It’s on the grapevine, Baz Lurhrman’s Set to Screen podcasts have hit the iTunes store offering young filmmakers an insight into the process behind the making of new feature film Australia. Critic Lynden Barber mentions it in his blog Eyes Wired Open and credits Luhrmann and Fox for a genuine effort to reach out to new filmmakers. There’s definitely something in this and, from someone who teaches at a film school, I know you can’t get better educational resources than this kind of on-the-spot, behind-the-scenes coverage.
It’s interesting to watch the evolution of what were standard DVD extras features only a few short years ago. Hasn’t the landscape changed when the studio marketing machine needs to release the extras ahead of the feature film, all noble intentions aside. The only thing is they’re not doing as good a job as Peter Jackson did on King Kong in 2005 with his on-set video diaries being posted on the web every week of the shoot. The site is still up here and it’s maintained by King Kong fans but includes all those original production diaries which are such a mine of information for film students everywhere. And they’re distributed by Bit Torrent as opposed to Baz Luhrmann’s material going through the Apple iTunes walled garden. Common guys, get with the program – and I mean Apple, Fox and Luhrmann – make this stuff freely available everywhere and it will actually have a much bigger pay off in terms of generating pre-release buzz. And it won’t harm your street cred with an internet savvy audience.
Had the pleasure interviewing Current TV‘s Ezra Coopenstein as part of the first Portable Film Festival being run in Singapore. The old parliament house was a spectacular venue for the symposium and Ezra and I were seated in the centre of what used to be the Singapore government chamber. I had to try not to end all my questions with ‘Mr Speaker’ – I’ve never felt so close to the seat of power!
After overcoming the weight of the venue we launched into a discussion of Current TV and Ezra’s role as leader of the Viewer Created Content team. VC2, as they call it, is at the heart of the Current philosophy and makes up about one third of their on air content and all of the content on their web portal. Current TV is a clever amalgamation of cable television and web community. The first filter on viewer created content is the viewers themselves and the process of viewing, commenting on and assessing content is also a means of constituting a creative community. Current has been very successful in bringing younger viewers back to television because gives them an opportunity to express themselves and communicate. The TV offering has recently been extended to the UK and Ireland and in May will open its doors in Italy. Who knows, tomorrow it may be as ubiquitous as CNN or the The Discovery Channel. It certainly offers cable networks a model to upgrade their cross platform capabilities as Current offers an effective format to drive viewers/creators from web to TV.The initial vision of Current revolved around creating an independent news network to counter the top-down media networks. It has managed to create a service that is suited to the times, both politically, and in a media landscape beset with challenges. It’s heartening to see an activist community of citizen journalists emerging and Current TV seems quite comfortable fostering them and letting them express their voice.
In the coming week Ezra will be appearing in a range of cities throughout Australia and I highly recommend you come to hear him. I’ll be hosting the Sydney session which will be held on Tuesday 8th April at 6pm at the Museum of Sydney. More information about Australian appearances can be found here.
This is not an alliance that I would have predicted but boy does it have potential to produce something interesting. There’s a great series of interviews available with both Corey and George (separately) on Ngai Croal’s Level Up Newsweek blog which you can read here. The big news is that they are going to make a Mad Max game together alongside the next Mad Max film. George Miller has some very interesting comments about how making Happy Feet, his first CGI feature, opened his eyes to the possibilities of the games medium. Here is some of what he says:
The realization was, as I started to work in the digital realm, that film suddenly is able to do things that you weren’t able to do before. And once I got into that, like everyone else, I saw the obvious convergence of film towards games and games towards film. So, I got swept along and found myself sort of in a current that was heading towards games.
The other big thing for me was the fact that film is a pretty closed narrative–it moves along at 24 frames a second, it’s extremely linear, and in that sense rigid, whereas games bust that open. So in a way, with games being more exploratory, it’s closer to what a novelist can do in many ways. A novelist can stop the forward momentum of their story and go explore little cul-de-sacs and then come back again. Games allow you to do that as well. Basically, games and films and just about everything else comes from the heading of storytelling. So it’s just another way to tell stories, I think.
The interviews are well worth a read and Corey also lets slip a few secrets about why he left Sony after God of War I, 2 and half of 3.
Photo of George Miller used in this post by paddynapper.
I’m not a huge Oprah fan but this is an amazing video from a courageous and inspiring man called Randy Pausch giving his ‘last lecture’. I’ve blogged about Randy Pausch before – he is one of the founders of the Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center and was jointly responsible for developing an amazing and forward looking educational program. It doesn’t get much more public than appearing on Oprah but Randy bravely confronts knowledge of his impending death of pancreatic cancer and reflects on the importance of keeping childhood dreams alive. A fuller version of the lecture was delivered at Carnegie Mellon in September 2007 and can be found here and it has lots of detail about the ETC program. Randy continues his battle against this horrible disease and you can follow his progress here Photograph by Wil P.
It’s a rare occurrence for a kid’s film to really touch you emotionally – especially with the assault of CG animated features which just keep coming and kids seem to lap up like ice cream. I’m thinking of The Bee Movie, Valiant, Madagascar – even Pixar’s offerings are getting stale and saccharine. The kid’s ‘effects’ movie bundled-with-lovable-fictional-creature is a genre that’s been hard to crack since ET hit the screens. But the producers of The Water Horse just reinvented the wheel without ladelling on all the schmultz you’d expect from Hollywood. This is a great movie whether you’re an adult or a kid. The performances are great from everyone including the digital creature who is portrayed in sensitive proportion to the demands of the story.
Although set in Scotland there is a New Zealand connection (Weta Digital did the effects and much of the movie was shot in New Zealand) and there are some story similarities with the inspired Whale Rider. It’s a joy to see a film where effects are so well integrated – this is how it should be and even kids can spot the difference. Good to see that it’s being promoted in a Godzilla kind of way in Japan but the movie itself is very much more understated.
Well I do. Tells you something about my age. Just watched the new online serial Quarterlife from the creators of the original Thirtysomething series. Got to say it’s the most compelling drama I’ve seen online. A lot of the others like Lonelygirl15, Kate Modern and PSTrixi were aimed very much at a teen girl demographic. More like Neighbours than Secret Life of Us. It’s been running online since the 11th November and NBC have picked it up and will broadcast the ten minute episodes after they have premiered online. MySpace are in there as a major partner probably in the same way that Bebo got behind Kate Modern in the UK. We may be seeing a new trend of social networks commissioning video drama to drive conversations and community around the content. Another one like this is Afterworld which premiered on Sony’s social networking portal Acid Planet and migrated to the Sci Fi Channel. The visual style is pretty bare for broadcast television but it works well on the web.
