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 begins, “Back in November [2023,] Warner Bros. Discovery announced it was not planning to release “Coyote vs. Acme,” a hybrid animated and live-action comedy starring John Cena and Will Forte that had wrapped filming a year earlier.”
He explores the reasons behind spending $70M, $90M and $40M and then shelving movies rather than releasing them to the public:
Money: “Hollywood financial experts say that when studios scrap finished projects the decision usually comes down to money.”
New Directions: “Abandoning a project may also reflect the shifting priorities of a studio.”
He concludes, “Though it may make financial sense for a studio to abandon a film, that argument may prove little comfort to the movie’s cast and crew or the fans eagerly awaiting its release.”
My take: Here’s his description of the cancelled movie: “Based on a satirical New Yorker piece, the movie followed Wile E. Coyote as he sued the Acme company after its products again and again fail to help him catch the elusive Road Runner.” That sounds hilarious! I’d watch that. And it seems cruel to green light a movie, get folks to spend years of time and effort working on it and then pull the rug out from under everything. Beep! Beep!
He begins, “This morning, a really lovely NFS reader reached out to me and wanted my opinion on a program called ScriptReader.AI, which charges $10 for a complete screenplay breakdown.”
He uploads one of his scripts and in two hours gets extensive coverage. It appears the AI’s method is to rate each scene and then average the scores. His script gets a “Recommend.”
However, Jason is not impressed. He concludes:
“Computers cannot think and feel. They have zero sense of nuance. And you cannot take their coverage seriously. No matter how nice it is. AI coverage is worthless!”
My take: the ScriptReader.ai website woefully undersells its capabilities. It certainly looks sketchy. But you can test out three scenes for free.
And then there’s a link in the top right corner of the website labelled “SHALL WE PLAY A GAME?_” I recognized this as a reference to WarGames in which Matthew Broderick unwittingly provokes WWIII.
With some trepidation, I clicked on the link.
This brought me to a page titled “SceneProv_” with two modes, Fun and Training.
I decided to have some fun and generate a scene for a RomCom. The AI, suddenly my writing partner, set the scene and populated it with two characters. My interactions are bolded.
“Genre selected: romance
INT. COFFEE SHOP – DAY
JEN sits at a table with a book, sipping on her latte. She notices AIDEN walk in and their eyes meet.
JEN:
(smiling)
Hey!
AIDEN:
(nervously)
Hi! Can I sit here?
JEN:
(surprised)
Uh, sure!
AIDEN sits across from Jen and they strike up a conversation.
AIDEN: I noticed you’re reading “Do Androids Dream of Sheep?”.
JEN: Yup. It’s my favourite book.
Her eyes glitch.
AIDEN: Do you want to go back to my place?
JEN:
(surprised)
Excuse me?
AIDEN:
(smiling)
Not like that. I have a first edition copy of that book. I’d love to show it to you.
JEN:
(relieved)
Oh, sure. That sounds great.
INT. AIDEN’S PLACE – NIGHT
Aiden and Jen are sitting on the couch, looking at the first edition. Her eyes glitch again.
AIDEN Jen, why do your eyes “glitch?”
JEN What do you mean?
AIDEN Well, every once in a while they kinda spark.
Are you hiding something from me?
Jen looks at Aiden angrily and stands up quickly.
JEN:
(angrily)
No, I’m not hiding anything! It’s just a glitch in my synthetic retinas. I’m an android.
AIDEN:
(surprised)
An android? I had no idea.
JEN:
(sadly)
I know, it’s not exactly a desirable trait in the dating world.
AIDEN:
(smiling)
Well, I’m not like most guys. I think it’s pretty cool, to be honest.
Jen’s eyes glitch again, this time in surprise.
JEN:
(surprised)
Really?
AIDEN:
(nodding)
Really. Plus, I always thought I’d make a great cyborg myself.
Jen smiles and takes Aiden’s hand, feeling grateful for the first time to have found someone who accepts her for who she really is.
They continue to look at the book, their fingers touching.
Aiden turns to Jen, looking into her eyes.
AIDEN:
(softly)
You know, I may not be able to dream like you do, but
I have a feeling this is the beginning of something special.
JEN:
(smiling)
I have that feeling, too.
They lean in and share a kiss, the start of their unconventional love story.”
And then it rated “our” scene a B+. This AI passes the Turing Test for sure.
“Jason Reitman has gathered more than two dozen filmmakers to help acquire Westwood’s historic Village Theater, which will program first-run and repertory programming.”
