Collected Data
"You can’t rely on an industry that serves Hollywood. You need to be a technician and a filmmaker."
The decline in commercial film production, however, has been countered by a rebirth in the phenomenon of artist-run film laboratories. What in the early Nineties was limited to a handful of cooperatively owned, independent labs, mostly in France, has grown into an international network of over 30, many of them formed within the last several years. The decline of film processing created a surplus of cheap, unwanted equipment that, in the right hands, could be repurposed for the smaller-scale operation of an artist-run lab. Saved from the scrap heap, many discarded contact printers and lomo processing tanks have begun a second life as artists’ tools.
Kitchen Sink Cinema: Artist-Run Film Laboratories
"Get ready, Timber Kings fans: There are a new group of kings in town."
“I am tough, but deep inside my toughness, I like to let people know I’m an old-fashioned mama’s boy.”
Once known as one of Hollywood’s tough guys, the one-time bouncer and mohawked member of TV’s “The A-Team” will show a tender side as he helps people in need of redoing kitchens and living rooms as part of a new show on Scripps Networks’ DIY. Mr. T’s “I Pity the Tool” is the latest in a growing series of programs on the cable network that place celebrities in the midst of tricky home repairs and remodels.
Mr. T to Wield Sledgehammer for DIY Home-Renovation Series
"A roadmap to maximize choice and affordability for Canadian television viewers."
By March 2016, Canadians will be able to subscribe to an entry-level television service that costs no more than $25 per month.This service will prioritize local and regional news and information programs given that many Canadians spoke of their importance during Let's Talk TV. News and information programs enable Canadian citizens to better participate in Canada's democratic, economic, cultural and social life. Canadian consumers also expressed frustration that the basic packages offered by cable and satellite companies had become too large and costly. Canadians will now have alternatives.
Canadians, who choose to do so, will be able to supplement the entry-level television service by buying individual channels that will be available either on a pick-and-pay basis or through small, reasonably priced packages. If they so choose, they will have the option of selecting theme-based packages—such as sports, lifestyle or comedy—offered by their service providers.
By December 2016, Canadians will be able to subscribe to channels on a pick-and-pay basis, as well as in small packages. In addition, Canadians will have the choice of keeping their current television services without making any changes, if these continue to meet their needs and budgets
Let's Talk TV: CRTC sets out a roadmap to maximize choice and affordability for Canadian TV viewers
Broadcasting Regulatory Policy CRTC 2015-96
Watch: "MESSAGE OF GREETINGS: PRIX SUISSE / MY THANKS / DEAD OR ALIVE" by JLG
More information and a transcription/translation…
Jean-Luc Godard's First 2015 Film: "MESSAGE OF GREETINGS: PRIX SUISSE / MY THANKS / DEAD OR ALIVE"
"How can we be in the golden age of TV when Canada has not produced any shows with the stature of Downton Abbey or Game of Thrones?"
The Canadian Media Production Association estimates TV production volume in Canada was $2.3 billion in 2014 with more than 125,000 full-time jobs associated with the sector.
last week's announcement that more expensive dramas are to be encouraged could remove money from genre productions, such as cooking shows, children's programming and documentaries, areas where Canada already has proven excellence.
Most of those people do not make dramatic programming.
Baker argues that there is no formula for making a hit — and giving it a $2 million an hour budget is not going to solve the quality problem.
"We need quantity, just like they do elsewhere in this world, especially in the U.S. and U.K., where they have a tremendous quantity of shows so a few of them can rise to the top," he said.
This ruling feels like it was made by an accountant with no understanding of how other counties industries succeed.
You don’t buy hit shows. You buy 9 failures for every success. And that success pays for the failures.
CRTC quest for quality set to shake up Canadian production
R.I.P. Tatsumi Yoshihiro, 1935-2015
Tatsumi is famous as the artist who helped fashion a new style of manga known as “gekiga” (dramatic pictures), a term he coined in 1957. He played a major role in broadening the possibilities of the medium to accommodate mature-reader genres like mystery, action, and horror, oftentimes in 100-plus-page, single-story books that predate the advent of the “graphic novel” by many decades. Though there was hardly a genre Tatsumi didn’t try his hand at, he is best known for the stories he created in the late ’60s and early ’70s about the bleak lives and perversions of aging white-collar and low-level blue-collar workers.
