"Literature had changed, painting had changed, culture. And from what I knew, the movie had been just illustrating stories, illustrating books," Varda said in 2015. "I could see that the feeling was just to illustrate, when I thought, 'It should be radical.' "

Because Harlan Ellison was an amazing writer; not always, but enough of the time, and with sufficient magnitude, that he shaped generations of writers, and inspired me. The eloquence and passion he brought to fighting injustice were my own apprenticeship (even though we sometimes disagreed thoroughly on what constituted "injustice"). Ellison has been my lifelong test-case for figuring out how to admire the admirable parts without excusing the parts that couldn't be excused, someone whose good deeds and remoteness gave him a salience without any kind of personal baggage (I could be angry at Ellison without worrying about taking it out on him, because we didn't socialize). As a training ground for finding space for two contradictory feelings, you couldn't ask for better than Harlan Ellison.

Clowns. Morons. Thieves. Thugs. Little pirates. Self-indulgent adolescents. That's what Harlan Ellison calls people who post his fiction on the Net without his permission.

Such talk has made Ellison as legendary for his acts of vengeance as for his literary work. Sure, he's written 74 books and classic episodes of Star Trek and Outer Limits. But an angry Ellison also once mailed a dead gopher to a book editor. On another occasion, he flew from Los Angeles to New York to tear apart an editor's office. Then there's the time he brought a gun to a meeting. (He swears it wasn't loaded.)

"For a brief time I was here; and for a brief time I mattered."

Harlan Ellison, science fiction master, dies at age 84

I never met Mr Ellison in person, but I did have the chance to speak with him over the phone. His work was and is still an inspiration.

Thank you Mr Ellison.

I am not a journalist. I am not a foreign correspondent. I am, at best, an essayist and enthusiast. An amateur. I hope to show you what people are like at the table, at home, in their businesses, at play. And when and if, later, you read about or see the places I’ve been on the news, you’ll have a better idea of who, exactly, lives there.

Jenifer Norwell for the CBC;

A record-breaking log car made in Williams Lake was sold not once, but three times on Friday.

The so-called Pioneer Cedar Rocket was created by Pioneer Log Homes of B.C., from a single log and holds a place in the Guinness World Records for fastest log car.

The log car has been toured all around North America for the past two years before being put up on the auction block at the Barrett Jackson Auction in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Reid says the final buyer was a man from a museum in Virginia Beach, Va., and the car will be displayed next to the Batmobile.

Tags: Timber Kings

Last night, Universal unveiled the first full trailer for JA Bayona's Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Fan reactions to the trailer have been mixed for all the usual reasons - some folks consider the storyline ridiculous, others aren't thrilled at how "small" the footage looks, still others would prefer if the film leaned more heavily on animatronics versus CGI - but my beef with the film is far more specific: namely, it does not appear that Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom's dinosaurs will shoot machine guns.

This is complete and total bullshit.

Marlene Yuen is a Vancouver-based artist who took part in a Visual and Digital Arts extended residency earlier this year. She is currently working on her forthcoming 2018 off-site exhibition, Coal, Gold & War, at Campbell River Art Gallery. Through a series of large-scale comics and handmade artist books, Yuen’s exhibition will address the labour of Chinese workers on the transcontinental railroad.

Tags: Art

At the heart of the story is a man trapped in circles of hell, inside a circumstance not of his own making. Freedom is within his grasp and then disappears because of the actions of others. (Canada's then-minister of foreign affairs, John Baird, made a grave error in the Fahmy case.) Fahmy's frustration mounted and, today, living in Vancouver, it still seethes. That's why he's "half-free." His energy now is directed at helping the families of the wrongfully imprisoned and ceaselessly talking about the number of journalists who are in jail around the world for doing their jobs.

Tags: Documentary, Review

When Paperny met with me and expressed interest in telling my story I knew I had fallen into the hands of a humanist, a storyteller who uses his camera to zone in on the “why?” and “what next?” It’s not easy trusting someone with the message you want to portray to the world through your own complicated political story of injustice.

Tags: Documentary

Brian Lowry for Variety;

Adam West — an actor defined and also constrained by his role in the 1960s series “Batman” — died Friday night in Los Angeles. He was 88. A rep said that he died after a short battle with leukemia.

West became known to a new generation of TV fans through his recurring voice role on Fox’s “Family Guy” as Mayor Adam West, the horribly corrupt, inept and vain leader of Quahog, Rhode Island. West was a regular on the show from 2000 through its most recent season. West in recent years did a wide range of voice-over work, on such shows as Adult Swim’s “Robot Chicken” and Disney Channel’s “Jake and the Neverland Pirates.”

But it was his role as the Caped Crusader in the 1966-68 ABC series “Batman” that defined West’s career.

Tags: News

There is a matter-of-fact quality to these histories. The tragedies and injustices are never amplified for dramatic affect as much as they are calmly, soberly pointed out. Victorious moments are also quietly delivered: such as that of women like Jean Lumb, whose activism helped reform Canada’s severe immigration laws and who became the first Chinese Canadian woman to earn the Order of Canada or Mary Ko Bong, a jazz performer and fine instrument mechanic trained in Hamilton.

The stories range from a salmon canning factory in B.C., to a lunch counter in Alberta, to a Chinese laundry on John Street in Hamilton, to the systemic exploitation of Chinese workers who mined tunnels through 13 mountains during the construction of the Trans-Canada railway. Taken together, there emerges a troubling pattern wherein Chinese immigrants are dehumanized by arduous, impoverished work, only to endure a second dehumanization when those jobs are mechanized, modernized, or unrecognized. Finding a way to thrive or even survive within these conditions is correctly constituted as heroism by Yuen.

Tags: Art, Review

Having started by trimming the Canadian programming requirements, Blais is now cutting the money, subtracting from the other side of the equation that is still an effective support for Canadian TV production. Following a decision last fall that reduced the number of Canadian creatives who need to be involved for shows to qualify for investments for certain production funds, this latest move continues a pattern of chipping away at supports randomly without offering a clear vision of what might replace them or where that “compelling and original Canadian content” is going to come from.

Tags: Broadcasting, TV

“We are extremely proud of the volumes of strong Canadian original content we have delivered to audiences over the years,” said Godfrey. “After resonating with legions of fans, Chopped Canada, Timber Kings and Yukon Gold have reached their natural end and won’t be renewed for another season. The success that these series had is a true testament to our exceptionally talented production partners at Paperny Entertainment and eOne and Corus applauds the cast, creators, producers, and writers for their dedication to these Canadian originals.

Tags: Timber Kings, TV, EOne, Work

Join us for our Spring/Summer exhibition After Gold Mountain: Selected Stories of Chinese Labourers in Canada by Vancouver-based printmaker and book artist, Marlene Yuen.

Please join us for the public opening reception of After Gold Mountain on Friday, May 12th from 7-10 pm. Marlene Yuen will be in attendance.

Tags: Art, Comics

Filming has begun on the final two episodes of Doctor Who series 10, with this first look image revealing the return of a much-feared classic foe.

The Doctor (Peter Capaldi) is pictured with the Mondasian Cybermen – the original version of the Doctor’s deadly enemies who hail from the planet Mondas and have not been seen in Doctor Who for over fifty years.

Tags: Dr Who, Geek, Science Fiction, TV

Returning for Season 4 on HGTV, Sunday’s premiere is a two-parter beginning at 9 p.m. ET/PT—Timber Kings moves to its regular timeslot next week—that begins with an instalment entitled “Heaven’s Gate.” Of course, building heavenly projects involves a lot of hellish conditions and this is no exception. This season of the show features international build locations in Germany and Scotland, but things kick off not too far from Pioneer’s headquarters in Williams Lake, B.C.

Tags: Timber Kings, TV, Work

Seijun Suzuki passed away in a Tokyo hospital on February 13. He was 93. In the Hollywood Reporter, Gavin J. Blair notes that his death was announced today by Nikkatsu, “the studio that famously fired him in 1967 after 12 years and 40 films, for what is now seen as his masterpiece Branded to Kill. The film was made in black and white as a punishment for his work on Tokyo Drifter—now also considered a classic—the year before. Both films were intended by Nikkatsu to be straightforward, B-movie yakuza gangster flicks, but Suzuki’s experimental style, unconventional narrative flow and comedy touches were too much for the studio bosses. Suzuki sued for unfair dismissal and found himself shunned by the industry and unable to direct for a decade.”

Tags: Film, Directing

WWE;

Steele was one of the wildest and most unpredictable Superstars in sports-entertainment history. Yet, despite his green tongue, hairy torso and insatiable appetite for turnbuckle pads, "The Animal" was a very well-educated man. Prior to breaking into sports-entertainment, Steele received his Master’s Degree from Central Michigan University and became a high school teacher and wrestling coach in the Detroit area.

It was during his teaching stint that he began moonlighting in sports-entertainment, working in the Detroit-area promotions. Steele’s first WWE appearances took place in 1967, when he began a heated rivalry with WWE Champion Bruno Sammartino. For nearly 20 years, Steele was a reviled villain, managed by the likes of fellow WWE Hall of Famers The Grand Wizard, "Classy" Freddie Blassie, Capt. Lou Albano and Mr. Fuji. His classic main events against Sammartino, Pedro Morales and Bob Backlund saw him come close to winning the WWE Championship on many occasions.

George "The Animal" Steele passes away

Tags: TV

Asked whether he had been practising his dance moves, Garrett was blunt. “Mate, let’s be really clear about that – that’s one thing I don’t need to rehearse,” he said.

“Midnight Oil’s not a calculated exercise in producing something that has an effect. It’s much more an internal kind of spontaneous combustion that always happens, and it’ll still happen. I’ll go for the odd frolic, I’m sure.”

The master builders of Pioneer Log Homes in Williams Lake, B.C. stop at nothing to get the job done under tight deadlines and intense pressure to build massive, multi-million dollar homes. The fourth season of Timber Kings carves out a home on the schedule Sundays beginning March 5 with a two-episode premiere at 9 p.m. ET/PT and subsequent episodes airing at 10 p.m. ET/PT. This season, the team constructs everything from a 50-foot log teepee to a breathtaking 20,000-square-foot log mansion in locations spanning from Vancouver Island to Germany. Fans can also watch exclusive, behind the scenes videos and home tours of the cast and crew’s homes on HGTV.ca.

Tags: Work, Timber Kings, TV

Stuart McLean, the host of CBC Radio's The Vinyl Café and an award-winning humorist, has died at age 68 after a battle with melanoma.

McLean's trademark blend of storytelling — part nostalgia, part pithy observations about everyday life — and folksy, familiar delivery made him a hit with audiences for more than 20 years.

Tags: Radio, CBC

Peter Capaldi has confirmed that he will leave Doctor Who at the end of the show's current run, bowing out to make way for a new Doctor.

Capaldi will leave at the end of series 10, with the 2017 Christmas special serving as his last hurrah.

Tags: Dr Who, Science Fiction, TV

According to the philosopher Harry Frankfurt, emeritus professor at Princeton University, bullshit is something that is constructed absent of any concern for the truth. This is quite different from lying, which implies a deep concern for the truth (namely, its subversion). Bullshit is particularly pernicious since the bullshitter adopts an epistemic stance that allows for a great deal of agility. For the bullshitter, it doesn’t really matter if he is right or wrong. What matters is that you’re paying attention.

Fisher made her big screen debut in the film Shampoo (1975), alongside Goldie Hawn, Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, but it would be another two years until she got her big break in Star Wars.

She told the Daily Mail in 2011 that when she got the part in a "little science-fiction film", she just thought of it as a bit of fun. "But then Star Wars, this goofy, little three-month hang-out with robots did something unexpected," she said.

"It exploded across the firmament of pop culture, taking all of us along with it. It tricked me into becoming a star all on my own."

