Category Archives: The Mediascape

Netflix’s global plan revealed

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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:

  1. to connect, or
  2. 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.

The secret to financing your second feature revealed

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Margeaux Sippell reveals on MovieMaker the 17-Year Secret to Indie Success, From Coatwolf’s Evan Glodell.

Jess Jacklin, Charles Beale and Jake Bowen of the excellent vlog/podcast Demystified recently interviewed Evan Glodell whose first feature Bellflower debuted at Sundance in 2011 and went on to earn two Indie Sprit Award nominations.

He relayed his seven-year story chasing funding for his second film:

“I’m having meetings with literally A-list actors who were like, ‘I want to work with you’ and every big studio in town, and I was like, ‘We’ve made it.’ Nothing had ever worked in my life until one day I said, I’m gonna do this thing and take what was available to me, like in my real-world resources I actually had, which is what we used to make Bellflower. And instead of being like, ‘Hey, that was a big life lesson, that worked!’ we were like, okay, now let’s go back to holding our hands out… What the hell was I doing?”

And he revealed his epithany:

“If I care at all about telling stories in these movies that I say I care so much about that I’m willing to endlessly work and go to meetings for seven years with no outcome, I should just go back in with the resources I have now. The second that I made that decision, all of a sudden everything turned around, and it was like the stars aligned.“

His micro-budget mantra: Just start with what you have.

“You literally have like zero in your way. It’s only you. You can tell your story, but you’re scared of having your story be there bare naked on the screen without the polish of millions of Hollywood dollars and skill, you know? Like 99% of people who reach out to me to say the same thing. I’m like, dude, you just need to get over your fear and just go. Do you have a rich family? Do you have rich friends? No? Okay, you’re in with most of the rest of us. Just go. Nothing’s gonna happen if you don’t go.”

Here’s the trailer for the $17,000 Bellflower:

And here’s how they made it.

My take: I love this sentiment! Nike said it best, “Just Do It!” Need instructions? What you need to know, in 10 minutes.

Pushing drone footage to the next level

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Drone footage. You’ve seen lots of dreamy sequences from high in the sky. But on March 8, 2021, a small Minneapolis company released a 90-second video with footage the likes of which you’ve never seen before. Here’s the local KARE-TV coverage:

Trevor Mogg of Digital Trends adds:

“Captured by filmmaker and expert drone pilot Jay Christensen of Minnesota-based Rally Studios, the astonishing 90-second sequence, called Right Up Our Alley, comprises a single shot that glides through Bryant Lake Bowl and Theater in Minneapolis. The film, which has so far been viewed more than five million times on Twitter alone, was shot using a first-person-view (FPV) Cinewhoop quadcopter, a small, zippy drone that’s used, as the name suggests, to capture cinematic footage.”

Here’s their corporate website and the original tweet.

Oscar Liang has a great tutorial on Cinewhoops.

Johnny FPV has a great first person view overview.

My take: ever had dreams of flying? This might be even better.

How NFTs will unleash the power of the Blockchain

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NFT. WTF?

Let’s break this down to the individual letters.

F = Fungible. “Fungible” assets are exchangeable for similar items. We can swap the dollars in each other’s pockets or change a $10 bill into two $5 bills without breaking a sweat.

T = Token. Specifically, a cryptographic token validated by the blockchain decentralized database.

N = Non. Duh.

So NFT is a Non-Fungible Token, or in other words, a unique asset that is validated by the blockchain. This solves the real-world problem of vouching for the provenance of that Van Gogh in your attic; in the digital world, the blockchain records changes in the price and ownership, etc. of an asset in a distributed ledger that can’t be hacked. (Just don’t lose your crypto-wallet.)

Early 2021 has seen an explosion in marketplaces for the creation and trading of NFTs. Like most asset bubbles, it’s all tulips until you need to sell and buyers are suddenly scarce.

But I believe NFTs hold the key to unleashing the power of the blockchain for film distribution.

Cathy Hackl of Forbes writes about the future of NFTs:

“Non-fungible tokens are blockchain assets that are designed to not be equal. A movie ticket is an example of a non-fungible token. A movie ticket isn’t a ticket to any movie, anytime. It is for a very specific movie and a very specific time. Ownership NFTs provide blockchain security and convenience, but for a specific asset with a specific value.”

What if there was an NFT marketplace dedicated to streaming films? Filmmakers would mint a series of NFTs and each viewer would redeem one NFT to stream the movie. This would allow for frictionless media dissemination and direct economic compensation to filmmakers.

Here’s a tutorial on turning art in NFTs.

My take: while I think NFTs hold promise in film distribution, the key will be to lower the gas price; the fee paid when creating NFTs in the first place.

The biggest feature film prize in Canada…

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…is $100,000.00. (Canadian bucks.)

Similar to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the Toronto Film Critics Association hold their own film awards ceremony annually, the TFCA Gala. This year’s show has been moved from January to March and is now online and free.

Tune into Youtube on Tuesday, March 9, 2021, at 8 p.m. ET.

