Category Archives: The Mediascape

Screen tax credits are worth billions, but have a dark side too

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K.J. Yossman reports in Variety that Tax Breaks Resulted in $18 Billion Boost for U.K. Economy.

She writes:

“According to the British Film Institute report, titled “Screen Business,” every £1 of U.K. film tax relief generates £8.30 for the U.K. economy via direct spend on screen production (which has increased by 74% to £13.86 billion between 2017-19), local business and infrastructure growth, job opportunities, inward investment e.g. in studio space, exports of U.K. services and productions, travel, retail and tourism (Bath, for example, now offers a number of “Bridgerton” tours).”

The dark side?

“While the production boom is great news for the U.K. economy – the report found jobs have increased by 45% and almost £1 billion will be invested in production facilities since 2016 – it has had a knock-on effect on smaller production companies and indie film producers, who are struggling to source crew, space and even equipment. In turn, scarcity has unsurprisingly led to price inflation.”

My take: I would say the same thing has happened here in Victoria, BC.

Bond bests Dom

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After being delayed time and time again, No Time to Die has officially earned the most (non-Chinese) worldwide box office in 2021, surpassing F9.

Nicole Drum reports on Comicbook.com that “the chairman of MGM’s film group Michael De Luca and MGM Film Group President Pamela Abdy released a statement expressing how “thrilled” they are to see audiences returning to theaters as well as for the support for No Time To Die.”

“We are so thrilled to see audiences returning to theaters across the world and for their ongoing support of the theatrical experience. After a long delay, we are especially gratified to know No Time To Die has entertained so many moviegoers the world over. Along with our partners at Eon, Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, all of us at MGM are grateful to the teams at Universal Pictures, United Artists Releasing, and in our own MGM territories for their tremendous efforts to cross this great milestone with No Time To Die. This achievement is a testament to Daniel Craig and the entire cast, as well as our director Cary Fukunaga, producers Michael and Barbara, and the crew for making an incredible film. We extend our thanks to our exhibitor and promotional partners for remaining steadfast in their support of the film.”

btw, Billie Eilish O’Connell and her brother Finneas Baird O’Connell won the Emmy for Best Song Written for Visual Media for the title tune:

My take: Got to say, I’m not surprised. After all, Bond is the longest running movie franchise with the fourth largest cumulative worldwide box office. And the music is killer.

The Dutch Angle, explained

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Marie Cascione explains on Vox — why movies tilt the camera. Watch now:

She writes:

“The Dutch angle (aka Dutch tilt, canted angle, or oblique angle) is a filmmaking technique that involves setting the camera at an angle and tilting the entire scene. You see it everywhere, from blockbuster movies to soap commercials. It’s used to emphasize when something is a little off, or just to make a shot look more interesting. The thing is… it’s not actually Dutch. And it didn’t start with filmmakers. It was pioneered by German directors during World War I, when outside films were blocked from being shown in Germany. While Hollywood was serving up largely glamorous, rollicking films, the German film industry joined the expressionist movement in art and literature, which was focused on processing the chaos of world war. Its themes touched on betrayal, suicide, psychosis, and terror. And expressionist films conveyed that darkness not just through their plotlines, but through their set designs, costumes — and unusual camera shots.”

My take: all of this reminds me of my short film Largo. Because it’s a psychological portrait, I invoked elements of German Expressionism to illustrate the Captain’s mental state, particularly canted camera angles, skewed sets and long shadows. Not bad for 72 hours and $10!

Jim Cummings says don’t get screwed by agencies

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Eric Kohn of IndieWire quotes Jim Cummings as saying, “Agencies don’t actually care about independent film,” in Your Agent Is a Con Artist: ‘The Beta Test’ Director Jim Cummings Wants to Liberate Indie Filmmaking.

Cummings’s thesis is that no one can do a better job monetizing your film than you. He says, “You have to have some business savvy in order to do anything. The film industry is no different, and you shouldn’t give your movie to people who don’t really care about the thing.”

His new movie The Beta Test is about how agencies package deals with their talent. Cummins explains, “The point was to inoculate independent filmmakers to not want to participate in that world — to not be fucked over by the way this culture is built. That has been my raison d’être over the last 10 years.”

Kohn asks, “If the movie is a cautionary tale, what would you like to see filmmakers do instead?” and Cummings replies:

“Exactly what we did. The story of the movie is that agencies don’t actually care about independent film. They care about money and power. But the way we made the film was completely circumventing that system. We ran a Wefunder campaign. It’s a crowd equity platform. We made the movie in our offices with our friends cast in all the parts. We did all of the distribution by ourselves without sales agents. The future is going to be a lot more like talented YouTubers making 90-minute pieces of content. That’s what real democracy is. You can waste a huge amount of your life working for people who don’t care about you.”

My take: This is a great read, and advice to heed. For review, please see Mark Duplass‘s seminal presentation The Calvary Is Not Coming.

Crazy8s deadline coming soon

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This Monday, October 25, 2021, at 11:59 pm, is the deadline to apply to Crazy8s on Film Freeway.

Since 1999, Vancouver’s Crazy8s has produced 127 short films. The Crazy8s Film Society exists to provide funding and support to emerging filmmakers to help them produce short films and to train crew and cast.

Each Writer, Directer and Producer team submits a 3-minute video pitch. Forty semi-finalists will be contacted by November 15 to schedule a time to pitch in-person to a jury of industry professionals on either November 20 or 21, 2021.

