Katrin Bowen
July 28, 2009 – 11:26 pm
Katrin directed her first feature “Amazon Falls” based on her experiences as a B-movie actress in Los Angeles.
Katrin Bowen awarded the WIDC feature film award
February 25, 2009 – 10:03 pmWIDC FEATURE FILM AWARD WINNER ANNOUNCED
Vancouver, Canada (February 18, 2009) – Creative Women Workshops Association (CWWA) is pleased to announce the winner of a $100,000 in kind award designed to encourage more feature films directed by women in British Columbia.
Director, writer Katrin Bowen is the 2009 recipient of the WIDC Feature Film Award, set to be presented March 4 at the Opening Gala of the 2009 Women In Film Festival in cooperation with Women in Film and Television – Vancouver (WIFT-Vancouver).
The award will support the completion of Bowen’s sexy fast-paced comedy feature film Love Bites. Valued at nearly $100,000, the prestigious prize includes: in-kind rentals for one week at North Shore Studios or The Bridge Studios; production equipment rentals from William F. White Intl.; and post production support from Deluxe Vancouver and Sharpe Sound Studios.
“I felt a huge amount of support while at WIDC 2007, from the course and my fellow directors, and to still have the program behind me is a great way to make my first feature. The WIDC Feature Film Award was the missing funding link we needed to take Love Bites to camera,” says Bowen, who is also currently developing two other original feature films, the semi-autobiographical Off Course and an epic love story based on her father’s mysterious disappearance, Ellis and Louise.
”We are very pleased to support Katrin and her project,” affirms Ed Brando, a representative of William F White International. “Having produced a few features myself I know how tough it is to get films made in Canada. Love Bites is a laugh out loud ride and we are confident that Katrin and her team will really bring the story to life.”
Recent research shows that women still make up less than 10% of directors on feature film projects in Canada. The WIDC Feature Film Award represents industry leadership and support from some of the most significant companies in westernCanada to help change that statistic. For over a decade Creative Women Workshops Association has been working in partnership with these and a host of companies, individuals and agencies like The Banff Centre, ACTRA, Telefilm Canada, CBC, CTV, the Quebecor Fund, Actra Fraternal Benefit Society, the Independent Production Fund, IATSE 669, and the Directors Guild of Canada, BC District among others, to help level the playing field for women screen directors in Canada through the acclaimed training program Women In the Director’s Chair.
The award presentation will take place March 4 at 7:00 pm at the Vancity Theatre, 1181 Seymour Street, Vancouver. Following the award presentation the festival opens with a Vancouver premiere screening of WIDC alumna Alison Reid’s award-winning feature film, The Baby Formula. Opening Gala and festival tickets are available online at www.womeninfilm.ca or at 604-685-1152.
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Media Contact and for more information:
Carol Whiteman, President and CEO, CWWA / Producer, WIDC
Tel: 1.604.913.0747; Email: carol@creativewomenworkshops.com
Web: www.creativewomenworkshops.com
BACKGROUNDER
WIDC FEATURE FILM AWARD 2009 RECIPIENT
Katrin Bowen ~ From growing up in a Mennonite community in Linden, Alberta, to writing and performing stand-up comedy, to writing and directing independent films and television in Vancouver, director Katrin Bowen has led a colourful life. She recently directed six episodes of The Last 10lbs Boot Camp for the Slice Network, and episode 3.3 of The Uber Guide for the Travel Network. She is currently in preproduction on: the sexy and hilarious Love Bites and in development on two features she wrote, the semi autobiographical feature Off Course and a film about her parents Ellis and Louise. Katrin’s film career began at Berkeley. For her graduation thesis she made an award-winning documentary on rap music: Spitting Reality. At the Vancouver Video Poetry Festival her short film, Someonewon the Audience Choice Award, and Katrin was honoured to receive the Vision Award for Best Director. Almost Forgot My Bones won the Best International Film Award at the Chroma Festival in Guadajara, Mexico and the Audience Choice award at the Vancouver Video poetry Festival. Her Crazy 8s film: Sand Castle won the diversity award from Citytv, and Edna Brown received BC Arts Council support. Katrin is an alumna of the University of California, Berkeley, the Cannes Producing Intensive, Women in the Director’s Chair and theBerlinale Talent Campus. She speaks four languages and lives in Vancouver, BC.
