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.

Sacha Baron Cohen leaves Freddie Mercury biopic

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I have a soft spot for Sacha Baron Cohen.

I think he’s brilliant; especially in his mockumentary work, like ‘Ali G Indahouse’, ‘Borat’ and ‘Bruno’. ‘The Dictator’ was so-so. But his acting in ‘Talladega Nights’ and ‘Hugo’ hint at his dramatic range.

So I was quite happy to hear he was cast as Queen frontman Freddie Mercury.

Now comes sad news that Cohen has dropped out. Apparently, the band wants a ‘family-friendly’ film, whereas he wanted ‘a gritty R-rated tell-all’.

I’m with Sacha Baron Cohen on this one.

Why not shoot two films at the same time? One could be the public-facing, successful singer story with lots of music. The other could be the private man, his sexuality and his decline with AIDS. One PG, the other R-rated. And Sacha Baron Cohen can star in both!

My take: I’m available to write and direct. I still remember when ‘Killer Queen’ came out on the radio and how electric and different it sounded; I think it might have been the first time I heard flanging.

Infographic: The History of Film

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From HistoryShots comes this fantastic infographic of 2,000 films from the last 100 years categorized into 20 genres.

“Films are organized by genre represented by streams that grow and shrink over time. The starting point is the early 1900s when the first feature-length films were released in the drama genre. The number and sizes of streams quickly grow as filmmakers expand their creativity by moving into such genres as action/adventure, westerns, war and comedy.”

How did they choose 2,000 films from approximately 60,000? These were the criteria:

  • Critical acclaim
  • Was it a key film
  • Awards
  • Box office success

Click on the infographic to zoom in.

My take: this is a fascinating visualization of the history of feature films and their genres over the last century.

Google Glass: everyone is a cinematographer now

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According to VentureBeat, the first arrest has been witnessed by Google Glass.

Documentary filmmaker Chris Barrett glassed it in Atlantic City on July 4.

“I picked up my Google Glass explorer edition last week. I wanted to test Glass out, so I filmed some fireworks, getting a very cool first-person perspective. About 10 minutes after the fireworks, we were walking back to our car, and I just decided to try it out on the boardwalk.”

Watch the footage.

My take: welcome to the voyeur world, where everyone is a cinematographer. Right now, the public is unaware and continues to “act natural”. But will behaviour change? Has it changed with CCTV and cellphone video? Very soon, documentaries will look very different when everyone has their own Glass. Editing may be replaced with web-based crowd-sourced Glass-fueled media streams, like Switchcam.

Hyperaudio Pad: cut and paste transcript video editing

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One of the problems with digital film is that it’s too damn easy to just shoot and shoot and shoot.

Great! But then, when it’s time to edit, you’re faced with hours and hours and hours of footage.

Just logging it can take days.

A new technology promises to revolutionize this and more: Hyperaudio Pad.

Twenty-two final round winners in the Mozilla Ignite Challenge were just announced. One of them is Hyperaudio Pad by Mark Boas et al.

The creators think they’ve built a language learning tool. I think it’s a whole new way to edit video.

What’s so cool about it?

  • It transcribes footage and automatically makes transcripts.
  • You can cut and paste the words to create visual sequences.

See the web page and the pitch video.

Most importantly, see the application they made for Al Jazeera English. Search for ‘nuclear’ and then click on each of the 35 tiny red and blue squares.

My take: imagine letting Hyperaudio Pad loose on your footage. How great would your next documentary be?

Note: AVID has something similar called ScriptSync.

Proof that movie trailers are getting faster

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Whether or not movie trailers give away too much, or that they’re too long, it does seem that they’re getting faster.

Wired.com has plotted the number of cuts per minute in over 150 trailers and the upward trend is undeniable, from  slightly more than 10 in the Fifties to almost 40 cuts per minute today. In other words, shot length has fallen from 5 seconds to approximately 1.5 seconds.

They suggest technology is to blame. Or decreased attention spans. Or both.

And yet the trailer for 1963’s Dr. Strangelove has 136 cuts per minute, or an average shot length of under half a second.

See the chart with links to each trailer.

My take: I think, when it comes to trailers, the shorter, the better. I despise trailers that contain spoilers and cheat audiences out of satisfying plot points or even endings.

Bonus: 15 Overused Movie Poster Themes

Lucas and Spielberg predict the future is on the Internet

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At a recent panel at the University of Southern California’s Interactive Media Department, George Lucas (Star Wars) and Steven Spielberg (Indiana Jones) said they believe “Internet-based services may become the dominant medium when movie-going as we know it crashes and burns.”

They cite two main reasons: viewers’s lack of time and the vast number of entertainment choices they face.

Lucas sees opportunity in today’s market: “All you need is a million people, which in the aggregate of the world is not very many people. And you can actually make a living at this. Where before you couldn’t.”

