A long-time media artist, Michael’s filmmaking stretches back to 1978. Michael graduated from York University film school with Special Honours, winning the Famous Players Scholarship in his final year. The Rolling Stone Book of Rock Video called Michael's first feature 'Recorded: Live!' "the first film about rock video". Michael served on the board of L.I.F.T. when he lived in Toronto during the eighties and managed the Bloor Cinema for Tom and Jerry. He has been prolific over his past eight years in Victoria, having made over thirty-five shorts, won numerous awards, produced two works for BravoFACT! and received development funding for 'Begbie’s Ghost' through the CIFVF and BC Film.
JETS will unite first, second and third feature film filmmakers with Canadian, German, Irish, Norwegian, Austrian, British, South African, and US producers, sales agents, finance and distribution companies during a day of pitching and networking sessions with the aim of encouraging co-production.
Producer/director teams can submit fictional film projects (features of duration of minimum 80 minutes; animation also eligible) that are still in the development or financing stages.
It’s quite revealing to look at the numbers in detail.
Let’s start with Genre.
Drama
7
Documentary
5
Comedy
1
Horror
1
Magic Realism
1
Mystery
1
Province?
Ontario
8
Quebec
4
British Columbia
2
Manitoba
1
New Brunswick
1
Let’s look at Language next.
English
4
French
4
Arabic
1
English/Arabic
1
English/Bosnian
1
English/Bulgarian
1
English/Farsi
1
English/Persian
1
French/English
1
Tibetan/English
1
And let’s finish up with Stream.
Filmmaker Apply-Direct
7
Industry Partner
7
Festival Selection
1
Industry Partner — Indigenous Component
1
In addition, if Gender is assumed from names:
Female
23
Male
15
Some observations:
Documentary is almost as successful as Drama.
Half of the successful projects are from Ontario.
Almost half of the successful projects include world languages in addition or instead of English and/or French.
Only half of the successful projects are from Industry Partners.
Finally women far outnumber men.
One might be tempted to conclude that Telefilm Canada is using the Talent to Watch program to over-correct its EDIA (Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility) results, but that would be highly cynical.
My take: wow! This is quite a departure for Telefilm. This is the first year that filmmakers could apply directly and Telefilm has rewarded them handsomely!
“For the movie, the producers hired Pierre Laroche, the makeup artist who worked for David Bowie and Mick Jagger and helped pioneer the androgynous glam rock look, to transform Curry into the future horror/musical icon. ‘He kind of adapted the makeup that was already in my case and did a very kind of high fashion version of it,’ Tim Curry told Interview Magazine. Even today, he was not sold on the glam version of Dr. Frank-N-Furter. ‘He got a little more high fashion,’ the actor elaborated. ‘I don’t know whether I like that or not.‘”
While filming Congo, I sat on top of a Volcano talking to Tim Curry about that movie. He said one of the coolest things was that it saved a number of small indie theaters from going under, because they knew that two nights a week Rocky was going to do big business.https://t.co/dvtd6sYm4G
“If you’re thinking about making your own feature film, I’m hoping this gives you an abridged, table-of-contents-style sketch of all the different parts of filmmaking. So many articles and interviews are all about writing, working with actors, camera choice, and the other creative aspects of the film, I thought it might be useful to get into the actual nuts and bolts. We absolutely loved making our film. All these spreadsheets helped us to get there.”
He discusses each one from the perspective of his second feature “All Sorts,” and includes some examples.
I like his advice for Credits:
“Just for keeping track of all the lovely folks who participated on the film. I know you’re thinking this should be in the post-production section, but start this on day one and just add people as they start to come into the life of the film. It’s easier than sitting with a blank slate all the way at the end of the film.”
Here are the titles of most of the spreadsheets Rick used:
Pre-Production Spreadsheets
Budget spreadsheets
Team spreadsheets (possible producers)
Location spreadsheets
Contact spreadsheets
Casting spreadsheets
Background
Auditions
Confirmed Cast
Scheduling spreadsheets
Art/props spreadsheets
June’s Diego vs Anthony spreadsheet
Calendar spreadsheet
“Go June” signs spreadsheet
Costume spreadsheets
Investor Spreadsheets
Production Spreadsheets
Call sheets
Post Spreadsheets
Footage spreadsheets
Editing spreadsheets
VFX spreadsheets
Credits spreadsheet
Master Rights Grid
Music Cue Sheet
QC Notes/Fixes
Crowdfunding Spreadsheets
Targets/contacts
Reward lists
Distribution Spreadsheets
Distributors
Deliverables spreadsheets
Screening invitees/attendees
PR/Marketing Spreadsheets
Social Media
Marketing
Email lists
Film Festivals
Published Articles
My take: Wow, that’s a lot of spreadsheets! What this actually reveals are the myriad jobs indie filmmakers routinely take on. With more money, each of these activities might be accomplished by a specialist in that one field. When you’re truly indie, you just do it all yourself. No wonder Rick resorted to these spreadsheets to track everything. You should too.
