Tag Archives: Go

Women: Apply to Banff SPARK now

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There are less than two weeks left to apply to the BANFF Spark Accelerator for Women in the Business of Media.

This program is designed to address the systemic gap in gender equality and representation by providing essential opportunities and resources to help increase the number of Canadian women-owned businesses in the media industry.

Up to 100 spots are available and include:

  • A full-access pass to the 2022 Banff World Media Festival.
  • A $1500 CAD travel stipend to attend (on the condition of an in-person Festival).
  • A suite of tailored virtual workshops between February to April 2022.
  • Mentorship from an industry advisor.
  • Access to and visibility within the Canadian and global media industry.

BANFF Spark is open to candidates who are established in the media industry and those that are starting out. Content production businesses as well as those that offer services within the screen-based industry are eligible.

The application deadline is Monday, November 15, 2021 at Noon PST.

See the previous cohorts.

My take: very worthy and highly recommended.

Maureen Bradley blogs about micro-budget feature production

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CineVic recently invited Maureen Bradley to speak about her micro-budget feature project, Two 4 One.

She’s cobbling the $250,000 budget together from a number of sources: the Telefilm Micro-Budget Program, the BC Arts Council, the Jim Murphy Filmmkakers Bursary, an IndieGoGo campaign and private sources, for a February 2014 shoot.

She’s blogging about the experience at microbudget.org where she gives a more detailed answer to one of my questions on Saturday.

Regarding this year’s Telefilm Micro-Budget Feature competiton, Maureen’s advice was: have a great story and really think through an innovative digital platform strategy.

My take: Thank you, Maureen, for sharing your knowledge and experience and — your insights! It occurs to me that Telefilm is in the business of making million-dollar movies, so they’re really taking a flyer with eight to ten projects for one million, and hoping that one breaks out. In the old model, a film’s profile was amassed through festival exposure, critical reviews and box office, to be augmented by media coverage as it worked its way through the standard windows. Today, a project’s profile starts with the first online exposure, carries on through the pre-production, crowd-funding, production and post-production stages and hopefully snowballs when more people can actually pay for it. The old model was mediated by distributors, whereas with the new model, the producer does it all. I foresee more creative cooperatives coming together: teams of producers, each specialized in different parts of the new paradigm — concept, marketing, social media, production, exploitation.