Producers are Filmmakers and an essential part of the filmmaking process.
You will work on each project for far longer than you think.
To the industry, the director is king. (Sorry producers.)
It is very unlikely that you will move up in the industry as fast as the directors you work with.
There is no ladder to climb.
You have to create your own opportunities.
She concludes by asking for a system that rewards indie producers for discovering and nurturing the next crop of filmmakers.
My take: thank you, Gabrielle, for a great, heart-felt post, and sharing your experience in producing so far. As to a system that rewards indie producers for discovering and nurturing emerging filmmakers, perhaps you could become their managers or agents? This would guarantee that as they advanced, you could too. Or, maybe we need an Alliance of Independent Producers that would lobby buyers on behalf of its members to make sure experienced and successful producers get better terms.
“Another major movie was taken off of the theatrical release calendar as theater chains like Regal and Cineworld shut down again in the US and UK last week. On Thursday, Disney announced that its upcoming Pixar movie, ‘Soul,’ would debut on its streaming service Disney Plus on December 25 and, unlike ‘Mulan,’ would be available to subscribers at no additional cost. This isn’t the first movie intended for theaters that Disney has released straight to Disney Plus during the pandemic, others being ‘Artemis Fowl’ and ‘The One and Only Ivan.’ But ‘Soul’ is different because Disney seemed to be committing to a theatrical release until Regal and Cineworld closed again.”
This is a departure from their ‘Mulan’ strategy that required Disney Plus subscribers to pony up an extra $29.99.
“There was some important and potentially game-changing language buried in the press release: ‘Under the new structure, the Company’s three content groups will be responsible and accountable for producing and delivering content for theatrical, linear and streaming, with the primary focus being the Company’s streaming services.’ Yes, Disney has officially announced that streaming content is going to be their primary focus going forward.“
Drew wonders: “If 2021 has the Mouse house focusing on streaming, it could spell certain doom for the big movie theater chains. And maybe that will present an opportunity for Disney to swoop in and buy one of these chains. If that happens, who even knows what the future of movie exhibition will look like.”
One person who is dismayed by that possibility is film director Patty Jenkins. Lisa Richwine of Reuters UK reports that “Jenkins is among dozens of top Hollywood directors appealing to the U.S. government to provide a financial lifeline to cinemas. Without it, she warned, the century-old tradition of going to the movies could disappear from American culture.”
She quotes Jenkins lamenting about the closure of movie theatres:
“If we shut this down, this will not be a reversible process. We could lose movie theater-going forever. It could be the kind of thing that happened to the music industry where you could crumble the entire industry by making it something that can’t be profitable. I don’t think any of us want to live in a world where the only option is to take your kids to watch a movie in your own living room, and not have a place to go for a date.”
“Warner Bros and most of Hollywood’s other major studios just announced that pretty much every big blockbuster movie left with a 2020 release date has now been delayed. The only notable exception to this massive movement of movie release dates is Wonder Woman 1984. There’s been no official announcement about any change in that movie’s release, even though the studio in charge of it, Warner Bros., announced they’re delaying everything else they had on the schedule. You haven’t heard anything about Wonder Woman 1984 being delayed for one very good reason: Warner Bros. is planning to stream it. There have been rumors for months now that WB has specifically pondered releasing Wonder Woman 1984 direct to streaming platforms and now according to my source it’s going to happen. This is a source I’ve known for a long time and while they haven’t given me a scoop recently, they’ve been straight up with me in the past. Still, I only have one source on this so as always any time any news item only has one source, take it with a grain of salt. My source tells me that Warner Bros. is sticking with Wonder Woman 1984’s current December 25, 2020 release date because they feel they no longer have any choice but to start releasing their movies on streaming.”
WW84 has been delayed three times and was scheduled to be released theatrically on December 25. Perhaps it will become a major day-and-date release, opening everywhere at once.
