• Lighting with natural light

  Micro-budget movie-makers are often in the position of having to light a set without access to dozens of high-wattage lighting instruments. For exteriors, this means using natural light from the sun. But it is a common mistake by amateurs merely to set the white balance for “sunlight” and start shooting.

  Mitchell Kanashkevich stresses that you have to consider the qualities of the light and how you might modify it for your shoot. He asks, “Are You Practicing these 5 Natural Lighting Tips?” and lays out “5 Tips for Controlling Natural Light”.

  Learn more: www.Digital-Photography-School.com/are-you-practicing-these-5-natural-lighting-tips and www.Digital-Photography-School.com/5-tips-for-controlling-natural-light

• Compare hand-held audio recorders

  Micro-budget movie-makers often record the location audio directly to the camcorder, but that is not always the best policy. It tethers the camera with the audio cable, and camcorders (and especially DSLRs) aren’t always the best device to record sound.

  The Zoom H4n audio-recorder is ubiquitous on micro-budget movie sets. Writing at Ryan Koo’s No Film School, E.M. Taboada compares the H4n with Tascam’s DR-100mkII and DR-40 units.

  Learn more: www.NoFilmSchool.com/2012/04/audio-recorder-roundup-H4n-Zoom-vs-Tascam

• 24-Hour Film Race

  The 24 Hour Film Race is an international competition that challenges movie-makers to create short films (four minutes or less) in just 24 hours. At the beginning of the shooting period, movie-makers are emailed a theme, prop, and action which must be included in the film. Local entries will be screened in more than 15 cities across North America, and the top 24 films overall will be invited to a screening in New York City in September, where they will compete for US$10,000 and an HTC One smartphone.

  Vancouver welcomes celebrity judge Micky Dolenz of The Monkees. The deadline for registration is May 15, and the 24-hour period will begin at 19:00 (PST) on May 18 and end at 18:59 on May 19. The Vancouver screening is June 28 at the Rio Theatre.

  Learn more: www.FilmRacing.com

• Praxis screenplay competition

  The Praxis Feature Film Screenplay Competition is an annual event seeking new screenplays by Canadian writers. The deadline is June 22, 2012.

  Eight entrants will be selected by a jury to participate in Praxis’s fall Screenwriting Workshop. Each screenwright will be matched with a veteran screenwriter or story editor, who will act as advisor and consultant over an intensive one-week period during which time they work together to rewrite, rethink, and chart a course for future development; the writer will leave these private meetings with a clear plan of how to proceed through the next draft.

  Writers who complete the workshops are given an invitation-only opportunity to apply for the Summer Readings programme, an annual event where screenplay drafts are professionally cast for table readings.

  Learn more: www.PraxisFilm.com/en/competitions/FeatureFilmScreenpla

• Michael Caine on acting in movies

  Years ago, I saw on some arts channel on television a programme featuring Oscar-winning actor Michael Caine in front of a group of acting students, giving instruction on acting for movies. He was very interesting, especially as he got very specific in his tips (eg. when you’re looking at another actor, pick one eye to fix your gaze on; if your gaze flicks back and forth between their eyes, you’ll look shifty and untrustworthy).

  E.M. Taboada, writing on Ryan Koo’s NoFilmSchool website, picks out ten of Caine’s tips, and links to the original video on YouTube. I highly recommend that both Actors and Directors check this out.

  Read it: NoFilmSchool.com/2012/03/Michael-Caine-teaches-act-film

• Casting your movie

  Jean Veillette Bowerman writes the “Balls of Steel” column for Script Magazine. Her most recent article, “Cast ‘Em”, is about how to get actors to be in your movie. Some words of wisdom:

  • The entire cast must work well together for the movie to blend into one painting.
  • One way to attract actors is to cast them against type, in roles they wouldn’t normally be offered.
  • You might want a Casting Director to help you attract “names” to your project.
  • Mention the people who are already involved as bait to attract further collaborators.
  • And of course: write a great script with roles that actors are dying to play.

  Lean more: ScriptMag.com/features/balls-of-steel-cast-em

• Write a 100-page script in April

  From the website: “Script Frenzy is an international writing event in which participants take on the challenge of writing 100 pages of scripted material in the month of April.”

  The way it works is simple: you sign up on the website, and then you have from April 1 to April 30 to write 100 pages of script(s) for a movie, TV show, stage play, comic book, radio play. It sounds like an interesting challenge, and the pressure of a deadline might stimulate the less-self-disciplined writer to produce.

  Learn more: ScriptFrenzy.org

• Prepare before you walk on the set

  The old saw “Prior planning prevents poor performance” applies especially to movie-making, where the shots you get are only a small part of the work you put in. C.J. Perry suggests ways you can run your shoot more efficiently, increase your production value, and save money by making sure you have what you need and know what you’re doing before you set foot on the floor on the first day of shooting.

  Read it: FilmSlateMagazine.com/filmmaking/preproduction-how-to-make-sure-youre-ready-before-you-walk-on-the-set

• What can you show?

  “Clearances” can be a dreaded word to the minor mogul. If your hero demonstrates his retro-nerd cred by wearing a “Space Invaders” T-shirt, you might get in legal trouble with Taito, which owns the rights to the game. If your stoner heroine rolls a joint with “Zig Zag” brand rolling-papers, you might get in legal trouble with National Tobacco. If your frat-house set has the poster for A Clockwork Orange on the wall, you might get in legal trouble with Warner Brothers. Almost any time you use something recognizable, you can get in legal trouble with somebody.

  In his article (a few years old now, but still useful), Thomas A. Crowell elucidates some “Legal Issues: What Can and Can’t Be Visible on Set”, and gives some tips for avoiding legal troubles.

  Read it: Microfilmmaker.com/tipstrick/Issue26/LegOnSet.html

• YouTube short-movie competition

  YouTube (the online-video giant) and Scott Free (the British production-company owned by Hollywood Directors Ridley and Tony Scott) are launching on online short-movie competition, “Your Film Festival”.

  Anyone in the world can submit a 15-minute movie; there is no entry fee. The brothers will choose 50 semi-finalists, and the movies will be put online for viewers to vote on and select 10 finalists. The 10 lucky movie-makers will attend the Venice Film Festival, where Ridley Scott will lead a jury to pick the winner — who will receive $500,000 to make a movie for Scott Free.

