Captains Blog: “Driving in Toronto is Easy”

Video Production Oakville – The Captain’s Blog

“Driving in Toronto is Easy”

Said no one!

Hi everyone, this is John from Groovy again.

Today I wanted to discuss one of the major challenges in filming a video production in Toronto and the GTA. That is the everyday traffic torture that is in the city of Toronto.

Toronto, as everyone probably now knows, has the dubious distinction of ranking number one for traffic congestion in North America. So an early morning shoot – usually an 8:00 a.m. start – is quite a challenge when we are hired to film anywhere in the GTA, in particular if it is in a downtown Toronto studio.

Gridlock is frustrating at best. As professionals we must take measures to be on time. It is a real concern and so we err on the side of caution. For instance if we had a video production in downtown Toronto, say in the Spadina and King area, coming in from Oakville we would of necessity add a good hour to our normal travel time in order to make certain that we are set up and ready at start time. Now if the traffic by some miracle is moving well we get there with time to spare – a much preferred scenario to arriving late with a car full of equipment to unload and set up!

And as they say, getting there is only half the fun. Most shoots end at 5:00 p.m. when the studios close for the day so we must pack up and head back west to Oakville, easily another two hour commute. So aside from the normal challenges of producing a beautiful film we must deal with traffic getting to the venue on time and getting out of town after 5:00 p.m.

Will self-driving cars be the remedy many hope they will be? Probably not. But as long as we’re spending hours sitting in traffic maybe we can get caught up on Netflix?

Essentially however, I guess the motto remains, where there’s a will there’s a way even if it is a slow but sure way!

That’s it for now. As always I look forward to touching base with you again down the line.

Happy filming!