The 36 investors include:
JJ Abrams
Judd Apatow
Damien Chazelle
Chris Columbus
Ryan Coogler
Bradley Cooper
Alfonso Cuarón
Jonathan Dayton
Guillermo del Toro
Valerie Faris
Hannah Fidell
Alejandro González Iñárritu
James Gunn
Sian Heder
Rian Johnson
Gil Kenan
Karyn Kusama
Justin Lin
Phil Lord
David Lowery
Christopher McQuarrie
Chris Miller
Christopher Nolan
Alexander Payne
Todd Phillips
Gina Prince-Bythewood
Jason Reitman
Jay Roach
Seth Rogen
Emma Seligman
Brad Silberling
Steven Spielberg
Emma Thomas
Denis Villeneuve
Lulu Wang
Chloé Zhao
“The Fox Village, built in 1930, has hosted hundreds of premieres over the past 90 years, including Reitman’s own “Juno,” “Licorice Pizza” and many others…. The distinctive Spanish mission revival-style building is topped by a 170-foot neon-lit tower, making it a beacon for filmgoers on the Westside of Los Angeles.”
The inevitability of script-to-screen technology is closer than ever.
OpenAI released test footage and announced, “Introducing Sora, our text-to-video model. All the clips in this video were generated directly by Sora without modification. Sora can create videos of up to 60 seconds featuring highly detailed scenes, complex camera motion, and multiple characters with vibrant emotions.”
“Sora is able to generate complex scenes with multiple characters, specific types of motion, and accurate details of the subject and background. The model understands not only what the user has asked for in the prompt, but also how those things exist in the physical world.”
“The model has a deep understanding of language, enabling it to accurately interpret prompts and generate compelling characters that express vibrant emotions. Sora can also create multiple shots within a single generated video that accurately persist characters and visual style.”
Beyond text-to-video, “Sora can also be prompted with other inputs, such as pre-existing images or video. This capability enables Sora to perform a wide range of image and video editing tasks — creating perfectly looping video, animating static images, extending videos forwards or backwards in time, etc.”
Sora can even replace the whole background in a video: “Diffusion models have enabled a plethora of methods for editing images and videos from text prompts…. One of these methods, SDEdit,32… enables Sora to transform the styles and environments of input videos zero-shot.”
My take: this is powerful stuff! Workers in media industries might want to start thinking about diversifying their skills….
The study, by ERm Research, provides an “understanding of overall consumption patterns, media sources used by audiences, their decision-making process, genre preferences, barriers to watching more movies, and their theatrical moviegoing habits, as well as perceptions of Canadian content.” The study contacted 2,200 feature film consumers in Canada from September 17 to October 2, 2023.
Three of the report’s findings:
95% of Canadians aged 18+ have seen one or more feature films in the past year, with nearly three-quarters seeing a movie in theatres.
Paid streaming accounts for 54% of all feature film consumption. Around nine in ten movie consumers use at least one streaming service, with most accessing multiple.
French Canadian movie watchers are more inclined to see Canadian content theatrically and generally have a higher opinion of Canadian films.
Some things that stood out to me:
55% of the audience on opening nights are under the age of 35 whereas by the second week 50% of the audience is 45 or older. (Page 33.)
Canadian moviegoers see on average only 1.4 feature films annually. (Page 38.)
The top five streamers in Canada are Netflix (67%,) Amazon Prime (50%,) Disney+ (39%,) Crave (21%) and Apple TV+ (12%.) (Page 35.)
My take: not very encouraging. I think we need to take our cue from the Quebecois who see (and like) more Canadian films. Why is that? The obvious answer is that they’re watching French-language films, fare that Hollywood is not producing. A more nuanced answer is that they’re watching films that reflect life in their province. Unfortunately, because Canadian movies have highly limited access to cinema screens in the rest of Canada, Canadians outside of Quebec don’t have that luxury.
“Pulling from our friends at B&H, it looks like their crew featuring Nick and Dave were able to take the new Kodak Super 8 camera through the paces as they ran around New York City.”
My take: This is way too expensive for me! And the image still bounces around like crazy. IMHO Kodak missed an opportunity to improve their technology by bypassing the cartridge’s internal pressure plate and figuring out how to stabilize each frame during exposure, kinda like the “true pin registration” that the Logmar GENTOO GS8 does. Pity.
“Screenplay critiques serve many purposes in the screenwriting process. First and foremost, they offer valuable feedback to the writer, identifying strengths and weaknesses in their work. This feedback helps writers refine their scripts, making them more engaging and effective.”