  They started accepting submissions yesterday, and you have until March 31 to submit your movie. The odds for success are probably about the same as buying lottery tickets, but “You never know . . . ”

  Learn more: YouTube.com/user/yourfilmfestival

• Awful things about being an actor

  This is one of those articles that makes you laugh, and then stop laughing and realize how horrible it is. Soren Bowie describes “Five Awful Things Nobody Tells You About Being an Actor”. It makes you appreciate all the more those whose dream is to bring to life the characters of our imaginations.

  Read it: Cracked.com/blog/5-awful-things-nobody-tells-you-about-being-actor

Now we learn why Christopher Dodd, the retired Senator from Connecticut, is receiving over $1.5 million a year to head the Motion Picture Association of America.

That would be the same Chris Dodd who — after dooming his chances of re-election with truly unseemly greed, even by Washington’s standards — pledged that he wouldn’t accept a lobbying job where he would peddle his access to his former friends and colleagues in government on behalf of the highest bidder (“lobbyist” is another definition of “whore”). Civil-rights critic Glenn Greenwald wrote a lengthy excoriation of Dodd’s bought-and-paid-for conduct this past week.

So it’s no surprise that Dodd would be working for the MPAA, an organization dedicated to defending huge corporations from any threat by individuals or smaller organizations. As Greenwald says:

In his SOPA advocacy, Dodd has resorted to holding up Chinese censorship as the desired model, mouthing the slogans of despots, and even outright lying. [links in original]

Dodd is now issuing threats to “politicians who accept MPAA campaign donations that they’d better pass Hollywood’s favorite legislation . . . or else”.

Back to Epstein’s article:

The MPAA, the trade organization for the Hollywood studios, is financed by Warner Bros., Fox, Universal, Disney, Sony and Paramount. Each provides about $10 million per year. Aside from efforts to suppress digital piracy, it lobbies Congress and regulatory agencies.

Its crucial job here is to protect the Big Six’s crown jewels: their intellectual properties. Without their libraries of movies, animated shorts, and TV series, they couldn’t survive.

They couldn’t survive because they don’t make anything, they just own things.

Consider Warner Bros. Its library has more than 60,000 licensable properties, including 6,500 movies and 40,000 TV episodes. Whereas its DVD sales have been on the wane, its TV licensing has skyrocketed. In 2010, according to sources at Time Warner, Warner Bros. harvested over $4 billion from worldwide licensing to TV.

Nearly 80 percent came from just four cable customers — HBO, Turner, ABC Family, and NBC Universal’s cable channels. Not only did this far exceed its share of theatrical box-office receipts, which were $2.4 billion in 2010, but this licensing is highly profitable:

The studio pays none of the cost of advertising, prints, or logistics. Almost all proceeds, minus some residuals paid to third parties, go to a studio’s bottom line. Whatever the vagaries of the box office, licensing is the largest and most reliable source of profits for the studios.

“Some residuals paid to third parties” means the royalties these corporations owe to Writers, Directors, Actors, etc. — you know, the people who created the works the corporations own and peddle. And these same corporations are aggressive in their attempts to deny, reduce, and whittle away at the royalties they should be paying to the people who actually make the movies and TV shows they sell.

When you download a Hollywood movie from The Pirate Bay instead of buying it on DVD or watching it on NetFlix, you deprive the studio of their slice of the dough. And that cannot be allowed!

Sharon Waxman lamented:

Why didn’t Hollywood grab the tools of the Internet to explain that when artists get ripped off, everybody loses?

The big studios (and big record labels) try to make that argument, but it’s a hard sell — because it’s not the artists who are being ripped off by illegal downloaders, it’s the studios. The ones who are ripping off the artists are these same studios.

Singer Courtney Love outlined ten years ago how the record labels exploit the creative artists, making millions of dollars from the artists’ works while the artists themselves make nothing. Singer Amanda Palmer detailed a coule of years ago how she made $19,000 in one month using Twitter to speak directly with her fans, while in the same period her label sold 30,000 copies of the record she made and paid her nothing.

(The labels’ response to artists who go over their heads directly to the fans? They want artists to sign “360 deals” — the artists have to pay the label a percentage of everything, regardless of whether the label had anything to do with making that money or not.)

And the movie-making field it’s the same: the big corporations rip off the creative people who actually make the works the audience wants to see. “Hollywood accounting” is the term for fiddling the books to disguise the profits these corporations made, that they have to pay royalties on. Hollywood claims movies like Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix haven’t made any profits yet, and have in fact lost money. (And Lucasfilm says that Return of the Jedi, the fifteenth highest-grossing movie of all time (adjusted for inflation), still hasn’t made a profit.) Epstein explains how that works.

Actor and author Wil Wheaton (of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame) says:

I have lost more money to creative accounting [ . . . ] than anything associated with what the MPAA calls piracy. Chris Dodd is lying about piracy costing us jobs. Hollywood’s refusal to adapt to changing times is what’s costing the studios money. That’s it.

The large, rapacious corporations and their bought-and-paid-for Congresscritters who are behind this bill are trying to paint it as protecting creators’ rights against pirates. In fact, it doesn’t do much for creators at all. What it does do is protect the rights of mega-corporations — who don’t create anything; they merely own things — to smash any competition and ensure that they and they alone remain the gateways you have to go through (and pay) to access any content online.

SOPA will require the company hosting your website to take it down, and will require Google and other search engines to delete your website from their search results, and will require Visa and Mastercard and PayPal to stop paying you any money they owe you. They will have to do this when a company accuses you of using copyrighted material — not proves that you are, but accuses you of doing so. In other words, you are not “presumed innocent until proven guilty”; rather, you are presumed guilty and a sentence is imposed on you until and unless you can prove, to your accuser’s satisfaction, that you have not done whatever it is they accuse you of.

Copyright expert Michael Geist spells it out:

the law envisions requiring Internet providers to block access to the sites, search engines to remove links from search results, payment intermediaries such as credit-card companies and PayPal to cut off financial support, and Internet advertising companies to cease placing advertisements.

