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 posits how AI was used in the workflow makes an interesting case study of how these types of tools can help filmmakers create movies. ChatGPT was utilized to not only generate some ideas for a short film, but to also write the script, create a shot list, and in essence direct the film.
“With the help of ChatGPT of OpenAI, we were able to not only get it to write us a full script, but also have it direct us in the production of this short film. We were able to ask ChatGPT to give us a full shot list, suggest specific instructions for the Director of Photography and camera operators (choice of camera lenses, camera movements and lighting requirements), recommend wardrobe preferences, and even give us specific prompts to let Dall-E 2 create a full storyboard.”
My take: Looking past the quality of this one film, AI opens up limitless questions. For instance: What are the legal ramifications? What does it mean when everyone can issue prompts for their own personal movies? What happens to the human race if we in effect outsource dreaming to technology?
To celebrate the holiday season, Santa has collected a sack of scripts for your reading pleasure!
Screenwriting is the art and craft of writing scripts for films, television, and other visual media. Screenwriters are responsible for creating the dialogue, plot, and characters for a film or television show. Screenwriting can be a challenging and rewarding career, but it can also be highly competitive. Successful screenwriters often have a strong understanding of storytelling, character development, and the structure of films and television shows, as well as excellent writing skills and the ability to collaborate with others.
They also have to network, constantly promote themselves and be very, very lucky.
The Black List is an annual compilation of the most popular unproduced screenplays in Hollywood, as determined by a survey of film industry executives. The list is compiled by Franklin Leonard, a former development executive at Warner Bros., and is announced every year in December.
Each year, a group of over 250 film industry executives are invited to participate in the survey, in which they are asked to identify the best unproduced screenplays that they have read in the past year. The screenplays are ranked based on the number of votes they receive, and the top screenplays are included on the Black List.
They list Originals (spec scripts) and Stunts (based on existing IP for entertainment purposes only.) For instance, this stunt script will appeal to fans of SNL and Die Hard: https://www.ericmoyer.com/dielaughing.pdf
My take: reviewing these log lines, pitch decks and scripts is a great education. I really enjoyed Die Laughing — it would make a great group read!
The fountain of youth is a spring that is said to restore the youth of anyone who drinks or bathes in its waters. This idea has been mentioned in many different cultures throughout history, often as a symbol of eternal youth and rejuvenation. In some stories, the fountain is guarded by a powerful being, such as a nymph or a fairy, and must be sought out by brave adventurers. Despite many people searching for the fountain throughout history, it has never been found and is generally considered to be a mythical concept.
“To make an age-altering AI tool that was ready for the demands of Hollywood and flexible enough to work on moving footage or shots where an actor isn’t always looking directly at the camera, Disney’s researchers, as detailed in a recently published paper, first created a database of thousands of randomly generated synthetic faces. Existing machine learning aging tools were then used to age and de-age these thousands of non-existent test subjects, and those results were then used to train a new neural network called FRAN (face re-aging network). When FRAN is fed an input headshot, instead of generating an altered headshot, it predicts what parts of the face would be altered by age, such as the addition or removal of wrinkles, and those results are then layered over the original face as an extra channel of added visual information. This approach accurately preserves the performer’s appearance and identity, even when their head is moving, when their face is looking around, or when the lighting conditions in a shot change over time. It also allows the AI generated changes to be adjusted and tweaked by an artist, which is an important part of VFX work: making the alterations perfectly blend back into a shot so the changes are invisible to an audience.”
At five seconds per frame, FRAN can age or de-age one minute of footage in two hours.
Shot and projected at 16 frames per second, this footage has had its original frame rate restored, stabilized, upscaled to 240 fps at 4K, colourized and the faces enhanced with AI and finally output at 60 fps.
Dennis details his process in the first four and a half minutes of the film and categorically states, “This is enhanced material and is not historically accurate.”
Nevertheless, the films are a fantastic view into the past. Travel back in time to France, England and Egypt, among other countries. The motion smoothing does impart a different feeling to the footage than the jerky black and white aesthetic we normally associate with old newsreels.
My take: for me, the best shot, at 13:44, is “Panorama of the Golden Horn, Turkey, Istanbul” because it’s one of the few shots that is truly “cinematic” imho. All the other shots are filmed from a tripod and therefore static. This shot is also on a tripod but because we’re on a boat the effect is to dolly to the right, resulting in magical movement with very pleasing foreground, middle ground and background action.
Prahl says: “Nicole Fugere is probably the least-remembered of the live-action Wednesdays, taking on the role just a few years after Ricci’s version, and it also was Fugere’s last acting role. She appeared in the 1998 made-for-TV movie ‘Addams Family Reunion‘ and its one-season sitcom, ‘The New Addams Family.'”
