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.
He suggests using Fal.AI to train a custom LoRA ( fal.ai/models/fal-ai/flux-lora-fast-training ) with at least 10 images of the subject. Then use this model to generate images ( fal.ai/models/fal-ai/flux-lora ) and increase their resolution using an up-res tool. Finally, you can now move on to animating them.
He details how to train a LoRA on Kling using at least eleven videos of your character. Admittedly, this pipeline is a little more involved. He also suggests FreePik as another option.
My take: basically, if you can imagine it, you can now create it.
Stephen Follows has just released The Horror Movie Report, the most comprehensive case study of the horror genre ever, with data from over 27,000 films.
The report is offered in English and Spanish and comes in two editions:
Film Fan Edition is aimed at general audiences. (£24.99)
Film Professional Edition is designed for those in the film industry and includes extra insights on profitability, and budgets, and comes with all the data as spreadsheets. (£79.99)
At over 400 pages, the report contains chapters on:
Horror Audiences
Subgenres
Script Origins
Cast
Crew
Budgets
Financials
Box Office
Profitability
Other Income
Film Festivals
Post Production
Posters and Marketing
Objectionable Content
Cultural Impact
Stephen is a leading film industry analyst known for his extensive research on film statistics; I’ve quoted his posts many times.
My take: Peter, this would make a great holiday gift for someone who aspires to produce a profitable film, no matter what the genre. The Professional Edition even comes with downloadable Excel files. Excel files!
“Canadian films earned $29.3 million in ticket sales, with a 14% market share for independent films.”
What’s misleading is that this groups both French and English-language films together, and it doesn’t use the full box office as the denominator to determine the percentage.
From the CMPA‘s Profile 2023, on page 90, Exhibit 10-6 Box office revenue and market share at theatres in Canada, by language market breaks down the cash and percentages to:
Language
Box Office
Percentage
English
$10.6 M
1.4%
French
$18.7 M
17.5%
Total
$29.3 M
3.3%
Note that this assumes a total box office of $889.4 M.
My take: another way of looking at this is that for every hour of film projected in Canadian cinemas in 2023, only two minutes were Canadian — only 84 seconds outside of Quebec. That’s just not good enough.
“The Attend platform will champion mid-range films that have largely disappeared from cinemas, as well as international films seeking release in North America, and films that typically receive limited theatrical release and could reach broader audiences through data-driven theatre selection, scheduling and marketing.”
Some features:
Filmmakers will be able to upload details and materials of their films directly
Exhibitors will be able to search the database
The platform will recommend films to exhibitors based on the preferences of their theatres and audiences
The platform will facilitate the logistics of projecting films in cinemas.
My take: this solves the “supply to theatres” issue, by cutting out distributors. I’d love to see some Canadian cinemas join — not that I have anything against Canadian distributors — it’s just that Canadian filmmakers have historically been shut out of Canadian cinemas by American distributors. How ironic that this American initiative might solve that for us.
“After a decade of massive growth, the indie film industry hit its peak in 2017 with just over 200 independent films in theatrical release. That’s also when streaming began to make itself known in a very big way, and the number of indie films in theaters began to plummet.
Netflix and the like spent a few years gobbling up indie movies out of festivals, but that’s dramatically slowed since 2021. Viewership for indies on streaming dipped from 30M in 2020 to just 18M by 2022. Indie films — and the audience for them — are being left behind.“
Former Sundance Institute CEO Keri Putnam led the “US Independent Film Audience & Landscape Study” a 118-page report available at indiefilmlandscape.org and believes there’s a massive audience waiting for indie movies because the biggest challenge facing independent films is finding them.
Her key recommendations for the indie film sector are:
Combat market fragmentation with a new, consolidated streaming destination
Invest in Theatrical Exhibition: Build data and marketing capacity at Festivals and Independent Cinemas
Invest in 21st Century Streaming Public Media and Include Scripted Films on PBS
Leverage Free, Mass Market Platforms: Build a field-wide vertical on a mass-market free streaming platform
Expand and Engage Audiences of Color
Thoughtfully enlist Brands and Philanthropy to Fund Production and Marketing
Innovate on Sector-Wide Marketing
Deepen and Enrich Engagement with Younger Audiences and Fan Communities
Conduct More Research and Share Data Across the Field
Build a Trade Organization to Facilitate Field-Wide Research, Innovation, Public Policy Advocacy
My take: an indie film marketplace and discoverability. Yes, the two things every indie filmmaker wishes for. I know I’ve been searching for the last twenty years however it’s almost impossible to accomplish in this digital age, which is maddening because digitization was supposed to level the playing field — but what happened was that everyone made their own field. “Build it and they will come” is almost never true now.