While proud of her work on Star Wars, Fisher was a woman of many talents. In 1987, she published her first novel, the bestselling Postcards from the Edge, a semi-autobiographical story about a woman raising a daughter while working in show business.

Writing became a lifelong passion for Fisher. She helped adapt Postcards into a film starring Streep in 1990, and made a career of revising Hollywood scripts, including Sister Act (1992), Outbreak (1995) and The Wedding Singer (1998).

Tags: Star Wars

As Canada finds it increasingly difficult to maintain the walled-garden of Canadian content, the commercial business model – whereby U.S. shows, often simulcast, underwrite a smattering of Canadian drama and comedy – is at risk. The moment may come when the commercial networks will have to be cut loose from both their Canadian-content obligations and market protections: Leave them to figure out how to make money as a local broadcaster selling U.S. content to Canadians when Netflix knows no national boundaries.

In that environment, a distinctively Canadian and commercial-free alternative would stand out like a beacon. Critics of CBC sometimes argue that globalized media make the Canadian public broadcaster obsolete. On the contrary, the plethora of foreign choices makes it more relevant than ever.

The BBC offers a compelling example of how a strong, stable, well-funded public broadcaster can serve the interests of domestic audiences and diverse communities, support the global ambitions of its creative and cultural sectors, and provide a strong foundation for Britain’s creative economy.

Through a combination of a cohesive culture strategy and sustained culture investment over many years, Creative Britain is now a crucial part of the British economy, British culture is stronger than ever and the BBC is a global symbol of quality.

Tags: CBC, Broadcasting, Canada

Tags: Cinematography

Tags: Music

Unusual and unsettling, Lipsett’s films are complex and tightly-wound. On the surface, or at first glimpse, all one experiences is chaos. The films appear disjointed, headache-inducing, even rambling. The visuals race from one thing to the next, and the sound doesn’t match.

But closer scrutiny reveals the depth and scope of Lipsett’s genius. Below the surface, things are moving. Things everyone stumbles upon once in a while: existential dread, unease, futility. Powerful feelings that most of us prefer to suppress and ignore.

Tags: NFB, Experimental, Film

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

One issue that cuts across most major cable networks, producers say, is the increasing flood of notes on shows and demands for multiple versions of episodes — all of which add to costs that usually come out of the producer’s pocket.

Producers emphasize that the development of new series can take months, if not years, and require significant up-front investment before a project is ever set up at a network. Companies often fund talent deals on their own, producing sizzle reels and accomplishing other pre-production work before the show is shopped to buyers. In the view of the NPA and PactUS, that activity amounts to an invaluable R&D service for networks. But producers of unscripted shows are rarely reimbursed for those costs — unlike major studios and networks under the generous terms for scripted series. The nightmare scenario for an unscripted producer is making that major investment, only to have the show taken away by the network after a season or two.

“The scary part for producers is that you can work really hard to develop this intellectual property, and the networks can arbitrarily take it away from you,” says the NPA’s Ford, a Discovery alum. “There’s a perception on the part of producers that it is becoming more likely to happen.”

Tags: Production, Broadcasting

The former nightclub and circus performer appeared in the 1977 original movie as well as The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and the franchise's prequel trilogy.

Some people might be surprised to learn there was a human inside R2-D2, considering his dialogue amounted only to beeps and whistles.

"I worked the levers," he told the Associated Press in a 1985 interview.

Tags: Star Wars

The full episode release of the season gave the impression of it being a great movie broken up into episodes that could be consumed in my own time — all at once or over time. This model allows writers to do more than they could in a movie given the time constraint. I’d even offer the viewpoint that this model allows for better storytelling overall. Which is why the glimpse we are seeing from Netflix is the future of entertainment — storytelling as a service.

TV networks are, in my opinion and analysis, not well positioned for this shift given their business model. Due to their advertising focus, they are incentivized to release content over long periods of time due to how they structure ad deals. Netflix, HBO, and Amazon are not subsidizing these shows by ads but by my consumer dollars, so I’m paying for these stories as a service. Which allows for this favorable model consumers prefer of releasing all at once. The challenge, as I see it, is their need to keep the stories coming. If I’m paying for it then I always want something to be on. The thing I dislike the most about binge-watching a series is when it is over. After you finish a series or season in a weekend, we need/want something else and, if we are paying for these stories as a service, we will demand it. Netflix, Amazon, HBO and any others wanting to compete here for consumer dollars need to be extremely aggressive in how much original content they release regularly. Again, the demand, if this future comes to fruition, is that we will always want a fresh story. That will be expensive.

I often emphasize a point that consumer markets are not generally “winner take all” markets. However, this may be one of those areas where it could be, simply on the point of economics to invest and create original stories at a frequent pace. The capital intensive nature of this business model means those who pull it off will acquire the most customers and can turn that revenue scale into investments in new content.

Tags: Broadcasting

Eclipse will not win any awards for creative film-making, and its director won't be snapped up to make a Hollywood blockbuster. But AI is advancing every day - and a decade from now, actors may find a computer sitting in the director's chair shouting: "Cut!"

Tags: Technology, Filmmaking

Over the past few decades, documentary-makers have taken enormous aesthetic leaps away from the static, talking-head educational films they grew up with, embracing reenactment, animation, stylized staging and other fiction-film techniques to bring energy and urgency to their narratives. In most cases, they have striven to hide the artistic liberties they take — the better to keep the audience fully immersed in the tale they’re spinning. But such coyness is beginning to feel hopelessly dated at a time when audience expectations have changed: Today, transparency has become the new standard. Perhaps it’s time to bring that same creativity to full disclosure, whether in the form of brief explanations during opening or end credits, or more artfully within the body of the film.

Tags: Documentary, Ethics

What’s more, this boom in childish entertainment points to a much larger problem: our culture no longer offers any models of adulthood that are remotely appealing. Growing up is identified with resignation; abandoning all the dreams of adventure, all the hopes you had for enjoying, and contributing to, a better future…

it is not just our fault: the forces that govern society do not really want grown-ups, for immature masses are much easier to manage. In Kant’s day, the means by which people were kept immature were straightforward. Censorship and punishment worked to keep subjects from thinking for themselves.

While we shouldn’t forget that those methods are still used in countries with which we are allied – Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and China leap to mind – the West has discovered more effective ways of keeping its citizens from growing up. Distraction works better than censorship. If you prevent people from getting information, some bold souls will always be moved to rebel. If you flood them with unmanageable quantities, they just want the noise to stop.

Facebook has magnified all of these trends: not only is content content, regardless of source, but it also tries to give us more of what we (literally) like, or click on, or comment on (in this case I am talking about the News Feed, not the Trending News section). If you like publications and stories that are more liberal in nature, you’ll get more liberal stories and publications in your feed; it’s the same thing with conservative stories and publications, or sports, or music, or whatever topics “drives engagement”, to use the parlance.

The result is that if you are a conservative, say, you are living in a cornucopia of conservative thought unimaginable to those students launching a new college newspaper against the odds in 1969. There are no obstacles to publishing, and Facebook actually tries its darnedest to bring you more of what you like in the name of engagement.

Tags: Facebook, News, Advertising

The best VR at the event were the pieces where the filmmaker created a world, and you experience the story from within it. The emotion evoked from the landscape and the characters in the world is the story. It’s not about watching a series of events; it’s about viscerally responding to the energy, the vibe, the spirit of a space.

Yes, everyone recognizes that this sounds like some trippy shit.

Tags: VIrtual Reality, Filmmaking, Storytelling

Tags: Music

Let’s face it: Following the “Grow Fast” rule of richly funded tech companies, BuzzFeed dreamed big right from the outset. In its pursuit of television advertising dollars, it set up a 100-person studio in Los Angeles, mainly to produce video for brands, initially at a price tag of about $100k per campaign. At that price, the product had to be perfect. It means endless refinement and audience testing (the latter being crucially important in BF’s promise to max out social reverberation over more than 30 different platforms).

But despite its power and talent for producing video contents and mastering the “social lift”, BuzzFeed monetizes poorly.

Now, though, Facebook is making multi-user VR much more social. During his keynote, Schroepfer showed how he and Mike Booth, a Facebook engineer located at the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters more than 30 miles away, were able to jump together into a series of 360-degree photographs, with each person represented by an animated avatar, and each able to see all around them as they interacted.

They even pulled out a VR selfie stick and took an instant selfie, which they then uploaded directly to Facebook. This was totally social—no game mechanics at all. That’s because, Social VR product manager Mike Beltzner explained to Fast Company at F8, Facebook found through its research that playing games, even with other people, took away from the social experience. "The more game-like it is," Beltzner said, "the less you interact."

Tags: VIrtual Reality

While many would assume that St-Pierre would be the modern-day equivalent of a T. rex, he says he wouldn't want to be that particular predator. "I wouldn't want to be a T. rex because T. rex had the hardest life ever," he says. "They hunted some of the most dangerous and ferocious herbivores and they had to compete with other T. rexes. It was probably the hardest life ever."

St-Pierre says he would prefer to have been a dromaeosaurus, a small but nasty dinosaur that lived in the late Cretaceous. Think of a meaner version of the velociraptors from Jurassic Park and you’ll have the idea. “It was very smart,” St-Pierre says. “Pound for pound, it was probably the best killing machine ever.”

Tags: The Boneyard, TV, Work

“You know in my sport I try to be, so to speak, the apex predator in the octagon,” St-Pierre explained. “So with this show, I'm on a quest to find out who is the all-time, baddest, meanest apex predator that ever lived.

Tags: The Boneyard, TV, Work

Where the camera is positioned, how it moves within the scene, what type of lens is being used, the way your eyes are being guided around the frame or used to form bridges across cuts, composition, lighting… These are the foundations of movie making. The basic elements of the language of cinema itself. What I don’t understand is why creators would want to abandon huge pieces of this language and thus greatly diminish their storytelling capability. What is there to gain in this scenario? It’s like asking someone to convey a complex topic using only the vocabulary they had in the third grade.

Tags: VIrtual Reality, Filmmaking, Storytelling

For many documentarians their opinion on the credit issue hinges upon audience perception: how puzzling it is for viewers to see the credit. Mr. Berlinger ranks it as “incredibly” so, while Mr. Curry said it may be a little confusing. The concern is that when audience members notice a writing credit, they may think that the dialogue spoken by subjects has been scripted and is therefore not genuine. If a documentary has been written, it suggests that the film could be more artifice than fact based.

Tags: Broadcasting, Documentary, Factual

Recognize excellence. Celebrate weirdness, and innovation. Oddballs should be cherished, if they can do something other people can’t do. But also everybody needs to understand that there are certain absolutes; there is a certain line. That no matter how much I love you — you may be my favorite, but if you show up late, two days in a row, I’m sorry — but you’re going over the side.

Tags: Interview

Now, with MMA light years away from the shadowy spectacle it was when GSP made his UFC debut back in 2004 (his job done, I guess), the former champion of the world has finally found a way to spin his world-changing success in the Octagon into an opportunity to indulge his first and truest love. On April 14th, the History Channel will be premiering a new two-part television special called The Boneyard With Georges St-Pierre in which the former fighter will travel the world looking for dinosaur bones. After two years of self-imposed exile the world's most dangerous nerd has found a new home.

Tags: The Boneyard, TV, Work

It's important to remember that most Canadian households still subscribe to traditional TV — more than 11 million at last count.

But there's no denying that cord-cutting numbers keep on rising. Some industry analysts had speculated that the new CRTC-mandated $25 skinny basic TV packages would help stem the tide. But there appears to be little interest in the new offering.

Tags: TV, Broadcasting

The TV networks already seem, grudgingly, to see where things are going, and have responded by putting their stuff, grudgingly, online. But they're still dragging their heels. They still seem to wish people would watch shows on TV instead, just as newspapers that put their stories online still seem to wish people would wait till the next morning and read them printed on paper. They should both just face the fact that the Internet is the primary medium.