Jason distinguishes the various types of notes:
Coverage: Coverage is a summary and evaluation of a script, typically prepared by a script reader or industry professional. It provides an overview of the script’s strengths and weaknesses and includes a recommendation on whether the script should be considered for further development or production.
Development notes: Development notes focus on the creative aspects of the script, offering suggestions for improving the story, characters, and dialogue. These notes are typically prepared by producers, development executives, or other industry professionals involved in the development process.
Writer-to-writer notes: These notes are provided by fellow writers, offering feedback and suggestions from a writer’s perspective. They can be informal, such as comments exchanged in a writers’ group, or more structured, such as a script swap or feedback session.
Line edits: Line edits focus on the script’s grammar, spelling, and formatting. These notes are typically prepared by a script editor or proofreader and help ensure the script is polished and professional.
Jason provides some best practices for giving feedback:
Read the script thoroughly: To provide meaningful feedback, you need to have a deep understanding of the script. Take the time to read it carefully, and make notes as you go. This will help you identify areas for improvement and provide specific examples when offering feedback.
Focus on the big picture: Before diving into the details, consider the script’s overall structure and story arc. Are there any plot holes or inconsistencies? Are the characters well-developed and engaging? Addressing these fundamental issues should be your priority when giving notes.
Be specific: When offering feedback, provide clear examples and explanations to support your observations. This will help the writer understand your perspective and make it easier for them to address the issues you’ve identified.
Offer actionable suggestions: Instead of simply pointing out problems, provide suggestions for how to improve the script. This will make your feedback more valuable and help the writer feel empowered to make changes.
Be respectful and supportive: Remember that your goal is to help the writer improve their script, not to tear them down. Offer praise for the aspects of the script that work well, and be empathetic and understanding when offering criticism.
Don’t be a dick: Seriously, I don’t know how many times I have to add this in there. Your job is to help. Not hinder.
Jason recommends a critique template that covers:
Story/Plot: Does the story have a clear and compelling arc? Are there any plot holes or inconsistencies?
Characters: Are the characters well-developed and interesting? Do their actions and dialogue feel authentic and consistent with their personalities?
Dialogue: Is the dialogue realistic and engaging? Does it move the story forward or feel extraneous?
Pacing: Is the story paced effectively? Does it feel too slow or rushed at any point?
Structure: Is the screenplay structured effectively? Does it follow the traditional three-act structure or another effective structure for the genre?
Themes: Are there any themes or messages conveyed in the story? Are they effectively communicated?
Tone: Is the tone consistent throughout the screenplay? Does it fit the genre and subject matter?
Setting/World-building: Is the setting or world of the story well-established and believable?
Visuals: Are there any scenes that would be particularly visually striking on screen? Are there any scenes that could be cut or condensed to improve the visual storytelling?
Overall Impression: What is your overall impression of the screenplay? Would you recommend it for production?
My take: When folks ask me to read their work, I always agree and then ask them what they’re looking for. I praise what I love and strive to provide at least a couple of suggestions for improving problematic bits. Hopefully one idea triggers something the writer can run with and make their own.
Acclaimed Canadian film and television director and producer Norman Jewison has died at the age of 97.
He first worked in television in Canada before moving to the US, where he transitioned into motion pictures.
His list of films made over 40 years is staggering:
1962 40 Pounds of Trouble
1963 The Thrill of It All
1964 Send Me No Flowers
1965 The Art of Love
1965 The Cincinnati Kid
1966 The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming
1967 In the Heat of the Night
1968 The Thomas Crown Affairs
1969 Gaily, Gaily
1971 Fiddler on the Roof
1973 Jesus Christ Superstar
1975 Rollerball
1978 F.I.S.T.
1979 …And Justice for All
1982 Best Friends
1984 A Soldier’s Story
1985 Agnes of God
1987 Moonstruck
1989 In Country
1991 Other People’s Money
1994 Only You
1995 Bogus
1999 The Hurricane
2003 The Statement
“Film Rescue has a global reach — and reputation — with a collection office in the Netherlands and another in northern Montana. Every few weeks, a batch of 200 to 400 rolls of old camera and home movie film appears at the Indian Head office, which is housed in a 125-year-old bank building on the main highway through town.”
“The film rescuers consist of Miller, Gostick and five employees…. One employee, Gerald Freyer, is a European-trained digitization expert. He was beavering away for a German museum when Miller recruited him to move to the Prairies. His latest star acquisition is Heather Harkins, who trained at the renowned Selznick School of Film Preservation in Rochester, N.Y., and was doing contract work for museums and archives throughout North America when she got a cold-call job offer.”