My take: as a Certified Independent Production Fund, the majority of the Talent Fund‘s past funding came from “CRTC tangible benefits” from major Canadian media companies and other media funds; private donations continue to be minimal and fund perhaps two documentaries a year, or one+ narrative feature films. The allocation of some of the new online streaming tax to the Talent Fund will be critical for its continued existence. See The Path Forward.
The problem with a lot of image generators is that they love selfies: front-facing portraits. But what if you want a profile? Ben has a two-step work-around:
“Generate a close-up photo of your subject’s ear and then use the editor to zoom out and create the rest of the image.”
He explains:
“The reason this works is because what Midjourney needed was a pattern interrupt. Take advantage of its usual way to generate images by finding the usual way to generate an image with a more unusual focus. It’s better to choose a focus that is already often viewed from the angle we want.
focus on a ponytail if we want to see the back of someone’s head
use a receding hairline to see someone from straight above
focus on the back pocket of a pair of jeans if you want the…
I wouldn’t recommend looking up someone’s nostril (I mean it’s an angle that works but I just wouldn’t recommend it.)
The point is we can generate any of these things using extremely simple prompts and get very unusual angles to be seeing a person from. And then starting from there once we have the angle well defined we can simply zoom out and make our chosen feature less prominent by changing our prompt to something else and so in the new image the angle we wanted is extremely well defined not by tons of keywords but by the part of the image we already generated.”
This works for Expressions as well. He explains:
“If we start with a photo of just a smile or just closed eyes or just a mischievous smirk, Midjourney will spend all of its effort to create a high quality closeup version of the exact expression we wanted that now, in just one more generation, we can apply to our character by simply zooming out.”
“The global appetite for drama films has significantly diminished, according to a panel of international sales agents at the BFI London Film Festival.”
He quotes Sophie Green, head of acquisitions and development at Bankside Films, as saying: “The big sort of takeaway at the moment from the market is anything but drama. That really is kind of like double underlined everywhere that we go.”
Drama has become increasingly difficult to finance and sell, leading to a shift toward genre films and comedies.
My take: the pendulum swings this way and then that way. Dramas will be back, but perhaps they demand too much empathy from audiences just right now.
It’s quite revealing to look at the numbers in detail.
Let’s start with Genre.
Documentary
8
Drama
4
Science Fiction/Fantasy
3
Drama-Comedy
1
Thriller
1
Province?
Quebec
7
Ontario
7
British Columbia
1
Alberta
1
Manitoba
1
Let’s look at Language next.
English
9
French
3
English/Sudanese Arabic
1
Portuguese (Azorean dialect)/French/English
1
French/English/Algonquin
1
French/English
1
French/Creole
1
And let’s finish up with Stream.
Filmmaker Apply-Direct
11
Industry Partner
3
Festival
2
Indigenous
1
In addition, if Gender is assumed from names and excluding Executive Producers:
Female
approx. 25
Male
approx. 15
Some observations:
The number of submissions rose almost 20% from last year.
Non-fiction continues to be almost as successful as Fiction.
Almost all of the successful projects are from Quebec and Ontario.
Almost one third of the successful projects include world languages in addition to English and/or French.
The vast majority of successful projects continue to be Filmmaker Apply-Direct.
Less than 20% of the successful projects are from Industry Partners.
Women far outnumber men and other expressions of gender.
No projects are selected from Atlantic Canada.
The cynical might posit that Telefilm’s Talent to Watch program continues to compensate for the broader industry.
My take: this is the third year that filmmakers could apply directly and Telefilm has rewarded them well! Therefore, if you can apply direct, bypass your local industry partner, for odds of approximately one in nine.
