A blog about film and storytelling through media.
We are delighted to announce that Amazon Falls will have it’s world premier at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
We’ve been chosen as one of 6 films in the Canada First! programme — a selection of compelling stories from Canadian film talent.
What an honor to have TIFF select Amazon Falls to show at this world class event.
Here’s the first 10 by Film Snobbery:
On May 11th, 2010 film producer Ted Hope posted on this blog 38 More Ways The Film Industry Is Failing. This should be considered, amongst other things, to be a direct response to that article. I will not deny that there are many obstacles facing the indie community. But film history has shown time and again that indie film has hurdled those obstacles every time they’ve been faced with them.
1. Government incentives at the state level are allowing more productions to get financed and opening up the job market in the filmmaking industry. This also trickles down to the independent film community. Filmmakers are able to and do use these tax credits, and other incentives like free shooting permits, etc. to fund and sustain their productions.
2. Technology has given independent filmmakers unparalleled opportunities to break into the film industry. Many movies that are starting off as shorts posted on YouTube are being optioned as Hollywood films (for example last year’s “District 9″). For filmmakers who are going a different route, technology has enabled them to make their art cheaper, more efficiently, and their productions are scalable to almost any size budget. The new independent filmmaker is not a technophobe or luddite, they are embracing technology as an indispensable weapon in their arsenal of art.
3. Organized filmmaker events are everywhere. Contrary to some schools of thought, the independent filmmaking community does exist and is incredibly vibrant. From film festivals all over the world to more local fare like The Conversation and DIY Days, filmmakers are gathering everywhere to network, learn, and share their projects with the general public and their contemporaries. The filmmaker community is open and welcoming. It is expanding and growing every year. Festival submission data corroborates that. Artists seek out other artists. That is the nature of creativity. It yearns to be nurtured and is inherently social.
4. Just the act of being a filmmaker does not necessitate that the artist is, or has to be a businessperson. Some people create just to create. Even getting your film in front of an audience does not necessarily require you to have an MBA from Harvard. It can be as simple as setting up a screen or popping in a DVD at your local bar, church, or school. The art of SELLING a film is where the business part comes in. Yes films have budgets, and the big buzz word right now is sustainability. Filmmakers don’t really need money to create art. They are not sustaining their creativity, they are sustaining their lifestyle. Things cost money, art doesn’t. Yes the accouterments of filmmaking can cost a pretty penny, but I run into filmmakers ever week that have made films for under $1000. They might not be the most professional looking films ever made, but they ARE being made. The business aspect of filmmaking is the same as any day job anyone has ever had. Trading time for money to pay for the necessities in life. Food, shelter, and clothing (and in most filmmaker’s cases, coffee). Filmmakers can in fact sustain themselves, without compromise to their art, but perhaps compromise to their lifestyles. Indie filmmakers recognize this and make these sacrifices constantly to tell the story they want to tell. They re-mortgage their homes and beg, borrow, and steal to realize their visions.
5. Crowdfunding has given filmmakers a unique way to fund their projects. The best part about crowdfunding is that it solves the investor issue, and acts as a natural audience filter for projects that might not yet be ready to be made (either due to poor creative vision, lack of a compelling story, etc.). Once a project has been successfully crowdfunded, and provided that the filmmaker stays within that budget, that project has a net loss of $0.00. Anything made from day one is pure profit. This is something that the Hollywood part of the industry just cannot do. Their business model does not support this.
6. Independent filmmakers have always had to think outside the box for things like funding, production, and distribution. This has led to a myriad of new business opportunities for those that are bold enough to see this demand and supply the proper channels for indies to take advantage of. Businesses like IndieGoGo, Biracy, and Kickstarter have answered the call for crowdsourcing. OpenIndie, Distribber, and IndieFlix are options to consider when looking towards distribution. The bulk of these sites were started by other filmmakers that saw a need in their community for a particular service. No one else was taking care of their needs, so they decided to do it themselves.
7. Filmmakers are always looking to share the tips and tricks they’ve learned while battling it out in the trenches. People like Jon Reiss, Chris Jones, and Lloyd Kaufman all have books out (Chris and Lloyd have a series of books each!) that are aimed at helping filmmakers make, produce, and sell their own damn movies. Others like Lance Weiler have even found other means of monetizing their careers as public speakers, giving seminars, and addressing other filmmakers. This to me shows entrepreneurial spirit and shows that there are many filmmakers that think about the future of not only the film community, but also their own.
8. Organizations such as SAG have gone out of their way to create contracts that are specific to low budget independent film. They have recognized that either one of two things will happen. Either filmmakers will play ball and create SAG approved films, or they’re going to do it anyway whether SAG approves or not. Agencies have seen the power of the independent filmmaker over the years and have changed or added to their policies to accommodate them. This shows that filmmakers do in fact have the ability to affect change within the industry. Look what happened when it was outed that Sundance hadn’t shown a true low budget indie in a number of years. The filmmaking community made a huge deal of it and that very same year we were introduced to Sundance Next.
9. Independent film has changed the way we watch content. Way back in 1993 the film “Wax or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees” became the first feature film to be streamed on the internet. This paved the way for future generations of filmmakers to put their content on the net and get it seen by a completely different audience than the traditional theatrical. While there were a lot of technical limitations of the time that prevented this movie to be fully appreciated online, other filmmakers embraced this new medium and has made it a home for the promotion of themselves and their content.
10. Independent film has led to film curators. People like Zak Forsman and Pericles Lewnes who created CineFist and the Annapolis Pretentious Film Society respectively as both a distribution platform for their films but also as a screening venue for others’ films. Other filmmakers and people in the indie film community have done this as well. David Branin and Karen Worden are the curators of Film Courage Interactive, and marketing expert and publicist Sheri Candler created her own as well. These combined with the film festival circuit provide filmmakers the opportunity to not only make an event out of their movies, but also a chance to have a limited theatrical distribution.
This looks fascinating… death of a city.
We have finished post on “Amazon Falls“. I am now sending her off to the first festivals.
Please sign up on : www.amazonfalls.com and we’ll keep you updated!
Katrin directed her first feature “Amazon Falls” based on her experiences as a B-movie actress in Los Angeles.
WIDC 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.
WIDC 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.
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.
One 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.
So, 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.