Author Archives: Michael Korican

About Michael Korican

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.

10 Things to Never Say to a Filmmaker

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It’s an old post, but I recently stumbled upon The Blue Streak‘s 10 Things to Never Say to a Filmmaker.

Gwydhar Gebien lists and discusses:

  1. Oh, you’re an independent filmmaker.
  2. So what’s your favorite movie?
  3. What do you mean you’ve never heard of (name of filmmaker)?
  4. Can you really call yourself a filmmaker when you just shoot digitally?
  5. Everyone is a filmmaker these days.
  6. But what’s your real job?
  7. You should start a YouTube channel!
  8. Why not just make a video and post it online and make it go viral?
  9. Hey my [kid/niece/nephew/neighbor] is a filmmaker…
  10. So when are you going to Cannes/Sundance/Tribecca/SXSW?

My favourite is Number 4: can you be a filmmaker if you shoot digital? As if you have a choice.

My take: too funny! See also, 24 Of The Worst Things You Can Say To A Writer.

Lytro reveals revolutionary studio camera

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Although you’ll never be able to afford one, Lytro introduced its Lytro Cinema Camera at NAB on April 19, 2016.

This is a huge studio camera with a foot-and-a-half-wide lens tethered to its own server farm. It captures “755 RAW Megapixels” at 300 fps in up to 16 stops of dynamic range.

That’s about 15 times more resolution than a full-frame DSLR at 50MP.

It doesn’t actually record images though. It captures the “light field” — the lightscape of reflected light rays in front of the lens. Behind the front lens, an array of microlenses allows Lytro to “capture a light field, compute the ray angles and then replicate that light field in a virtual space.”

In other words, this camera captures a virtual hologram of the scene in front of it.

With this computational model, Lytro can, after capture, i.e. “in post”:

  • refocus and change depth of field
  • adjust frame rate and shutter angle
  • pull a key based on depth and not green screen
  • stabilize camera movement based on actual movement in space
  • natively create 3D footage from one shot
  • as a DI, output optimal deliverables for any format

Watch the No Film School interview and video.

My take: With its Cinema Camera, Lytro has displaced image capture with lightscape hologram capture. If I was a Hollywood producer, I’d use this camera on 3D shoots and to simplify keys for composite work. And — to fix those pesky out-of-focus shots. But wait! There’s more! They’re also promising a Light Field VR Camera called Lytro Immerge.

Is the Internet making it easier to tell stories? Or harder?

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Scott Beggs of FilmSchoolRejects recently wrote an interesting piece about storytelling in our digital age.

In it he holds:

“Going behind the scenes has become the scene. Trailers have become the true first act of any movie. Casting announcements introduce us to characters now.”

Our digital age means almost all information is at hand, which implies, “We’re now fully an anti-shock culture.”

He goes on to discuss Batman v Superman and — spoiler alert — the Man of Steel’s demise. Apparently director Christopher Nolan wanted to hold on the casket shot and then cut to the credits, without any dirt floating up, the idea being to leave the audience thinking he’s gone, bit the dirt, so to speak. (Disclosure — I have not seen this film.)

Scott then points out that actor Henry Cavill has been announced for The Justice League (2017) — thereby resurrecting the Last Son of Krypton.

My take: I think this is can only be true. The sheer amount of information and the myriad ways we have available to access it mean we can’t help but be exposed to official and fan-provided media around any project. In the past, only big companies could feed us a steady diet of advertising and PR — now we gorge non-stop at the Information Super-Highway All-You-Can-Eat Buffet. See also, Scott’s post on Every Movie is a TV Show is a Book is a Broadway Play is a Video Game. More and more, a Producer’s job is to manage IP rights and not necessarily just to produce a feature or a TV show.

Script analysis proves women are underrepresented

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Hanah Anderson and Matt Daniels of Polygraph recently analyzed over 2,000 screenplays to research gender trends in Hollywood movies.

They state:

“We compiled the number of words spoken by male and female characters across roughly 2,000 films, arguably the largest undertaking of script analysis, ever.”

Their conclusion:

“Across thousands of films in our dataset, it was hard to find a subset that didn’t over-index male. Even romantic comedies have dialogue that is, on average, 58% male.”

Other takeaways:

  • Only 22% of the films featured female leads.
  • 38% of dialogue spoken by women is by women 22-31 years old.
  • 39% of dialogue spoken by men is by men 42-65 years old.

My take: kudos to the team for doing this analysis — it confirms what we already knew. I particularly like their interactive charts! For more data on Hollywood, see this.

