Watch CineSpark 2021 tonight!

Posted on May 19, 2021 by Michael Korican

Since 2017, CineVic, Victoria BC’s largest artist-run media centre, has been running the CineSpark competition. Watch the Top Five pitch live on Youtube tonight at 7 p.m. PDT.

The production prize awarded to the winner is substantial:

$13,500 in-kind equipment rentals from CineVic
$2,500 in-kind equipment rentals from William F. White
$1,500 cash grant
$100 Modo driving credits toward production van rental
Production Insurance: 10 consecutive days of coverage ($195 value)
One-year complimentary CineVic Production Membership ($220 value)
Your film will premiere at the next Short Circuit Pacific Rim Film Festival!

There are two stages to the competition.

It all starts with a script. Submissions are judged blind and the Top Five are then invited to wrangle together a production team and pitch their project live to a jury of visiting filmmakers during CineVic’s Short Circuit Pacific Rim Film Festival. (Unfortunately, the pandemic has meant virtual pitches this year and last.)

First proposed by him as one way CineVic could step up the production value of at least one film by its members, Arnold Lim says:

“Island filmmakers may not have the same name recognition as those from service towns like Vancouver or Toronto, but I believe they are every bit as talented and deserve the opportunities that are more abundant in more established film hubs in Canada. That’s why talent-development programs like CineSpark are so critical. I am proud of CineVic and CineSpark for the opportunities they have provided to talented local Vancouver Island and Gulf Island filmmakers and their cast and crew who all deserve the chance to level up and show off their artistic vision.”

Producer member of a past winning team, Darlene Tait echoes this sentiment:

“Winning a CineSpark Pitch Competition is like a rallying cry to the local film community who love to work with or help out CineSpark winners. Having the winning pitch speaks to the possibilities that exist with the team and the script and it immediately levels up your game. It can be a serious launchpad if you do it right.”

One of tonight’s Top Five Pitchers, emerging filmmaker Suzanne Moreau comments on the experience so far:

“Thrilling. Then nerve wracking. Then encouraging. A little bit frustrating. Then confusing. Lastly inspiring. This cyclone of emotions resembles the grief cycle! But it’s actually been fun and a great way to discover and connect with many more local filmmakers than I would have otherwise. So I’m already benefitting and the win would be icing on the proverbial cake. It’s been a rush!”

Best of luck to all involved and, “Roll sound. Roll camera. Action!”

My take: even though only one team wins tonight, I can practically guarantee that more than one film will end up being created out of this year’s competition. I guess investing this much time and effort into pitching a project can’t help but solidify the desire to make the movie — and I know of at least two projects that resulted in better films than the official winner that year.

Indie feature tips, including how to use Legos

Posted on May 5, 2021 by Michael Korican

Brian Ulrich dishes on No Film School: How We Made Our Low-Budget Action Movie Look Like a Million-Dollar Feature.

I’ll summarize below but first there’s something I’ve never seen done before in their BTS Making Of video above.

Most directors will storyboard the shots they envision for their movie. Or hire an artist to draw them for them.

Not Brian. At 1:18 he reveals:

“A lot of people do storyboarding. I’m a terrible artist so I did what I call ‘Storybuilding.’ I have a massive Lego collection and I shot probably about 70% of the film in photographs with these Lego figures.”

The clearest frames showing this are near 1:24 and 1:30. OMG!

I mean, I’ve never heard of anyone doing something like this. Wouldn’t this just take forever? But, okay, props for using your Legos!

Some of his other tips on the making of “Last Three Days” that also apply to any no-low budget movie:

Write your script with what you can afford to shoot. “The rules for the script were: modern-day, no kids, no animals, no blowing things up.”
Move forward on all fronts and don’t worry about funding post-production up front. “I continued to churn out a new draft of the script each month and we continued to meet with investors to keep funding moving forward. But it wasn’t until a month before production that we finally raised enough money to get to the end of principal photography.”
Go for union actors under the Ultra Low Budget agreement. “That decision proved well worth the additional paperwork and money required.”
Hire crew who share your enthusiasm for the project. “For crew, the rate was minimum wage across the board, so we brought on talented individuals who believed in the script and didn’t mind making very little money.”
Keep your locations simple. “We borrowed friend’s homes and businesses, asked local businesses if we could buy out the place for a few hours, and sometimes drove around the city just looking for the perfect spot and then found out who owned it.”
Production requires superhuman efforts all round. “Every single department felt that this film was special, and what they lacked in experience, they made up for in passion and raw talent. Every individual went above and beyond, operating outside their singular position and doing whatever it took to bring this story together. Even when things went wrong, which they always did, the crew would remind themselves, we’re all on the same team.”
In post-production, this film used three editors, something only possible because it has three different sections.
(This tip really should be considered in pre-production.) When it comes to VFX, “ultimately all that matters is what ends up within the boundaries of your finished frame. You don’t need a giant set, a giant backdrop, or even a “finished” practical set. And the more carefully you plan your shots, the less time and resources you need to fill that frame, and suddenly your VFX budget is the size of a window instead of the size of a backyard.”
Take your time in post, especially if you’re working on the cheap. Note that post-production on this film took two full years.
Regarding marketing and distribution, “as a low-budget non-linear action romance thriller, with no movie star on the poster, it was initially difficult to get eyes on the film.” They skipped the festival circuit and through a strategic contact signed with a sales rep who was able to land both domestic and international distributors.

My take: my advice is to sketch your storyboard. For free and paid storyboarding software, see The 14 Best Storyboarding Programs in 2021. btw, there are a ton of stop-motion movies made with Lego.

Novel idea: turn your screenplay into a book

Posted on April 28, 2021 by Michael Korican

Typically, literary works are adapted into screenplays; witness the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, this year won by Christopher Hampton & Florian Zeller for adapting Zeller’s play “Le Père” into the feature film “The Father.”

But local writer Michael Whatling has just done the reverse by adapting his screenplay “Pâtisserie” into a new novel: “The French Baker’s War.”

Set in Occupied France in 1943, one day André Albert returns home from the daily hunt for the rationed ingredients necessary to keep his family pâtisserie open, and finds his four-year-old son in the street, his wife gone, and an emaciated Jewish woman cowering behind the pastry display case.

Michael and I recently had the following email exchange:

Michael Korican: Congratulations! Is this your first novel? Because I know you foremost as a screenwriter.

Michael Whatling: “It’s my first “real” novel, I suppose. I say “real” because when I was 15 I sat in the back yard at one of those round metal tables with the umbrella in the middle and typed out a book on an old Royal typewriter I found in the basement. I called it “The Song No One Heard.” It ended up being the book no one read.”

MK: I believe you overheard the germ of the idea for this story in a Montreal bakery. How long did it take you to write the screenplay?

MW: “The screenplay didn’t take long — it was all the rewrites that were interminable. It was optioned twice: Once by two-time Academy Award nominated best actress Isabelle Adjani, and by Francis Lawrence, the director of “I Am Legend,” “The Hunger Games,” “Water for Elephants,” etc. Unfortunately, like is often the case, the options lapsed.”

MK: How did you turn the screenplay into a novel?

MW: “I wrote the novel based on my screenplay because I felt there was so much more of the story to tell that a 100 page script couldn’t. I used the screenplay as a detailed outline. As you know, in novels you have to go inside the heads of the characters. That was a very different skill from the ones needed for writing a script. That took getting used to.”

MK: But why turn a screenplay into a novel? Was it the intellectual challenge, or does it now make the screenplay more marketable? Or, did you in effect abandon the script but not the idea and use the lockdown to re-express it in another creative medium?

MW: “By bringing the novel to a different audience, I’m hoping it will also make it more visible to someone who’d want to see it as a film.”

MK: How long did it take?

MW: “Writing the novel took much longer. Writing novels is hard work. You have to consider EVERY. SINGLE. WORD.”

MK: What else have you been up to, and what’s next?

MW: “An award winning independent film I wrote, “The Dancing Dogs of Dombrova,” is currently available on Optik TV and iTunes. It’s about estranged siblings who travel to Poland to fulfill the dying wish of their grandmother. Another of my screenplays, “Cut for Stone,” has been optioned by Ezeqial Productions of Toronto. It’s about doctors who slip into Syria during the current civil war to provide medical aid to civilians.”