“Hi, I’m Josh, an LA-based filmmaker. I work as a writers’ assistant and script coordinator on TV shows, and I direct my own short films. By far, the most valuable thing I’ve learned about storytelling from big-budget shows and indie projects alike is that just two elements—the actors and the script—are way more important than everything else.”
Here’s my list of his important things to consider for indie filmmakers:
The actors.
The script.
Don’t over-crew; have some crew do two jobs.
No walkie talkies.
Keep insurance costs in check.
Be willing to walk away from too-expensive crew or locations.
Some cities have cheaper gear than others.
Join a writers group for feedback on your drafts.
Devise films with locations that you have or can secure easily.
Write for actors you personally know.
Use costumes you have.
Use equipment you have or can rent cheaply.
Buy your crafty at Cosco.
Save your costumes in case you need to shoot pickups.
Josh’s one day plus pickups shoot cost him $4,343.06 and he kindly shows the full breakdown.
My take: Thanks for sharing, Josh! One thing to note is that post-production actually cost more than double production. Oh, and nice short too!
“Why is STS (speech to speech) different from TTS (text to speech)?
The difference between the two is significant. A few important limitations text to speech has:
In most cases, TTS provides non-natural, robotic emotions. AI doesn’t know where to take emotions from, so it tries to generate them based on the text alone.Very limited control over emotions. Some TTS can make the converted voice sound sad or excited using text annotation. But it is hard to manually encode intricacies of human acting using these annotations alone.
Words only. TTS are based on dictionaries. Unknown words and abbreviations pose a significant problem. Natural speech contains lots of non-verbal content as well. TTS struggles to render that.
Most TTS systems face challenges with low-resource languages due to higher data requirements.
The Respeecher voice cloning system works solely in the acoustic domain. We convey all the emotions and sounds of the source speaker while converting their timbre and other subtle variations into the target speaker.“
They even have a program for Small Creators and will accept pitches from interesting projects.
Here’s a glimpse of their online interface:
My take: well, that’s it. Along with deep fakes, now you can’t trust anything you hear either. I guess that leaves “real life” as the one thing you can trust — most of the time, that is. Maybe we are living in a simulation after all….
“The most concise and well constructed version of this came from the book “Hero Within” by a person named Carol S. Pearson…. She was a psychologist who wrote a self-help book with the idea, and the hero within I think it’s like six archetypes we live by. Her idea was that you can define yourself by one of these six archetypes which was like warrior, wanderer, orphan, martyr, innocent, magician, there we go I actually got them all.”
Jeffrey is big on the number four. To him, every film answers four questions, in four acts:
My take: fascinating! As someone very curious about storytelling, I love all the various theories on structure and the various rules and edits around screenwriting. Oh yeah, he also says there should be 44 plot points.
“These strategic priorities are guided by Telefilm’s determination to provide a public service that reflects Canada in all its diversity. To this end, Telefilm will introduce nine initiatives in the coming months.”
The nine initiatives are:
Evolve our funding allocation approach by delivering a continuum of success for filmmakers, by increasing access for underrepresented groups and by enabling eco-responsible productions.
Act as a partner and ally on equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI), and eco-responsibility by adopting an evidence-based approach to our funding and corporate decisions.
Promote Canada’s unique creative voices and initiatives that set the example for a sustainable and inclusive screen-based industry.
Empower Telefilm’s teams and encourage internal growth and development.
Streamline our programs and processes to avoid red tape, ensure a simplified workflow, improve our services, and consolidate our partnership with the Canada Media Fund.
Develop and maintain user-friendly tools and systems that optimize data management.
Build on the trust achieved with the government to solidify the increase in our funding.
Develop relationships with public and private partners to create synergy and attract additional sources of funding.
Attract donations for the Talent Fund.
In the “Performance Indicators” section, Telefilm proposes to invest in:
34 Projects with production budgets greater than $3.5 million (61% of funds)
38 Projects with production budgets of less than $3.5 million (28% of funds)
27 Theatrical Documentaries (6% of funds)
15 Talent to Watch micro-budget features (4% of funds)
Telefilm also commits to:
50% gender parity for women in the role of Producer, Director, Writer
At least 16 projects with “a Black or people of colour” key creative
“Getting your film SEEN in the Age of YouTube is a different game. Your title and thumbnail have a huge effect in how many people will watch your movie. Give your short film or feature its best shot by optimizing your title and thumbnail and planning ahead.”
The Title should be:
meaningful for your film,
unique,
catchy,
grammatically simple,
seo-able, and
have an available domain name.
He admires the way Omeleto titles their films: Logline sentence. | Film Title
He also thinks getting the genre into the title helps.
The Thumbnail should be:
a compelling image that’s going to get people interested,
most likely a frame-grabbed close up of the main character,
but why not get some dedicated stills on set?
My take: This stuff can’t be an afterthought. In fact, I think that after the film title, the film logo and one central image can really help you fine tune the script, narrow the audience and solidify the entertainment promise (probably because I worked as a graphic designer for many years.) Oh, as to the title, you might as well choose from the beginning of the alphabet rather than the bottom half.
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