They'd be in a better position if they'd done that earlier. When a new medium arises that's powerful enough to make incumbents nervous, then it's probably powerful enough to win, and the best thing they can do is jump in immediately.

Whether they like it or not, big changes are coming, because the Internet dissolves the two cornerstones of broadcast media: synchronicity and locality. On the Internet, you don't have to send everyone the same signal, and you don't have to send it to them from a local source. People will watch what they want when they want it, and group themselves according to whatever shared interest they feel most strongly. Maybe their strongest shared interest will be their physical location, but I'm guessing not. Which means local TV is probably dead. It was an artifact of limitations imposed by old technology. If someone were creating an Internet-based TV company from scratch now, they might have some plan for shows aimed at specific regions, but it wouldn't be a top priority.

Tags: TV, Broadcasting

Tags: Music

In the era we live in, ecstasy is in short supply. Escape from reality is one thing, and it’s in high demand right now, packaged and sold in a seemingly endless series of comic book and blockbuster franchise films that bludgeon audiences into submission, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. Rather, I’m examining a group of films made in the early to mid 1960s that openly celebrated life, and our connection to it, through a strategy of sensory overload that sought to make the viewer almost a participant in the film’s content, to convey, without restraint, the sheer joy of existence in world of seemingly endless possibility. Perhaps it’s impossible to make such films today; perhaps we have lost our connection to the real world to such a degree that only CGI effects and amped-up soundtracks reach mass audiences.

Tags: Film, Experimental

In a way, 2112’s message isn’t all that different from the rebellious ideology that characterized the burgeoning punk movement at the time. Bands like The Ramones and the Sex Pistols were nearing the apex of their cultural influence in 1976, turning wholly away from the bombast of mainstream rock and embracing the power of the individual to create music — no matter that individual’s musical skill. Punk represented the resentment by the masses of a commercial music apparatus that had abandoned its populist roots; it was a sort of taking back music itself. In this regard, Rush’s mentality going into the creation of 2112 — “fuck it, we’re doing this our way” — matched the rising tide of artistic protest against the “rock establishment,” propelling the band firmly out of the fantastical bubble they’d constructed with Caress of Steel and bringing them before a receptive audience in the real world. In the process, they established themselves as heroes of the misfits, the young people who feel left behind by society. Many of their later standout efforts, from “Tom Sawyer” to “Subdivisions”, express the challenges of individualism first heard in 2112.

Tags: Rush

At the core of their reputation is Bordwell and Thompson’s passion for the art of film. “The pleasure of moviegoing is not something that has gotten lost,” says Healy. “You can talk to them for hours about movies. Then you want to go off and watch all the movies they’ve talked about. But they also give you the feeling that it’s mutual. They want to know what you’ve discovered; what you like. They have that unending curiosity.”

Tags: Bordwell

Mad Max: Fury Road seems to me a superbly directed film in its chosen style, but we can find alternatives. What about fast cutting that tries, as a part of an action scene’s kinetic drive, to shuttle or bounce the viewer’s attention more widely across the frame? This option wouldn’t be helter-skelter in the Bay manner; it’s calculated, and engenders its own pictorial excitement.

Tags: Bordwell, Filmmaking, Editing

In announcing its approval Wednesday, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission noted that fact, saying the change in ownership "does not result in a change in effective control of either entity."

Meanwhile, it said the transaction positions Corus as a stronger player with enhanced scale that can offer better services and higher-quality programming to Canadians, consistent with the regulator's goals.

However, the Canadian Media Producers Association said it was worried that the deal will see Corus dominate women's, lifestyle and children's programming in Canada, "ultimately reducing the diversity and quality of programming available to Canadian audiences."

Tags: Broadcasting, Canada, CRTC

In reality, the odds are that only a fraction of people you know have watched Netflix’s latest “hit series.” But it’s impossible to tell, because Netflix is notorious for keeping its viewership numbers confidential. One reason is because the streaming service doesn’t want to reveal proprietary information about its products. But another is that Netflix simply doesn’t care about ratings—at least not in the way other television providers do.

Tags: Broadcasting

In what is being billed as the most far-reaching organisational overhaul in the BBC’s 93-year history, Lord Hall will give a speech before Easter in which he will unveil proposals to axe the corporation’s existing channel-based structures, fundamentally reshaping the organisation into content and audience-led divisions.

While the broadcaster is committed to the keeping its television channels and radio stations on the airwaves for the foreseeable future, Lord Hall is said to believe that the quickening pace of technological change means that the boundaries between media such as television, radio and online are blurring.

Floor Burger is an intriguing, even revolutionary work, at once sculptural and painterly, accessible and complicated. It’s not so much a reproduction of a burger as a quasi-trompe de l’oeil semblance “pushed to the limit,” in the words of the AGO’s assistant curator of modern art Kenneth Brummel. And for all the monumentality of scale, it’s more anti-monument than monument to the United States’s most enduring fast food. Nobody’s appetite is going to be whetted here; the burger’s finally too dead(-in-the-)pan than sizzler-on-the-grill for that – the Big Boy as anti-hero, floored by its bulk and the weight of its ennui. (Those who see Floor Burger as a sort of anticipation of, say, the General Idea installation One Year of AZT, Ron Mueck’s A Girl, or Jeff Koons’s Puppy, or other contemporary works of gigantism are not wrong.)

Tags: Art

It is hard to tell whether money or politics come first, but either way they are intertwined. During industrialization, the two key commodities for economic growth were labor and actual commodities. The British Empire became dominant because it mastered mass production and consumption as well as controlling commodities. And it started with The East India Company. The subjugation of the Indian subcontinent was part of industrialization. In the 20th century, petroleum shaped the political narrative; in this new century, “attention” shapes politics. That is why we have to look at this issue of Internet.org from a cultural standpoint.

Tags: Privacy, Politics

Why? Why would someone do this, you might ask. And who? Who in the world would devote time to such a project? Also, what? What were they smoking? Must've been some potent stuff. 

Called the Cedar Rocket, the log car is the creation of Bryan Reid Sr. and friends. Reid is the founder of Pioneer Log Homes in Williams Lake, British Columbia, and more recently, the star of the quasi-reality HGTV Canada show Timber Kings, which follows Reid and his Pioneer crew on their builds and adventures. Once you meet Reid, it's easy to see his appeal to a producer. Sturdily built, he's an affable fellow with a trimmed gray beard and a rustic Canadian accent that makes him seem as down to earth as the trees he harvests. 

Tags: Timber Kings

Documentary’s relative freedom from institutional constraint has enabled its makers to experiment in ways that are difficult for traditional journalists. Moreover, as journalism becomes more of a curator of information and shaper of conversations, documentary’s demonstrated ability to contextualize and explain through well-chosen instances has proven newly relevant. The interactive documentaries produced to date offer a compendium of approaches, interfaces, user experiences, tools and even strategies for working with crowd-sourced and co-created content all of which journalists can assess, draw from and transform.

So I guess I would say that by finding themselves in the same boat, both journalists and documentarians have discovered commonalities of purpose and technique. Interactive documentary is fast developing a repertoire of techniques that work well in today’s ‘digital first’ and increasingly participatory environment and digital journalism still commands considerable reputation and audience reach.

Tags: Documentary, Journalism, Media

Tags: Dr Who, TV, Science Fiction

The final speed on the first ever run of the motorized log, was 76.625 kph (47.64 mph) - smashing the required benchmark of 50 kph to set a new Guinness World Records title - an impressive feat when taking into account the 2,000 pound weight of the car. 

Tags: Timber Kings

Tags: Storytelling, Transmedia, VIrtual Reality

However you want to describe it: the whodunit; the mystery of what really happened; the mystery of personality; of who people really, really are is powerfully represented when you have a crime standing in back of all of it. It’s a way of dramatizing really significant issues: How we know what we know? How have we come to the belief that we have? Is justice served by the various mechanisms in our society? Is the law just? And on and on and on and on and on.

Tags: Documentary, Interview

The transaction will give Corus ownership of all of Shaw Media’s brands, including specialty channels like Food Network Canada, HGTV Canada, Slice and History Canada. It also includes Global Television’s national conventional service with stations in various Canadian cities, including Vancouver, Okanagan, Edmonton and Calgary, among others.

Corus and Shaw’s combined portfolio will include 45 specialty television channels, 39 radio stations, digital assets, the content studio Nelvana and 15 conventional television stations.

Barbara Williams , executive VP of broadcasting and president at Shaw Media, will move to Corus “in a senior leadership capacity” pending the deal closing. Her specific role is as yet unclear, but a release notes she will play an “integral role shaping the new Corus.”

The rest of the executive team for the combined company will be announced when the deal is finalized, according to the release.

Tags: News, Broadcasting

Tags: Music

Tags: Music

This levity makes it difficult to find too much fault in the film even when it exists less as a meaningful extension of its world than as a fan-service deployment device, in part because every eye roll-worthy moment (another Death Star to destroy?) is preempted by the film's own built-in eye-roll response gag (”...but bigger!”). Also because its affectionate call-backs are doled out with such underlying competence, from the fleet narrative's clean, three-act structure, to the convincingly deployed iconic visual grammar of wipes and agile dolly shots, to the strength of the performances.

Tags: Star Wars, Review

We present a method to continuously blend between multiple facial performances of an actor, which can contain different facial expressions or emotional states…a seamless facial blending approach that provides the director full control to interpolate timing, facial expression, and local appearance, in order to generate novel performances after filming.

Tags: Post Production, VFX, Editing, Filmmaking

Adjusting for inflation changes the rankings dramatically. The original Star Wars movie A New Hope is no longer in the middle of the pack. Instead of only $750 million, it made over $3 billion in movie ticket sales after adjusting for inflation. The Empire Strikes Back moves from the very bottom of the list to second place with over $1.5 billion in inflation-adjusted ticket sales.

After adjusting for inflation, Gone with the Wind earned $3.4 billion in inflation-adjusted money, eclipsing both Avatar and the first Star Wars movie.

Tags: Star Wars

Tags: Good Advice

If you got all of your information from TV and movies, you'd have some pretty dumb ideas. You'd be convinced blowing stuff up works, because it always does in our movies. You'd have no empathy for the poor, because there are no poor people in American movies or TV shows - they're rarely even shown on the news, because advertisers consider them a bummer.

Politically, you'd have no ability to grasp nuance or complexity, since there is none in our mainstream political discussion. All problems, even the most complicated, are boiled down to a few minutes of TV content at most. That's how issues like the last financial collapse completely flew by Middle America. The truth, with all the intricacies of all those arcane new mortgage-based financial instruments, was much harder to grasp than a story about lazy minorities buying houses they couldn't afford, which is what Middle America still believes.

Tags: Media, Journalism, TV, Politics

Were you able to relate to her more now than you did 40 years ago?

(Shakes her head “no.”) I bring [the characters] to me. I don’t go to them. I don’t get into character.

Tags: Star Wars, Interview

Tags: News, Privacy, Google

Wall is the lone dissenting voice among the Canadian delegation. He's also the most powerful voice for the Canadian oil industry. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers has representatives in Paris, but it is not a part of the delegation or at the main conference centre.

Wall is hesitant to bring in a carbon tax in his province, worrying about the economic impact it might have. There is a suggestion that introducing new carbon policies in Canada could help the oil industry gain public and political support to build new pipelines, but Wall says there is no guarantee.

"It would be frustrating if you're in the energy industry and think we get it, we have to pay a carbon tax, we need to do more by the environment," said Wall. "Now we can't even move our product, because we can't seem to build national support for a pipeline. So, I think that's a concern."

Tags: Politics, Canada, News

The YouTube Kids App is supposed to be a safe zone for children under age 12, but the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) and Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) found both product placement in videos and inappropriate ads.