My take: turn your screenplay into a book; how novel! Congratulations, Michael!

Kevin Smith to sell new movie as NFT

Posted on April 21, 2021 by Michael Korican

Anthony D’Alessandro reports on Deadline that Kevin Smith To Sell Horror Movie ‘Killroy Was Here’ As NFT.

Independent filmmaker Kevin Smith‘s feature “Killroy Was Here” is a horror anthology loosely based on the Kilroy was here graffiti phenomenon, sometimes described as one of the first memes.

D’Alessandro writes:

“Kevin Smith is looking to push the boundaries on indie distribution again and this time he’s auctioning off his latest horror feature anthology Killroy Was Here as an NFT (non-fungible token). The owner of the NFT will secure the rights to exhibit, distribute and stream the work, making it a means for whoever owns the movie to earn money outside of the blockchain.”

He quotes Smith as saying:

“As an indie artist, I’m always looking for a new platform through which to tell a story. And Crypto has the potential to provide that, while also intersecting with our almost 25 years of experience selling real world collectibles online and at the brick-and-mortar Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash. Back in 1994, we took Clerks up to Sundance and sold it. Selling Killroy as an NFT feels very similar: whoever buys it could choose to monetize it traditionally, or simply own a film that nobody ever sees but them. We’re not trying to raise financing by selling NFT’s for a Killroy movie; the completed Killroy movie IS the NFT. And If this works, we suddenly have a new stage on which I and other, better artists than me can tell our stories.”

Check out the drop on April 21, 2021.

My take: to summarize: you write, finance and create a digital feature film, then evolve it into a unique digital item as an NFT and finally sell that for Etherium crypto-currency. Hmmm. It will be interesting to see who buys it, if they immediately resell it, if any buyer decides to hang on to it and whether they then attempt to monetize it through distribution theatrically or online through VOD or streaming or ??? Who knows? This is crazy shit!

Netflix’s global plan revealed

Posted on April 7, 2021 by Michael Korican

Jason Hirschhorn of REDEF interviewed Netflix CCO Ted Sarandos one year ago at the Upfront Summit 2020.

Even though this is from the pre-pandemic past, the insights are insightful.

Speaking to Netflix’s international reach, Ted says:

“I think people really want to see their stories; they really want to see themselves on screen.”

As to their reach, he claims:

“We can find a great story from anywhere in the world and make it play anywhere in the world.”

He says there are only two reasons people watch Netflix:

to connect, or
to escape.

The reason why Netflix does not specialize:

“Tastes are incredibly diverse; you don’t have to leave Netflix as your tastes evolve.”

My take: to connect or to escape. I interpret that as Tragedy or Comedy. It all boils down to a good story well told.

Digital Humans coming soon!

Posted on February 17, 2021 by Michael Korican

Epic Games and Unreal Engine have announced MetaHuman Creator, coming later in 2021.

“MetaHuman Creator is a cloud-streamed app designed to take real-time digital human creation from weeks or months to less than an hour, without compromising on quality. It works by drawing from an ever-growing library of variants of human appearance and motion, and enabling you to create convincing new characters through intuitive workflows that let you sculpt and craft the result you want. As you make adjustments, MetaHuman Creator blends between actual examples in the library in a plausible, data-constrained way. You can choose a starting point by selecting a number of preset faces to contribute to your human from the diverse range in the database.”

Right now, you can start with 18 different bodies and 30 hair styles.

“When you’re happy with your human, you can download the asset via Quixel Bridge, fully rigged and ready for animation and motion capture in Unreal Engine, and complete with LODs. You’ll also get the source data in the form of a Maya file, including meshes, skeleton, facial rig, animation controls, and materials.”

Got that? See documentation.

The takeaway is that your digital humans can live in your Unreal Engine environment. Is this the future of movies?

My take: This reminds me of my experiments in machinima ten years ago. I used a video game called The Movies that had a character generator (that would sync mouth movements with pre-recorded audio,) environments and scenes to record shots I would then assemble into movies. See Cowboys and Aliens (The Harper Version) for one example. You know, in these COVID times, I wonder if Unreal Engine’s ability to mash together video games and VFX will become a safer way to create entertainment that does not require scores of people to film together in the same studio at the same time.

