The Canada Media Fund wants to chat with you

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The Canada Media Fund recently came to Victoria and met with a dozen people in a hotel meeting room.

The CMF picked our brains on how they’re doing and how their future direction might change.

The discussion was wide-ranging but got most traction on ‘Triggering Events’.

It was great to chat with Valerie Creighton before the presentation.

See a PDF of the deck.

See the remaining schedule.

My take: Definitely worth going to and speaking your piece. We’re talking about how to disseminate a quarter of a billion dollars of cable TV subscription money and tax dollars annually. Show up early for great access.

Enter Pitch 360 at Merging Media 2013

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You have until 5 p.m. on Monday, September 30, to enter Pitch 360 at this year’s Merging Media fourth annual conference in Vancouver.

Twelve contestants will then compete on Thursday, November 7, at the Creative BC Pitch Parlour by pitching their concepts for cross-media or transmedia projects in development. They are looking for:

“…a cross‐media property that ‘crosses­-over’ into at least one other medium e.g. a multi-platform story that extends onto more than one platform, a television series with mobile App, a webseries with a mobile game element, an e-book with an Alternate Reality Game etc.”

Up for grabs is $10,000. If you live on the right side of the tracks, you might also qualify for an additional $5,000 from Telus.

Note: you need to be based in Western Canada and there is a $75 fee if you’re chosen to pitch.

My take: of course, if you’re developing a cross-media or transmedia project, you must enter!

 

Dolby dies

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Ray Dolby, the man whose name was synonymous with noise reduction, has died.

Dolby died last Thursday in San Francisco of leukaemia. He was 80. In recent years he had also been battling Alzheimer’s disease.

I have fond memories of making backup copies of my record albums onto cassette tapes, and using the Dolby button to minimize hiss.

Dolby had many patents and became a billionaire when his company went public in 2005, forty years after its founding in 1965.

Thomas Dolby, the English new wave musician, best known for his hit ‘She Blinded Me with Science’, was not a relation but changed his last name to his nickname, one he got for his audiophile tendencies.

My take: rest in peace, Ray. In the analogue days, Dolby NR was a glimpse of better sound to come. In our digital age, tape hiss is a historical footnote, thank goodness.

Digital conversion threatens indie theatres

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On the heels of my shares on exhibition formats and DIY DCP, comes a Rolling Stone article discussing the collateral damage of digital conversion.

“The National Association of Theater Owners, the trade organization that represents exhibitors, has estimated that as many as 10,000 screens – one in every five screens in North America – could go dark because they can’t afford to convert. Among those venues most in danger are independent theaters.”

Gary Susman hints that this might actually be a Hollywood plot to lessen competition.

“Hollywood studios don’t much care about the possible demise of the independent theater. (It’s not showing their movies anyway.) Besides, the potential loss of thousands of screens will only hasten the day when Hollywood doesn’t have to deal with those pesky exhibitors anymore and can go directly toward home distribution on disc or video-on-demand, where most of a film’s money is made.”

My take: if progress is gradual and change is sudden, the demise of ‘film’ exhibition is change that we may not be able to fight. If you’ve ever had to lug two heavy ‘cans’ of 35mm film up to the projection booth at the very back of the balcony, you may not care. But I’m not in favour of this if it means a restricted number of movies.

Help shape Canadian policy on $360M of TV and New Media funding

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The Canada Media Fund (CMF) is about to launch a cross-country consultation tour.

“The CMF is a not-for-profit corporation that delivers $360.7 million in funding annually to support the Canadian television and digital media industries….”

Consultation Tour 2013 will help shape policy for the next two years and will spend time in 18 cities, towns and hamlets from coast to coast to coast from mid-September through mid-November.

Sign up here.

My take: $360M is a lot of money! Why not get yourself invited to the table?

Saul Bass: posters and title sequences

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Saul Bass is one name I remember noticing when I first got into films.

Probably because he did cool titles and his name was usually right in those titles.

Check out the first 10 and a half minutes in this documentary to see some of Saul Bass’s famous title sequences.

Saul Bass was also a graphic designer and made some very iconic posters.