"Far from being a safe place for kids to explore, YouTube Kids is awash with food and beverage marketing that you won't find on other media platforms for young children," said CCFC's Josh Golin in a news release.

Tags: Google, Advertising

After poring over the treaty's final text, the businessman who helped build Research In Motion into a $20-billion global player said the deal contains "troubling" rules on intellectual property that threaten to make Canada a "permanent underclass" in the economy of selling ideas.

Tags: Canada, Politics

Tags: TV, Broadcasting

Thank you for having faith in me. Thank you for putting your trust in our team.

We will not let you down.

Tags: News, Politics, Canada

Others argue that doing interpretive work, having to search for meaning, is good not because it’s pleasurable, but because it exercises your brain, like a muscle, making it strong. This is the “no pain, no gain” theory of forcing audiences to dig deeper for hidden meaning. But here’s the thing: It’s still just a theory. Studies have tried again and again to prove it—both for literary fiction and, more recently, for prestige television—but when it comes down to it, there’s no real evidence that more subtle entertainment makes you smarter.

Tags: Storytelling

Tags: News, TV, Internet, CRTC

Leaders inspire tolerance. Demagogues incite hate.

Leaders empower the powerless; they give them voice and respect. Demagogues scapegoat the powerless; they use scapegoating as a means to fortify their power.

Leaders calm peoples’ irrational fears. Demagogues exploit them.

Tags: Politics

During his Comic Con panel, Campbell jokingly expressed a bit of pessimism about his track record as a TV star. "Every time I star in a series it lasts one season," he said, referencing his runs on the short-lived The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. and Jack of All Trades, both of which were action-adventure series featuring a steampunk influence. Meanwhile, Campbell said, "Every time I'm second fiddle it goes on for fucking ever."

Tags: Geek, TV

This interview has been edited and condensed to be shorter than an ewok. To hear the full interview, click on the audio labelled: Stephen Quinn and fellow Star Wars superfans speculate on new film

Tags: Star Wars, CBC

So Harper could ladle pork like a Liberal. Better, in fact. Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin reduced the national debt by $90 billion and left a budgetary surplus of $14 billion. Harper's six deficits added $150 billion to the national debt.

Not his fault, you say? Perhaps so, although Harper certainly made the red ink deeper by cutting the GST and adding $14 billion a year to the deficit. Add on all the tax cuts for hockey moms and firefighters and parents and, well, Harper even contrived to double the budget for prisons at a time when crime was falling.

The end result was lower taxes and higher debt. The two are not wholly unrelated.

Even so, a rising debt can still be a smaller slice of the economy if the economy grows.

That's the big picture: Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio is on a slow, downward creep, from 30 per cent to 25 per cent, which is better than our G7 partners. It's a meaningful measure of fiscal health. If Harper wants to be judged by the economy, then it could be a lot worse.

Tags: News, Canada, Politics

When Justin Trudeau was just four months old, then-US President Richard Nixon predicted the infant would one day follow in his father's footsteps.

At a gala dinner during a state visit to Ottawa in 1972, Mr Nixon addressed his Canadian counterpart: "Tonight we'll dispense with the formalities. I'd like to toast the future prime minister of Canada: to Justin Pierre Trudeau."

According to CBC, the elder Trudeau responded that should his son ever lead the country, "I hope he has the grace and skill of the president."

Tags: News, Canada, Politics

Justin Trudeau's positive campaign style, his clear love for the country's diversity, the strength of Liberal candidates, and the desire to throw out Stephen Harper's Conservatives were all factors behind what happened.

But perhaps more than anything else, the Liberals' adoption of many evidence-based policies may have proven decisive.

Tags: News, Canada, Politics

After nearly 10 years as prime minister, Stephen Harper is on his way out as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Tags: News, Canada, Politics

Tags: Star Wars

Tags: News, Technology, Politics, Canada

Honestly.  If you’re okay with all this stuff and still insist on voting Conservative.  Well.  Thanks for nothing.

Tags: News, Politics, Canada

Stephen Harper is defending a Conservative ad campaign targeted at Chinese and Punjabi-speaking voters in Vancouver and Toronto that claims Justin Trudeau supports the sale of marijuana to children, the expansion of safe injection sites and the establishment of neighbourhood brothels.

Tags: News, Politics, Canada

what has provoked Biguzs's anger, and determination for a reckoning, is that someone under her command apparently had the gall to tell a journalist — and thereby the Canadian public — about the PMO overriding the professionals in her department

Tags: News, Politics, Canada

Although we are only beginning to understand the details — mostly because the Trans-Pacific Partnership was negotiated away from the prying eyes of voters — one of the main criticisms of international trade deals like the TPP is that the main beneficiaries are large corporations, not ordinary citizens.

"Negotiators worked overtime on terms to please multinational corporations — under close consultation with those same corporations. But there was no consultation with labour or civil society groups," says a release from the Trade Justice Network, a group that opposes the deal.

It struck me that, then and now, the only way to keep our rights is to keep fighting for them.

Convinced that the free market will solve our problems, we complacently wait, repeatedly voting for the status quo, not realizing the problem is more complex and that re-creating a truly free-market capitalism for the many, not the few, will require more than a Mickey Mouse effort.

Tags: News, Copyright, Politics, Canada

Tags: Dr Who, Lego, Geek

He used the word racism in reference to the debate over the wearing of the niqab by Muslim women taking part in the oath of citizenship.

Williams said the issue is not worthy of becoming a national issue, but the Conservatives have latched onto it in order to secure votes.

"He doesn't care if he isolates the issues of women or if he isolates the issue of minorities, and even crosses, possibly, that racism line," Williams stated.

"It doesn't matter to him. It's all about getting elected at the end of the day."

Tags: News, Politics, Canada

A luxury neighbourhood of grand old homes and lush greenery is being designated as Vancouver’s first-ever heritage conservation area in an effort to halt a tide of demolitions and assuage fears that the city is being wrecked by a brash new group of home buyers who do not care about its history.

Tags: News, Politics, Vancouver, Culture

"For 80 years, the government has funded the CBC. It has given it a set mandate that the CBC has to comply," she said. "For Mr. Harper to suddenly say the problems are not a result of his funding cuts boggles the mind.

"The CBC is in a funding crisis. It has all these programming responsibilities and it just can't keep doing them with the funding at the level that it's at."

Tags: News, Politics, Broadcasting

Errol Morris, the reverred documentary filmmaker, has revealed his top 10 programme for this year’s International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (Nov 18-29).

Each year, the festival invites an important figure in the world of documentary to compile a list of ten important works of factual film, all of which will be screened as part of the programme.

An animal trainer, a gardener specialised in converting yew hedges into animal figures, an expert in the field of mole rats and a robot technician are the protagonists of Errol Morris’ playful philosophical exercise about the relationship between man and animal, culture and nature.

Tags: Documentary, Film

On the other hand, a foreign company could not itself be sued and ordered to pay Canada under the TPP. The trade and investment treaties are structured one way. They give exceptionally powerful rights to foreign investors without any actionable responsibilities.

This imbalance is a political choice.

Any treaty can be written to put enforceable responsibilities on foreign investors; for example, to avoid corrupt activities or respect workers' rights. But the governments driving the treaties -- in Washington and Brussels but also Ottawa -- have not done so.

Tags: News, Politics

During a campaign stop in downtown Montreal, Trudeau told supporters and members of the Quebec arts community that culture and creative industries generate jobs and help to strengthen the economy. 

Tags: Politics, Culture, Broadcasting, Canada

Tags: Advertising, Internet

Tags: Internet, Advertising

This sort of marketing just feels gross to me. I understand that people love brands and love sharing photos to show off their latest looks. Where it starts to feel weird is when companies capitalize on that without compensating the people who are helping sell their wares.

Tags: Advertising, Internet

Tags: Privacy, Facebook, Free Speech

But perhaps the worst of all harms is how endless war degrades the culture and populace of the country that perpetrates it. You can’t have a government that has spent decades waging various forms of war against predominantly Muslim countries — bombing seven of them in the last six years alone — and then act surprised when a Muslim 14-year-old triggers vindictive fear and persecution because he makes a clock for school. That’s no more surprising than watching carrots sprout after you plant carrot seeds in fertile ground and then carefully water them. It’s natural and inevitable, not surprising or at all difficult to understand.

Tags: Politics, Media, Culture

We declare that “austerity” – which has systematically attacked low-carbon sectors like education and healthcare, while starving public transit and forcing reckless energy privatizations – is a fossilized form of thinking that has become a threat to life on earth.

The money we need to pay for this great transformation is available — we just need the right policies to release it. Like an end to fossil fuel subsidies. Financial transaction taxes. Increased resource royalties. Higher income taxes on corporations and wealthy people. A progressive carbon tax. Cuts to military spending. All of these are based on a simple “polluter pays” principle and hold enormous promise.

Tags: Politics, Canada

Rankings calculated by total takedowns by Google, based on requests by content owners and/or their agents.  Infringing sites and urls published by Google as part of its Transparency Report, which lists all takedown requests (and compliance to those requests), as well as the requesting companies and organizations.

Tags: Google

"In a way it's the opposite of what musicians do when they tend to write with other musicians, which is get everyone in a room together and 'jaaaaaaammmmmm.' That's the enemy of all creativity as far as I'm concerned, cause when you 'jaaaaaaammmmmm' you tend to pick a chord or pick three chords and all stay on the same bloody thing again and again and again until you're not just sick of music, you're sick of living.“

Tags: Music

I launched NMK by giving away free ebook versions Angry Young Spaceman. Pre-Kindle and iPhone, people found it baffling. But the gift economy works — it's come back to me in a lot of ways.

Tags: Media, Publishing, Books, Comics, Geek, Science Fiction

In short, Sesame Street was founded to help low-income kids keep up with their more affluent peers. That is literally why it exists. It succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations. And now it is becoming the property of a premium cable network, so that a program launched to help poor kids keep up with rich kids is now being paywalled so that rich kids can watch it before poor kids can.

This turn of affairs comes from the austerity brought on by the economic crisis, which has deeply cut the public broadcasters on whom Sesame Street depends. In other words, the richest people in America, having first looted the world's bank-accounts through an act of incredible fraud, and then having benefitted from the bailouts that followed, and then having used the Republican Congress to create tax-breaks and preserve tax-loopholes, have so starved public services in America that programming created specifically to serve poor children must be optimized for the viewing of rich children, and delivered only to the poor children it was intended for after the children of the rich have tired of it.

Tags: TV

Tags: Internet, Advertising

When, in the space of three months, all three movies in a genre arrive with very public news that they are not the movies they could have been, something has gone wrong. There is, I think, an increasing sense that every mark the comic-book genre is forced to hit — origin stories, Easter eggs, big-picture continuity, action beats, fan service, world-stakes battles, potential sequels, post-credit sequences — is obstructing them from being movies.

Tags: Film

This is just the first shot in a new system of distribution that has been building for quite a while; I’m really surprised it has taken traditional media this long to notice that frankly, they’re in long term trouble. There’s no way this trend is turning around, and what happens next is -as far as I can see- that Netflix gets bigger and bigger, and traditional media becomes less and less relevant to millennials.

Tags: TV, Media, Multi-Screen, Broadcasting

“We know that some channels won’t make it,” said Phil King, president of CTV, sports and entertainment programming at Bell Media, on the future of specialty TV during the company’s media day prior to its 2015 Upfront presentation. “Everyone has four or five [channels] that won’t survive, or will be what they used to be. That’s the way CRTC wants to run it, so we’ll try to win.” Shots fired.

Tags: News

Tags: Film

Tags: TV

From an end user perspective, moving from a free service to a paid one would actually be a good thing because it would make the relationship between the user and companies like Google more explicit. It is hard to argue that it is acceptable to secretly track users and capture their personal details when the user is paying for a service. Whether this model is going to be as financially lucrative for Google as selling ads is yet to be seen.

