Tags: Editing

In announcing the decision, the CRTC acknowledged the concern that the change could result in “fewer opportunities for Canadians,” but added that non-Canadian actors and creators “may increase a project’s attractiveness and visibility in international markets.”

It also said some stakeholders say the change will give producers “creative flexibility” in developing Canadian productions with “international market appeal and the potential for international investment.”

“American writers won’t guarantee better content,” Mr. Heaton said. “And to say that Canadian programs [need] help [in] the international market is confusing when we have so many examples of successful Canadian shows already.”

Tags: CRTC, Broadcasting, Canada, Culture, Politics

It's simply a matter of time, however, before the technology will catch up to whatever storytelling needs filmmakers have or can imagine, according to Robert Stromberg, an Oscar-winning American special effects artist, art director, designer and filmmaker whose credits include Maleficent, Avatar, Pirates of the Caribbean and Alice in Wonderland.

VR is not simply a film, or a videogame, said Stromberg, who also directed a VR experience that accompanied Ridley Scott's The Martian."It's this new thing and a form of entertainment at the level of Hollywood's biggest films," he said. "It's a new way for people to experience anything they want to experience and also a new way to tell stories. It's this sort of frontier, this brand-new world on its own."

Tags: VIrtual Reality, Filmmaking, Storytelling

There will be plenty written about The Ramones 40th Anniversary Deluxe Edition. As someone who was there in the beginning of what was to become known as punk rock, it is impossible for me to be objective about the scene and how it altered my life. Writing about The Ramones dispassionately would be like dropping acid and Thorazine at the same time. What’s the point?

the heart and the soul of the package: a newly re-mixed and mastered mono version on 180 gram vinyl. This splendid mono release was produced by the album’s original producer Craig Leon at Abbey Road studios. Mixed from the original analog master tape, the record has a presence, a melt-your-faceness that will hit you like a tuning fork struck by the hand of God.

Tags: Music, Review

I now realise that customised culture, which is very nearly ubiquitous today, is a mutation of what Adorno and Horkheimer wrote about in their classic Frankfurt School text Dialectic of Enlightenment seven decades ago. Their contention was that the freedom to choose, which was the great boast of the advanced capitalist societies in the west, was chimerical. Not only do we have the freedom to choose what was always the same, but, arguably, human personality had been so corrupted by false consciousness that there is hardly anything worth the name any more. “Personality,” they wrote, “scarcely signifies anything more than shining white teeth and freedom from body odour and emotions.” Humans had been transformed into desirable, readily exchangeable commodities, and all that was left to choose was the option of knowing that one was being manipulated. “The triumph of advertising in the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them.” The Frankfurt School is relevant to us now because such critiques of society are even more true now today than when those words were written.

Tags: Culture

When attempting to identify a film as propaganda, we often resort to the same set of historical antecedents. There’s Eisenstein and Vertov fronting for the communist contingent. There’s Riefenstahl repping the fascists. Over here’s Capra standing up for Why We Fight. All of it is rather comfortably contextualized in an extreme era that necessitated an extreme methodology that, when it’s been evoked during the 70 years since, implies crass hysteria—which is also how it’s applied to North Korea, effectively a holdout from that earlier era, making it all the more hysterical and crass for enduring in this supposedly more enlightened era.

Thus a perfectly descriptive, non-qualitative word damns and is damned by dint of its historical associations. Officially, propaganda casts a wide net, encompassing, per Webster’s, “ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing cause,” whereas in popular discourse it’s become a blunt, zero-sum pejorative for art with an agenda. Which leaves us without a valuable tool for identifying what certain films are doing and why, and forces some of the savvier modern propagandistic practitioners into a defensive crouch.

Tags: Documentary, Storytelling

most nonfiction filmmakers I know—wrestle conscientiously while filming and editing over how to represent the truths we perceive. Of course, that's the key: The truths we perceive. Most doc filmmakers and scholars agree that documentaries are subjective. I started to wonder to what extent general audiences understand that what distinguishes documentary from journalism is that docs are interpretive; they have a point of view, rather than being straight reporting or documentation. Today, when doc filmmakers exuberantly employ elements from the narrative toolkit—re-enactments, animation, stylized staging—to create powerful nonfiction cinematic experiences, has a credibility gap emerged between the general public and the film community? Are our narrative strategies becoming obstacles to audiences trusting our films?

Tags: Documentary, Ethics, Storytelling

It’s the only study I know of how narrative techniques emerged and developed in a single era. No wonder it took five years. I watched over 600 films. I trawled through books and trade papers for hints about what the producers, directors, and writers thought they were doing. And because a lot of techniques weren’t unique to film (e.g., flashbacks, first-person voice-over, etc.), I wound up reading forgotten plays and neglected novels, while listening to hours of old-time radio.

Tags: Bordwell, Storytelling, Filmmaking

The changes to the commission’s policies on CIPFs are significant and sweeping. Chief among them is the elimination of the requirement of a licensed-broadcaster trigger for CIPF funding, the reduction of the number of Canadian certification points required to access CIPF funding, the eligibility of co-ventures, and the approval to allow script, content development and promotion/discoverability initiatives to qualify for funding.

The elimination of the requirement of a broadcast licence or development agreement from a licensed broadcaster is restricted only by a criteria that producers “must demonstrate that the production will be available on a platform accessible by Canadians” (thus eliminating the possibility that a property commissioned by and aired exclusively on a U.S.-only service would qualify for CIPF funding).

In its decision, the CRTC wrote that eliminating the requirement will give producers more flexibility to distribute their projects on whichever platform they choose by removing distribution exclusivity. In a familiar refrain under Jean-Pierre Blais’ CRTC, the Commission said it will “allow producers to take more risks” since the projects would not have to fit the traditional TV parameters, as well as giving them more bargaining power and creative control.

“This is hugely disappointing,” says WGC Executive Director Maureen Parker. “That the CRTC, a public authority charged with regulating Canadian broadcasting, would effectively denigrate Canadian showrunners and screenwriters and suggest our country’s creators cannot deliver international success is shocking. It’s also verifiably untrue.”

The CRTC decision is not, however, an isolated instance of what the WGC views as an entirely misguided outlook. It’s an increasingly pervasive view that suggests Canadian tax dollars should not be put towards productions created by Canadians. This unfortunate notion — that reducing the presence of Canadian talent is the ticket to more international funding — is taking hold.

Reaction was swift from the self-described “creatives” in the Canadian industry. Outrage, anger, despair and more outrage. Using Facebook and Twitter, some are claiming they will walk away from the industry. Others are saying they’re heading for Los Angeles because employment opportunity in the Canadian business is now considerably diminished. Some of this reaction borders on hysteria. Some of it is anchored in a kind of happy-clappy nationalism beloved of children, not thinking adults.

First, however, the decision is truly appalling. It suits a commercial industry that is already heavily protected, arrogant and uncaring about investing in a medium from which it profits vastly. Second, the CRTC decision comes, suspiciously, without the usual public and industry debate. It looks like a major favour being done for outlets who want to dodge responsibility. Third, it arrives when a Liberal government, one that loudly proclaims its support of Canadian culture, is in power.

Tags: Broadcasting, CRTC, Politics, Culture, Canada

Tags: Trailer