He was also an Academy-awarded filmmaker. See his 1968 winning short film.

My take: when it comes to opening and closing credits, Saul Bass was a trailblazer. Have you seen any great title sequences lately?

Does your film have a clean Chain of Title?

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If you’re selling your movies already, stop reading.

If you want to make money from your films, see below.

The film business is ultimately a business. Stop thinking only about actors and directors and start thinking about accountants and producers as well. Actors and directors need good scripts, whereas accountants and producers need good products.

Yes, your sellable film is a product.

Not only does it need to be a damn fine film, it must have a “clean chain of title.” Title simply means ownership. The chain are all the creative people who’ve helped you along the way. You document their agreement and the terms of their involvement in contracts.

And there are a lot of contracts:

  • Writer Option Agreement
  • Crew Agreement
  • Actor Agreement
  • Location Release
  • Composer Agreement
  • Etc., etc., etc.

You need these agreements to get Errors and Omissions insurance.

Why do you need E&O insurance?

Distributors and television outlets want to know that they’re not going to get sued when they show your film.

Want to know more? Want free resources about Chain of Title? See Jordan Clark’s Chain of Title campaign on Indiegogo.

My take: kudos to Jordan for getting this rolling. Keeping your chain of title clean is just plain smart.

Kickstarter comes to Canada!

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Leading crowd-funding platform Kickstarter is coming to Canada.

They say new projects will go live on September 9, 2013.

It’s taken three years but it looks like Canadian filmmakers and other creative folk have no more excuses. It used to be that you needed a bank account and address in the States to list on Kickstarter. Now Canada joins the US and the UK.

Need help with your campaign? See Kickstarter and crowd-funding advice from someone who work(s/ed) for one of their competitors.

My take: sure you can raise funds on Kickstarter but more valuable is the audience you’re building. In a sense, you’re pre-selling your film to hundreds, maybe thousands, of viewers. Just remember to budget enough time!

DIY DCP

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If, after reading last week’s post about exhibition formats, you really want a DCP but lack the budget to get one professionally made, you’re in luck.

Danny Lacey has created a tutorial for OpenDCP, open software to create Digital Cinema Packages.

Danny says,

I’ll tell you what, this is going to open a lot of doors for Indie film makers too, I believe it’s going to be incredibly helpful for those going down the self distribution route. It’s quite simply chopping down the prices and expense of delivering your movie.

The 27-minute video has all the details but in a nutshell:

  1. Export your film as a 16-bit TIFF sequence.
  2. Use free, open source DCP software to convert the TIFF sequence into JPEG 2000
  3. The DCP software then wraps the video (JPEG2000) and audio (WAV) in to MXF files.
  4. The final stage is creating the DCP which generates 6 files that will be recognised by a DCP server.

My take: well worth the watch!

Exhibition Formats 2013

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You’ve written a killer script.

You’ve cast an excellent cast.

You’re shooting with an HD camera.

But have you planned out your full workflow? For instance, how are you going to show your film to your audience?

If your answer is, “On the Internet,” then carry on and use whatever compression format Youtube or Vimeo recommends.

However, if your answer is, “In theatres and at film festivals,” carry on reading.

Keep your digital intermediate (your DI) at a sufficiently high quality so that you don’t sacrifice anything as you edit.

When it’s time to deliver for exhibition, things can get tricky fast. Do you need a DCP? Can you get by with one Blu-ray disk?

Luckily, The Independent’s Guide to Film Exhibition & Delivery 2013 has is all figured out.

Their conclusion:

“Given the volatility of the current delivery landscape, it may be actually best to NOT commit to any particular exhibition format, and instead finish your film in a digital (hard-drive) format that you can keep as a master at a trusted lab for future needs down the road. It is advisable to have your film in the most flexible format possible, until you are forced by circumstance to deliver a specific format for a specific purpose. The most flexible and useful format to initiate most exhibition/delivery formats at the moment is the Apple ProRes 422 digital file.”

My take: Well worth the read, if only for the assertion that, “DCPs were invented to put independents out of business.”