Tags: Advertising, Internet, Privacy

Invariably, people point out that labels exploited artists for years, and use that as some rationalization for file sharing. But all it really means is that Napster made it easy for the fans to screw the artists too, and a few entrepreneurs got really rich instead of label guys. You can't support Napster by claiming some moral high ground.

Tags: Copyright, Internet, Media

But there's no guarantee that Hollywood is the solution to the Valley's content problem. Traditional movie and TV types never took the video game world by storm. Maybe they're not the visionaries who will prove the future of VR, either. Plus, with no rules or standards in place, how can companies explain this new field to a layperson who just wants to watch a new kind of movie?

Tags: Media, VIrtual Reality, Storytelling

For publishers, ad blockers are the elephant in the room: Everybody sees them, no one talks about it. The common understanding is that the first to speak up will be dead as it will acknowledge that the volume of ads actually delivered can in fact be 30% to 50% smaller than claimed — and invoiced. Publishers fear retaliation from media buying agencies — even though the ad community is quick to forget that it dug its own grave by flooding the web with intolerable amounts of promotional formats.

"We're not against advertising," says Ben Williams, communications and operations director for Eyeo, which operates Adblock Plus. "We think that advertising can be better."

Tags: Advertising, Internet, Privacy

In essence, advocating any ideas or working for any political outcomes regarded by British politicians as “extremist” will not only be a crime, but can be physically banned in advance. Basking in his election victory, Prime Minister David Cameron unleashed this Orwellian decree to explain why new Thought Police powers are needed: “For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens ‘as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone.'” It’s not enough for British subjects merely to “obey the law”; they must refrain from believing in or expressing ideas which Her Majesty’s Government dislikes.

Tags: News, Politics, Security, Free Speech, Democracy

Agnès Varda will be honored for the body of her work at the closing ceremony of this year’s Cannes Film Festival. She’s the first woman selected for this distinction. Only three other directors — Woody Allen, Clint Eastwood and Bernardo Bertolucci — have been recognized in this way for the global impact of their body of work.

From her first film, La Pointe Courte in 1954, Varda’s style reflected elements of what would become the French New Wave although because she preceded that movement her work is more Left Bank in style. Her next feature, Cleo From 5 To 7, was a documentary style look at a singer awaiting results of a biopsy, which foreshadowed Varda’s fascination with human mortality.

Tags: Film, Documentary

Probably the week's most stinging blow came from Harper's home province of Alberta where, on Tuesday, in a stunning election upset, the provincial NDP won a majority, toppling a 44-year reign by the Conservatives.

Only winning an international hockey game would make Canadians more jubilant than they were on Twitter on Tuesday night. The "Orange Crush", named for the NDP colours, had rolled over tar sands country, hard hit by the tanking price of oil, right in the Harper heartland.

Tags: News, Politics

In January, Canada's then foreign affairs minister, John Baird, signed a "memorandum of understanding" with Israeli authorities in Jerusalem, pledging to combat BDS.

It described the movement as "the new face of anti-Semitism."

A few days later, at the UN, Canadian Public Security Minister Steven Blaney went much further.

He conflated boycotts of Israel with anti-Semitic hate speech and violence, including the deadly attacks that had just taken place in Paris on the Charlie Hebdo magazine and a kosher supermarket.

Blaney then said the government is taking a "zero tolerance" approach to BDS.

Coming as it did from the minister responsible for federal law enforcement, the speech alarmed groups that have, to varying degrees, supported boycotts, believing them an effective tool to bring about an end to Israel's occupation and colonization of the West Bank, and its tight grip on Gaza.

Some of these groups had noted that the government changed the Criminal Code definition of hate speech last year, adding the criterion of "national origin" to race and religion.

This change could, they feared, effectively lump people who speak against Israel in with those who speak against Jews.

Micheal Vonn, a lawyer for the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, says the expanded definition is clearly "a tool to go after critics of Israel."

But the response from the Tories appears to contradict the email comments by a public safety ministry spokeswoman, who cited Canada's hate crime laws when asked specifically by CBC News about the government's "zero tolerance" for Israel boycotters.

Tags: News, Politics

Without a clear definition of what “supporting terrorism in general” means, I can’t see how I can be sure to avoid violating this law by accident, whenever I express my views as a Muslim. If I am expected to not violate a law, it should be at least possible for me to understand it. If the law says that the government decides when the law was violated, then for me to make sure I don’t violate the law, I have to either check with the government about every sentence I want to write, or wait for the government to come and arrest me after I write anything, and if they don’t show up, I will know I didn’t violate the law this time!

Tags: News, Politics, Privacy

Sitting here today through third reading, I heard a great number of propositions from Conservative members of Parliament. I have no doubt that they believe those propositions in their speaking notes to be true, but they are consistently repeating fallacies that I would like to try to explain and deconstruct so that Canadians will understand why these repeated bromides are just not true.

The three fallacies I want to address in the time I have are the following. One notion is that information-sharing, which is part one of the bill, is designed to ensure that our security services, which are the RCMP, CSIS, Canada Border Services Agency, and CSEC, the agencies of policing and intelligence, share information with each other. That was put forward earlier today several times, and that, indeed, is something that must be done, but this bill does not do it.

The second fallacy is that there is judicial oversight in this bill, because judges are involved in one section. I want to deal with that one as well.

The other fallacy is that the terrorism and propaganda sections in the amendments to the Criminal Code in this omnibus bill would actually make it more likely that we could stop youth from being radicalized.

Tags: News, Politics, Privacy

Wow -- this is how Conservative MP Laurie Hawn responded to the now 140+ businesses who have raised concerns in a letter published by the National Post about reckless spying Bill C-51:"[They] should seriously reconsider their business model and their lack of commitment to the values that bind us as Canadians".

Tags: News, Politics, Privacy

Tags: News, Politics

The Anti-Terrorism Act, also known as Bill C-51, easily passed third reading by a margin of 183 to 96, thanks to the Conservative government's majority and the promised support of the third-party Liberals.

Tags: News, Privacy, Politics

Wong has stressed that Happy Together was inspired by contemporary Latin American fiction, Manuel Puig’s The Buenos Aires Affair in particular: “I was besotted with the title and always wanted to use it for one of my pictures. Then, after the shooting in Buenos Aires, I finally realized the film is really not about the city, so my long cherished title went out of the window and I needed to come up with something new.”

Tags: Film, WKW

After a few hours of tense huis clos in the hotel room, Greenwald publishes his first article on the basis of evidence from the former NSA employee. The clock is now running before the NSA and its minions, or the triads, get to them. Laura films Snowden’s confession. He faces the camera and gives testimony: family name, first name, age, profession, motivation. And evidence of the some of most shocking revelations in the history of the American Intelligence Agencies. The Washington Post, the only media company to have commissioned Poitras, releases the video on its homepage on June 6th. The video, a full frontal assault on the NSA, goes viral around the world and is screened in Times Square.

Tags: Documentary, Privacy

For all the telling changes on this year’s list, there was still a stable core of familiar favourites, films which seem to have established a more or less permanent place in our national cinematic consciousness. Atom Egoyan’s masterful adaptation of Russell Banks’ The Sweet Hereafter placed third for the second year in a row, while Denys Arcand’s beloved Jesus of Montreal and David Cronenberg’s most disturbing, yet most austere work (at least for him), Dead Ringers, returned as well.

Tags: Film

The Tim Hortons on Highway 16 has seen an influx of customers lately, particularly in their drive-thru during the morning commute. Fed up with the congestion, drivers have begun committing dangerous traffic violations to get their coffee fix.

Tags: News, Canada

Beyonce released “Die With You” on Tidal as an exclusive.  Everyone at YouTube knows that it was intended to be an exclusive just like everyone at YouTube knows that YouTube could keep the track from being uploaded to YouTube if YouTube wanted to do that.

YouTube has worked hard at getting the world to accept the concept of “user generated content” as some kind of great cultural event–even, when like “Die With You”, there isn’t anything particularly “user generated” about it, unless you call a one-to-one rip of Beyonce’s track that was distributed in clear violation of Beyonce’s rights “user generated”.

Tags: Google

According to the consumer groups' letter, the videos mingle commercial and entertainment content in ways that wouldn't be allowed on television. Search for My Little Pony, for example, and the first several options are lengthy advertisements for My Little Pony Play-Doh and toy kitchen sets, including one Play-Doh segment stretching 19 minutes.

Tags: Privacy, Advertising, Google

The NFA, which had denounced Harper's Bill C-51, the so-called anti-terrorism legislation, as "a sort of creeping police state bill" teamed with a coalition of civil liberties and labour groups against the proposed law. Clare was even to make an appearance at the parliamentary hearings on the bill, alongside the spokesperson for the coalition.

…

It seemed Clare had the Harper government over a barrel. Just four days later, Clare suddenly bailed from his parliament appearance, with no explanation. And just as suddenly, Bill C-42 was back on track. Second reading resumed on Wednesday. It looks like it's a lock for passage before the election.

Tags: News, Politics

As shows craft ongoing mysteries, convoluted chronologies or elaborate webs of references, viewers embrace practices that I’ve termed “forensic fandom.” Working as a virtual team, dedicated fans embrace the complexities of the narrative – where not all answers are explicit – and seek to decode a program’s mysteries, analyze its story arc and make predictions.

Tags: TV, Theory

Some of the strangest debate came in the committee's seventh hour, when government lawyers contended that the legislation wouldn't breach the constitution, despite language in the bill saying that CSIS agents, in tackling a threat, would be allowed to ignore Canadians' rights, if they have a warrant. They argued that, by obtaining a warrant, CSIS' actions inherently could not be unconstitutional.

Yet, minutes later, when the NDP and Green Party introduced amendments to forbid CSIS from breaking Canadians' constitutional rights, the Conservatives balked.

Tags: Politics

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.

Tags: Film, Experimental

Tags: TV

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.

Tags: TV

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

Tags: CRTC, Broadcasting, TV

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.

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.

Tags: News, CRTC, Broadcasting, TV

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.

Tags: Comics, Graphic Novel

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. 

Tags: News, CRTC, Culture, Broadcasting, TV, Politics, Production

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.

Tags: Film, Theory, Bordwell

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.

Tags: Film, Digital, VIdeo, Technology

“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.

Tags: VIrtual Reality, Media, Games

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.

Tags: News, Film, Documentary

"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.

Tags: News

Tags: News, Media, Journalism

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.

Tags: News, Politics

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP— Leonard Nimoy (@TheRealNimoy) February 23, 2015

His artistic pursuits — poetry, photography and music in addition to acting — ranged far beyond the United Federation of Planets, but it was as Mr. Spock that Mr. Nimoy became a folk hero, bringing to life one of the most indelible characters of the last half century: a cerebral, unflappable, pointy-eared Vulcan with a signature salute and blessing: “Live long and prosper” (from the Vulcan “Dif-tor heh smusma”).

Tags: News

"For instance, if you play the interactive episode first, certain elements of the scripted episode portion will be tailored to reflect some choices made in your interactive play through," Bruner told EW. "If you watch the show before playing, some elements in the interactive portions may be presented differently than if you played first. The interactive episodes will never release without a scripted episode, they will always come out together."

He went on to add that non-interactive versions of the scripted entertainment would be made available on streaming networks and broadcast TV some time after the release of a given "Super Show" episode.

Tags: News, Broadcasting, Multi-Screen, Transmedia, TV, Storytelling

For fifty years, TV and TV-thinking was the shortcut. Make average stuff for average people (by definition = mass) and promote to every stranger within reach. It worked.

But mass is fading, fading faster than our desire to be mass marketers is fading. The shortcut doesn't work every time now, and the expectation that success is the same as popularity is still with us.