If you think that this Act won’t affect us here in Canada, or in the rest of the world, think again. For the purposes of this Act, the USA treats Canada (and twenty Carribbean countries) as subject to American domestic law. It doesn’t matter if what you do is legal in your country; if Disney accuses your website of posting a picture of Mickey Mouse without their permission, your site is gone from the Internet.

And in order to file a challenge to the sentence against you, you must first consent to the jurisdiction of the American legal system. In other words, if you want to stand up to the bully, you have to agree that the bully has the right to beat you up if he thinks you haven’t stood up to him well enough on his own terms.

Further, this Act compels enforcement by breaking the infrastructure of the Internet: it hijacks the DNS registration system to make accused websites inaccessible (see this explanatory video). You’ll type in MyWebsite.com, but your ownership of that domain name has been stolen and re-routed. The cost of this technological change will be enourmous, and will open up exciting new avenues for hackers to steal your personal and financial information or otherwise harm you — and it won’t even be effective in eliminating access to the accused websites.

Heckuva job, Hollywood! Heckuva job, RIAA! Heckuva job, Congress! Heckuva job, authoritarians!

(Next battle: Stop the “Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement” (ACTA), the international censorship treaty being negotiated behind closed doors.)

Further information

• Cory Doctorow: “Lockdown: The coming war on general-purpose computing”. Boing Boing: December 2011. Read it
• Michael Geist: “Geist: U.S. could claim millions of Canadian domain names in piracy battle”. Toronto Star: November 13, 2011. Read it (and see also Geist’s blog)
• Jason Harvey: “A technical examination of SOPA and PROTECT IP”. Reddit: January 17, 2012. Read it
• Joel Hruska: “How SOPA could actually break the Internet”. Extreme Tech: December 19, 2011. Read it
• Chase Kell: “The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and what it means for Canadians” The Right Click: December 20, 2011 Read it
• “Key Issues: Rogue Websites Legislation”. Public Knowledge.org Read it
• Julian Sanchez: “How SOPA Will Be (Ab)Used”. TechDirt: December 19, 2011. Read it
• Michelle Schusterman: “Infographic: Why the movie industry is so wrong about SOPA”. Matador Network: January 17, 2012 Read it
• Lucas Shaw: “Hollywood’s Anti-Piracy Campaign Runs Aground”. The Wrap: January 17, 2012. Read it
• “SOPA: The Internet Blacklist Bill”. American Censorship: 2011. Read it

But if you watch a lot of micro-budget movies, you have to admit that a lot of them suck sweaty goat-balls.

Of course, as with anything Sturgeon’s Law applies: “Ninety percent of everything is crap.” But let’s look at micro-budget movies more specifically. Really, there are nine simple reasons why micro-budget movies are bad:

1. Poor writing
2. Poor directing
3. Poor acting
4. Poor video
5. Poor audio
6. Poor editing
7. Poor music
8. Poor distribution
9. High expectations

So let’s take them one by one, over the course of a series of posts here. This time:

1.) Poor writing

There is a simple equation for all narrative writing: Drama = Character + Action.

Left to their own devices, Actors will consume themselves with “character” until they disappear up their own assholes. Left unchecked, Directors will concern themselves with “action” until everything becomes a collage of spectacle. Both Actors and Directors need a scaffold on which to hang their respective crafts, a skeleton to give shape and articulation to their creative contributions to a movie. This core is the screenplay.

In the medium of cinema, only the Writer is a creator. All the other contributors to this most collaborative of artforms are interpreters. An Actor brings life to a character — but the Writer is the creator of that character. A Director brings life to the screenplay as a whole — but the Writer is the creator of that screenplay. If the movie is a house, the Director is the building contractor, and the Actor is the interior decorator, but the Writer is the architect. As even Steven Spielberg (the most powerful Director in the world, but neither a Writer nor an Actor) admitted, “It all begins with the word.”

Regrettably, sometimes craft is the enemy of art. Screenwrights know so much about the screenplay as the blueprint of a movie that their knowledge sometimes gets in the way of creating interesting characters doing interesting things.

And these screenplays are usually very well-crafted. Every screenwright knows about Syd Field’s Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting and Robert McKee’s Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting; most screenwrights have read them, and some might have attended McKee’s travelling workshop; exceptionally pretentious screenwrights might mention Aristotle. Writers will go on about beat sheets, ticking time-bombs, rising action, setups and payoffs, character arcs, Joseph Campbell and the Hero’s Journey. But the resulting script is too often a beautiful still-life — each piece perfectly and passionlessly set in place. I am reminded of a scathing review of a cartoonist: “It’s as if he plots and scripts his stories, then pencils and inks them, forgetting in between to write and draw them.”

(For a good dramatization of the difference between being technically skilled and being an artist, see this installment of Cyanide & Happiness.)

I think the problem here is careerism. We all want to write screenplays that get made into movies. More than that, we all want to make a living writing screenplays that get made into movies. But that results in a certain calculated slant to the scripts, where they’re written with half an eye on the marketplace — on what sells.

Back in the 1990s, everyone was writing ultra-violent crime movies with wise-cracking dialogue, because everyone wanted to be Quentin Tarantino. This past decade, everyone was writing zombie-apocalypse horror movies, because everyone wanted to be … I dunno, but everyone wanted to cash in on the trend. In both cases, I suspect, writers were enamoured with the set-piece sequences they imagined, and merely constructed the rest of the script to set up or pay off those set-pieces. They hastened through the boring stuff, sketching it in with just enough detail that we’ll understand the punch-line when it comes. But a script — like a joke — is more than just the punch-line.

We don’t have to emulate currently-popular genre crap. We’re minor moguls, not Hollywood moguls. We don’t have to worry about pleasing the Marketing Department, because that’s us. If you’ve been building your community, you know whether you have an audience for your movie. And without the necessity of recouping tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, movie-makers can take creative risks that bean-counters tell us are economically irresponsible. We can make any movies we want!

The world doesn’t need another zombie movie right now. If you want to make a B-movie, what about trying another classic movie monster? Probably not vampires; they’ve also been done to death recently. Maybe werewolves? Your theme could be something about the fear that an uncontrollable monster lurks within all of us, and could be set free, beyond our control — the embarrassment and horror of an unleashed id. Or mutants? Tap into our environmental concerns, that pollution could transform our bodies in horrible and destructive ways. Or plain old ghosts? Disembodied spirits, not subject to the same physical laws, want to exert their will on us.

