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 starts by pointing out: “Every TV show that’s on the air was an idea in someone’s head at one point. and then, it was a pitch that they delivered.”
His suggestions, in a nutshell?
Have a clear vision.
Write a compelling logline.
Write a synopsis.
Develop memorable characters.
Practice your pitch.
Incorporate feedback.
He closes with:
“By focusing on comprehensive coverage, crafting a compelling logline and synopsis, developing memorable characters, creating a strong visual presentation, and utilizing feedback for improvement, you can create a pitch that stands out from the competition and captures the attention of network executives.”
My take: This is great advice, and well worth the read!
On September 29, 2023, co-founder Matthew Buchanan of Letterboxd announced, “we have accepted an offer for Tiny to acquire a 60 percent stake in Letterboxd, securing the platform’s future as an independently run company and part of the Tiny stable.”
Matthew elaborates:
“Something else that began around this time, courtesy of Tumblr’s flourishing design community, was my friendship with Andrew Wilkinson and his brother Will, both involved with MetaLab. There was no-one paying attention to the design scene at that time who wasn’t aware of their digital agency in Victoria and the quality of work it was delivering. We first met in person at XOXO in Portland, then kept in touch, as we both continued to build: us with our studio and Letterboxd, and Andrew with MetaLab and then Tiny, which acquires and supports great, creative businesses.”
It’s quite revealing to look at the numbers in detail.
Let’s start with Genre.
Documentary
9
Drama
5
Comedy
3
Horror
1
Province?
Quebec
5
Ontario
4
British Columbia
3
Alberta
2
Manitoba
1
Nova Scotia
1
NWT
1
PEI
1
Let’s look at Language next.
English
6
French
2
English/Farsi
2
English/French/Kinyarwanda
1
English/Hungarian
1
English/Plains Cree
1
English/Punjabi
1
French/English/Arabic
1
French/Vietnamese
1
Spanish
1
Wayuunaiki/Spanish/English
1
And let’s finish up with Stream.
Filmmaker Apply-Direct
11
Industry Partner
5
Indigenous
2
In addition, if Gender is assumed from names:
Female
approx. 26
Male
approx. 16
Some observations:
Non-fiction is as successful as Fiction.
Half of the successful projects are from Quebec and Ontario.
More than half of the successful projects include world languages in addition or instead of English and/or French.
For the first time, the vast majority of successful projects are Filmmaker Apply-Direct.
Less than one third of the successful projects are from Industry Partners.
Women far outnumber men and other expressions of gender.
A project with only one director/screenwriter/producer is successful.
It appears Telefilm’s Talent to Watch program continues to compensate for the broader industry.
My take: this is the second 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 better than one in fifteen.
Flawless AI‘s tools include TrueSync that can be used to replace dialogue or even change the spoken language, all the while preserving correct mouth and lip movement.
Other Flawless AI tools include: AI Reshoot (“‘allows you to make dialogue changes, synchronizing the on-screen actors mouths to the new lines, without needing to go back to set”) and DeepEditor (“enables filmmakers to edit and transfer an actor’s performance from one shot, to another, even if the shots were filmed from different angles.”)
My take: this is powerful technology but not sure how I feel about Robert De Niro’s face speaking in German, German that some other actor is speaking. (Of course, the next iteration of this tech is to voice clone and use that to speak in German. But now we’re really offside.)
“Blackmagic Camera unlocks the power of your iPhone by adding Blackmagic’s digital film camera controls and image processing! Now you can create the same cinematic ‘look’ as Hollywood feature films. You get the same intuitive and user friendly interface as Blackmagic Design’s award winning cameras. It’s just like using a professional digital film camera! You can adjust settings such as frame rate, shutter angle, white balance and ISO all in a single tap. Or, record directly to Blackmagic Cloud in industry standard 10-bit Apple ProRes files up to 4K! Recording to Blackmagic Cloud Storage lets you collaborate on DaVinci Resolve projects with editors anywhere in the world, all at the same time!”
My take:Grant Petty mentions how multiple filmers at “protests” in this update could use Blackmagic Cameras on their iPhones and work with an editor to create almost instant news stories; I think this technique could also be used during concerts as well.
Kofi points out: “Beyond his acting, Ryan Reynolds has made a name for himself as one of the most media-savvy modern-day moguls. In addition to Aviation Gin, Reynolds also has his Mint Mobile venture; the Canadian wealth management service Wealthsimple; tech ventures Nuvei and 1Password; production and marketing venture Maximum Effort, and sports ventures including stakes in F1 team Alpine and England’s Wrexham AFC soccer team (which is also the subject of his hit docu-series). Reynolds is also pursuing a bid for Canada’s Ottawa Senators NHL team, and their stadium, the Tire Centre. Reynolds’ wife, actress Blake Lively, is similarly branching out as a mogul, launching her own line of sparkling non-alcoholic cocktail mixers, Betty Buzz.”
