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.

Support Canadian Film? Wanna make $7,500?

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The Canadian Film Centre has announced the latest incarnation of The REEL Challenge Contest:  Celebrating the Movie and Television Industry at Work: Behind the Scenes.

Make a sixty second (or less) short or PSA, upload it and get a chance to win.

Up for grabs are two prizes of $7500 each, in the categories of the most innovative and dynamic animation or comedy.

The deadline is February 15, 2013.

My take: If you have a killer concept, go for it! I predict less than 100 entries in each category, so your odds are good! Remember, there will be less animations than comedies.

Seed&Spark: an innovative take on crowdfunding, audience building and dissemination

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Those New Yorkers continue to innovate!

Seed&Spark has put a couple of twists on crowd funding:

  1. Rather than pitching for a sum of money, they ask filmmakers to create a ‘gift registry’ of the things they need to make their movie; and then patrons can give cash OR lend the items.
  2. You get green lit at 80% of your goal.

This is a cool idea for towns that might be resource-rich but cash-poor. It also might get people more ‘invested’ in your project, helping to build your audience. They say:

“We started Seed&Spark because we want to make films but we wanted a healthier environment in which to make them. We believe that the art of storytelling is about expanding imagination, shining a light on the world inside and deepening empathy for the world outside. In the current political and economic climate where many consider the arts a luxury, we believe artists are responsible for teaching their audiences why they are essential. Films are not just art, they are business ventures. They require the seed of an idea and the sparks of human and capital investments to bring them to life.”

Seed&Spark is also an online film streaming site. Earn between 20 and 80 cents for each view of your short, three times that for features.

Between now and February 15, 2013, they’re selecting the next dozen projects to launch on the site.

See their video; read their guidelines.

My take: I love the concept and the curated aspect to this. It’s film specific which differentiates it from every other crowdfunding platform out there. The challenge will be to scale it up. The lending option seems to keep it local; can this work for projects in other cities or countries?

NYC Indies Adopt Tech Accelerator Model

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Hot on the heels of CineCoup in Vancouver, Dogfish Pictures in New York has announced the Dogfish Accelerator.

Both groups plan to use the successful tech business accelerator model to attract, mentor and launch indie film teams (and their projects). Whereas CineCoup will do this publicly using social media, the Dogfish Accelerator will stick to the tech model more closely.

Scheduled for this summer in Brooklyn, the Dogfish Accelerator will seed each company with $18,000, give them office space and mentor them for three months. They say:

“We will choose great producers who are proposing innovative opportunities and business ideas that support a highly creative and artistic idea. It’s about the team.”

C’mon, what’s the catch?

“For once, there is no catch. We want a healthier industry for indie film and this is our way to do it. Dogfish Accelerator and its mentors, service providers, and partners are all people who enjoy helping indie film. We recognize how important support is for one another and are willing to give our time and effort to you.”

My take: if you’re developing a film project and you’ve got a place to crash in New York for three months this summer, you should go for this!

Best Canadian Film is Now Worth $100K

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Congratulations to Sarah Polley for winning the Toronto Film Critics Association’s 2012 Rogers Best Canadian Film Award.

The award comes with $100,000, making it by my estimation Canada’s riches post-release prize.

The TFCA is a group of about 40 film writers. The award used to be $15,000 but Rogers Communications has recently upped the ante.

Polley won with Stories We Tell, a personal documentary, and also won in 2006 with her debut feature Away From Her.

My take: all the more reason to make excellent movies in Canada. $100K is not bad profit for any Canadian film. Second and third place get $5,000 as well.

More details here.

100 Million Dollars Crowdfunded to Indie Film

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In cased you missed it, Kickstarter has announced that over the last three years people have pledged over $100,000,000 to independent films on their platform.

60% of that in 2012!

I found the stats on the 8,600 successful film projects very interesting. 72% raised less than $10,000 and only 8% raised more than $100K.

Nevertheless, over 85% of film projects that raised more than 20% of their goal were successful.

See Kickstarter’s announcement.

My take: crowdfunding must be an integral component of most if not all independent films, whether to raise funds, build an audience or both.

Interactive media as ‘sidebars’ to linear stories

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I came across an interesting post today by Andrew DeVigal, who works at the New York Times, among other places.

