Category Archives: Coming Soon

Kodak announces a new Super 8 camera

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At CES 2016 in Las Vegas last week, Kodak stunned the world by announcing it is making a new Super 8 camera for release this fall.

After emerging from bankruptcy two years ago, Kodak decided to go all in on film, even though film represents only 10% of its business.

Hollywood filmmakers, many who grew up shooting Super 8, convinced Kodak to bring back the narrow-gauge format.

Kodak believes Super 8 can join the Maker Movement and ride the analogue trend.

Check out the camera specs.

My take: I’m also one of the filmmakers who got their start shooting Super 8. I have two concerns with Kodak’s new camera. While the viewfinder and SD card are appreciated, what were they thinking with the microphone? Super 8 cameras are typically noisy! My other concern is with the jitter inherent in Super 8. Logmar of Denmark has solved this — but their camera costs ten times as much. What I do think is brilliant is Kodak getting back into the film processing business and combining it with film scanning. That combination is the real news here and could make more people consider shooting on Super 8. But only if your pockets are very deep or your shot list is (super) short.

Short film is dead. Long live web series!

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I have made over 40 short films.

Today, to me, making a short is like painting a picture in the park on a Sunday afternoon. Pleasant, but unchallenging.

With this in mind, I recently read an old posting by Mike Jones at No Film School.

In it he argues that the short film is dead.

“There are two ways of looking at how a Short Film serves the emerging and aspiring filmmaker. The first is as a Learning Exercise, the second is as a Calling Card.”

He then proceeds to debunk both beliefs and concludes:

“As with many long-entrenched elements of filmmaking, the tradition of the short film needs to be let go of and seen as the antiquated anomaly it is; a tool of a bygone era. A good short film can be great work of art but emerging and aspiring filmmakers need much more than a short work of art to build a career. The short-format, online, episodic webseries is the most dynamic, audience-driven, self-publicising, learning vehicle indie filmmakers (in film school or not) have ever had access to.“

My take: I’m warming up to this idea. I’ve been toying with a concept that could be realized as a dozen episodes. 2016 will be a great year for me to launch it! Stay tuned!

The improv branch of the new media tree

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Nick Fortugno, CCO & Co-Founder at Playmatics, and Lance Weiler, Director at Columbia University Digital Storytelling Lab, recently presented at Power to the Pixel, in London, England.

Nick began by reading a manifesto of sorts that concluded with:

“I stand here with the resolve that this is an amazing time to be a storyteller and we collectively hold a unique opportunity to innovate the industry we would like to see.”

They reiterated the necessity of story at the heart of innovation and then led the audience/collaborators in a story/creation of Sherlock Holmes & the Internet of Things.

The session was recorded: the pair present for the first half of the video and then launch into the simulation/group activity at 16:30.

Read about it on Hackpad.

My take: this seems to me to be an elaborate improv game. More of a parlour entertainment than a sit-back experience. I think that’s their point — the definition of media and audience is expanding.

Rooster Teeth set to deliver Lazer Team

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Rooster Teeth has announced that the world premiere for Lazer Team will be on September 24, 2015, at the Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas.

From the Fantastic Fest media release:

“Fantastic Fest will host the World Premiere of LAZER TEAM, the first feature film from web series gods Rooster Teeth. LAZER TEAM director Matt Hullum and cast members Burnie Burns, Alan Ritchson, Colton Dunn, Michael Jones, and Gavin Free will be in attendance to celebrate the highly anticipated sci-fi comedy and join Fantastic Fest’s official opening night party, presented by Rooster Teeth.”

Recall that in July 2014 this project became the third most crowd-funded film and video project on Indiegogo.com.

My take: kudos to Rooster Teeth for pulling this off. Their 37,000+ fan-funders must be giddy!

Telefilm Micro-Budget Feature Winners Announced

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Telefilm Canada has revealed the 2015 finalists of its wonderful Micro-Budget Feature Production Program.