LOVE BITES
A sexy fast-paced comedy about six intense characters in extreme relationship situations — and the crazy and obsessive behaviours that spring from this thing called love, Love Bites is an emotional roller coaster ride, punctuated by moments of uncomfortably illuminating hilarity as characters confront their fears and passions on the love curve. To be shot in Vancouver with a Canadian cast and crew, Katrin Bowen is slated to direct. Produced by Cheryl-Lee Fast of Fast Productions, to be lensed by Danny Nowak, Love Bites has been developed with the support of Telefilm Canada and Super Channel.
Katrin just won the WIDC award for 100k in kind services for her feature
February 25, 2009 – 10:02 pmWIDC FEATURE FILM AWARD WINNER ANNOUNCED
Vancouver, Canada (February 18, 2009) – Creative Women Workshops Association (CWWA) is pleased to announce the winner of a $100,000 in kind award designed to encourage more feature films directed by women in British Columbia.
Director, writer Katrin Bowen is the 2009 recipient of the WIDC Feature Film Award, set to be presented March 4 at the Opening Gala of the 2009 Women In Film Festival in cooperation with Women in Film and Television – Vancouver (WIFT-Vancouver).
The award will support the completion of Bowen’s sexy fast-paced comedy feature film Love Bites. Valued at nearly $100,000, the prestigious prize includes: in-kind rentals for one week at North Shore Studios or The Bridge Studios; production equipment rentals from William F. White Intl.; and post production support from Deluxe Vancouver and Sharpe Sound Studios.
“I felt a huge amount of support while at WIDC 2007, from the course and my fellow directors, and to still have the program behind me is a great way to make my first feature. The WIDC Feature Film Award was the missing funding link we needed to take Love Bites to camera,” says Bowen, who is also currently developing two other original feature films, the semi-autobiographical Off Course and an epic love story based on her father’s mysterious disappearance, Ellis and Louise.
”We are very pleased to support Katrin and her project,” affirms Ed Brando, a representative of William F White International. “Having produced a few features myself I know how tough it is to get films made in Canada. Love Bites is a laugh out loud ride and we are confident that Katrin and her team will really bring the story to life.”
Recent research shows that women still make up less than 10% of directors on feature film projects in Canada. The WIDC Feature Film Award represents industry leadership and support from some of the most significant companies in western Canada to help change that statistic. For over a decade Creative Women Workshops Association has been working in partnership with these and a host of companies, individuals and agencies like The Banff Centre, ACTRA, Telefilm Canada, CBC, CTV, the Quebecor Fund, Actra Fraternal Benefit Society, the Independent Production Fund, IATSE 669, and the Directors Guild of Canada, BC District among others, to help level the playing field for women screen directors in Canada through the acclaimed training program Women In the Director’s Chair.
The award presentation will take place March 4 at 7:00 pm at the Vancity Theatre, 1181 Seymour Street, Vancouver. Following the award presentation the festival opens with a Vancouver premiere screening of WIDC alumna Alison Reid’s award-winning feature film, The Baby Formula. Opening Gala and festival tickets are available online at www.womeninfilm.ca or at 604-685-1152.
-30-
Media Contact and for more information:
Carol Whiteman, President and CEO, CWWA / Producer, WIDC
Tel: 1.604.913.0747; Email: carol@creativewomenworkshops.com
Web: www.creativewomenworkshops.com
BACKGROUNDER
WIDC FEATURE FILM AWARD 2009 RECIPIENT
Katrin Bowen ~ From growing up in a Mennonite community in Linden, Alberta, to writing and performing stand-up comedy, to writing and directing independent films and television in Vancouver, director Katrin Bowen has led a colourful life. She recently directed six episodes of The Last 10lbs Boot Camp for the Slice Network, and episode 3.3 of The Uber Guide for the Travel Network. She is currently in preproduction on: the sexy and hilarious Love Bites and in development on two features she wrote, the semi autobiographical feature Off Course and a film about her parents Ellis and Louise. Katrin’s film career began at Berkeley. For her graduation thesis she made an award-winning documentary on rap music: Spitting Reality. At the Vancouver Video Poetry Festival her short film, Someone won the Audience Choice Award, and Katrin was honoured to receive the Vision Award for Best Director. Almost Forgot My Bones won the Best International Film Award at the Chroma Festival in Guadajara, Mexico and the Audience Choice award at the Vancouver Video poetry Festival. Her Crazy 8s film: Sand Castle won the diversity award from Citytv, and Edna Brown received BC Arts Council support. Katrin is an alumna of the University of California, Berkeley, the Cannes Producing Intensive, Women in the Director’s Chair and the Berlinale Talent Campus. She speaks four languages and lives in Vancouver, BC.