Avi Delivers!

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Within the next week, Avi Federgreen and IndieCan will unspool five new Canadian feature films in theatres in Toronto, Vancouver, Saskatoon, Regina, Halifax and Moncton.

The films are:

They are some of the results of Federgreen’s IndieCan10K project. Along with executive producers in each province, Avi mentored emerging filmmakers as they created their first features — as long as they kept the budgets under $10,000.

As quoted on First Weekend Club, Federgreen says:

“I believe initiatives like INDIECAN10K are imperative to the success and survival of the Canadian film industry, which is facing increasingly difficult parameters for young filmmakers. We need to encourage emerging filmmakers in Canada to get out there and make their first feature, and we need to show them they can make a great film for a very low budget. The filmmakers that participated in the INDIECAN10K initiative are all amazing, passionate and creative people who deserved a chance to make their first feature and I think they all deserve all the success in the world not only for their INDIECAN10K films but their next films moving forward. I am super proud of all of them!”

My take: Telefilm take note! I love your microbudget initiative, but I firmly believe $100K is too much for first-time feature filmmakers. Ingrid Veninger ($1K) and Avi Federgreen ($10K) prove it. My modest suggestion: reserve the $100K money for second-time feature filmmakers. I guarantee the results will warrant it — let emerging filmmakers scrape up just enough cash to make their first features and, more importantly, make all their mistakes making their first features. Their second features (if they survive to do it again) are where you want to invest.

Digital Distribution in Canada

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The excellent First Weekend Club recently posted an article by Anita Adams about Demystifying Digital Distribution in Canada.

Some takeaways:

  1. Theatrical releases can be costly and impractical, unless mandated by Telefilm or required to garner critical reviews.
  2. A better strategy is to rent a theatre where your fans are and fill it.
  3. Even better, after strong festival showings, immediately launch on VOD.

Regarding VOD aggregators, be wary. Some charge you $1,000 to work with them and then $175 per outlet, leaving the marketing up to you. Vimeo Pro lets you DIY and keep 90%. CanadaScreens seems like a great deal at $100-$250.

Other tips:

  1. Make sure you have a clean poster that works well as a thumbnail.
  2. If you don’t have a professional trailer, just use a thirty second clip from your movie.
  3. Post your trailer on your Youtube channel, but don’t monetize it.

My take: I would love to see an analysis that compares the number of titles divided by each platform’s revenues to get a very rough idea of revenue by VOD outlet.

Get a job and then give your films away

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Following up on job strategies to support your independent filmmaking habit from last week, Christian Stella writes in Filmmaker Magazine:

“I feel it is best to branch out. Hedge your bets with the stability of a career that may not be glitzy but is less cutthroat than film.”

For instance, he’s a successful food photographer and cookbook author.

This freelance career allows him the freedom to invest time into his craft. Plus, he’s able to free up his schedule for future productions.

“A flexible career outside of film may be the best foundation to assure that your films can ever get made. Most people can scrape together enough time, money, and favors to make their first film, but you’ll need stability to make the second, third, and so on.”

Stella is one half of a filmmaking duo. He and Jeremy Gardner have made two films: The Battery and Tex Montana Will Survive!. Profiting only a pittance on their first movie, they decided to try something different with their latest project.

Rather than stretch the economic life of the movie out over many years, they decided to sell it only once. On Kickstarter. For $50,000. The plan was to raise the money and then release the film for free, to the world, under Creative Commons.

“This campaign is in part an effort to address the countless messages we received from amazing film fans across the globe, who were understandably frustrated with how long it took for our previous film, The Battery, to be made available in their countries. It is also a reaction, to a very sobering—and demoralizing—reality we were made painfully aware of by the end of The Battery’s incredible journey: It is incredibly difficult to make a living as an independent filmmaker. A dramatic influx of films on the market—coupled with the rise of peer-to-peer sharing through torrent sites—has resulted in a drastic decrease in compensation for filmmakers across the board. Minimum Guarantees (MGs) are small and residuals trickle in over the course of years.”

Did they make it?

Yes! 759 backers pledged $53,889 — around $60 each (disregarding the top half dozen backers.) Watch the comedy here.

My take: I love this strategy! You make a film. You give it a realistic price. Your fans support you. You give the film to the world. This totally cuts out the friction between the creator and the audience. Gone are the middlemen and the market. (But remember to reserve the intellectual rights so you can protect your brand and do the remake. Just ask George Romero.)