Spielberg believes the multiplex will change: “There’s going to be a price variance. You’re going to have to pay $25 to see the next Iron Man. And you’re probably only going to have to pay $7 to see Lincoln.”

Lucas thinks the mediascape is changing:

“Now is the best time we can possibly have. It’s a mess. It’s total chaos. But out of that chaos will come some really amazing things. And right now there are amazing opportunities for young people coming into the industry to say, ‘Hey, I think I’m going to do this and there’s nobody to stop me.’ It’s because all the gatekeepers have been killed!”

See more coverage on The Verge.

My take: I realized awhile ago that movie theatres were destined to become the ‘Opera’ of our era. As an alternative to your devices and your home theatre, going out to the movies might even be seen as an ‘elitist’ activity one day.

‘Additional Funding Guide for Documentary Film’ released

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The Canada Media Fund has released the second edition of the 170-page Additional Funding Guide for Documentary Film.

“…a practical tool enabling Canadian and European producers and filmmakers to identify the different resources available for their own productions or co-productions: private funds dedicated to audiovisual content, including broadcaster funds, awards, grants, financial guidance and calls for projects by festivals, independent production cooperatives, provincial arts councils, crowd-funding platforms, help with distribution, marketing and audience development….”

Download the free PDF.

My take: If you make docs, get this! You can’t argue with the price. Just don’t take all the info as gospel; I found numerous errors glancing through.

Harold Greenberg supports features with calling card shorts

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Astral’s Harold Greenberg Fund has got the right idea.

Their Shorts-to-Features program will fund three short films for $30K AND chip in another $10K to take the feature script to the next draft.

In other words, they’re condensing the “shorts are a stepping stone to features” journey into ONE project. Brilliant!

“An initiative of Astral’s Harold Greenberg Fund in association with Movie Central, and The Movie Network, the Shorts-to-Features program is designed to greenlight and finance the production of short films, in the amount of $30,000 each, from emerging Canadian filmmakers to use as a calling card for a feature film currently in development.”

The deadline is Wednesday, June 5, 2013 at midnight.

My take: If you have a feature script ready to go, for sure, apply!

Money for music videos

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Public Records and Telus are doling out an unspecified number of grants to BC and Alberta filmmakers to produce music videos of local artists for Optik TV.

“We’re giving away music video grants to artists in BC and Alberta. Each grant is worth up to $5,000. To be eligible for a grant you must be either a musician or a filmmaker. Grants will be awarded to collaborations between a musician (artist or band) and a filmmaker (individual or crew). Winners will receive funding to produce a music video.”

Optik Local supports Community Access Programming in the areas which it serves in BC and Alberta: Metro Vancouver (including Whistler), Victoria, Nanaimo, Prince George, Kelowna, Vernon, Calgary, Edmonton, Red Deer, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Fort McMurray, Grande Prairie, Penticton and Kamloops.

Grant applications open on May 31st and close on June 14th. The winners will be announced on June 21st and final music videos must be submitted by August 7th. See the full rules.

My take: music videos are fun! I’ll be collaborating with my favourite musician and renting gear from CineVic in Victoria.

Hope for a sustainable filmmaking future

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Ted Hope has 16 Recommendations For Filmmakers To Discover Best Practices For A Sustainable Creative Life….

I highly recommend a close reading. In the meantime, here are the bullets:

  1. Focus on developing Entrepreneurial Skills as well as the creative.
  2. The great challenge is no longer how to get your film made or funded, but how to get people to watch it.
  3. Aggregate audience.
  4. Start figuring out how your audience uses your work.
  5. Transition your passive audience to an active engaged participatory community.
  6. Platforms are for the many.
  7. Be more prolific and ubiquitous.
  8. You need others to be authentically incentivized to share and promote your work.
  9. Shift our focus from a single product business to one of an ongoing relationship.
  10. The film biz lacks a way for the passionate fan to demonstrate their appreciation of a work.
  11. [With] the end of feature film dominance… we can create an infinite variety of storyworld extensions, discovery nodes, and engagement forums.
  12. Learn to strategize, schedule, budget, and predict revenues for the entire life cycle of your film.
  13. Embrace rapid prototyping with multiple iterations.
  14. Fail twice as much. Experiment.
  15. Gather & share data.  Embrace transparency and an “Open Source” attitude to all you do.
  16. The work you create moves us closer to the world you aspire to.

This is deep stuff and makes the filmmaker’s job so much harder. Making a movie is hard enough with pre-production, production and post-production but now consider all the other aspects Ted mentions. Choose your projects wisely, as they now demand much more from you!

My take: I can’t help but think of Franchises and how well they do on Ted’s paradigm. See what I mean at The Numbers.