LOVE BITES
A sexy fast-paced comedy about six intense characters in extreme relationship situations — and the crazy and obsessive behaviours that spring from this thing called love, Love Bites is an emotional roller coaster ride, punctuated by moments of uncomfortably illuminating hilarity as characters confront their fears and passions on the love curve. To be shot in Vancouver with a Canadian cast and crew, Katrin Bowen is slated to direct. Produced by Cheryl-Lee Fast of Fast Productions, to be lensed by Danny Nowak, Love Bites has been developed with the support of Telefilm Canada and Super Channel.
Introducing Tracy Skead
February 25, 2009 – 5:07 pmBonjour!! I’m Tracy Skead.
Currently, I am in a film program called Kaleidoscope - “a small film production company with 12 youth participants.”
Program participants are required to get a internship, and I found one with Katrin Bowen working on her feature film “Love Bites”.
Katrin and I hard at work.
At the moment we are doing pre-production, working on the storyboard and prep work.
Storytelling
June 9, 2008 – 3:45 pm
The central component in all media is the story. What is the message we get out of the experience and how does it map onto our lives and change us?
linear narrative => branching narrative => transmedia narrative
Traditional storytelling has been linear: Movies, television, and books all move in a sequence from start to finish. There have been examples where the story plays with nonlinear techniques, however, the experience itself is something that you consume in a linear way.
Conversations, in contrast, are unique. They are not a set sequence in a story — they are an interactive form of collaborative storytelling. The telephone is a good example of a broadcast technology that supports interactive storytelling.
Websites and video games are also building in interactive aspects to a story and they strive to build out the depth of experience that an audience can engage in.
There is also a lot of work happening in transmedia storytelling - stories that transcend one specific medium and covey a message in a pluralism of forms. More of a collaborative storytelling effort and immersive experience.
So the trend is to make your story a whole universe with parts in each medium that make the most sense for that part of the story. The Stars Wars story is a good example: it is movies, television, books, and video games. All these forms allow fans to explore and immerse themselves in the story.
There is a cultural concern that new media will take traditional stories and recreate them in another medium just to make it edger, or to spin it a different way, or to add a component that had never been addressed before. What will happen to our stories that have cultural significance when exposed to this transmedia expolsion? Everything in culture is iconic and will find new representation in every iteration of the media.
And this assumes that the real value in story telling is being able to provide a narrative with the right icons at the right time to appeal to your audience. And if the audience likes what they get, they’ll likely continue to engage your story through other forms.
Money in New Media
June 8, 2008 – 8:27 pmOne of the big topics here is how to monetize new media. All the Broadcasters, Producers, and Developers are concerned about their ability to generate money from the investments they make into new media content creation. In order to sustain the flow of good content people need to be able to make a living while doing it.
The fundamental mantra in this industry is that you need to give your audience a good story and an engaging experience first, then the business mechanisms can generate a reliable and profitable return as a result. Those traditional mechanisms usually revolve around advertising and licensing the content to others, who can then charge for access or add advertising of their own.
New media challenges this traditional model. It’s not so automatic for a producer to create great content and have it become a financial success. It is not such a one-to-one relationship between number of people who see a story and the revenue generated.
One way this has changed is that broadcasters no longer have control over what viewers can access. For example, a broadcaster can purchase the rights to a show in Canada and make it pay-per-view only on television. But internet users can often download it, or watch it on a website hosted outside of Canada. The internet short circuits those barriers that traditional broadcasters use to control, and therefore monetize, access to content.
Another related example is film and the tight control studios have by making people go to a physical theatre, or buy a DVD that is locked, in order to ensure profit from the access people have to their stories. The internet enables piracy, particularly for film and music content, because the stories can be freed from these physical forms and be copied and distributed digitally. Unfortunately the mechanisms that return money to the content creators is also broken when this happens.
Ironically, there are some in the entertainment industry who have embraced this trend by making their digital content free and they report making more profit from live shows or other specialty content. There is the growing awareness that free can generate communities of fans and a deeper and more direct engagement between the artist and audience never before possible. This kind of relationship cultivation can then provide indirect methods of financial reward in merchandising, brand power, sponsorship, and other non-traditional means.