2021: streaming to cost more

Posted on December 16, 2020 by Michael Korican

Frank Pallotta predicts on CNN Business that Streaming is about to get a lot more expensive.

Last week Disney+ revealed it has amassed 86 million subscribers and “will have roughly 10 new series from Marvel and Star Wars, as well as 15 Disney live action, Disney Animation and Pixar series. Disney also said that 15 new films from Pixar, Disney live action and Disney Animation will be heading to the service.”

Oh, and the price is going up in March 2021. This, after Netflix has already raised prices for US subscribers in October 2020.

Frank argues that streaming subscriptions must go up to pay for the expensive movies that will find their audiences at home in 2021 and not in cinemas:

“Take HBO Max, for example. The service from CNN’s parent company WarnerMedia announced earlier this month that it will stream movies on HBO Max the same day they drop in theaters. Whether that becomes the norm or is just a quick solution during a pandemic is yet to be seen. But if it becomes a permanent strategy, consumers will likely see their subscription prices rise over the next few years. Producing a major blockbuster like ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ isn’t cheap.”

He also quotes Bernie McTernan, a senior analyst at Rosenblatt Securities:

“Disney increasing its content budget is a big deal for the whole industry, including Netflix. It is effectively raising the bar to compete. If Disney needs to spend $14 billion to $16 billion on content, then Netflix likely needs to spend well over $20 billion to achieve the same subscriber scale globally.”

Investors will foot this with the expectation of future company profits. But given that the rate of new subscriptions is plateauing, Netflix will have no choice other than raising prices again. (They have also cancelled their free month trial subscription.)

My take: and don’t forget that in Canada GST will become payable on your foreign streaming services come mid-year. Yes, streaming will definitely cost more in 2021.

Gambling $1M+ on your indie action film

Posted on December 2, 2020 by Michael Korican

Garry Maddox of Australia’s The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Maverick Aussie director puts up $1.6m of his own money — for killer robot movie.

“Longtime Australian commercials director and cinematographer Mark Toia came up with a preposterously ambitious idea for a debut film: a CIA test of military robots goes disastrously wrong when a group of American doctors arrive in a Cambodian jungle for humanitarian work. Toia, 56, then shot it around the world – starting in Cambodia then moving on to Vancouver, New York and Brisbane. And he and his wife put up $1.6 million of their own ‘hard cash’ to make it, without a cent from government agencies or the film industry. He spent a year seeing whether he could get backing in the US before he and wife Carolyn decided to do it all themselves. ‘I thought, you know what, I don’t really need the money. Screw it. I’m going to do this as a bit of an indie film now for the masses and sell it ourselves.‘”

The result, Monsters of Man, begins streaming online on December 8, 2020.

Do they think they’ll make any profit?

“I have no idea. I decided that if I was going to do a movie, I’d just do my own just for more of a therapy, relaxation type thing. And it was therapeutic. Because we funded it ourselves, I didn’t have to listen to anyone. Because I was a painter as a child, it was like a painting for me. It was like working in my garage, painting away.“

Check out the movie’s website.

My take: that’s a great concept! And kudos to Mark and Carolyn for putting up their own money. If the movie is anything like the trailer it could be good! I’m slightly spooked by the running time, though.

How to compete with Hollywood

Posted on November 25, 2020 by Michael Korican

In a Film Courage interview, indie filmmaker Geoff Ryan claims, “Your movie will never compete with Hollywood.”

Given that, what should we do?

“I wanted to create something that people would walk away from thinking I’ve never seen anything like that before. A small indie like this can’t compete with Hollywood for spectacle and star power, but we can try to make much more interesting films at least. Make something that when people walk away from it they don’t just forget about it. I want to say it was Kubrick but some director I remember reading years ago said I don’t care if they love it or hate it, I want them to remember it.“

Looks like he’s done that with his latest feature; see the trailer below.

My take: this is great advice! Lacking millions of dollars, we must have something else to beat Hollywood at its own game. That something is: story, attitude and ingenuity.

Michael Korican Thinks

Thoughts on Independent Filmmaking and the Emerging Economic System

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