CineCoup goes public and why you should care

CineCoup just went live and you should care.

I blogged about CineCoup.com last November and last week it opened to the public with 90 projects, each vying for $1,000,000 and guaranteed screenings at Cineplex.

CineCoup is applying the tech accelerator model to film-making in Canada. Over the next three months, they’ll be challenging the teams to complete a number of ‘missions’ which the public will then rate.

That’s right — you’ll decide the fate of the filmmakers.

This is a fresh model for film financing in Canada. Other than direct crowd-funding, I don’t know of anything else here that shifts the power from industry insiders to the general public. After all, why not ask the audience directly what it wants to see, rather than leaving that decision to committee after committee?

My take: Sign up! Visit CineCoup often. Watch and rate the trailers. Add projects to your watch lists. Follow along for the next few months. Get involved.

Disclosure: I’m providing some production management services to Transmission by Tyler Moore and Clay Bartel.

A shining example of collaborative filmmaking

Today is Pink Shirt Day. We wear pink to show we stand up to bullying.

“…on February 27, 2013 we encourage all of you to wear something pink to symbolize that we as a society will not tolerate bullying anywhere.”

Giant Ant Studios of Vancouver teamed up with spoken word poet Shane Koyczan and almost 90 animators to create something special.

“86 animators and motion artists donated their time and brought their unique styles to 20 second segments that we threaded into one fluid voice. This collaborative volunteer effort demonstrates what a community of caring individuals are capable of when they come together.”

Please watch on Vimeo or Youtube and share.

My take: This is a shining example of collaborative filmmaking.

Interactive media as ‘sidebars’ to linear stories

I came across an interesting post today by Andrew DeVigal, who works at the New York Times, among other places.

He quotes an Indian saying about education:

“Tell me, and I will forget.
Show me, and I may remember.
Involve me, and I will understand.”

He goes on to illustrate how the Times uses photos, graphics, videos and other media to augment their linear stories.

I particularly liked the conclusion of his piece. He envisions engagement and social media, mobile, physical spaces and games augmenting narratives:

“These sidebars are less about the story form and presentation/design and more about the experience and narrative flow. Imagine a written story or a video script written specifically to engage the reader/viewer in an interactive sidebar, or a sidebar that encourages a user to take a quiz, engage with an interactive graphic or offer their thoughts on Twitter or Facebook… or giving a reader/viewer a chance to go to a physical space and experience the story through an augmented reality presentation.”

The picture tells the story.

4K consumer TVs are here; bring cash

Well, when I say ‘consumer’ I mean your very, very rich uncle. And you might need a wheelbarrow for all that cash.

Sony has unveiled a $25K television that has four times the resolution of your measly Full HD 1080 flat-screen TV.

The XBR-84X900 4K Ultra HD TV has a native resolution of 3,840 x 2,160 pixels packed into an 84 inch screen. There is virtually no dot crawl! Sony says:

“Sony is a leader in 4K digital cinematography and projection. As of June 2012, there were over 13,000 Sony 4K digital cinema theaters — nearly 75% of all 4K theaters worldwide use Sony 4K digital cinema projectors. And now Sony brings the full 4K digital experience into the home with stunning picture quality, whether you’re watching native 4K video or low-resolution smartphone clips. The newly-developed XCA8-4K chip upscales HD (or lower resolution) images by analyzing and refining images from all sources. Everything you see is restored with beautiful, natural detail, richer color and stunning contrast. The latest Reality Creation database and Super Resolution processing breathes new life into everything you see with phenomenal 4K (3,840 x 2,160) resolution.”

See Sony’s information or visit Atlas Audio Visual in Victoria to see the only model on display in Canada.

Even film festivals need to re-invent themselves

Recently at the International Film Festival Summit in Austin, San Francisco Film Society Executive Director Ted Hope questioned the legitimacy of film festivals in a world saturated with film.

We live in the time of grand abundance of content, total access to content and rampant distraction from content. Fifty thousand feature films are generated worldwide on an annual basis. America will remain the top consumption market in the world for at least another year, and it’s thought we, at best, consume between 500-600 titles a year – basically, only 1% of the world’s supply. It will take us an entire century to look at this year’s supply of film. And next year we will still have the other 49,500 we didn’t get to this year. And yet good movies don’t get widely seen. Do we really need any new movies?

Of course, we need new movies! You might as well say we don’t need any more songs or poems or dreams.