In addition, Telefilm announced that the Talent Fund will subsidize the program. This is great news as it assures stable funding for the near future:

“The Fund has raised over $15 million to date from companies, foundations and individuals. The money will be invested over a period of seven years. Sixty percent of the Micro-Budget Production Program will be financed by the Talent Fund.”

Fifteen teams now negotiate with Telefilm for $100K+ in financing for their projects.

“This is the third annual round of projects in the Micro-Budget Production Program, which supports emerging filmmakers seeking to produce their first feature-length films, with emphasis on the use of digital platforms and developing their potential for distribution and audience engagement.”

I notice that this year most of the projects came through film schools rather than film co-ops as in the past.

Future applicants should note an innovative promotion and digital distribution plan is critical:

identify the target audience;
identify the goals for audience reach and engagement;
describe the release strategy;
identify the digital platform(s) on which the main distribution of the project will be made;
describe how the project will be promoted on the chosen platforms;
enumerate the distribution and/or promotion partners that will be pursued;
provide the budget for the promotion and distribution plan;
add any other information deemed important regarding the promotion and distribution plan

My take: this remains the best way to fund your first feature in Canada. Telefilm is rightly proud to have brought 37 features into being in the last three years.

One of the best reasons to make a short film

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Nathalie Sejean just posted a fascinating post on her excellent site, Mentorless.com titled To Short or Not to Short? 20 Filmmakers Who Successfully Transitioned from Short to Feature.

In it she lists twenty filmmakers from George Lucas (THX-1138) to Damien Chazelle (Whiplash) who graduated from shorts to features.

See the wonderful infographic.

Canadian filmmakers interested in this path should apply to Bell Media‘s Shorts-to-Features Program right away — the deadline is in two days!

My take: I think this is a good strategy. Particularly because we live in such a visually-dominant age, the more you can show of your storyverse to your potential fans and backers, the better. I lean towards reworking one or two scenes from your feature as a stand-alone short — now you’ve got a film and footage to cut into your crowd-finding pitch video.

U2 shows us the way with live mobile streaming

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First Youtube enabled anyone to post moving images to the Internet, democratizing the movies.

Now mobile streaming apps are revolutionizing live broadcasting, once the domain of television.

Having just launched within the last three months, both Meerkat and Periscope enable anyone with a smartphone to stream live video broadcasts in realtime to the world.

Meerkat (IOS and Android) wants you to first log in to Twitter. The left column lists upcoming streams, comments are on the right and the stream is featured vertically in the middle. Meerkat loves the colour yellow.

Periscope (IOS and Adroid) was purchased by Twitter shortly after Meerkat debuted. Comments are superimposed in the bottom left-hand corner, and you can show some ‘love’ with hearts that float up the right side of the vertical screen.

You can search Twitter to find live Meerkat streams or live Periscope streams.

Or, New York digital & social agency, GLOW, offers two ways to sample multiple streams:

Rock band U2 have embraced Meerkat. During the current i+e Tour, according to The Hollywood Reporter,

“The band invites an audience member onto the B stage to shoot a stripped-down number — on this night, ‘Angel of Harlem’ — to be broadcast live via the fledgling Meerkat platform. ‘This goes out across the globe — to about 150 people, until it catches on,’ Bono quipped.”

My take: I think this is truly revolutionary. The ‘airwaves’ for traditional TV broadcasters are strictly controlled by the FCC in America and the CRTC in Canada. Now, everyone with a smartphone has a ‘TV’ camera in their pocket and can begin broadcasting to the world at any time, for free! Journalism and entertainment may never be the same again. Interestingly, both apps use a mobile-friendly vertical orientation, which is decidedly uncinematic.

Deadlines for writers and filmmakers at a glance

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Time is linear, right?

Or is it more cyclical?

Taking a page from the Mayans, Jonathan Krimer of writersandfilmmakers.com has compiled three very interesting calendars.