My take:Christmas Day has historically been the busiest day of the year for cinemas. But it looks like the Covid Grinch has other plans. My prediction for 2021 is that all film theatre chains will see a change of ownership to the largest streaming companies: Disney Plus, Amazon and Netflix. Imagine if your Amazon Prime membership got you free delivery, free Prime Video and free admission to the local Prime Movie Multiplex? Maybe now is the time to buy popcorn futures?
The screenings start this Friday with 1917 and Rocketman.
It’s not cheap — each car will cost £32.50. You can upgrade to a “deckchair, table, popcorn and separate area to the side of your vehicle in an exclusive and bigger bay for your car” for an additional £7.50 — presumably per deckchair.
There will also be “a pop-up bar with a large selection of soft drinks as well as alcoholic beverages, popcorn and snacks.”
“Travis Irvine, the movie’s writer, director and producer, said that in the week it was ranked 13th, “Killer Raccoons 2” was the only comedy on the list — making it the No. 1 comedy film in the U.S. (“with many asterisks next to that,” he said).”
“I do think that the pandemic has unleashed all options. It’s become a testing zone of every possible way of getting a film out there, and it’s going to take while before it gets set into some sort of pattern.”
This weekend we shall see which strategy wins: in one corner we have Mulan‘s paradigm-shifting Premium VOD and in the other we have Tenet‘s old school theatrical distribution. Tenet released internationally one week before its US debut, earning $53,000,000. With 60 million subscribers and a $29.99 ticket, Disney+ needs at least 2 million of its subscribers to pony up the extra cash to catch up to Tenet.
My take: If one strategy wins by a landslide, will the film industry follow en masse and forever change how movies are distributed?
“Cineplex, one of Canada’s leading entertainment and media companies, will be the first of the major film exhibitors in the world to reopen its entire circuit of theatres when its remaining theatres open Friday, August 21, 2020. From coast-to-coast, all 164 Cineplex theatres and 1,687 screens across Canada will be open as of tomorrow, including the Company’s 22 VIP Cinemas locations.”
Nevertheless Jessica Leonora Whitehead opines in The Globe and Mail that “today, thanks to the quality of TV programming and the rise of streaming services, the industry cannot assume that customers will simply come back.”
My take: I love watching movies in cinemas! But perhaps not right now.
“This pop-up event is touring the country and visiting 160 Walmart Supercenter locations. Gates open at 6:00pm and the film begins at 7:30pm. Tickets are free, but must be requested in advance.”
The films to be shown from August 5 through October 21, 2020 are:
Black Panther
Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse
Wonder Woman
Friday Night Lights
Spy Kids
Space Jam
Ghostbusters
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
The Wizard of Oz
My take: It appears that people are dying for a night out, as ALL of the dates are SOLD OUT! I say “sold out” but remember all the spots are free. I wonder how many of these screenings will be shut down by local authorities if they exceed the maximum number of congregants for group gatherings.
So begins a startling revelation by Disney Researchers Jacek Naruniec, Leonhard Helminger, Christopher Schroers and Romann M. Weber in a paper delivered virtually at The 31st Eurographics Symposium on Rendering in London recently.
Here’s the abstract:
“In this paper, we propose an algorithm for fully automatic neural face swapping in images and videos. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first method capable of rendering photo-realistic and temporally coherent results at megapixel resolution. To this end, we introduce a progressively trained multi-way (comb network) and a light- and contrast-preserving blending method. We also show that while progressive training enables generation of high-resolution images, extending the architecture and training data beyond two people allows us to achieve higher fidelity in generated expressions. When compositing the generated expression onto the target face, we show how to adapt the blending strategy to preserve contrast and low-frequency lighting. Finally, we incorporate a refinement strategy into the face landmark stabilization algorithm to achieve temporal stability, which is crucial for working with high-resolution videos. We conduct an extensive ablation study to show the influence of our design choices on the quality of the swap and compare our work with popular state-of-the-art methods.”
Got that?
My advice: just watch the video and be prepared to be wowed.
