Category Archives: The Mediascape

Here comes the 1K Wave!

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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

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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

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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?

Will the real Hollywood North please stand up?

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Which city springs to mind as standing in for “Hollywood North”?

Vancouver, BC, or Toronto, Ontario?

Toronto cracked $1.13 billion in production spending in 2011.

BC topped $1.188 billion in 2011.

Stay tuned for this year’s stats next March.

In the meantime, Vancouver’s in the same time zone as Hollywood. And I live in BC, so I’m giving it to Vancouver. So there.

The Fall and Rise of the Mediascape

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Ever since 2004, I’ve pictured the mediascape as a brick wall.

A brick wall falling apart.

In slow motion.

Brick by brick.

Movies and TV first began appearing on the Internet in 2004. No one quite knew how to make money with media on the web but no one could deny that people were spending more and more time there. And less and less time on traditional media.

Since then, this trend has accelerated. More channels and fragmented audiences have meant smaller budgets and increased competition. How is the independent filmmaker to finance their work?

The bricks continue to fall.

As the dust begins to settle,
is that a glimmer of blue sky I see?