“The TFCA Awards celebrate Canada’s own film community. We are extremely grateful to founding sponsor Rogers Communications for the $100,000 Rogers Best Canadian Film Award, one of the largest arts prizes in Canada. Under the TFCA’s rules, eligible contenders for the awards include films released in theatres or streaming in Toronto in 2020 as well as films that qualify for the 2020 Academy Awards and have a Toronto release scheduled by the end of March 2021.”

See this year’s three nominees.

See past winners.

My take: my goal is to win the Rogers Best Canadian Film Award with ‘1 Lie.’ All I have to do is make it and get it screened in Toronto. How hard can that be? (Hmm, the screening will be tough.)

How to pitch to Amazon Studios

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Buried near the bottom of a $10,000 pitch competition for Canada’s BIPOC filmmakers are some very valuable tips for your next scripted series pitch to Amazon Studios.

Quoting for research purposes:

“Pilot Structure Guide for Scripted Series 

Plotlines:

There should be an A, B and C plot in the pilot.

A plot: Story of the week. This is a closed-ended story usually dealing with the “business or franchise of the series.”

B plot: Ongoing serialized plot line for our main character that goes over the course of the season. This should be something that builds throughout the season with twists and turns. Two Essential Questions to answer within B Plot:

  1. Why start the story now?

Most importantly there should be an inciting incident that happens at the top of the pilot to our main character that is out of their control – i.e. Tony Soprano having an anxiety attack in Sopranos, or Walter White gets lung cancer. What happens to our lead character early on?

This incident makes the lead character decide to do something i.e. Tony goes to see a Shrink; Walter decides to sell Crystal Meth.

This decision is what springs the plot of the series into action. It moves the character’s life in a new direction. It’s also why the pilot story starts now versus another time in the story.

  1. What does our lead decide to do?

This is what the series will be about.

C plot: Closed-ended story in the pilot that revolves around a secondary character whose plot has nothing to do with the A or B plot.

Theme:

The pilot episode needs a theme that connects all three plotlines.

Ending:

Make sure to end the pilot with a surprise or twist that the audience does not see coming so that they are compelled to watch episode two.”

Also included are tips for your actual pitch:

“Pitch Outline Format

INTRO – Explain what inspired this project, why you specifically feel connected to it, and why now. (2 – 3 minutes)

THE WORLD / GROUND THE LISTENER – Give a very clear grounding statement at the top of the pitch so they know exactly what they are about to listen to. For example, “this is a character-driven, serialized cable comedy (or drama) about XXXXXXX.” Include a broad introduction to the world the show lives in. (2 – 3 minutes)

THE PILOT / PILOT BEATS – Broad stroke the events in the rest of the pilot. Introduce each character briefly as they appear in the pilot story (not in a separate “characters” section). The beats of the pilot story should set up the emotional and thematic arc of the lead character, the story-of-the-week plot, and a secondary character(s)’s storyline. (5 – 7 minutes)

SEASON ONE ARCS – Map out where your main two or three characters’ plotlines will go during the first season, and where they will each find themselves by the end of season one. (2 – 3 minutes)

SUBSEQUENT SEASONS / SERIES ARCS – Discuss what future episodes of your show will look, where you want to go in series, potential storylines, character arcs and entanglements. (2 – 3 minutes)

TONE / RELEVANCY – Make sure you have clearly established the tone of your show by including a few tonal comparisons – mention a movie, or a show or two. Discuss the relevance in terms of today’s cultural or political climate. (1 minute)”

My take: thank you to the Indigenous Screen Office for these excellent instructions.

Digital Humans coming soon!

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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.

From Shorts to Features at Sundance 2021

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Oakley Anderson-Moore writes on No Film School How Shorts Propelled These Filmmakers to Make Their Sundance Features.

She profiles six filmmakers who beat the odds, had shorts at Sundance and came back this year with features. For two of them, the shorts were basically proof of concept calling cards.

Oakley says:

“This year, there were 1,861 narrative features and 1,642 documentary features submitted to the Sundance Film Festival. And due to COVID-19, that number was less than in previous years. Holy hell, that’s a lot of competition! How do you make a feature film that makes it into Sundance? For some filmmakers, a short version of a feature is a great way to prove the concept, not to mention get attention and funding. For others, their short film got them noticed by future collaborators. For others, it merely went to sharpen and hone the voice they would need for their feature debut.”

The filmmakers, their short and their feature are:

My take: I love that two of these features started as shorts. It takes a lot of perseverance to expand a short into a feature but at least folks can see your concept and your filmmaking chops.

Indie filmmaker pivots marketing strategy

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Evan Kidd guest posts on Film Independent how his Microbudget Feature ‘Panda Bear It’ Shifted Its Gameplan Post-Pandemic.

He starts by lamenting the loss of the way things were:

“I miss the community that accompanies sitting in a dark room for an hour or two surrounded by complete strangers. Strangers who embark on the uniquely shared but silent conversation that is watching storytelling unfold in the cinema. Every filmmaker wants to see their work on the big screen with an engaged audience. It doesn’t matter if it’s a crowd of five or five hundred. Putting your work (yourself) out there and having a dialogue about the message behind the medium makes the trials and tribulations of this industry melt away.”

