmakers.

On April 8, Michael filled the roles of cinematographer and project manager on the team that brought home gold in the first annual Fanshawe College / EK3 Technologies multimedia competition. The competition pit eighteen teams of five against each other over thirteen weeks to devise three components of a mobile communications marketing campaign: a website, a web-traffic driving strategy, and a digital in-store solution.

Michael shot a broadcast spec spot for the campaign on 16mm film and some SD / HD green screen work for the website and the digital in-store solution, respectively. You can view samples of the work in the ‘Cinematography’ section of this website.