Wednesday, January 27, 2010

My producer and I are putting together a package for the Telefilm submission for a feature I'm attached to direct. It's very exciting, because if we can get the financing, then it would be my first feature. We're trying to figure out how to do everything on the small budget we'll have, which means trying to find stars we can afford who will also excite the distributors, and locations where we can place more than one scene.

It's nice to now have access to satellite imagery. We have a bunch of art gallery scenes, and a scene on the Lachine Canal. I remembered an old factory, now renovated to condos, offices and studios, right on the Canal, on St. Ambroise. Anton and I were talking, and I ran Google Maps up and down the Lachine Canal looking for the telltale parking lot. There it was. "You know this place, right?" "Oh yeah, a lot of people have production offices there." "We could do both art gallery scenes, and maybe Lucas's apartment, and the Lachine Canal." "Good idea."

It's mad good to have access to satellite imagery.

Meanwhile, actors' reels are starting to go up on YouTube. I wanted to show the ridiculously talented and alarming Michael Filipowich to an American showrunner I've been working my metaphysical drama with. He's got his reel up on YouTube. "You see what I'm talking about?"

Department heads, too. If you're a cinematographer, a production designer, a composer: get your stuff up on the Net. If we're looking at two people, and one of them can be checked out on the Net, who do you think we're going to check out first?

And if an actor doesn't have a reel, they often have interviews. One actor we were looking at is famous for her dramatic roles. "But can she do comedy?" We looked at an interview on Tout le monde en parle," a Quebec talk show. (Trans: "Everybody's Talking About It.") Oh, yeah, there's the lightness we were looking for.

... Which, of course, means, you better be on fire every time you give an interview. I was looking at one actor for a role, and she had an interview up which just made her look like a dingbat. Fortunately, she had a TV interview up that made her look perfect. Fortunately, I saw both.

Indie film has been taking a terrible beating lately. It's very hard to get a distributor. Fortunately, in these small ways, it's getting easier to put one together.

PS: For Dog's sake, why do so many of these Canadian films not have a trailer online? Are you kidding me? What is wrong with you people? Ask your intern to UPLOAD YOUR FRAKKING TRAILERS.

Labels: technology

9:23 AM

1 Comments:

Always insightful, Alex. For all the bitching and moaning about where technology is taking the industry and how it's changing the game for the worst, it's nice to read about the positive aspects of what we're going through. Especially positive, for newbie filmmakers (like me).

Cheers

By  The "Dangerous" Writer, at 11:06 PM  

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