And especially don’t write down to the material, just hacking something out because you think it’s what the audience wants to see. As Gore Vidal said, “Shit has its own integrity.” There are people out there who just love trash movies, and they can smell your insincerity a mile away.

Even worse are those creators whom critic Gary Groth dubbed “neo-hacks”. In the past, a hack might take a certain pride in being a good craftsman: delivering a well-made product to order. The neo-hacks, however, have so thoroughly internalized the values of the marketplace that they can’t tell the difference between commercial success and artistic value. “Of course I’m an artist — look at my sales figures!”

Write something you care about — something you like, something that made you cry, something that pisses you off.

If you want to write a semi-autobiographical drama, don’t make the mistake of assuming that everyone is as interested in you and your friends as you and your friends are. Don’t get caught up in “what really happened”; tell a story.

Think of your log-line. When someone asks, “What’s your movie about?” what are you going to tell them? You don’t want to mumble and ramble incoherently until they lose interest and go away. Your comedy doesn’t have to be high-concept (eg. “It’s about a sleazebag lawyer who is cursed and unable to tell a lie on the same day he’s handed a big case that could make him a partner in his firm.”), but you should be able to give people an idea of the story in a sentence or two. If they want more information, they’ll ask for it.

The biggest problem with most micro-budget movie scripts is that they aren’t about anything beyond the scenes on the page. There is no subtext, no theme, nothing for the audience to take away once they’ve watched the movie. Setting out to write An Enduring Work of Art can be a trap, leading to pretention at best and paralyzing writer’s block at worst. Remember: Drama = Character + Action. The audience only wants to know what happens next. But try to leave them with a little question about what they’ve experienced, something that will stay with them after the experience.

What you can do:

• Work on your screenplay until it’s as good as you can make it. Then work on it some more. Play the scene in your head as if you were watching it on the screen, and you’ll see whether your script works as a movie or only on the page. Read the dialogue out loud to yourself, act out all the blocking in your living room, and you’ll learn what sounds wrong (if you have trouble speaking your dialogue, so will the actors) or doesn’t work physically (maybe the sword-fight shouldn’t take place in the broom closet).

• I’m not an unqualified fan of writers’ groups. Whether they are any good or not is very subjective; it depends entirely on the dynamic of the group — of the people involved. One relentlessly negative asshole can poison the whole group. But when they do work, they can be very valuable indeed. Your mother can read your script and say, “Very good, dear,” but feedback from your fellow screenwrights, who understand screenplays, can give you criticisms you can use to improve your work. To start: here in Vancouver, we have the Vancouver Screenwriters Meetup group.

• Get some actors, and hold a table read of your script. Everyone sits around a table and verbally acts out the script. It will show you which lines of dialogue are clunky, laughable, or just unnecessary. Give the actors the freedom to improvise around the script, and they may show you a better way to convey the point of the scene; character is the actor’s business, after all. Videotape the read-through so you don’t have to make notes at the time, which will only distract you from what’s actually happening in the room.

• Have some ambition! Your script doesn’t have to make a Grand Statement about The Human Condition; there’s sufficient nobility in writing a comedy that makes people laugh. (Comedy is hard!) But don’t go always for the easy laugh. John Cleese, certainly a leading contender for “Funniest Man on the Planet”, always expressed contempt for those writers who never stretched beyond the easy laugh.

• Find crew members who will work for free

  Evan Luzi is a Camera Assistant and creator of The Black and Blue, a great website of articles and resources for camera crews specifically and movie-makers generally.

  Writing at Ryan Koo’s NoFilmSchool (also highly recommended) back in June 2011, Luzi provides “Five Tips to Find Professional Crew Members for Free”. You can get talented, professional individuals to work on your micro-budget movie for no pay up-front, just the usual Three Cs (credit, a copy, and craft services). His advice is obvious once you think about it: make it about them — be honest and upfront with what you need and what you offer, and explain to them how your project will be creatively interesting to them.

  Read it:
  NoFilmSchool.com/2011/06/5-tips-professional-crew-work-free

• Keep your crew happy

  And speaking of Evan Luzi: writing on his own blog, he suggests “Five Ways Directors (and Producers) Can Keep a Film Crew Happy”. His tips seem like common sense or simple courtesy after you’ve read them, but it’s surprising how often they’re ignored on the floor. Especially at the micro-budget level, where we’re asking people to work for low or no pay up-front, it’s essential to keep the crew feeling respected, valued, and engaged.

  Read it: TheBlackAndBlue.com/2011/01/18/5-ways-directors-and-producers-can-keep-a-film-crew-happy

• Learn how to direct actors

  Randolph Sellars, another guest poster at NoFilmSchool, discusses “Getting Better as a Director: Learning How to Talk to Actors”. His key piece of advice: take an acting class. I’ve heard this from many creators over the years — that one sure way to become a better Director is to take an acting class (and conversely, that one sure way to become a better Actor is to take a directing class).

  (There are many fine acting classes and coaches in Vancouver. A good place to start searching for one is the training section of the Vancouver Actor’s Guide website.)

  Read it: NoFilmSchool.com/2012/01/director-learning-talk-actors

• Give the audience an experience, not just content

  Josh Spector correctly judges that “Over the past couple years, we’ve seen the bottom fall out of the entertainment content business and it’s become increasingly difficult to monetize content of any kind,” — music, movies, or (his own specialty) comedy. But rather than passively lament the situation, he suggests “Why Creating an Experience Is More Valuable Than Creating Content”.

  Josh points out that movie theatres are improving their amenities (seating, food, service) to make movie-going more special than sitting on your own couch in front of your large-screen television and DVD or Blu-ray player. The most successful creators will be those who can offer the audience something they can’t get at home — a night out, an experience, a memory — not just a movie.