Other people who are primarily internet based content creators state that the best way to make money from new media is to give all their content away for free to as many people as possible, as easily as possible, because this is effectively advertising themselves. They make money because they acquire fame and reputation in a niche and become experts who are then consulted and get paid work from others who need their help. It is the epitome of self-promotion and can lead to may self-directed opportunities not possible in other models. For example, such self-made experts often have a lot of clout in online communities and, depending on the area of expertise, corporate sponsors are often willing to cooperate with and fund these people directly, thereby bypassing the other advertising channels in order to promote their products. And, the best part is that this direct sponsorship model is viewed by the internet audience as a more trustworthy source of promotion as compared to traditional advertising.
The big players in film and television tend to express a willingness to cautiously explore these new trends, but they are very reluctant to give up on the established financial models that have served the industry so well for so long. As a result there are many reports from new media content creators that they will get funding to develop a project only to see it flounder in the old distribution model, or tied up in limbo because it is seen as disruptive or competitive to other properties that are successful in the old model.
On the other hand, broadcasters have huge access to audiences in ways that are not possible in any other way. They also have developed a relationship with their audiences and are trusted to deliver a certain quality and style of content that the audience wants. Their brand is a powerful asset and broadcasters are very determined to maintain this brand relationship with audiences and extend it to be able to offer related story experiences in new media domains that still preserve the quality and characteristics they have become known for with their audience base.
The trick seems to be to offer broadcasters new media projects that complement their existing properties and provide a way to expand their audience engagement into these new domains made possible by the Internet. And if you can demonstrate that your project has the potential to leverage their established relationships with sponsors and advertisers — great — but if you rely too much on indirect monetization channels there is still some skepticism. But the bottom line is: does the new media project fit the style of their brand and their audience. If you can demonstrate that, you’ve got your foot in the door.
Moments
June 7, 2008 – 1:00 pmSo, besides attending nextMEDIA for the insight and networking, I’m also here to pitch my project called Moments.
I attended the CBC Digital Development Labs last month and have been in talks with the CBC to get this project off the ground. Today I met with Stephane Bousquet, who is the Director of Business Development at CBC, and pitched him my idea.
The meeting went very well — he likes the project and has several ideas about how it can fit with projects in the CBC right now. Thats a great feeling for me — to talk to someone who ‘gets’ new concepts and can immediately see how it can fit into the larger picture.
So, the outcome is that he has agreed to offer his support internally with CBC to talk to stake holders and help get this project going. He also connected me with other people who will be here tomorrow — when the television segment of the event starts — and we’ll meet and discuss more details about how moments can be integrated into other CBC shows and projects.
I’m learning that the first step to getting a project going with a big player such as CBC is to garner internal support — champions — who can evangelize on your behalf from the inside.
Very political, however, very rewarding when these people see the value and voluntarily offer to help you talk to others and work out the best way to get your idea made.
Jeff Barr on Cloud Computing
June 7, 2008 – 11:09 amJeff Barr - Senior web services evangelist at Amazon.com on Amazon’s Cloud Computing platform
Pervasive connectivity means that you don’t intentionally turn on your media experience. Its now all around you all the time.
This means that media interactions can happen at will, anytime, anywhere. This is interesting because film is intended to play in a theatre — a controlled space with other people who focus their attention on the silver screen for a few hours. Its interesting that theatres demand that participants disconnect their cell phones and other devices so that everyone can remain free of distractions. The magic of film seems to have something to do with overcoming the limitations of the media in a way that allows for suspension of disbelief — in other words, films work well when they are crafted in a way that allows the audience to leave their seat in the theatre and live inside the movie for a period of time.
New media is totally reversing that. The strength is not in the power of suspending disbelief, it is about being pervasive and an overlay on your reality — eventually to the point where you can use the media to tweak your reality. You don’t need to leave your seat to get into the story, the story can come to envelop you wherever you are.
Cloud computing is the computational technology behind making this possible. Essentially it is huge computer resources (bandwidth, storage, and processing) on the internet that can respond in real time to support media experiences for anyone anywhere. This is more than just downloading a video on your phone (although data streaming is part of it) this is also about computing the actual experience so that it can respond to the user in an interactive way.
For start-up media producers who create something like a facebook application, or other interactive new media story, cloud computing means you can plod along with minimum resources while your application is small. When it goes big, or viral, the compute cloud can respond to automatically cover the explosion in demand on a minute-by-minute basis. This keeps your up front costs and investment very small without limiting yourself.
This is great for film makers or media creators because you can keep your hosting and overhead costs minimal as you get going and launch. If, or should I say when, your project takes off the cloud automatically scales up to meet demand. And if your story relies on other people’s content, and that content is also on the cloud, everything scales in harmony to meet the spike in demand. Its like a digital ecosystem.