With his second feature, Panda Bear It, a new marketing strategy was required, as:

“…film festivals, screenings and promotion typically involved many other people and a lot of marketing: shaking hands (RIP), traveling with your project to festival screenings big and small and being an ambassador for your own film. That slow burn approach allows you to meet your audience.”

But as the pandemic picked up steam, suddenly only social media and online distribution were viable.

Rather than invest in too many festivals with online screenings, Evan decided to build up his online presence:

  1. He created a podcast called Convincing Creatives. “Talking to a different member of our cast and crew of every episode. The types of conversations we would have with an audience at a film festival Q&A just put into podcast form. People connected with that. They missed it.”
  2. He also fleshed out his Youtube Channel. “I filmed a series of videos shot in my home office during lockdown talking about every aspect of production on Panda Bear It for a few hundred dollars in North Carolina. It grew into a series about indie filmmaking now spanning over 35 videos and counting. They’re essentially the DVD bonus features no one asked for.”

All this was to build up hype for their release on Amazon Prime. He concludes:

“The twists of this year molded me more as a filmmaker. I was truly and fully involved in every aspect of production and promotion like it or not. Perhaps this is a roadmap for future works? Filmmaking is a celebration of the human condition that I didn’t know was as resilient as my fellow filmmakers and film goers proved to me this past year.”

See his company RockSet and twitter for Panda Bear It.

My take: I love the way Evan pivoted. Not able to tour with his movie at film festivals, he doubled down on his podcast and Youtube channel. All indie filmmakers need to be all-in on every possible marketing outlet to attract their audience.

Best places to live as a filmmaker in 2021

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MovieMaker Magazine has just published their Best Places to Live and Work as a Moviemaker, 2021.

COVID got you down? Fed up with your current town? Perhaps a move is in your future.

Here is the list:

HALL OF FAME CITIES

  • New York City
  • Los Angeles

BIG CITIES

  • 25. St. Petersburg, Florida
  • 24. Milwaukee
  • 23. Seattle
  • 22. San Antonio
  • 21. Kansas City, Missouri
  • 20. Washington D.C.
  • 19. Portland
  • 18. Baltimore
  • 17. San Diego
  • 16. Memphis
  • 15. Oklahoma City
  • 14. Cleveland
  • 13. Cincinnati
  • 12. Dallas
  • 11. Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • 10. Calgary, Alberta, Canada
  • 9. Boston
  • 8. Miami
  • 7. Montreal, Quebec, Canada
  • 6. Philadelphia
  • 5. Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
  • 4. Chicago
  • 3. Austin
  • 2. Atlanta
  • 1. Albuquerque

SMALL CITIES & TOWNS

  • 10. Ashland, Oregon
  • 9. Wilmington, North Carolina
  • 8. Richmond, Virginia
  • 7. Tulsa
  • 6. Providence
  • 5. Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
  • 4. Savannah
  • 3. Pittsburgh
  • 2. Santa Fe
  • 1. New Orleans

Of Vancouver, they say:

“Ryan Reynolds came home last year to shoot the star-studded The Adam Project, which features Jennifer Garner, Mark Ruffalo, and Zoe Saldana. But Vancouverites are more than accustomed to seeing famous faces around town at this point: generous, sustainable tax incentives, and temperate Canadian weather have lured many an A-lister up the Pacific Coast. Sandra Bullock shot an untitled Netflix film in the Chinatown district of Vancouver in 2020, and you can ponder what it might be about as you walk along nine beaches stretching out over 18 kilometers — that’s about 11 miles in American. If you’re looking to go back to school, British Columbia has seventeen educational institutions that offer digital media and motion picture production programs, including the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, Capilano U, and Vancouver Film School. Tax credits in British Columbia can be tricky, but it’s worth the money you’ll spend on a good accountant to figure them out. A production can receive a 35% basic tax credit along with several additional credits for particular types of projects and locations. For example, a digitally animated production done in certain locations could receive a total credit of a jaw-dropping 69.5%.”

Of Victoria, they say:

“Vancouver thrives as a big-city alternative to Los Angeles and New York City, and Victoria thrives as a smaller alternative. It’s only about 75 miles away from Vancouver, but getting there will require a combination of driving and a ferry — which takes about four hours from downtown Vancouver — or a flight, which takes about 35 minutes. Victoria is worth the trip. The Vancouver Island Sound Film and Media Commission notes that the island, where Victoria is located, has locations that can double for everything from Central Park to English castles to the French Quarter to the Napa Valley. Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters in Deadpool is really Hatley Castle, just outside Victoria, and Vancouver Island’s Highway 19 was the scene of a harrowing chase in Sonic the Hedgehog. We’d suggest referring to our entry about Vancouver for a taste of the significant tax benefits that await you in Victoria, but as we said there, you’ll probably want to enlist a tax professional. The commission will cheerfully direct you to qualified crew and production services, and your mood will be elevated by waking up each day to dreamy greenery and crashing waves.”

My take: so there! Five mentions on a list of thirty-seven places: we’re punching above our weight.