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.
The third instalment in the ensemble mystery franchise featuring Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc will screen in selected theatres globally for 14 days starting November 26 before streaming on Netflix on December 12, 2025.
In 2022, “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” played in 600 cinemas for one week one month before streaming.
My take: kudos to Rian Johnson for putting this in his Netflix contract. Could this become their new norm, after Netflix’s success with its two-day KPop Demon Hunter theatrical release?
He says people spend too much and don’t cast recognizable actors.
And, “A lot of people would be shocked if they saw the real numbers.”
But he also says:
“I encourage people not to just make short films, but to make features because if you can make a short, I think you can make a feature, because you’re almost there. It’s a little bit more money, but a feature is much better; it has some marketability.”
Zac’s company, Lucky 27, provides Financing & Distribution Strategy, Producer’s Representation, Negotiation and Deal-Making and Marketing and Promotion services.
My take: having made over 60 short films, I totally agree. There is no money to be made making shorts. Features, technically, have a market. Of course, what’s distinctly missing here is what the market is looking for, how to attract those known actors and how to raise the money. Guess that’s where the consulting services come in.
My take: this is a perfect example of what I call Niche Concentration — in this case, Animation (a niche) multiplied by K-pop (a second niche) multiplied by Musical (a third niche.) You’d think that the audience would diminish each time you add a niche, but there seems to be an inverse effect as the concept becomes increasingly concentrated.
KPop Demon Hunters was largely animated by Sony Pictures Imageworks in their Vancouver and Montreal studios.
The film has tax credit money from Quebec, British Columbia and Canada — see the end credits.
Note there will be a KPop Demon Hunters Sing-Along limited theatrical event for one weekend only in the US and Canada on August 23 and 24. See SingKPopDemonHunters.com for more.
My take: kudos to Netflix for bankrolling this production.
“To resolve distribution issues in a sustainable manner, it is essential to tackle the structural problems throughout the entire value chain, both upstream and downstream of distribution.“
My take: this is a fascinating, if depressing, report on the state of film distribution in Canada. The best part, in my estimation, is the exhaustive list of (almost) every distributor in Canada, found in Appendix A on Page 25.
“You cannot compare street food to Michelin. Is Michelin food going to take over street food? No, not a chance. But there is an appetite for street food. There is an appetite for Michelin dishes.”
But she forecasts:
“People keep saying, you know, ‘TV is dying.’ It’s not dying. It’s just moving to the verticals, moving to the fragmented viewing. So if people move, you have to move with them, otherwise you’ll be eliminated.”
My take: You could say that TikTok forced Meta to introduce Reels to Facebook and Instagram, and Google to introduce Shorts to YouTube. Does that mean the Chinese love of microdramas is guaranteed to play out in North America too? I hope not. (I did like six-second Vines though.)
“This new feature can turn you into literally any character you can imagine. We are talking about advanced motion capture now with full body face and hands tracking. Act-Two is an AI human hybrid performance acting tool. It’s full scene transformation powered by your acting and a single image. No green screen, no fancy setup, just a video of you and the one image or video clip to guide the look. It transforms you into any character, even nonhuman.”
Act-Two requires a Standard plan or higher ($15/month.)
“Prompt: Cinematic shot of a chimpanzee sitting in contemplative stillness, its fingers types on a retro typewriter. Soft, diffused lighting highlights the rich textures of its fur and the intricate details of its face. Shadows fall dramatically across the dimly lit room, creating a cinematic and moody atmosphere. Captured with a shallow depth of field using warm, sharp 35mm film aesthetics. Moody low angle looking up at a close hairy chimpanzee hands raised looking at a typewriter, out of focus lunar landscape in the background dark space. Bark sky, dark void, black void, minimalist masterful, shot on 35mm, low angle, close up, black background, stark black backdrop, darkness of space on the moon valley, hyper realistic, details, cinema, rocky cracks craters dusty surface of the moon, atmospheric hazy atmosphere, out of focus lunar surface, haze, space.”
Pricing is not cheap at $14.99 for 10 videos. (Curiously, the middle tier is the best value at $1.40 per video.)
My take: Finally, a company working from inside Hollywood and not just another one approaching AiGV as a technical challenge. Moonvalley seems to be our best hope yet for valuable tools that filmmakers might use to improve their projects.
For consistent characters in Flow, use “ingredients”. According to Google:
“An ingredient is a consistent visual element — a character, an object or a stylistic reference — that you can create from a text-to-image prompt with the help of Imagen or by uploading an image. You can add up to three ingredients per prompt by selecting “Ingredients to Video” and then generating or uploading the desired images.”
You should be able to add your two main characters this way, and keep them consistent with Ingredients to Video.
Another way to generate a new clip with the same character is to Jump To it. According to Google:
“Transition a character or object to a completely new setting while preserving their appearance from the previous shot. It’s like teleporting your subject, saving you from recreating them for a new scene.”
In general, you’re going to want to be very specific when prompting Veo for video. From Google:
“Consider these elements when crafting your prompt:
Subject and action: Clearly identify your characters or objects and describe their movements.
Composition and camera motion: Frame your shot with terms like “wide shot” or “close-up,” and direct the camera with instructions like “tracking shot” or “aerial view.”
Location and lighting: Don’t just name a place; paint a picture. The lighting and environment set the entire mood. Instead of “a room,” try describing “a dusty attic filled with forgotten treasures, a single beam of afternoon light cutting through a grimy window.”
Alternative styles: Flow is not limited to realistic visual styles. You can explore a wide array of animation styles to match your story’s tone. Experiment with prompts that specify aesthetics like “stop motion,” “knitted animation” or “clay animation.”
Audio and dialogue: While still an experimental feature, you can generate audio with your video by selecting Veo 3 in the model picker. You can then prompt the model to create ambient noise, specific sound effects, or even generate dialogue by including it in your prompt, optionally specifying details like tone, emotion, or accents. Note that speech is less likely to be generated if the requested dialogue doesn’t fit in the 8-second clip, or if it involves minors.
You can use Gemini to refine prompts, expand on an idea or be a brainstorming companion. Here’s a Gemini prompt to get you started:
“You are the world’s most intuitive visual communicator and expert prompt engineer. You possess a deep understanding of cinematic language, narrative structure, emotional resonance, the critical concept of filmic coverage and the specific capabilities of Google’s Veo AI model. Your mission is to transform my conceptual ideas into meticulously crafted, narrative-style text-to-video prompts that are visually breathtaking and technically precise for Veo.”
If you’re using Gemini to help generate multiple clips that have scene consistency, you’ll need to explicitly tell Gemini to repeat all essential details from prior prompts.”
My take: cheeky, prompting us to use Gemini to create prompts for Veo. Bit of a house of mirrors, no?