He quotes an Indian saying about education:

“Tell me, and I will forget.
Show me, and I may remember.
Involve me, and I will understand.”

He goes on to illustrate how the Times uses photos, graphics, videos and other media to augment their linear stories.

I particularly liked the conclusion of his piece. He envisions engagement and social media, mobile, physical spaces and games augmenting narratives:

“These sidebars are less about the story form and presentation/design and more about the experience and narrative flow. Imagine a written story or a video script written specifically to engage the reader/viewer in an interactive sidebar, or a sidebar that encourages a user to take a quiz, engage with an interactive graphic or offer their thoughts on Twitter or Facebook… or giving a reader/viewer a chance to go to a physical space and experience the story through an augmented reality presentation.”

The picture tells the story.

4K consumer TVs are here; bring cash

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Well, when I say ‘consumer’ I mean your very, very rich uncle. And you might need a wheelbarrow for all that cash.

Sony has unveiled a $25K television that has four times the resolution of your measly Full HD 1080 flat-screen TV.

The XBR-84X900 4K Ultra HD TV has a native resolution of 3,840 x 2,160 pixels packed into an 84 inch screen. There is virtually no dot crawl! Sony says:

“Sony is a leader in 4K digital cinematography and projection. As of June 2012, there were over 13,000 Sony 4K digital cinema theaters — nearly 75% of all 4K theaters worldwide use Sony 4K digital cinema projectors. And now Sony brings the full 4K digital experience into the home with stunning picture quality, whether you’re watching native 4K video or low-resolution smartphone clips. The newly-developed XCA8-4K chip upscales HD (or lower resolution) images by analyzing and refining images from all sources. Everything you see is restored with beautiful, natural detail, richer color and stunning contrast. The latest Reality Creation database and Super Resolution processing breathes new life into everything you see with phenomenal 4K (3,840 x 2,160) resolution.”

See Sony’s information or visit Atlas Audio Visual in Victoria to see the only model on display in Canada.

CMF to fund Pre-Development

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The Canada Media Fund has earmarked $1 million for the new English Regional Pre-Development Fund.

“The English Regional Pre-Development Program, designed in consultation industry stakeholders, is intended to support producers in their preparation of documents to present to broadcasters at the early stages of development.  In addition to this new program, the CMF has also changed its regional definition in development to include Vancouver as a region.”

This first-come, first-served fund opens on Thursday, December 13.

The details are buried in the Development Program Guidelines 2012-2013.

Even film festivals need to re-invent themselves

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Recently at the International Film Festival Summit in Austin, San Francisco Film Society Executive Director Ted Hope questioned the legitimacy of film festivals in a world saturated with film.

We live in the time of grand abundance of content, total access to content and rampant distraction from content. Fifty thousand feature films are generated worldwide on an annual basis. America will remain the top consumption market in the world for at least another year, and it’s thought we, at best, consume between 500-600 titles a year – basically, only 1% of the world’s supply. It will take us an entire century to look at this year’s supply of film. And next year we will still have the other 49,500 we didn’t get to this year. And yet good movies don’t get widely seen. Do we really need any new movies?

Of course, we need new movies! You might as well say we don’t need any more songs or poems or dreams.

Fifty-six years ago the San Francisco International FIlm Festival launched, the first in America. Today there are thousands. Hope continues:

Seven years ago, the biggest film festival in the world launched, offering the greatest degree of community participation and media democracy yet implemented:YouTube. Four billion videos per day are streamed. Quality may be an issue, but they filled a need we seemingly missed. Five years ago, cable VOD platforms offered 50 or so new films a month; today we get thousands. And still 27 films a week still open in NYC. San Francisco and the Bay Area now host over 80 film festivals throughout the year. How do we ensure that film festivals truly matter in this over-saturated environment of infinite options?

A very good question.

It seems film festivals are facing the same issues that plague filmmakers: how to remain relevant in a world where paradoxically standards are rising and falling at the same time and where competition is fierce and fewer and fewer make it to the top.

My take is that change is inevitable.

Old methods will hang on (with a few winners getting larger and larger). In the meantime, the vanguard of filmmakers will explore new methods of funding and distributing their work. (This might be crowd funding and theatre screenings on demand — ToD.)

And one day the remnants of the industry will catch up and formalize a new economic model.

Read Hope’s full speech.