This is in contrast to the current distribution model of stories (books, film, or video) where there is a huge cost involved in getting the media copied into tangible forms (books, newspapers, DVDs, film stock, PAL and NTSC tape, etc) and distribute them to places where you think there is an audience. That risk and cost barrier to accessing an audience is no longer a limitation to getting your story out if you use digital new media formats and cloud computing.
Bill Buxton on the Future of Media
June 7, 2008 – 8:57 am
Bill Buxton is a researcher at Microsoft and and Acadamy award winner for his creation of Maya. The following is a paraphrased (and slightly augmented) version of his presentation:
Film is technology based. One may think it is an art, but emotion and chemistry on celluloid is no different than digital content on the web. The craft is different, the expectations and constraints are different. But every lens the filmmaker chooses is a technological decision.
Films used to be restricted to a highly selective group who had access to the technology required to make them. Now they can be done by average people. New media makes it possible to make a film differently. The creative is opening up, the technical opens more possibilities to more people, but the craft struggles to keep up.
How to keep up and evolve the craft of film making? Just gotta push this stuff, practice practice practice to get good, try stuff. Movies don’t have to be real, there are so many tricks and short cuts that technology offers you don’t have to be locked into the old expensive way of storytelling with film.
Technology might even be about creating such compelling storyboards and shot planning that you’ve already made a low res version of your story before you even get the funding to shoot the real thing. That way, one can mockup a really close version of the story with cheap technology, work it, hone it, perfect it before you go and shoot the expensive film sequences. New media can mean massive cost savings and efficiencies for traditional film making.
Today, electronic film making is computationally about as complex as music was a few decades ago. You can sample, remix, and create electronic video that is derived from other content to create a new product. And you can do it on your laptop today. You can be god and create any scene you want without having to rely on reality. For example: Pixeldust allows you to take out any moving content from existing film footage (say free stock footage) and use it as a background. Then overlay your film footage of your actors. It’s still all film, just remixed.
On another front, video games have taken narrative cues from film makers and made stories that are interactive and participant oriented like a spectator sport such as hockey. Story matters — its about the emotional engagement with people. And in this way, interactive is not limited to one player: others can get emotionally involved and the media can engage a crowd.
“The future is already here, its just unevenly distributed.” - William Gibson
The future of technology is already here, its just that not everyone gets it yet, and no one knows exactly how to use it yet. Its a gamble left to the artists to work out before it goes mainstream. New media right now manifests as folk instruments: amateur tools that allow people excluded from access to the real tools to try stuff out. Technology tends to bypass barriers to entry that have traditionally been used to ensure a closed exclusive group has control over maintaining a minimum quality of craft.
The challenge now is that new media engagement opens new possibilities to new people, many of whom do not have classical training in an artistic craft, and this changes the way we can effectively use the media. Most people make the mistake of translating stuff they know and throwing it up in the new domain. That doesn’t work. People easily get wrapped up in the problems, constraints, and limitations of the last technology (i.e television and movies) when addressing the new technology. And that doesn’t work. Gotta approach it fresh and the amateur has an advantage there. So do kids because they treat it for what it is, not how its like something else.
Microsoft Interactive Surface project - like the iPhone, but on a tabletop. Touch screen and interactive features make this table a part of the interface like the surface-ground relationship in art. Put your phone, or camera, or videocamera on the table and all the digital content from these devices is automatically displayed and connected in a transparent way. Content is not limited to the domain it originated from anymore — new media means that content is now transparent and transportable to any place and any device.
How do you tell stories now? How do you craft a message that can accommodate platform ambiguity? Stories no longer need to be linear. You don’t need to got to the theatre to see the story. And, you need to think differently and push these assumptions to be sucessful storyteller in the future.
Earl Hong Tai from Telefilm
June 7, 2008 – 8:12 amEarl Hong Tai, Director - Western Region of Telefilm Canada presented in the opening ceremony.
His speech speaks to the film debate and purpose of nextMEDIA.
He asked: why is a film and television cultural funder at nextMEDIA? The lines are being blurred and there is a fundamental shift in storytelling.
“Our screens have no borders”
Earl talks about how telefilm is committed to helping new media people ‘crack the code’, and discover the magic bullet that will revolutionize story telling as much as film and television have. This will include interactive content of some form, and when it happens, it will generate income that far exceeds boxoffice receipts.
Telefilm wants to help Canadian companies to create products with this kind of potential.