  Read it: ConnectedComedy.com/why-creating-an-experience-is-more-valuable-than-creating-content

I learned about the opportunity from Craigslist, in their “Gigs” section: “We’re shooting a pilot for a talk show style session [ ... ] and need a Sound Recordist [ ... ] This is going to be an interview scene with two characters”. I sent the poster an email offering my services and equipment. Pooya Khalili (check out his “Design and Media” portfolio) asked to meet me on Wednesday, and I guess I impressed him favourably enough (or he was desperate enough) that he invited me to do the job.

The crew call was set for noon at Gossip, a nightclub in the city centre. Pooya said he would be there by 11:00 and we could show up any time after that, but he didn’t actually arrive until shortly after 12:00, so three or four of us were standing around outside the locked nightclub for half an hour. That’s not fatal, just irritating. Producers take note: if you say you’ll be somewhere at a certain time, be there at that time or let everyone know you’re delayed.

Arash was to perform in the evening. We set up our gear in a corner of the floor while his crew set up his gear on the stage. Then we went and had a coffee and snack while they rehearsed and checked everything. Then we came back and shot the interview with Arash. Then he rested for a couple of hours before his show. Then in the evening they shot the show, for cutaways in the interview; I wasn’t required for that.

We shot the interview with three Canon 5D Mark II DSLR cameras: a one-shot on Pooya, a one-shot on Arash, and a two-shot on both. That’s the best way to shoot interviews; it gives maximum coverage and flexibility for editing.

Director of Photography Peter Carty brought a selection of Arri fresnel and Kino Flo lighting instruments and C-stands and flags and bounce-boards. They ended up using what looked like a Lowel Tota-Light with a softbox behind each individual but pointed at the other, and a Kino Flo 200 low down and off-centre from the front. The low light was good — really filled in the shadows under their brows and noses and chins.

For audio, I put Sennheiser lavaliers on each of them, running into my Mackie 1402-VLZ3 mixer and then recorded onto a Zoom H4n — one track per mic. I recall a few years ago that Zoom had problems with quality control, and the H4n in particular was notable for introducing lots of hiss into the recording, but lately they seem to have ironed out the problems. Perhaps they’ve found a steady manufacturer; I read that they would often switch manufacturers to keep their costs down, so you were never sure what you were getting under the hood. Certainly the H4n is ubiquitous on micro-budget movie sets.

We originally planned to have also a shotgun mic on a fishpole, but the Boom Operator had to cancel at the last minute and we had nobody to fill in. That’s too bad; I find a shotgun mic boomed from above is more directional and rejects more off-axis sound than lavs, and represents the accoustic signature of the room better. We wound up placing the second Zoom H4n on the floor by the talent, out of shot, and just using its on-board mics. I don’t think that will yield anything useful; the room was just too echoey and the mics are not directional enough.

We had another problem, too: the house sound-system was on, so the big speakers on the ceiling were issuing a constant crackling. I could hear it through my headphones; at first I thought it was clothing noise — a shirt scraping across the lav or something (another good reason to have a shotgun mic capturing another audio track). I asked the stage crew if they could do anything about it, but they said that they were not allowed to touch the house sound-system. I asked them who I would speak to from the club, but that guy was apparently absent at the time. So we had to live with it. I hope that it won’t be too audible under the interview. At least it’s a constant noise, so it will just be part of the background; and they can edit without viewers hearing a discrepancy where suddenly there’s silence or suddenly there’s noise.

Given that, maybe a shotgun mic boomed from above would not have worked so well in these circumstances. Shotguns are very directional; they reject off-axis sound very well. But they will pick up audio not only from where they are pointed, but from the rear of the mic as well. In this case, the rear of the mic would have been pointed up at the house speakers. So we might have picked up even more of the crackling noise from that mic. No way to be sure without testing.

We were done, packed up, and out of the venue by about 17:30, so the shoot took five-and-a-half hours. The original ad estimated a three- to four-hour shoot, but work always expands to fill the time available. Note to producers: always over-estimate the time you tell people you want them for. People grumble if you keep them over time, but they thank you if you let them go early.

We had to arrive by 17:30 for the 18:00 event, our ten-dollar admission fee in hand. If we were too late, our spots would be given to people on the waiting list. Praxis said the event was sold out, but the chair beside me was vacant, and two in the row in front of me, and a couple further down that I could see. I don’t know why they weren’t filled with people from the rush line.

There was a handout on every seat that listed the production company and the speaker, and a brief write-up about the company. One noticeable oversight: no Web links! (I have attempted to include links below, when I could find them.) Several of the speakers said we could learn more about their companies on their websites, so it would have been handy to include that information right there on the handout.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the theatre full of aspiring screenwrights — and I wasn’t the only one (see Raymond Massey, below). It was also good to see a healthy ratio of girls to boys in the audience; of course the boys were the majority, but there were more girls than I had feared. I was amused that there was a clear break in the audience between 20-year-olds and the 40-plus-year-olds.

Many of the speakers made the mistake of spending most of their allotted time talking about their companies and/or themselves, listing their track records and quoting their résumés. We already had this information on the handout, and we could also get it from their websites, so it just seemed like bragging. They used up their entire four minutes before they got around to talking about what they wanted to see from writers, and had to rush at the end.

Highlighted excerpts

• The Canadian market alone isn’t big enough to support a project, so projects have to appeal to at least the USA audience, and preferably the world-wide audience.

• The most-sought-after projects are thriller, sci-fi, horror, and action movies, in that order. Comedies are right out for the most part; several speakers said that comedy doesn’t work in the international market. (I would guess that’s because our sense of what’s funny is often socially constructed, and (especially today) depends on getting the cultural references and in-jokes.) Dramas are an uphill battle to sell. It’s an older, mature audience who watches arthouse movies.

• It doesn’t matter if you’re a member of the Writers Guild of Canada or not — and it can be a disadvantage, because it means that the production company will actually have to pay you for your work. However, having an agent is a definite advantage, as some companies won’t read submissions that don’t come through an agent.

• From Raymond Massey: “Are there this many writers in Vancouver?” From Blake Corbet: “So you all want to write movies? Get ready to be broke.” And from Alexandra Raffé: “It’s extremely hard to get into this business. It’s even harder to make a living at it.” Richard Craven said he often feels as though there isn’t a movie industry in Vancouver.