Tags: TV, Advertising, Broadcasting

And as a society, we’re allowing Google to lower the bar on acceptable business standards.  The company argues that holding them to a standard of decency is somehow a threat to “Internet freedom.”  Look, I’ve been sued about lyrics in my music. I’m all for freedom of speech.  Selling drugs to kids is NOT freedom of speech. Showing citizens how to skirt doctors to get pharmaceuticals is not a right guaranteed in the Constitution.  It isn’t some unfortunate consequence of progress that these videos slip past Google. They know what’s there and they know people are watching – and the ads are being seen.

Tags: Privacy, Politics, Google, Advertising

Keen unapologetically calls the previous arrangement an "industrial meritocracy." He feels this hierarchical meritocracy is being destroyed and there is nothing to replace it.  This will result in a cultural Dark Age where the talented cannot earn a living creating culture. The only avenue left for creators of content that can be copied and distributed digitally (music, digital art, writing) is to find wealthy patrons to support their work.

Tags: Politics, Culture

There are two important things I’ve found in television. One is to understand that most people in television are frightened all the time. They’re frightened of losing their jobs. They’re frightened of making the wrong decision. When they encounter someone who really and truly doesn’t give a f*** about losing their job, that is a relatively immovable object, it’s something they’re not used to encountering. That attitude was always helpful to me.

Another is that television, generally, likes to repeat what works already. My partners understood early on with No Reservations that whatever worked and made people happy last week, it’s the smart thing to do something completely different next week.

Tags: TV, Factual, Production

I have no idea whether this 13-year-old boy was “a member of al-Qaeda,” whatever that might mean for a boy that young. But neither does the New York Times, which is why it’s incredibly irresponsible for media outlets reflexively to claim that those killed by U.S. drone strikes are terrorists.

That’s especially true since the NYT itself previously reported that the Obama administration has re-defined “militant” to mean “all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants.” In this case, Mohammed did not even qualify for that Orwellian re-definition, yet still got called a terrorist (by both the Obama administration as well as a “member of AQAP,” both of whom are, for different reasons, motivated to make that claim). Whatever else is true, extreme skepticism is required before claiming that the victims of the latest American drone strike are terrorists, but that skepticism is virtually never included.

Tags: News, Media, Journalism, Politics

But the most serious problem with simultaneous substitution is that it creates a strong incentive for Canadian broadcasters to show U.S. programs. They can double or triple their market share when they’re showing what U.S. channels are showing. Is it any wonder our networks’ primetime schedules are dominated by U.S. shows, or that when U.S. networks move a show’s time slot, Canadian broadcasters jump to do the same?

Tags: CRTC, TV

If we lived in a world where Frozen was the only movie that had ever been released, the CEO of Concerned Women for America might have a point. But we don’t live in that world. We literally live in the opposite world that’s being described in that above video. Disney itself releases about 15 movies a year where a man is the hero.

Tags: News, Film

At the moment, the response to the lone-wolf hullabaloo, like so much else in recent years, is inching us further down the path toward an American police state. One government response, now being re-emphasized, comes (of course!) with its own acronym: countering violent extremism, or CVE.

Tags: News, Politics, Privacy

Asked whether the decision was a tactic so the Conservatives can't use security as a wedge issue against the Liberals in this year's election, Trudeau said that view doesn't do justice to the concerns of Canadians.

Tags: News, Privacy, Politics

In the beginning, only brief sequences—sometimes just five minutes long—would be colorized in otherwise black-and-white films. Technicolor was a proprietary process, and it was expensive. "Very often, fashion shows [would be] in color," Layton said. "It was also kind of common to have, if the lovers in the film got married, the wedding would be in color. Really splashy things. If you were paying for color, you wanted to see color. It wasn't always subtle or artistic use."

Tags: Film

Tags: News, Politics, Privacy

According to the legislation those warrants authorize the spies to "enter any place or open or obtain access to any thing," to copy or obtain any document, "to install, maintain or remove any thing," and, most importantly, "to do any other thing that is reasonably necessary to take those measures."

The proposed "disruption warrants" are good for up to 120 days, and can be renewed twice. The legislation is explicit that authorities can ignore the laws of Canada and any foreign state while operating under such a warrant.

"[Canadians'] freedom and their security, more often than not, go hand in hand," Harper told a crowd of supporters, continuing that "it was a jihadi terrorist that took away our freedoms," not police officers.

Tags: News, Politics

Matte paintings are fake sets that—most of the times—used to be made with plexiglass and oil paint. The artists used oversized panels to create the necessary detail that the camera needed to fool the audiences when the film was projected over the large surface of the theater screen. The paintings were combined with live action filmed to match the perspective of the painting. If done well, the public would totally buy into the shot.

Tags: Geek, Star Wars, Illustration

Tags: Broadcasting, Media, Factual

Everywhere *we* look we see pretend worlds and childish make-believe, imaginary dragons, badly written dialogue and unskippable cutscenes in which angry mannequins gesture awkwardly at each other.

The problem I have with a term like formalism is the implication that those who have an interest in "mechanics and systems" (i.e. gameplay) believe these elements are the most important element of an artistic medium and that they are denying the importance or value of other elements of that medium.

It's difficult to argue BioShock and Grand Theft Auto don't present themes, messages, aesthetics and world views. It's just that the art of these products is irrelevant to the gameplay.

That's the elephant in the room in most of critical discourse: it's for other critics and a specific, narrow type of developer interested in philosophical and semantic arguments, not for game developers as a whole. People arguing about what formalism is or is not, what sorts of games formalists are interested in, whether people are too or not enough interested in ludo-whatever or who would win in a fight, ludozealots or narratologists - almost totally irrelevant to the actual act of creating video games.

Which matters "most" is irrelevant - they all matter. Good video games, and even good board games, have good rules and good presentation / theming that supports the rules and adds to the experience.

There aren't that many specialized words in film criticism - most of them are invented by practitioners, not critics, and describe something specific that comes up in day-to-day work, like a "two shot" or an "insert." But you can read film criticism without coming across a single invented-by-critics word.

Games are not Form, games are Function, so "games formalism" would actually mean the opposite of what it's used to say (again, just "scientism" by other name), as "formalist" implies a focus on "form" over function.

even narrative has formal aspects, related to game systems, especially if one is innovating in the area as in 80 Days or The Walking Dead.And it's like anything. If you break the "rules" without understanding them, results will be more random. So I teach my students formal game design elements, in part so that they can break the mold on purpose rather than by accident!

Tags: Media, Storytelling, Theory, Games

In the digital advertising sector, the places to find some relief remain branded content or native ads. Depending on how deals are structured, prices are still high and such ad forms can evade blocking. Still, to durably avoid user rejection, publishers should be selective and demanding on the quality of branded content they’ll carry.

Tags: Media, Branding

Cogeco lost 8,465 TV customers but added 18,535 Internet subscribers, while Shaw shed 15,591 cable and satellite television customers and gained 14,048 broadband customers in the three-month period ended Nov. 30.This is a trend that has become common for cable operators as viewers increasingly turn to online streaming video options such as Netflix Inc. to supplement and, in some cases, replace traditional cable packages.

Tags: News, Broadcasting, Media

people like Mr. Yu say local businesses may find that high-end consumers in new developments would not shop at their herbal medicine or produce stores.

Tags: News, Vancouver

The paradox in this “unlimited marketplace” is that media technologies, services and content are growing much faster than consumption. Users, who fear being overwhelmed, now restrict their access points and their message could be summarized by: “I don’t want to randomly go looking for content. If it’s important or popular enough, it will get to me.” Search may not be totally dead, but social is the new way to discovery.

Tags: Broadcasting, Media

“We’re making a club, that’s what we’re making. This mass niche called people who read. It’s a weird, kooky activity. We could have annual conventions, like the Shriners, with go-karts and clowns,” he says.

Tags: News, Media

High exposure to the toxic metal cadmium could prematurely age cells, potentially triggering a number of diseases as people age, according to a new study.

Tags: News

Asking why? about something in an artwork actually veils two different questions.The first is: How did it get there? The answer is a causal story about how the element came to be included.The second sense of why is: What’s it doing there? That’s not a question of causes but of functions. How does the element contribute to the other parts and the artwork as a whole?

Tags: Film, Theory, Bordwell

To be sure, Vancouver is not alone. New York, London and Singapore have long been popular with foreign investors, driving up the cost of living for locals. But while those cities are global financial hubs and have many bankers with big compensation, Vancouver's economy relies more on tourism and a cyclical resources industry.

Tags: News, Vancouver

Tags: News, Film

At the current stage of technology development, we are largely limited to adding Content Metadata manually. If we want people described; if we want the scene described; or the action described, we need to add Keywords or Notes to achieve that. I don’t expect that to be the case in the future.

Tags: Editing

The result is nice case study in visual storytelling. It also indicates how even a pure instance needs non-visual elements to be understood.

Tags: David Bordwell, Theory, Storytelling

Powerful governments and corporations are leading the attack against these core values, usually in the guise of protecting us or giving us more convenience. But these powerful entities are also creating a host of choke points. And the result is a locking down of computing and communications: a system of control by others over what we say and do online — a betrayal of the Internet’s decentralized promise.

Tags: News, Internet, Media

“Everything was built with performance, not security, in mind,” Dr. Shrobe said. “We left it to programmers to incorporate security into every line of code they wrote. One little mistake is all it takes for the bad guy to get in.”

Tags: News, Internet

Hollywood is a “hedgehog,” good now at only one thing (making tentpoles), and no longer a “fox,” fluid and adept at many things. We have reached a point where we should accept the death of the Hollywood film for adults. Hollywood is a one-horse town.

Tags: TV, Broadcasting, Film

10. The Studios Might Just Learn to Innovate.  Warners and Turner have had their incubators for some time now, helping to give rise to platforms like Reelhouse.  Now Disney is also in the soup. Incubators and accelerators might teach a few folks some new tricks, although it has also been said that such ploys are just attempts at employee retention as some of the big BizDev guns would flee the ship if they didn’t have sparkly new toys to play with.

Tags: TV, Film, Broadcasting

Tags: Music

But what really has the exhibition industry unnerved are two statistics released in the spring by the Motion Picture Association of America. Last year, despite a glut of extravagant action movies, the number of frequent moviegoers ages 18 to 24 dropped 17 percent, compared to a year earlier; the 12-to-17 age bracket dropped 13 percent.

Tags: Film

Tags: Geek

it’s possible that your creative choices may break the rules that define the medium you’re working in, which will then compel the people you’re communicating with to either adapt their entire conception of that medium to your choices, or to laugh in your face.

Tags: Storytelling

A loner of French cinema; he is an onlooker, at one with his thoughts and with an inner commentary that spills onto the movie screen with vigour and passion. At 83 he is still very much into his craft, and his skill as an editor, though very much of the old school, still has the capacity to impress

Tags: Film, JLG, 3D

Tags: Film, JLG, 3D

For the deep-horizon outside images, Aragno similarly ignored the usual guidelines: “Hollywood says you shouldn’t have more than six centimeters between cameras, so I began at 12 to see what happened.”

Tags: Film, JLG, 3D

Wheeler wants the category of "multichannel video programming distributor" to become "technology-neutral," which would allow the Internet to be used as a method of transmission, alongside cable and satellite, for television providers seeking access to programming. "The definition of an MVPD should turn on the services that a provider offers, not on how those services reach viewers,"  Wheeler wrote. "21st century consumer shouldn't be shackled to rules that only recognize 20th century technology."

Tags: TV, Broadcasting

In addition, Google said it recently enhanced "autocomplete" and "related search" functions to prevent terms "closely associated with piracy" from appearing in those results, and that it has introduced new advertising products to further promote authorized sources of content in search results.

"While relatively few users search in this way compared to root queries like 'expendables,' we are happy that these new ad formats are driving traffic to legitimate sources of media," Google said.