Swanberg at SXSW

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At his recent SXSW Keynote, mumblecore alumnus Joe Swanberg related his approach to making money making independent movies. Summarized in forty words:

  1. Share information.
  2. Be prolific.
  3. Capitalize on festival buzz with day and date VOD releases.
  4. Own as much of your films as possible.
  5. Invest in your own projects.
  6. Sometimes no budget is better than some budget.
  7. Happiness is money too.

Regarding budgets, Joe explains:

“If you have ‘some money’, everybody is going to want some of that ‘some money.’ If you have ‘no money’, everybody knows it — and then they’re just there to work. In a best case scenario — you sell a movie and then you’re able to pay people afterwards better than you could’ve paid them if you had ‘some money.'”

Here’s what he says about taking that industry job that kills your soul:

“It’s often just not worth the money to take a shitty job on something you hate. Nobody likes a bad movie. I don’t know any scenario where a filmmaker hates the film they’re making and have that movie turn out any good. You may think that you’re taking a paycheck or making some money, but in fact you’re making the next person who wants to invest in your work less likely to do it.”

More coverage at Indiewire, No Film School and The Guardian.

By the way, Netflix has just placed an order with Swanberg for an 8-episode comedy series called Easy.

My take: I wholeheartedly agree with Joe’s thoughts on budgets. As soon as you have some real money, it’s never enough. Shoestring budgets force you to be creative and pay for critical items only (and food).

The disconnect between Hollywood prizes and profits

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There seems to be a disconnect between Hollywood’s fascination with comic book superheroes, their international box office performance, and the Oscars.

Over two dozen superhero movies will be released between now and 2020. (See the list at the end of this post.)

At the Oscars, although dystopian sci-fi ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ scooped six statues, almost all the awards went to ‘smaller’ films: ‘Spotlight’ won Best Picture and ‘The Revenant’ scored Best Director, Actor and Cinematography.

Consulting Box Office Mojo‘s 2015 international rankings, we see ‘The Revenant’ is in 16th position and ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ is in 20th. Superhero flicks ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ in 6th place and ‘Ant-Man’ in 13th have made more money.

For 2016, ‘Deadpool‘ tops this year’s take so far.  It’s currently the 10th most successful comic book adaptation, and still climbing!

See how lucrative franchises and brands are. The 65 Marvel and DC Comics movies have made over $11 billion at the international box office to date.

My take: I don’t quite understand the fascination with fantasy films. Is it simply that reality is too depressing and people want escape? Or, is it just age at work — so many more young viewers go to the movies and they prefer action pictures? Or, is the advanced average age of the Academy voters revealing their preference for dramas?

The coming comic book movies and their release dates:

‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’ March 25, 2016
‘Captain America: Civil War’ May 6, 2016
‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ May 27, 2016
‘Suicide Squad’ August 5, 2016
‘Doctor Strange’ November 4, 2016
‘Untitled LEGO Batman Movie’ February 20, 2017
‘Untitled Wolverine Movie’ March 3, 2017
‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’ May 5, 2017
‘Wonder Woman’ June 23, 2017
‘Untitled Spider-Man Reboot’ July 7, 2017
‘Untitled Fox/Marvel Film’ October 6, 2017
‘Thor: Ragnarok’ November 3, 2017
‘Untitled Fox/Marvel Film’ January 12, 2018
‘Justice League Part One’ November 17, 2017
‘Black Panther’ February 16, 2018
‘The Flash’ March 16, 2018
‘Avengers: Infinity War – Part 1’ May 4, 2018
‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ July 6, 2018
‘Untitled Fox/Marvel Film’ July 13, 2018
‘Animated Spider-Man Film’ July 20, 2018
‘Aquaman’ July 27, 2018
‘Captain Marvel’ March 8, 2019
‘Shazam’ April 5, 2019
‘Avengers: Infinity War – Part 2’ May 3, 2019
‘Justice League Part Two’ June 14, 2019
‘Inhumans’ July 12, 2019
‘Cyborg’ April 3, 2020
‘Green Lantern Corps.’ June 19, 2020
‘Gambit’ TBD

Writers & Filmmakers Green-lights Short Film Competition

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I blogged about Jonathan Krimer’s Writers & Filmmakers a year ago and now it looks like the short film competition is about to be launched.

The funding model is a crowd-sourced meritocracy: online writers select a worthy filmmaker and similarly online filmmakers select the most engaging scripts. Entry fees pay the winners for the script and to make the film.

My take: if you haven’t entered and paid yet, do it now! I will publish numbers next week — all I can say today is that there are twice as many writers as filmmakers signed up. And your odds are much, much better than originally planned.