Next, twelve semi-finalists go into a story editing phase and work with a professional Script Editor.

Then the Top 6 Teams receive almost $50,000-worth of camera, lighting and grip packages, $1000 cash, and mentorship throughout the duration of their 8-day production and delivery of their final films.

The process culminates with a Gala Screening and AfterParty slated for April 9, 2022, in Vancouver.

My take: I’ve seen a number of Crazy8s films over the years and have always been impressed with their professionalism. Highly recommended.

Another reason not to fly right now

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PetaPixel‘s Anete Lusina has a good summary of last weekend’s travel news: “Man’s Vintage Camera Mistaken for Bomb, Causes Emergency Landing.”

She reports:

“A passenger flight was forced to make an emergency landing in NYC this weekend after a woman mistook a fellow passenger’s vintage camera for a bomb. The incident reportedly occurred after a woman spotted a fellow passenger scrolling through videos and photos of vintage cameras. She mistook the images of vintage cameras for bombs and believed that the passenger was looking up bomb-making instructions. The woman’s fears peaked after the man pulled out his own vintage camera and began fiddling with its settings — she believed that he was setting a timer on a bomb’s detonator. She then notified a flight attendant and the pilots decided to land in Queens. The suspected terrorist was pinned to the tarmac before authorities figured out he was a camera enthusiast.”

Here’s a visualization of the plane to tower communications:

She concludes with:

“The suspected terrorist was forced to lie face-down on the ground and be searched. His bags were also confiscated and searched, and they only revealed a skateboard and other vintage cameras. After being detained several hours by Port Authority police officers and federal agents, the vintage camera enthusiast was finally cleared of any wrongdoing and released. Port Authority spokesman Tom Topousis said that “The JTTF [Joint Terrorism Task Force], the FBI and the Port Authority Police Department determined that there was no criminality on the part of the passenger and he was released.”“

My take: I really want to know what that “vintage camera” was. Also, I found it quite interesting that the witnesses had such different stories. The moral of the story? Don’t fiddle with your f-stop mid-flight? Don’t adjust your aperture on a plane? Maybe just: avoid the U.S. at all costs?

Netflix reveals viewership data

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Catie Keck, reporting for The Verge from this year’s Code Confernece, reveals that Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s Chief Content Officer, shared “Top 10” data from the notoriously tight-lipped streamer.

Netflix Top Series and Films by Hours Watched in their first four weeks:

Netflix Top Series and Films by Number of Accounts in their first four weeks:

When we do some back-of-the-envelope math on Bridgerton: Season 1, we can compare the number of people who watched by hour with the number of accounts that clicked through.

The first season’s eight episodes totalled 8.1667 hours in length. 625M hours viewed divided by 8.1667 hours per season equals 76.53M seasons viewed.

82M accounts watched at least two minutes (which seems like a very low threshold to count though.) 76.5M and 82M are relatively close.

Call it 76.5M seasons per account. With my totally unscientific guesstimate of three viewers per account, I figure 230M people watched Bridgerton, which is twice as many as the largest Super Bowl viewership ever.

My take: what is most surprising to me is that I’ve only seen around half of these titles.

Seinfeld and its Movie References

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Film scholar Yaron Baruch has just posted Seinfeld and its Movie References.

This is a fantastic side-by-side comparison of famous movie scenes are their recreation in the TV sitcom Seinfeld.

Some of you may be wondering, isn’t that illegal?

In the U.S., this use might be permitted under Fair Use provisions.

In Canada, this use might be permitted under Fair Dealing provisions.

For all we know, they may have secured permission from the original copyright holders to adapt their work.

My take: the clips with Newman (Wayne Knight) in both the original and the episode are brilliant! btw, Yaron has also done Community and its Movie References Side by Side.

TV Series and Music: popularity over time

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I love data visualizations!

The American data analyst Data is Beautiful creates scores of data visualizations on their Youtube site Data is Beautiful.

I particularly like The Most Viewed TV series (1986-2020) because it encapsulates decades of my own viewing history.

Another favourite is Best-Selling Music Artists 1969-2019 because once again it compresses fifty years of my listening experience into a tidy ten minutes.

The TV series are the most popular based on the number of viewers per episode on average. The music is ranked by yearly certified record sales and the numbers are worldwide and adjusted to twelve months trailing average.

My take: Imagine if these videos had sound clips matched to the data! Now that would be a trip!

Google AI can now enhance low res pix

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Remember those laughable TV episodes in which someone asks, “Can you enhance that?”

Well, laugh no more. Google AI has mastered “high fidelity image generation.”

You can just about hear it: “HAL, unlock the enhancing algorithm.”

Google explains their new method:

“Diffusion models work by corrupting the training data by progressively adding Gaussian noise, slowly wiping out details in the data until it becomes pure noise, and then training a neural network to reverse this corruption process. Running this reversed corruption process synthesizes data from pure noise by gradually denoising it until a clean sample is produced.”

Add noise to the picture, and then denoise it?

Here is the Super-Resolution via Repeated Refinement paper.

And the Cascaded Diffusion Models for High Fidelity Image Generation paper.

My take: It was Arthur C. Clarke who said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Google has just given us more magic. And we so smugly said those enhancing programs can’t add resolution back into a pixilated picture. Looks like we were wrong, yet again.