Tatsumi Yoshihiro, 1935-2015
"Television quotas are an idea that is wholly anachronistic in the age of abundance and in a world of choice"
The national broadcast regulator said Thursday it was cutting the quota for the ratio of Canadian programs that local TV stations must broadcast during the day from 55 per cent to zero. That's a recognition that stations have sometimes been broadcasting the same program episodes many times over the course of a day, or even over years, simply to satisfy the old Cancon rule.
CRTC eases Canadian-content quotas for TV
I’ll wait until smarter people review, but I have a bad feeling about this.
Broadcasting Regulatory Policy CRTC 2015-86
Read: "1932: MGM invents the future (Part 1)" by David Bordwell
This is what we have come to expect in mainstream cinema. Not only inner monologues but all channels of subjectively tinted information are usually slanted toward one character per scene. So a film might have several point-of-view characters in its overall running time (e.g., Psycho), but any given scene is likely to be anchored around one.
1932: MGM invents the future (Part 1)
Watch: "Errol Morris Week"
Six new short Errol Morris films.
Also, a great interview…
The Grantland Q&A: Errol Morris
"Watching a movie, whether in the cinema, or on a monitor is really quite different to normal sight."
John Clark;
We still tend to assume that the camera somehow mimics the eye and brain, while a projector is basically a camera in reverse, which was indeed sometimes the case in early cinema and for amateur film-makers who could adapt their cameras to project their film after processing. However, for Digital Cinema the Digital Light Projector ticks along at 144fps, whatever the official frame rate of the movie, with individual frames described as being 'flashed' more than once to fill the available time (though the very concept of 'frame rate' and 'flashing' shouldn't really be applied to 3-chip DLP's, whose 'micro-mirrors' oscillate 50,000 times a second with information up-dated in a modulated form to change each mirrors' pitch). This remarkable technical achievement is quite different to the traditional 'maltese cross' light/dark approach to match the stop/start motion of a print as it moves through the projector, or the scanned lines of a monitor. The notion of 'persistence of vision' building a perceptual bridge between one frame, or half-frame and the next need no longer apply.
What is the "cinema feel"?
"There’s only one catch: No one’s sure what virtual reality goggles are good for just yet."
“That is definitely the million-dollar question,” said Levi Miller, an engineer at Valve, a game developer and distributor, when I asked him what experiences would work best in virtual reality. Mark Zuckerberg might say it’s more like a $2 billion question.
“The truth is, we still don’t know what the best applications are going to be,” John Carmack, the chief technology officer of Oculus, said during a speech at the conference.
Virtual Reality’s Potential Displayed at Game Developers Conference
Uh huh. Video games and interactive entertainment are a just avenues to refine the technology, but they are not the future of VR. Console ‘hard core’ gaming is a niche. Interactive fiction is a niche. VR is unlikely to replace television or movie theatres.
I can understand that Mr Carmack is probably not in a position to discuss why Facebook bought Oculus, but the very fact that Facebook bought a VR company should tell everyone what they need to know; VR is the ultimate social networking technology.
That’s the ‘killer app’.
R.I.P. Albert Maysles 1926-2015
In 1960, Maysles co-directed the iconic vérité entry Primary, about the Democratic primary election campaigns of Kennedy and Humphrey, and later the documentary Salesman (1968), a portrait of four Boston door-to-door Bible salesmen. Maysles was made a Guggenheim Fellow in 1965 and went on to make such films as Rolling Stones doc Gimme Shelter (1970) and Grey Gardens (1976), a portrait of a mother and daughter living in a dilapidated East Hampton mansion. Maysles Films – the director’s production company – has produced many films on art and artists, with Grey Gardens cited by many doc-makers as a huge influence.
Master documentarian Albert Maysles passes away
"She said she doesn’t know how the Canadian economy can grow, when people her age are making so little money that their lunch is a tin of tuna."
"I think it’s important to understand that Canada's a rich country – the GDP per capita keeps going up, the problem is that we’re not sharing that wealth at all equitably. In many ways, we’ve gone back to 1920s mentality," he said.
Job quality in Canada at 25-year low, says CIBC
"Business interests are aggressively asserting themselves over public service obligations of journalism."
"Pollution and climate change caused by excessive burning of fossil fuels are real threats, not the people who warn that we must take these threats seriously."
If, for any reason, someone causes another person harm or damages infrastructure or property, that person should -- and would, under current laws -- face legal consequences. But the vast majority of people calling for rational discussion about fossil fuels and climate change -- even those who engage in civil disobedience -- aren't "violent anti-petroleum extremists." They're people from all walks of life and ages who care about our country, our world, our families and friends and our future.
Let's not sacrifice freedom out of fear
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