Tags: Google

I have more concerns for the long term with an open source project. History shows that many projects start strong, but ultimately it comes down to a small group of people (or one in MOX’s case) doing all the work, and inevitably life’s circumstances intervene.

Tags: Editing

The degree to which networks support net neutrality depends entirely on how much they want to disintermediate TV providers, which in turn depends on how successful their online efforts become. If they do well, they won’t think twice about their old partners.

Tags: TV, Broadcasting

CBS is a broadcast network, meaning anyone in the U.S. with an antenna can pick up the station's live signal for free. Subscribers to CBS All Access, however, will be able to stream on their Mac, iOS or other device with no need for a television set or antenna.

Tags: TV, Broadcasting

But the executives who had championed A Cook's Tour eventually left, and Bourdain says the network started pushing for episodes on middle-of-the-road American fare, like barbecue.

Bourdain now has a term for such corporate meddling: being asked to "eat a shit sandwich." It's one of the few meals he flat-out refuses to consume. "Given a choice between eating the sandwich and not having a television career, I would happily not have a television career," he says. "Most people eat the sandwich." He quit, taking the show to Travel Channel.

Tags: TV

Tags: Media

Tags: Broadcasting, CRTC, TV

Tags: Broadcasting, CRTC, TV

Netflix and Google told the hearings that Canadian content was thriving online. However, they did not provide the information the regulator was seeking to back up that claim.The regulator said the companies' refusal to provide any supporting evidence means it cannot evaluate the strength of their arguments.

Tags: News, CRTC, Broadcasting

We need to change the discussion from “I want it to do everything,” to “I need a system that handles my current editing with room to grow in the future.” This means that we need to take a hard look at the kind of editing we are doing and what we plan to do for the future.

Tags: Editing

however publishers do it, there’s a ticking time bomb beneath it all. At some point, all the 15-year-olds blocking adverts now are going to grow up, Blanchfield points out. “Where’s that going to leave us in five years time?”

Tags: Advertising, Media

One of the music industry's most iconic pieces of technology has gone the way of the Walkman, since Apple has quietly discontinued its iPod Classic players.

Tags: News, Apple, Music

The director spent the latter half of his keynote outlining a 13-point manifesto for filmmakers:

1) Don’t make a doc, make a movie. “The art is more important than the politics,” said Moore. “Because if I make a [crappy] movie, my politics won’t get through to anybody. The art has to come first.”

2) Don’t tell me anything I already know. “Give people something new they haven’t seen before,” said Moore. “With Roger & Me  I said there shouldn’t be one shot of an unemployment line. People are numb to those images.”

3) Don’t let your documentary resemble a college lecture. “We have to invent a different kind of model than the college lecture model,” said Moore.

4) Too many of your documentaries feel like medicine. “Don’t show a doc that’s going to kill [an audience's] evening,” said Moore.

5) The Left is boring. “It’s why we have a hard time convincing people to think about some of the things we’re concerned about,” said Moore. “The Left has lost its sense of humor and we need to be less worried.”

6) Why don’t we name names? “Why don’t we go after the corporations and name them by name?” asked Moore. “You will be sued. People will be mad at you. But so what?”

7) Make your films personal. “People want to hear your voice,” said Moore. “It’s what most docs stay away from, and most don’t like narration. But who’s saying this film?”

8) Point your camera at the cameras. Moore advised doc makers to challenge the mainstream media and film its coverage of various events.

9) Follow the examples of non-fiction books and television. “People love to watch [Jon] Stewart and [Stephen] Colbert,” he said. “Why don’t you try to make films that come from the same spirit? People just want the truth and they want to be entertained.”

10) Film only the people who disagree with you. The director said that while filming Roger & Me he tried to stay away from interviewing union workers to tell the story, since they were basically friends. Interviews with those who held contradictory opinions are harder to secure, but more interesting to audiences, said Moore.

11) Make sure you’re getting emotional when filming. “Are you getting mad when filming a scene? Are you crying?” asked Moore. “That’s evidence that the audience will respond that way, too… [You] are a stand-in for the audience.”

12) Less is more. “Edit, and make it shorter,” Moore advised, saying it’s okay to let audiences fill in the gaps. “People love that you trust they have a brain.”

13) Sound is more important than picture. “Sound carries the story,” said Moore. “Don’t cheat on the sound, and don’t be cheap with the sound.”

Tags: Documentary, Film, Manifestos

Franey explained that this will be the first year that none of the selections will be presented on celluloid—all the films are digital."That doesn't really matter though," he said, "because what we're here for is great storytelling on the big screen and most people in the audience do not know or care whether it's shot digitally or on celluloid."

Tags: VIFF, Film, News

Specialty channels in Canada are facing a shakeup in their industry that will likely result in the death of at least a few of them and reduced profit margins for many others. Two issues are at play as the CRTC moves to reset television regulation in Canada: pick and pay and genre protection.

Tags: TV, Branding, CRTC

Television • Average weekly viewing of traditional television remained consistent, going from 28.2 hours in 2012 to 27.9 hours in 2013. Among Canadians 18 years of age and up, average weekly viewing decreased slightly, going from 29.5 hours in 2012 to 29.3 hours in 2013. • The percentage of households subscribing to cable and satellite services decreased slightly from 85.6%, or 11.93 million, to 84.9%, or 11.92 million. • For Canadians 18 years or older, average weekly viewing of Internet television increased from 1.3 hours in 2012 to 1.9 hours in 2013.

Tags: TV, Broadcasting, CRTC

Tags: Media

There is enough political will and consumer desire to make pick-and-pay television happen, but consumers should not underestimate either the cost or the complexity of bringing the concept to life.

Tags: TV, Broadcasting, CRTC

Tags: Film, Design

"It’s unreasonable to expect that there will be no teething problems with using a new editing system but I was rather fortunate to miss the most difficult period of the first three days as I was on the road with the crew for the three Stages that wound their way down from Yorkshire to London. Notwithstanding the fact that I had watched three seamless highlights shows on each of those evenings, I was expecting to arrive at Ealing Studios and feel like one of those new Marines marching in to find a lot of bloodied combat veterans with thousand yard stares.At the end of my first day in the edit I was only half joking when I said “ I don’t know what all the fuss was about. Piece of cake”.

Tags: Editing

eOne has been on an investment and acquisition streak of late, recently acquiring another West Coast producer, Paperny Entertainment, home entertainment distributor Phase 4 Films, and investing in Toronto digital powerhouse Secret Location.

Tags: TV, News

In a market where many networks are scrambling for a homegrown hit, HGTV Canada boasts a startling number of highly rated Canuck shows (the network's licence dictates that 50 per cent of its shows be Canadian). Eight out of the top 10 shows on the network during the winter/spring 2014 season were Canadian, among them "Timber Kings," "Canada's Handyman Challenge" and "Leave it To Bryan."

Tags: Timber Kings, TV, HGTV, Broadcasting

Richard Beech, in the Mirror, agreed Capaldi had "all the hallmarks of a great Doctor".He called the 80-minute opening episode, entitled Deep Breath, "an impeccable debut"."If you watched Deep Breath and you don't want to watch the rest of series 8, then there truly is something wrong with you," he wrote.

Tags: Dr Who

Consumers could wind up with many more choices about what they watch on TV and how they pay for it, given sweeping new proposals from the country’s broadcast regulator announced Thursday.

For the first time, broadcasters could be allowed to count what they spend on original programming produced for the Internet toward what they are required to spend on Canadian programming. According to the draft, this would encourage broadcasters to make more Canadian content online. And it proposes allowing television stations and networks to count revenues from online or other delivery platforms toward their overall revenue base.

Tags: TV, Broadcasting, CRTC

Although the company is a joint venture of Shaw and Rogers, it will operate as a stand-alone entity. With almost one third of anglophone Canadians already subscribing to Netflix, it will be a struggle for the service to attain a significant subscriber base. 

Tags: TV, Broadcasting

editors’ wages never were an issue in this dispute, assistants and loggers will see pay increases. Overall, the work schedule and compensation for all post staff will move to an 8-hour day and 40-hour week. Before, editors’ individual contracts had been on a day rate, regardless of hours worked or if they worked a weekday or weekend day. The tentative agreement transforms that into an 8-hour day, 5-day week. Overtime of time-and-a-half will go into effect after eight hours worked, as is standard in union shops. It goes into double time after 12 hours worked.

Tags: News, Factual

The biggest TV ad market gains between 2010 and 2020 are tipped to come from Latin America and the Middle East and Africa where ad spend is expected to double.

Tags: News, TV

This vision positions Avid’s products as a “platform”, in the same way that Windows, Mac OS X, iOS, Android, Apple hardware and PC hardware are all platforms. Within this platform concept, the products become stratified into product tiers or “suites”. Bear in mind that “suite” really refers to a group of products and not specifically a collection of hardware or software that you purchase as a single unit. The base layer of this platform contains the various software hooks that tie the products together – for example, APIs required to use Media Composer software with Interplay asset management or in an ISIS SAN environment. This is called the Avid MediaCentral Platform.

Tags: Editing, NLE, Avid

"The potential for a YouTube creator to become a global star has increased, and that opens up all sorts of new doors," said Jamie Byrne, YouTube's director of content commercialization. But "the core of their popularity, and the core of their fan base, is really driven by their activities on YouTube."

Tags: TV, Media, Google

Tags: Art

This year’s forum will see more industry guests and speakers from LA., and will expand its focus from film and television to broad-based screen entertainment, in recognition of Vancouver’s growing visual effects, animation and gaming industries.VIFF Industry also wants to promote Vancouver as a production and post-production centre, by participating in trade missions, for example, and helping to facilitate international co-productions, in particular with India and China.

Tags: Film, Documentary, TV, News, VIFF

Tags: News, TV, Factual, Editing

"The resulting videos might not have the same narrative or technical complexity that a human editor could achieve, but they capture the essential action and, in our experiments, were often similar in spirit to those produced by professionals," said Ariel Shamir, an associate professor of computer science at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel, and a member of the Disney Research Pittsburgh team.

Tags: Editing

Drew's films pioneered a strict journalistic code that allowed no directing of subjects, no set-up shots, no on-camera narrator. The candid footage was edited into a dramatic narrative that gave the feeling of what it was like to be there as events occurred. His technique became known as cinéma vérité or direct cinema, though he liked to call it reality filmmaking.

Tags: News, Documentary

On the other side of the coin, the reality show — documentary's younger sibling — is thriving both financially and production-wise, with nascent cable channels scooping up endless series about pawnbrokers and extreme truckers. Channels like Oprah's OWN try to give a serious examination of celebrity, following in the footsteps of E! and Bravo, which have been “documenting” the lives of the pseudo-famous for years.

Tags: Documentary, Factual, Film

Nothing must be arbitrary or left to chance. Care and accuracy in the design process show respect towards the user

Tags: Design

Mrs Page is the last trug-maker left in the village and she knows of only six other people who can make them."I think it will die out, unfortunately," she said.

Tags: The Past

They came to preach the value of using Live + 3 stats at the very least, in light of how popular delayed viewing has become – particularly of scripted primetime series, with drama series leading the way. “We all provide projections [for Live + 3 Day]. We understand your skepticism about using our projections,” Poltrack said. “The one thing you can be sure about our projections is that if one of us starts giving you a lot of bullshit, the other ones are going to let you know. You’ve got us to check each other,” he said.

Tags: TV

In transmedia, elements of a story are dispersed systematically across multiple media platforms, each making their own unique contribution to the whole. Each medium does what it does best--comics might provide back-story, games might allow you to explore the world, and the television series offers unfolding episodes.

Tags: Transmedia, Storytelling

Recognizing the increasing appetite for unscripted content internationally, eOne is now turning its focus towards expanding its unscripted & factual portfolio to balance the company's diverse multi-genre overall offering. This deal will see eOne ramp up its activity in unscripted television production across North America.

