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.

AI feature filmmaking

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AiMation Studios has released the first feature fully made with AI on YouTube, Where the Robots Grow.

It took the crew of nine ninety days to create it. They used Wonder Dynamics to motion capture actors, replace them with assets, and then skin the assets, backgrounds and skies with AI generated replacements.

Haydn Rushworth interviewed Tom Paton, the director, in Coventry, England. Here he explains how he finances all his self-described “shitty” movies:

Watch Part One, Part Two, Part Three and a bonus studio tour.

My take: the feature definitely has some rough spots. But the democratization of production using AI to assist in all areas is something only those with vested interests will resist.

Why so many movies are shot in British Columbia, Canada

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Edward Vega posts on Vox “Why your favourite movies fake their locations and why so many of them are shot in Vancouver.”

It all boils down to money.

Some of the reasons he points out:

  1. Locations: Vancouver has got it all: downtowns, suburbs, rural areas, mountains and forests, all within easy travel times
  2. Infrastructure: officials, crews and the general public are film-friendly and eager to make movies
  3. Tax incentives: provincial and federal dollars are readily available as tax rebates.

btw, the whole video is sponsored by Destination Vancouver.

See also:

My take: Another reason is that British Columbia and California share the same time zone. And a further reason is the exchange rate — the Loonie is worth 69 US cents, so every dollar Hollywood spends automatically goes over 40% further north of the border. (btw, you get even more tax incentive to film in Victoria or on Vancouver Island!)

TV in Canada in 2025

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Alex Nino Gheciu of The Canadian Press reports that TV seasons are getting shorter. Canadians who rely on the industry are nervous.

In summary: the Canadian television industry is experiencing a significant downturn, with domestic TV production falling 13% and foreign production dropping 36% between April 2023 and April 2024. The industry faces multiple challenges, including shorter season orders and smaller writing teams. This transformation is affecting employment opportunities for Canadian creative professionals and raising concerns about the future of Canadian storytelling.

He quotes ‘Murder in a Small Town‘ series creator Ian Weir as saying:

“Most Canadian shows used to have at least five writers on staff, now the norm is the showrunner plus one other full-time writer.”

He also quotes ‘The Sticky‘ co-creator Brian Donovan as saying:

“Everybody in this environment is looking for less and less risk. Money is tight and people don’t want to throw out huge orders because it’s really expensive.”

My take: The challenges facing Canadian television mirror trends in the United States, where average season lengths have also decreased. However, Canada faces unique pressures due to our regulatory environment and smaller market size. And yet the situation in the UK offers an interesting contrast, as British television has historically operated with shorter season orders (often 6 to 8 episodes) but has maintained strong creative output through robust public funding and clear content quotas. (See Understanding the UK’s TV Production Sector.) Canada’s attempt to implement similar protective measures through the Online Streaming Act faces resistance from major streaming platforms, leaving our industry in a more precarious position. Stay tuned!

UK indie film distribution crisis

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Alex Ritman reports on Variety that U.K. Indie Film Distribution Hits Breaking Point as ‘Santosh’ Saga Exposes Market Crisis: It’s an ‘Utter S—-show’.

The article discusses the latest crisis in the UK independent film distribution market and highlights the struggles faced by films like “Santosh“, a Hindi-language crime thriller, which despite critical acclaim and international recognition, had difficulty finding a UK distributor.

It points to several factors contributing to this crisis, including:

  • High ticket price splits favouring cinemas
  • Unprofitable Pay-One TV windows
  • Declining revenues from DVDs without a corresponding rise in VOD revenues.

The result is a highly cautious market in which distributors are hesitant to invest in arthouse or foreign language films.

He quotes an executive who confided to him:

“Nobody’s buying and everybody’s terribly cautious. It’s an utter shitshow.”

The British Film Institute (BFI) offers support for indie film distribution through various  initiatives to bring film to a wider UK audience. They also publish a spreadsheet of the weekly UK box office.

My take: different continent, similar story. In Canada, we simply don’t have access to cinema screens. In the UK, attempting to make money from independent films faces this plus other barriers. Is it simply that stories are not connecting with their audiences? Or is the problem something much more complex about scale, awareness and access?

Generated Video and Emotions

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Haydn Rushworth has just released COMPARED: 10 AI Emotions – Minimax / Hailuo.ai 12V-01-live vs KLING, VIDU, Runway.

He compares Minimax with Runway, Vidu and Kling.

His conclusions?

Runway was the most sedate whereas Kling was all over the place. Vidu was good, but Minimax was his favourite.

Tao Prompts also compares Sora, Kling, Minimax and Runway.

He concludes that Runway doesn’t tend to add much emotion at all.

My take: it appears that Minimax may be the best platform to generate video from images at the close of 2024. What will 2025 bring us?

How to Create Consistent AI Characters

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Caleb Ward of Curious Refuge has released 2024’s best summary of how to Create Consistent Realistic Characters Using AI.

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.

CyberJungle, the Youtube channel of Hamburg-based Senior IT Product Manager Cihan Unur, also posted How to Create Consistent Characters Using Kling AI.

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.

The Horror Movie Report just released!

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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:

  1. Horror Audiences
  2. Subgenres
  3. Script Origins
  4. Cast
  5. Crew
  6. Budgets
  7. Financials
  8. Box Office
  9. Profitability
  10. Other Income
  11. Film Festivals
  12. Post Production
  13. Posters and Marketing
  14. Objectionable Content
  15. Cultural Impact

Stephen is a leading film industry analyst known for his extensive research on film statistics; I’ve quoted his posts many times.

See the sample pages.

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!

1.4% is just not good enough

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Continuing with analysis of Telefilm Canada’s 2023-2024 Annual Report, the box-office ticket sales reported for Canadian independent films is misleading.

From page 19:

“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.

Attend platform will allow filmmakers to connect directly to cinemas

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Jeremy Kay reports on Screen Daily that Former top exhibition sector lobbyists unveil digital marketplace to boost theatrical supply.

“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.

The Attend platform is being developed by The Fithian Group of John Fithian, Jackie Brenneman and Patrick Corcoran.

Dozens of filmmakers support the concept, including Ted Hope and Steven Soderbergh.

Read an in-depth interview with The Fithian Group for more.

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.

Calls for an indie film marketplace and discoverability

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Brian Welk reports on IndieWire that Study Reveals Untapped Market of 40 Million People Who Will Pay for Indie Films on Streaming.

He sets the context with:

“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:

  1. Combat market fragmentation with a new, consolidated streaming destination
  2. Invest in Theatrical Exhibition: Build data and marketing capacity at Festivals and Independent Cinemas
  3. Invest in 21st Century Streaming Public Media and Include Scripted Films on PBS
  4. Leverage Free, Mass Market Platforms: Build a field-wide vertical on a mass-market free streaming platform
  5. Expand and Engage Audiences of Color
  6. Thoughtfully enlist Brands and Philanthropy to Fund Production and Marketing
  7. Innovate on Sector-Wide Marketing
  8. Deepen and Enrich Engagement with Younger Audiences and Fan Communities
  9. Conduct More Research and Share Data Across the Field
  10. Build a Trade Organization to Facilitate Field-Wide Research, Innovation, Public Policy Advocacy

Read the full report.

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.