• Brush up on your industry terms so you don’t sound like a complete newbie. There’s a certain irony to the fact that everybody wants to discover new talent, but nobody wants to work with newbies because they’ll have to train you to bring you up to speed. So learn what “MOW” and “STV” stand for, what a “beat sheet” is, what ingredients are in a “package”, what it means for a project to be “fully developed”, and what they want when they say, “I’d like to see tape on this.”

Ameland Films

From the handout: Ameland Films Inc. is a Vancouver-based film and television-production company. [ . . . ] The company produces a wide variety of film genres from independent drama to comedy to thriller to historical drama and documentaries as well as short films, TV commercials & virals, and music videos.

Productions: Moving Malcolm (2003), See Grace Fly (2003), Ill Fated (2004) [see also Iron Horse, below]

Speaker: Paul Armstrong, Producer

Paul seeks historically-driven fiction and documentaries. He’s also looking for a Story Editor for his documentary Revolution: The Legacy of the Sixties.

Paul also promoted The Celluloid Social Club, of which he is Producer and Co-Founder. I’ve found this to be a very cliquey and unwelcoming meetup, but your mileage may vary. He also promoted the First Weekend Club’s Canada Screens programme, where you can see movies you might not get a chance to see elsewhere.

Arcana Studio

From the handout: Since 2004, Arcana has established itself as an innovative leader in developing content in numerous mediums [sic]. Arcana owns one of the world’s largest libraries of graphic novels and comics, and has adapted this library into live-action feature films, stereoscopic 3D animated features, episodic television series, and toys.

Speaker: Sean Patrick O’Reilly

Sean originally started a comic-book publishing company, and that still seems to be mostly what Arcana does; it’s adapting many Hollywood properties into comics form. It won a Joe Shuster Award as Publisher of the Year in 2005.

Arcana takes a “transmedia approach”, seeking “story worlds” to develop into comics, movies, video games, etc. One lesson many comics creators learned the hard way in the ’90s and ’00s is to make sure your contract gives you something for the rights to your creation in other media, or you may find yourself getting nothing for the Hollywood movie based on your creation.

Arcana’s website is alarmingly poor: low information, blank pages, broken images, and doesn’t really tell you anything about the company or what it does.

Blake Corbet Productions

From the handout: Blake Corbet Productions Inc. is a wholly-owned spin-off from Anagram Pictures where Blake was president for 10 years. He produced Anagram’s first feature, the critically-acclaimed Mile Zero (2001), and [co-]wrote and produced The Delicate Art of Parking (2003) [see also Quadrant, below].

Speaker: Blake Corbet

Blake began his four minutes by saying, “So you all want to write movies? Get ready to be broke.” That got a laugh. He said that one thing he learned in marketing The Delicate Art of Parking was that ultimately it’s the exhibitors who decide whether a movie will be shown. He seeks original, funny romantic comedies.

Cinemontage Productions

From the handout: We produce broadcast documentaries and docu-dramas, in French and English, in a variety of genres. [ . . . ] Our goal is to build on our success and expertise to expand production in Canada and move into the US and international markets. We are looking for writers to help research, develop ideas, and write episodes that can be produced in British Columbia or within Canada. We need writers with knowledge and experience, and a genuine interest, in science and crime-based stories for international broadcast.

Productions: Dark Waters of Crime / Eaux Troubles du Crime (2007)

Speaker: Greg Nosaty

Greg said that Cinemontage burns through writers. He seeks unique ideas to develop, or people to research and write the company’s ideas.

Escape Factory

From the handout: Escape Factory is a Vancouver-based boutique production company established by producer Ian Birkett in 2007. EFI is focused on the production of feature-length dramatic films of theatrical quality. All genres excepting straight horror are welcome, while thrillers are preferred.

Productions: Altitude (2010)

Speaker: Ian Birkett, President

Ian said he is drawn to features that provide escape and evoke a sense of wonder — that take us somewhere we couldn’t otherwise go or introduce us to characters we couldn’t otherwise meet. He seeks projects that are high-concept and commercial.

He likes writers who work quickly. He would rather receive a one-pager than a one-liner or a completed script.

EVOS Media

From the handout: EVOS Media [formerly RedBear Entertainment] is an independent production company founded in 2009 to create, develop, produce, and co-finance theatrical motion pictures and television content. The company is developing story-driven, commercial pictures across all variety [sic] of genres targeting a world-wide audience (specifically thrillers, family, sci-fi, and action films).

Speaker: Jason Riley

Jason said he is always looking for material: thriller, sci-fi, and action; think Alien or Predator. He is “not so fixated on [it being] original”; for example, he mentioned that he have acquired the rights to remake several Chuck Norris movies.

For EVOS, character is not as important as the concept and tone of a piece. They also view writers as replaceable cogs in the machinery of production, so don’t get too attached to your work.

Jason said that he prefers to meet with writers and get to know them, and isn’t that interested in seeing spec scripts.

Props to Jason for being honest and saying that if you mention Writers Guild of Canada minimum rates, you’re out the door. I mean, good for him for being honest, but run far away from his company for stating outright that they want writers who will agree to be exploited.

Foundation Features

From the handout: Foundation features is an independent production company developing, packaging, and producing high-quality feature films and television series by collaborating with some of the industry’s most critically-acclaimed and established directors, writers, and creative talent.

Productions: Hard Core Logo 2 (2010), Capote (2005), The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)

Speaker: Rob LaBelle, Executive in Charge of Television

Rob said that he wants dynamic storytelling with a compelling vision, for both scripted and unscripted projects. He seeks writers who know their genre and are hard-working.

I’m not sure what they’ve produced on their own. They seem to be another company that exists so American producers can get Canadian tax credits.

The Foundation Features website notes, “Foundation Features Inc. regrets that we are unable to accept unsolicited material of any kind. Our policy is to return unsolicited materials unopened (when possible), and emails will be deleted to protect your privacy.” So if you don’t have an agent, cross them off your list.

Front Street Pictures

From the handout: Front Street Pictures is a Vancouver-based company that produces a broad range of independent films, movies-of-the-week, and series for worldwide distribution. [ . . . ] The company is looking for cast-driven independent films, with roles that can be packaged with main talent, as well as fresh concepts primarily for one-hour TV series.