My take: Deep fakes were concerning enough. However, this technology actually has production value. I envision a (very near) future where “substitute actors” (sub-actors?) are the ones who give the performances on set and then this Disney technology replaces their faces the those of the “stars” they represent. In fact, if I was an agent, I’d be looking for those subactors now so I could package the pair. A star who didn’t want to mingle with potentially COVID-19 carriers could send their doubles to any number of projects at the same time. All that would be left is to do a high resolution 3D scan and some ADR work. Of course — Jimmy Fallon already perfected this technique five years ago:
The clear winner is Amazon Prime Video, with over 2,200 TV series available. Netflix is second with over 1,900. Note that about 35% of Netflix’s TV series are originals.
However, when counting high-quality (average rating of 8.0 or higher on IMDb) TV series, Netflix pulls away with over 330 shows.
“Film isn’t elitist. We all express ourselves through the stories we tell, what we watch and the communities we create. One person’s film culture is watching Spider-Man at the Rio, another’s is going to a Kurosawa season at the BFI or catching the new Christopher Nolan movie at an Imax. But it’s those smaller independent and community cinemas that have been hardest hit by the lockdown… Film isn’t just entertainment. We’re looking at each other, watching what other people do and encouraging greater honesty about each other’s cultures. It’s the age of mass storytelling in which a video recorded on a phone can bring together families separated by lockdown — or inspire a powerful global movement… A nation finally acknowledging its diversity needs a diverse film culture — we have to protect it at the time we need it most… We may need the money mainstream cinema from America brings in, but to create future stars and introduce new voices, independent film is where it’s at. I wouldn’t be here without it.”
“The UK, I’m not afraid to say, is behind. I am not only the only Asian person on set, but the development of people behind the camera is very slow in the UK.”
My take: yes, independent film is indispensable to diversity, mainly because no one can stop you from making your film with your particular point of view. Inclusion, on the other hand, still has lots of gatekeepers, those thwarting your message from getting out and keeping you out of their club. I think the fact that we’re discussing the problem shows we’re firmly on the path to change it.
His thesis is threefold: power will pass from agents to producers, theatre screens will be bought by streamers and production will embrace 8-hour days in new centres.
I’m not going to be able to do his history lesson and argument justice but the gist is:
“…why do producers now get passed the mantle of power? Content demand. Today there is so much content needed to be made that it’s becoming harder and harder for TV networks and studio development teams to have such a hands-on approach to developing projects. Netflix is going through a massive commissioning spree as traditional broadcasters and studios pull their content from the Netflix catalogue to launch their own services. …[hence] a new (or old) breed of Hollywood producer comes into play. Producers who can find content, fully develop it quickly, and earn the trust of financiers who simply look at the budget and a new rich data set behind cast, genre, and other key talent that validates potential audience numbers (data that has only really been available for the last 5 years), and send them off to make the project, delivering it with a big fat bow ready for consumption.”
As to exhibition:
“…movie theaters are going to turn into entertainment centers with big money pumped into them, creating premium experiences in a way that the current owners never could. Amazon will buy AMC or one of the big three. They’ll do special screening deals for Prime members. They’ll program content based on the viewing data of Amazon Prime members around each of their theaters and they’ll market directly to audiences on their own platform to create hype before bigger roll outs both in theaters and via streaming.”
In order to return to film production in these COVID times, safety will be paramount:
“The hours can be brutal. That’s got to change. No sleep equals lower immune systems, tired crew means opening yourself up to basic health and safety mistakes that could allow a virus to run rife. The alternative is longer shooting schedules, 8 hour days, 5 day weeks — the French model.”
He also predicts a crew shortage and lots of ‘runaway’ production.
Richard concludes:
“The death and rebirth of Hollywood is upon us. There are opportunities in every sector of the industry. There really is no greater time — wherever you live in the world — to be in film and television. BUT it’s time to innovate and hustle.”
My take: this is a long and fascinating read, one I highly recommend. Some might think Richard Janes doesn’t know what he’s talking about but his experience in Hollywood guides his prognostications. He’s the first in a long time that I think have it bang on.