My take: We loved Netflix’s Wednesday! I thought the colour grading was fantastic: the whites were tinged with blue and yet the skin tones and artificial light sources were a very warm yellow. Still trying to figure out how much was done on set and how much in post.
The 2004 comedy was made for only $400,000 but went on to gross $46.1 million at the box office.
Gregory elaborates:
“Speaking to Stuff about his ‘dynamite’ career, Heder confirmed he was paid only $1,000 ‘initially’. As we all know, Napoleon Dynamite is firmly cemented in pop culture and has clearly raked in millions since it was unleashed into the universe. Heder was able to renegotiate his deal and got a cut of the profits. Heder explained: ‘They went a little bit higher.'”
The cult film was based on a film school assignment by Jarod Hess in 2022:
My take: if the budget was truly $400,000, I think $1,000 for the lead was very low. However, if the cash budget was, say, one quarter of that, $1,000 starts to look reasonable. Sometimes shorts do lead to bigger things.
The goal of the Canada-France Series Lab is to encourage and facilitate the development of new relationships between Canadian and French producers and fostering the development of projects with strong international potential in a competitive environment and create new co-production opportunities.
“The Canada-France Series Lab will be a year-long initiative starting at Series Mania Forum 2023 and ending at the 2024 event. A selection of 15 producers from each country will be invited to participate in Series Mania Forum 2023 to meet their French/Canadian counterparts and form pairs. Four to five projects presented by these pairs will be selected by a jury of experts and invited to participate in a series of professional workshops. The first workshop will be held in person at the BANFF World Media Festival in June 2023. It will be followed by a virtual coaching cycle from September 2023 to March 2024. The program will end at the 2024 edition of the Series Mania Forum with the projects’ presentation to potential international financiers.”
My take: Parlez-vous français? Do you have an idea for a series with strong connections between France and Canada? Something set in the colonial past perhaps? Maybe something set on Saint Pierre and Miquelon, the tiny bit of France directly off Newfoundland? This seems like a fantastic opportunity for series producers looking to build bridges to France, and through it, Europe.
JETS will unite first, second and third feature film filmmakers with Canadian, German, Irish, Norwegian, Austrian, British, South African, and US producers, sales agents, finance and distribution companies during a day of pitching and networking sessions with the aim of encouraging co-production.
Producer/director teams can submit fictional film projects (features of duration of minimum 80 minutes; animation also eligible) that are still in the development or financing stages.
It’s quite revealing to look at the numbers in detail.
Let’s start with Genre.
Drama
7
Documentary
5
Comedy
1
Horror
1
Magic Realism
1
Mystery
1
Province?
Ontario
8
Quebec
4
British Columbia
2
Manitoba
1
New Brunswick
1
Let’s look at Language next.
English
4
French
4
Arabic
1
English/Arabic
1
English/Bosnian
1
English/Bulgarian
1
English/Farsi
1
English/Persian
1
French/English
1
Tibetan/English
1
And let’s finish up with Stream.
Filmmaker Apply-Direct
7
Industry Partner
7
Festival Selection
1
Industry Partner — Indigenous Component
1
In addition, if Gender is assumed from names:
Female
23
Male
15
Some observations:
Documentary is almost as successful as Drama.
Half of the successful projects are from Ontario.
Almost half of the successful projects include world languages in addition or instead of English and/or French.
Only half of the successful projects are from Industry Partners.
Finally women far outnumber men.
One might be tempted to conclude that Telefilm Canada is using the Talent to Watch program to over-correct its EDIA (Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility) results, but that would be highly cynical.
My take: wow! This is quite a departure for Telefilm. This is the first year that filmmakers could apply directly and Telefilm has rewarded them handsomely!
“For the movie, the producers hired Pierre Laroche, the makeup artist who worked for David Bowie and Mick Jagger and helped pioneer the androgynous glam rock look, to transform Curry into the future horror/musical icon. ‘He kind of adapted the makeup that was already in my case and did a very kind of high fashion version of it,’ Tim Curry told Interview Magazine. Even today, he was not sold on the glam version of Dr. Frank-N-Furter. ‘He got a little more high fashion,’ the actor elaborated. ‘I don’t know whether I like that or not.‘”
While filming Congo, I sat on top of a Volcano talking to Tim Curry about that movie. He said one of the coolest things was that it saved a number of small indie theaters from going under, because they knew that two nights a week Rocky was going to do big business.https://t.co/dvtd6sYm4G
