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.

Arts Innovation Deadline: November 30, 2012

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Got an idea about engaging audiences in new and innovative ways?

The submission deadline for the Arts Innovation Fund, a partnership between BC Film + Media and the BC Arts Council, is November 30, 2012. The goal is to encourage arts and culture organizations to collaborate with digital media creators to better engage audiences.

“The funding is a non-recoupable advance of up to $25,000 and does not require matching funding or market support to trigger eligibility.”

BC Film + Media is administering the program. See the details.

Telefilm’s policies under fire

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Telefilm Canada’s Success Index (60% box office, 30% cultural significance and 10% private investment) may be reducing the number of production companies able to secure development funding for new projects.

Groups of filmmakers are now complaining that only senior producers can qualify.

See the National Post article.

My take: Stop chasing elusive government funding and come up with new ways to finance your (albeit cheaper) films. It won’t be long before the whole regime is toppled as catering to special interests and all of Telefilm’s money goes to the CMF for televison.

Winnipeg Film Group relaxes Telefilm Microbudget membership requirement

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The Winnipeg Film Group has extended its deadline for its upcoming Telefilm Microbudget Recommendation Submission to November 28, 2012.

More importantly, it has relaxed the co-op membership requirement so that members who joined more than three years ago can now apply:

“Telefilm has the following criteria for eligible applicants:
Be a recent member of the WFG’s production centre (max 3 years)
* there is now flexibility in this requirement, so long as the other eligibility requirements are met….”

No word as to whether other Telefilm partners are relaxing this requirement as well.

See all the WFG details here.