Here’s the transcript, delivered as only Ryan Reynolds can:
“It’s nearly fall, which means the entire universe will once again be losing its mind for pumpkin spice. Well, not at Aviation. Not on my watch. Let’s make a Negroni.
First, take one part each of Bitter Red Liqueur and Sweet Vermouth. Pour over ice. Take a pumpkin spiced cinnamon stick and shove it right up your [BLEEP].
Then, we add one part Aviation American Gin. And stir.
Then while stirring, we’re going to take a moment to ponder, why it is, that once a year for two or three months, we lose our [BLEEP] mind over pumpkin spice. What the [BLEEP] are we doing, people? I’m not sending my kids off to school with a [BLEEP] cumin yogurt in their lun…
Next, we’re going to garnish with an orange peel, delicious orange fruit, and enjoy a real drink. [BLEEP] you pumpkin spice, it’s Negroni week.
(credits)
It’s come to my attention that pumpkin spice has quite a lot of fans, and a powerful political lobby. So, on behalf of Aviation American Gin, its parent company Diageo, we’d like to wholesale apologize for our previous commercial.
Help me.”
Streaming: “Acquired content was the stand-out for the month. Suits… set new viewing records for an acquired title, amassing almost 18 billion minutes. In aggregate, the heavy viewing levels pushed streaming’s share of TV to 38.7%, a new record, with Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and YouTube all hitting all-time highs.”
Broadcast: “Drama remained the most watched category, capturing 25.7% of viewing. Overall, total broadcast viewing was down 3.6% to finish the month at 20% of TV, representing a new low.”
Cable: “Cable viewing slipped as well, losing a full share point to capture 29.6% of TV in July. Feature film was the only genre to see a rise in viewership (0.5%).”
Other includes video on demand (VOD), audio streaming, video gaming, as well as Blu-ray/DVD playback.
My take: According to Nielsen, Broadcast and Cable TV viewing totalled 49.6% or just less than half. Of course, when the NFL and the NHL roar back in the Fall, these numbers will increase. But still….
“Sony Pictures Technologies has unveiled its latest developments in real-time game engine technology with this new proof-of-concept project…. Its “cameraless” virtual production style… intends to allow developers to use this real-time game engine to produce a scene live on a motion capture set.”
Jason Reitman, who wrote and directed the two-minute scene in one day, says:
“I love filmmaking in real places with real actors. So for me, this is not a substitute. If I were to make Juno again today, I would make Juno exactly the same way. What I see here, what thrills me, is if I wanted to make a movie like Juno that took place in ancient Rome, I wouldn’t be able to do that because it would cost $200 million to make Juno. And that’s not cost effective. There’s no studio who would sign up for that. You can make Ghostbusters for a lot of money, but you can’t make an independent film in an unexpected location. You can’t make an independent film underwater, on the moon or, you know, a thousand years ago or into the future, and what thrills me about it is the possibility of independent filmmakers who want to tell their kind of stories, but in environments that they don’t have access to with characters that they don’t have access to, and the possibility of getting a whole new wave of stories that you could read in a book, but you would never actually get in a film.”
My take: While I agree with Jason Reitman that this technology is promising, I think their finished scene is underwhelming. It’s just not believable. For instance, the folks on the sidewalks are obviously from a video game. The traffic is not real world either. And the actor is not human; he’s a marshmallow! However, this might be where superhero comic book movies are going: totally computer-generated, with the faces of the stars composited onto the quasi-lifelike animation. (My nightmare situation: those faces and voices are AI generated from scans and recordings!)
The tool is a free AI de-noising and re-reverb plugin called GOYO by South Korea’s Supertone AI.
Michael begins:
“I’ve used many of the sort of more premium and expensive dialogue, restoration and denoising softwares, and those are very good, but I haven’t come across a free tool that even comes close to what is offered by those. So I was really curious, downloaded it, tried it in my DAW and video editor, and was just completely shocked by the results.”
There are three dials: Ambience, Voice and Voice Reverb. You can solo, mute, decrease or increase each band. Simple and powerful!
His expert tip:
“My favourite way to use these sorts of tools is to dial them in and then print the results. So I would control this to the amount I’d like. I would export that as a new WAV file, take a listen and then work with that so that I know that the next time I open up the session, it’s going to be exactly the same.”
The How to Use page from Supertone is quite sparse so Michael’s examples are great.
My take: the perennial joke on set has always been, “We’ll fix it in post.” Well, now that’s possible for sound! I’ve used this on a short and can attest to its ease of use and incredible results. I concur with Michael that it’s best to print out each voice track as a WAV file and re-synchronize it to the timeline because I found that either the effect did not persist between sessions or the values had reset to zero or the effect was present but the numbers displayed as zero. My other tip is to only use the graphical user interface (and do not use the Inspector) as this seemed to work best. After all, this is a free beta!