One each for filmmakers, writers and documentary and television markets.

What sets these calendars apart from all others is that they are round. Think discs spinning, not stacks of paper blowing in the wind.

I asked Jonathan what software he uses, what conclusions we can draw, where he got his data and how often he updates:

“It’s Excel! I’m an MS Excel expert and use pretty complex charts in my day job (HR Analyst). So I just thought there might be some information gained from mapping it out visually. I did a basic Google search and found some existing templates that I then had to tweak. They were a bit of a hassle to do actually.

If you look at the writing competition chart, there is definitely a visual message there. There are definite slow months when you should be writing and writing! There are other times when everything must be submitted, so if you space out your writing year accordingly, you won’t miss the bulk of the deadlines.

To make the Film Festival Chart, I used some information from Sydney Levine whom I’ve met twice at TIFF. She also writes and does interviews for Indiewire @sydneysbuzz. She has festival circuit recommendations that I used as a guide.

I have not updated the calendars recently. I think I will update them later in the year.”

See his blog for more details. Scroll down to December 2014.

My take: I love the circular design. It makes it very easy to get the big picture and see events in relation to others. If you miss a deadline, chill, it’ll probably come around again.

Netflix at Cannes

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As reported in Variety, Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos recently outlined their strategy to break into the film business at the Cannes Film Festival, again.

Recall that Netflix upended the TV industry when it began producing its own series like “Lilyhammer,” “House of Cards” and “Orange Is the New Black.”

“Sarnados said that when Netflix launched in 1997, 90% of the content viewed on the service was movies. Now it’s only 33%, with TV series making up two-thirds of what people watch on Netflix.”

Sarandos mentioned Netflix has five or six feature projects in the works, some picked up at film festivals, some produced in-house.

Budgets range from $10 to $50 million.

Some will go straight to Neflix (like Adam Sandler’s “Ridiculous 8”) and some will be released theatrically first. He would like to see more day and date releases.

Not everyone will recall that Netflix previously operated a film acquisition and production company called Red Envelope Entertainment which it closed in 2008, in part to avoid competition with its studio partners.

My take: Netflix has the market leader’s competitive advantage. What other subscription video on demand (SVOD) platforms do people like, and actually use? Anyone got Shomi or Crave?

The Netflix Quantum Theory explained

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If you subscribe to Netflix, you’ve likely seen some strange categories suggested for your entertainment:

  • Cult Mockumentaries With a Strong Female Lead
  • Chilling Workplace Mysteries From the 1980s
  • Cerebral Mind-Bending Courtroom Fantasy Movies

While those might not be real categories, Alexis Madrigal and Ian Bogost looked into Netflix’s taxonomy and concluded they have over 75,000 different ones.

They’ve even posted a spreadsheet listing 10 sub-genre columns. The longest one, Adjectives, has almost 150 rows, everything from Absurd to Zombie.

The fascinating tale of their data hunt is detailed in The Atlantic’s How Netflix Reverse Engineered Hollywood.

‘Todd Yellin is Netflix’s VP of Product and the man responsible for the creation of Netflix’s system. Tagging all the movies was his idea…. A fascinating thing I learned from Yellin is that the underlying tagging data isn’t just used to create genres, but also to increase the level of personalization in all the movies a user is shown. So, if Netflix knows you love Action Adventure movies with high romantic ratings (on their 1-5 scale), it might show you that kind of movie, without ever saying, “Romantic Action Adventure Movies.” “We’re gonna tag how much romance is in a movie. We’re not gonna tell you how much romance is in it, but we’re gonna recommend it,” Yellin said. “You’re gonna get an action row and it may have more or less romance in it based on what we know about you.”‘

My take: I love The Atlantic’s Netflix-Genre Generator. There are three flavours: Netflix, Hollywood and Gonzo. Good for lots of chuckles — and maybe some bright ideas too!