Tags: News, TV

speaking in Vancouver to gathered journalists, Immigration Minister Chris Alexander said the reforms should actually make the process of acquiring a work permit for foreign workers quicker."In those cases where there is a real need that Canadians can't be found to fill, the service will actually be faster than ever," said the minister."Our reforms to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program have been broadly well-received. People want us to ensure that Canadians across the country have first crack at available jobs and that wasn't happening before the reforms."

Tags: News, TV, Film

Right now, most “second-screen” usage is more distracting than it is enriching, but that’s about to change. Soon your tablet will spring to life when you tune into your favorite show, and you’ll have more opportunities than ever to engage. The million-dollar buzzword here is Automatic Content Recognition, or ACR.

Tags: Multi-Screen, TV

The layoffs are part of a plan announced by parent company BCE Inc. last month to cut 120 jobs from Bell Media's Toronto workforce due to "financial pressure" in its advertising and subscription TV services.A notice sent by Bell Media's human resources department outlined some of the cuts, which included editors and producers at Much, formerly known as MuchMusic. All of the changes will be made before mid-October, the letter said.

Tags: TV, News

The BBC had planned to clear the online rights to the vast quantities of material in its vaults, and change its commissioning so that any new material would also be pre-cleared. This material – a rich, publicly funded archive of the nation's collective cultural memory – would have been put online under a generous, creative commons-style licence for Britons to download, share, remix and re-contextualise decades' worth of material both beloved and forgotten.

Tags: TV, CBC

While broadcasters are using transmedia to reach previously inaccessible audiences, filmmakers are using these devices to create dialogues with viewers ahead of completing projects.

Tags: Documentary, Transmedia, Cross Platform, Multi-Screen

Consumers don’t care where or how they get their content. They don’t care if it comes to them via cable, satellite, broadband, wi-fi, or wireless. They also don’t care who provides the hardware (smart TV, set-top box, smartphone or tablet) to deliver the service that they want. They want an integrated, easy-to-use system to get their content. Period.

Tags: TV

Tags: TV

Now that people have several devices at work—a laptop, a phone, a tablet—they’re finding their way to a similar trick, where they use each piece of hardware for a different purpose. Consider it a new way to manage all the digital demands on our attention: Instead of putting different tasks in different windows, people are starting to put them on different devices.

Tags: Multi-Screen

...the CBC should aim "to avoid excessive commercialism and to encourage Canadian content and the use of Canadian talent" in order to focus on its main goal: telling the stories of Canadians to Canadians.It's those stories that knit a country together. And that's really tough to do when you're readying to cut back evening newscasts and shut down in-house production of documentaries altogether at a downsized public broadcaster.

Tags: TV, CBC

While analysts dismiss these “TV everywhere” offerings as defensive moves geared at protecting the media cos’ ecosystem of cable subscriptions, the companies say they are laying the groundwork to provide more of what audiences are looking for –namely, episodes of a show’s current season stacked in a library for binge-watching and past seasons available at a price...

Tags: TV, Multi-Screen, Cross Platform, Media

In my opinion, branded content’s main goal is selling, while branded entertainment is inspired by a brand’s philosophy and culture, but created to be authentic, true content a network would commission.

Tags: TV, Media, Branding

“In a pick-and-pay world all the channels will potentially suffer subscriber loss,” she says. “But the notion is building channels with programming that people want to see. Original programming is becoming more important because then you can bring viewers to a show they can’t get anywhere else.”

Tags: TV

Money to these services has been rising at a rate of 7% over the past five years, according to numbers from the CRTC.

Tags: News, TV

If Google is trying to prove that the system is unworkable, then it’s succeeding – only the system it’s apparently operating in isn’t the system the CJEU described. It’s a straw man.

Tags: News, Google, Privacy

Tags: News

It’s status quo right now. Everyone says we need cross-platform measurement, and there are ad hoc solutions in place, but no one has a solution for the root of the problem, which is that different companies maintain different data sets.

Tags: TV, Media, Multi-Screen, Cross Platform

while reality production companies like ITV Studios are profitable and expanding (ITV recently acquired New York production company Leftfield for $360 million), the writers and producers who create their shows continue to struggle.

Tags: Factual, TV, News

In its first statement, the NPA offered the following regarding its formation: “Nonfiction content is a significant part of the programming landscape and, thus, warrants an Association dedicated to the advancement and protection of all those whose talents, hard work and commitment literally created the industry.

Tags: TV, Factual, News

Along with Fire’s price comes a free one-year subscription to Amazon Prime – valued at $100 – which offers second-day delivery on most products and access to Amazon’s huge library of music, movies and TV shows – all gratis.

Tags: Amazon

Some concerns within the industry were that the pick-and-pay concept could dramatically increase the price of paying for a single channel, basically pushing consumers into buying specialty channel packages they didn't want in the first place.

Tags: Media, TV

Cineworks Independent Filmmakers Society (est. 1980) is an artist-run production and exhibition centre that supports independent filmmakers and media artists. Through initiatives that foster dialogue and experimentation with cinematic practices, we engage our membership and the broader community through the transformative power of the moving image and the changing role of film in its contemporary context.

Tags: Production, Media, Friends

Filmmaker, producer, cinematographer, animator, and overall cinema pioneer Wolf Koenig passed away on June 26, 2014 at the age of 86. During a prolific career at the NFB, Koenig’s films were lauded for their sophisticated style and what was often a subtle irony in their observation of human behaviour and modern society.

Tags: Film, NFB

Documentary pioneer Wolf Koenig (pictured), who spent 47 years working at Canada’s National Film Board (NFB), has passed away at the age of 86.

Lonely Boy by Wolf Koenig& by Roman Kroitor, National Film Board of Canada

Tags: Film, NFB

“We’re trying to get ahead of the curve. We’ve got three big proceedings this fall and they’re all about setting the stage for the future of Canada’s telecommunications system,” said Jean-Pierre Blais, chair of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission... “We’re trying to get Canadians, regulated industries, producers, those that watch TV together in a room and say ‘OK how can we prepare in a sustainable way for the next five to 15 years?’”

Tags: TV, Media

In crippling Aereo, you see, the six judges made a choice to entrench the current, badly broken model of TV. That model has let the TV business largely defy the logic of digital distribution, and instead impose a form of cartel pricing on consumers — requiring people to buy a slew of channels they don’t want in order to watch the handful of ones they do

Tags: TV, Media

As soon as the ruling happened, Google started receiving requests from pedophiles and disgraced politicians asking for links to articles about them to be removed.

Tags: Google, Privacy

“We’re going to lead now with mobility, we’re going to lead with whatever widget you use” says CBC president and CEO Hubert T. Lacroix. “You’re going to see an investment in mobility that’s going to rise as the investment in perhaps television ... is reduced.”

Tags: TV, Media

Since 2010, Google has tried easing itself into the living room with various boxes, dongles and gadgets that put its software and services on your TV. Each attempt has been a little different and usually a little better, but there has yet to be a critically acclaimed box-office hit. Perhaps the previously reported Android TV, formally introduced today at Google I/O, will be different.

Tags: Google, TV

While the platform is still a theoretical implementation than a concrete product, Google is flexible about whether it can be used for a smart TV, a set top box, or another format entirely.

Tags: TV, Google

Tags: Media, TV

The problem with The Pillars of Creation is that there is no up or down in space, meaning the orientation of the image — to say nothing of the consequent naming of the image — was an editorial choice.

Tags: Storytelling

Tags: DGC, Awards

I feel weird about it. While buying toothpaste online does nothing to help my local economy, the truth is that I'm not buying it from a mom-and-pop store. My six bucks is going to end up at Amazon or Walgreens, and both are multi-billion dollar companies.

Tags: Amazon, Privacy

Indeed, while credit agencies must — by law — wipe clear their data on us from many years ago, the far larger, far richer, far more encircling Google faces no such restrictions.

Tags: Google, Privacy

“You need the same skills for any unscripted show, which is basically storytelling. The only difference is rather than completely creating the stories, you have to be able to respond to events, and to mold stories, and to present them in such a way that’s interesting for the audience.” - Conrad Green

Tags: TV, Factual

"The DGA tracks all nonunion reality productions, investigates any situation in which a member is suspected of working on a non-guild-covered project and takes disciplinary action as appropriate," said DGA spokeswoman Sahar Moridani. "In no way do we allow members to work nonunion."

Tags: TV, Factual

Six days a week, tour busses on the Pawn Stars circuit pull up outside his store on Fremont Street and unload their passengers. “We have tours that come through here – 30 to 120 people a day – all because of the show,” he says. “They might only spend 15 minutes in our shop, but they come back or do transactions by email. We’ve made some customers for life from those tours.”

Tags: Factual, TV

“The very big change came when we began to produce TV formats. We didn’t think that our culture” would be so embraced. But with globalization, “you see that your problems are human problems. Now we understand that a good story or a good format is something that can make must-see TV.” - David Yardeni

Tags: Factual, TV

Do you prefer a night in with Netflix over paying $8 for popcorn at the theater? You’re not alone: Box office revenue has been flat over the past few years while online video revenue has grown dramatically, and this is starting to change how Hollywood makes its money. - Janko Roettgers for Gigaom

Tags: Media

I just noted that Facebook and Google, in order to function, must be free (and thus ad-supported) in order to offer meaningful social networking and better search, respectively. The biggest beneficiaries, though, are the people who actually use Facebook and Google. Facebook doesn’t seem to get much respect in tech circles, but the truth is it has had and continues to have a more meaningful impact on normal consumers lives than any of the various companies and products that actually get tech people excited. - Ben Thompson

Tags: Google, Privacy

90 percent of the music industry have agreed to the contract terms that include provisions for the subscription service. But YouTube will apparently not let the 10 percent that have resisted carry on as ad-supported-only videos, and Kyncl told FT that the blocking will begin in a matter of days.

Tags: Media, Google

Historical players had experienced nothing but a cosy competitive gentlemen-like environment, with a well-defined map of players. This left incumbents without the genes, the culture required to fight digital barbarians. Whether they are media dealing with Google, publishers negotiating with Amazon, hotels fighting Booking.com or AirBnB, or taxi confronting Uber, legacy players look like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights. - Frederic Filloux

Tags: Media, Cross Platform, TV

You know, it’s interesting to see where this genre has gone into the more sort of character-led, personality-led forms of reality TV. At the same time, things are cyclical. I think every generation, each genre of programming has a star, and it might be every 20 years or maybe even every 30 years. Look at game shows. They were sort of out of fashion, out of favor. They weren’t fresh, there was nothing new, so they were pushed into the daytime schedule. Then along came something fresh and it was Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. - Trish Kinane

Tags: TV, Factual

Tags: TV, Factual

For me, the essence of Reality TV is all about drama.   So, I think bringing pressure is healthy whether it’s a professional chef or a domestic chef. Because the only way ever to really identify the true purpose of how good they are is submerging them under pressure.  So I say it’s no different than a live football game because it’s about the intensity. - Gordon Ramsay

Tags: TV, Factual

It cannot be phoned in, it has to continue to be great, and my philosophy of when you find something that works, it creates an anchor. It’s an emotional anchor for people. - Mark Burnett

Tags: TV, Factual

“The reality genre is maturing,” she said. “There was a while there – a heyday – when anything you put on was fresh and new. But not everything’s going to work now.” - Nancy Daniels

Tags: TV, Factual

Tags: TV, Dr Who

“Don’t wait for the network to tell you what they’re looking for,” added Linn. “Go after the things you’re most excited about and would want to watch on TV. Somebody is going to want it or some variation of it.” - Chris Linn

Tags: TV, Factual

Tags: TV, Multi-Screen, Cross Platform, Media