Fifty-six years ago the San Francisco International FIlm Festival launched, the first in America. Today there are thousands. Hope continues:

Seven years ago, the biggest film festival in the world launched, offering the greatest degree of community participation and media democracy yet implemented:YouTube. Four billion videos per day are streamed. Quality may be an issue, but they filled a need we seemingly missed. Five years ago, cable VOD platforms offered 50 or so new films a month; today we get thousands. And still 27 films a week still open in NYC. San Francisco and the Bay Area now host over 80 film festivals throughout the year. How do we ensure that film festivals truly matter in this over-saturated environment of infinite options?

A very good question.

It seems film festivals are facing the same issues that plague filmmakers: how to remain relevant in a world where paradoxically standards are rising and falling at the same time and where competition is fierce and fewer and fewer make it to the top.

My take is that change is inevitable.

Old methods will hang on (with a few winners getting larger and larger). In the meantime, the vanguard of filmmakers will explore new methods of funding and distributing their work. (This might be crowd funding and theatre screenings on demand — ToD.)

And one day the remnants of the industry will catch up and formalize a new economic model.

Read Hope’s full speech.

Telefilm’s policies under fire

Telefilm Canada’s Success Index (60% box office, 30% cultural significance and 10% private investment) may be reducing the number of production companies able to secure development funding for new projects.

Groups of filmmakers are now complaining that only senior producers can qualify.

See the National Post article.

My take: Stop chasing elusive government funding and come up with new ways to finance your (albeit cheaper) films. It won’t be long before the whole regime is toppled as catering to special interests and all of Telefilm’s money goes to the CMF for televison.

CineCoup coming to a city near you!

Could you use $1,000,000.00 to make a feature — in six months?

Will your marketing package rise to the top of the social media heap?

After stealth-launching at the VIFF Forum, CineCoup is about to visit cities across Canada to pitch its innovative film financing and distribution model. As they put it:

“Launching December 1, 2012, CineCoup is a disruptive film accelerator that will ultimately option 10 Canadian projects [f]or development and select one for up to $1 million in financing and GUARANTEED release in Cineplex theatres.”

For dates and more, see CineCoup.

Here comes the 1K Wave!

Last May, Ingrid Veninger, the Queen of DIY Filmmaking in Canada, put up $5,000 of her own money for the first $1,000 Feature Film Challenge, or 1K Wave.

Now the films of the first 1K Wave go on view at Toronto’s Royal Cinema this Thursday through Saturday:

Hotel Congress Toronto actress Nadia Litz (The Five Senses, You Are Here) worked with her real-life partner Michel Kandinsky on this two-hander about love and fidelity, shot in a Tucson hotel room.

Me, the Bees and Cancer Veteran assistant director John Board (Naked Lunch, The Bay of Love and Sorrows) traces his search through stinging alternative therapies for a cure for his own cancer.

Mourning Has Broken This roving black comedy by Brett and Jason Butler (Confusions of an Unmarried Couple) centres on a guy who responds to his wife’s terminal illness by channelling his frustration toward all the nuisances of daily life.

Sockeye High-school student Ben Roberts pulls an all-nighter with his dad, TV actor Rick Roberts (Republic of Doyle), and discovers new plot twists in his family background.

Liquid Handcuffs: the Unmaking of Methadonia Indie-film veteran John L’Ecuyer (Curtis’s Charm) turns his unfinished film into a diaristic look at the theory and practice of making movies for almost nothing.

See Robert Everett-Green’s Globe and Mail article for more.

Canadian television industry to face extinction

According to the Winnipeg SUN, Pierre Karl Peladeau, president and CEO of Quebecor Inc., told a MIPCOM audience that the Canadian television industry could “face extinction.”

Peladeau told the audience that two trends in particular are threatening the country’s current TV business model. The first is that the country’s funding systems rely on politicians and taxpayers who aren’t “feeling particularly generous these days,” he said. The second worrisome trend, he said, is the fact that the way TV is watched and distributed is evolving. “Obviously, an ecosystem based on declining funding and antiquated regulation is ripe for a major upheaval,” Peladeau said.

A major upheaval indeed. These guys can see the writing on the wall. Hence the reason why all content companies in Canada have become connectivity companies as well.

30 Years Later

It’s been 30 years (minus one month) since SCTV aired the classic ‘Garth and Gord and Fiona and Alice’.

See Part One and Part Two. Love the 8-track tapes on the dashboard and Yonge Street. The opening and closing credits are required viewing.

Hilarious! But has anything changed?