Productions: Mrs. Miracle (2009), Call Me Mrs. Miracle (2010), Little Girl Lost: The Delimar Vera Story (2008), We Don’t Live Here Anymore (2004)

Speaker: Marnie Young

Marnie replaced the announced Harvey Kahn as Front Street’s speaker. She said they have been working mostly in television, and want to move back to features. They seek thrillers (especially) and dramas, but no sci-fi or horror.

She said that the package is very important; you need to have a cast attached. We can assume by this that she means actors whose participation in the project will draw an audience (i.e. stars), not just your friends from film school.

Front Street’s website is a professional-looking (albeit slow and annoying) Flash-based site. The company seems to be in the business of partnering with American production companies so they can qualify for Canadian tax breaks.

Gang of 2 Productions

From the handout: Gang of 2 is a writer-centric film and television production company. We are always on the lookout for new feature-film projects as well as scripted drama and half-hour comedy [ . . . ] and are interested in looking at creative material at the early “idea” stage as well as fuller- or fully-developed projects.

Productions: Terminal City (2005), The Cult (2010), Fancy (2011)

Speaker: Angus Fraser

Angus said that they want to work with writers from the ground up to develop a series they can take to a network.

He lamented that Vancouver used to have an independent-movie scene with such movie-makers as Lynne Stopkewich, but that now “it’s a conservative time.”

(Personal note: I found their name amusing, as years ago my parents set themselves up in business as “The Group of Two”. Canadian and fine-arts fans will get the joke.)

Iron Horse Motion Picture Studios / Etch Media

From the handout: Iron Horse Motion Picture Studios is a Vancouver-based production company, focused on the production of independent feature films, television, and new media. We are currently accepting full-developed content in all genres.

Productions: The Thaw (2009) [see also Quadrant, below], Ill Fated (2004) [see also Ameland, above]

Speaker: Rob Neilson

Rob said he’s looking for genre stuff. He wants sci-fi and thriller movies that can be made for $1 million. (For comparison: that’s about one-quarter the budget of an episode of Fringe.)

Iron Horse’s website is one of those annoying ones that uses Shadowbox, so you can’t bookmark any pages within the site.

Etch Media sponsored the “Motion Picture and New Media Career Expo” in November. Iron Horse advertised, “Iron Horse Motion Picture Studios is in need of developed screenplays! If you’ve got a one-sheet or synopsis for that perfect project you’ve been putting blood, sweat, and tears into for years, come by our booth and drop off your information. Any genre — any medium — we’re interested.” However, Iron Horse didn’t have a booth at the Expo; I’m not sure how they accepted submissions.

Joker Films

From the handout: Joker Films is a full-service sales agency selling to over 50 countries worldwide. Joker deals with all levels of distribution (theatrical, STV, pay/free TV). [ . . . ] Joker is also a production company with [a] focus of family films.

Productions: Not applicable

Speaker: Tim Brown, President & CEO

Joker is not an actual production company itself, but (according to its website), was created to “focus on worldwide sales, packaging, and equity financing for third-party production companies who make movies, films, and television programming for worldwide distribution[.]”

Tim is always looking for high-concept projects, especially thrillers, but no gore movies. He said it’s important that you know who your movie is for — and no, it’s not for everybody; different demographics have different interests.

He pointed out that comedy is hard to sell to the international market, and there are a billion low-budget horror movies out there already. He said it’s good if your movie is broadcaster-friendly, as sales to television are very important; the DVD market is way down, and video-on-demand is not yet making up the numbers.

Lark Productions

From the handout: Lark productions Inc. is a television-production company that develops scripted drama series, comedy-drama series, non-scripted formats, and entertainment content for Canadian as well as international television markets.

Speaker: Stacey Landers, Development Executive

Stacy said she seeks Canadian projects that can be sold to the international market. She wants one-hour, episodic continuing series with universal themes — and no comedies. Her company works only with writers who are members of the WGC. They receive a large volume of submissions.

In the unscripted market, what she hears is that companies want big characters doing unusual things to make money.

Mad Samurai Productions

From the handout: Mad Samurai Productions develops and produces dynamic film and television projects, focusing on edgy, indie feature genre films and original, high-concept feature film properties. [ . . . ] Genres that we do not work with are romantic comedies, most dramas, scripts with budgets surpass[ing] $35+ million [by way of comparison, last year’s blockbuster hit Inception spent three times that amount on its advertising campaign alone], zombie films, and family films. Everything else would be considered. What we are truly looking for are projects that are dark and edgy, in whatever genre they fall under.

Speaker: Matthew Cervi

Matthew wants to produce feature movies. He said that it takes a long time to make a movie, so he has to fall in love with a project — about five years, most of which time is unpaid. He says he can judge a script in ten pages.

He seeks genre projects: thriller and action movies, no comedies or dramas.

Mad Samurai’s website not only has an annoying Flash intro, but it plays music without asking. (N.B. to website designers: don’t do that; if I want music, I’ll ask for it.) The one annoying page appears to be all there is to the whole site.

Massey Productions / Anji Bridge Media

From the handout: Massey Productions is Raymond Massey’s small Vancouver-based production company which develops and produces primarily feature films for theatrical and cable. Anji Bridge Media is a financing venture [ . . . ] which facilitates co-productions with China[.]

Speaker: Raymond Massey

Raymond began by looking at the audience and asking, “Are there this many writers in Vancouver?”

He seeks scripts that have good main roles to attract stars — both western and Chinese (see below).

He recently specializes in co-productions with China. He said it’s hard to find material, bilingual English/Chinese writers are a very rare breed. There are specific requirements for such co-productions — for example, a movie can’t be about corrupt officials, because no officials are corrupt in China. A script can’t address the baby trade, Falun Gong, Tibet, or the Dalai Lama. China has no movie-ratings system, so a project has to be suitable for a general audience.

No Equal Entertainment

From the handout: No Equal produces both scripted series and feature films for the world-wide marketplace. [ . . . ] No Equal develops projects in all genres.

Productions: jPod (2008), Nightwatching (2007), Helen (2009)

Speaker: J.B. Sugar

J.B. said he is a big fan of adaptations; having reputable source material adds cachet to a project. He seeks dramas and comedies that can become series. His advice: “Be brilliant, dammit.”

Odyssey Media

From the handout: Odyssey opened its doors in Vancouver in 2010 with a business plan designed specifically to exploit foreign production and financing options. [ . . . ] We are always looking for lower-budget MOW sci-fi and thrillers, plus action/thriller features with budgets under $10 million.

Productions: Bad Karma (2011), Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life (2005)

Speaker: Keith Shaw

Keith said he seeks action/thriller features. For MOWs, he wants sci-fi and female-driven thrillers.

Odyssey has a branch office in Brisbane, Australia, where its two theatrical features have been shot, and a production partner in Bulgaria.

(Two years ago, Kirk’s brother and business partner Keith lamented the state of the industry in Vancouver and Canada (particularly the federal Conservative government’s unnecessary rejigging of the Production Tax Credit after some of their prudish members were offended by the title of the movie Young People Fucking) that led to the failure of their previous production studio, Insight Film Studios, formerly Vancouver’s largest independent film-production house.)

Omni Film Productions

From the handout: Omni Film Productions Limited has produced hundreds of hours of award-winning programming including drama, factual and lifestyle series, documentaries, and children’s programming since opening our doors in 1979. [ . . . ] Omni Film (despite its name) is a television production company! We produce drama, comedy, MOWs, and limited series. We do not produce feature films, animation, or kids’ shows [I guess they stopped doing those].

Productions: Primeval: New World (upcoming), Defying Gravity (2009), Dragon Boys (2007)

Speaker: Michele McMahon, Director of Drama Development

She receives over 600 scripts per year. Most of them are good — but not extraordinary. She wants to hear a writer’s unique voice.

Michele said that she has a file of 500 writers. Of those, perhaps 100 of them are cable of show-running, and those are the writers she prefers to talk to. She never works with a writer she hasn’t met before. She stressed that it’s important for a writer to have a good relationship with the producer.

Omni Film does not accept unsolicited submissions.

Opiate Pictures / Curio Media

From the handout: Opiate Pictures Inc. specializes in producing female-driven genre [projects] — horror, sci-fi, and fantasy — for feature film, television, and the Internet. Projects should be written/directed by women, or in certain cases, [feature] a strong female protagonist, but preference is given to female-created projects.

Curio Media is the distribution platform and is interested in acquiring female-driven genre [projects] in all formats[.]

Productions: Stained (2010), Eighteen (2005)

Speaker: Karen Lam

Karen said she seeks horror, sci-fi, and fantasy projects. She stressed that they want to work only with women movie-makers. She also mentioned her involvement with a women-only film festival early in the new year.

(If you’re looking for woman-centric movie stuff, a good place to start is Women In Film & Television Vancouver.)

A quick note: I don’t mind a company using WordPress.com as its Web-hosting service, but I am suspicious of a company that doesn’t own its own domain name; it says “fly-by-night outfit” to me, like a company with only a post-office box for an address.

Principia Productions

From the handout: Principia Productions develops and produces projects for theatrical and television audiences. Our primary focus in the last few years has been on feature films. We are interested in dramas, comedies, and thrillers[.]

Productions: A Simple Curve (2005)

Speaker: Richard Craven

Richard said he often feels as though there isn’t a movie industry in Vancouver. He revealed of his company, “We’re struggling.”

He said that, while Hollywood scripts are often criticized for having big emotional moments at a rate of one per minute, a problem with Canadian scripts is that they’re lucky if they have one emotional moment at all.

He said that your script won’t get made, even if you have the budget, if you don’t get marketable actors. He did say that Principia would always accept a brilliant, $275,000 road movie with no stars.

Quadrant Motion Pictures

From the handout: Quadrant is a film-production company, focused on the development and production of feature films for the international marketplace. [ . . . ] We are interested in all genres, though our primary focus currently is on comedy and drama.

Productions: Fido (2006), The Delicate Art of Parking (2003) [see also Blake Corbet, above], The Thaw (2009) [see also Iron Horse, above]

Speaker: Mary Anne Waterhouse

Mary said that Quadrant is a family company: she finances and puts the movies together, and her husband Andrew Currie writes and directs.

She boasted about her Hollywood contacts. She said that relationships are very important: “Who is a fit for you?” She likes to stick with people for the long haul.

Quadrant’s website says the company is “dedicated to the creation of quality theatrical feature films that promote originality and a deeper understanding of our world.” Comedy is her favourite, not really other genres. She said that a script must be either at the micro-budget level, or able to attract stars.

Reel One Pictures

From the handout: Reel One is an international film and television production company with offices in Los Angeles, Vancouver, and Montreal. We specialize in movies-of-the-week, dramatic television series, and feature films. We are currently seeking Canadian writers for both work-for-hire MOWs (sci-fi and women-in-peril) as well as low- to medium-budget genre-driven original scripts (especially thriller, horror, and sci-fi properties).

Speaker: David Sanderson, Director of Development

Davis said that Reel One produces sci-fi and women-in-peril MOWs and television series, punctuated with features.

He seeks fast writers who are willing to work on producer-driven projects (in other words: don’t pour your heart and soul into your work). He wants writers on a work-for-hire basis (which means that the company is the legal author of your work, and you are just a hired-hand technician paid for your time).

David stressed that you must be a Canadian citizen to work with Reel One.

(I can’t find a website for this company. They aren’t Reel One Pictures, as that company is in New York, USA, and specializes in documentary and non-fiction programming. They might be Reel One Pictures Inc., affiliated with Reel One Entertainment in California, USA.)

Screen Siren Pictures

From the handout: Screen Siren Pictures develops and produces feature films, feature documentaries, documentary series, television series, and TV movies and mini-series. In addition, we are a production-services company, servicing mainly American TV production. [ . . . ] We are interested in many genres, but not all that attracted to sci-fi or horror.

Productions: Eco-Pirate: The Story of Paul Watson (2011), Luna: Spirit of the Whale (2007)

Speaker: Christine Haebler

Christine said she is not seeking sci-fi, horror, or women-in-peril (that last seemed like a dig at David Sanderson of Reel One Pictures, who preceded her as speaker; she got a laugh). She said that it’s an older, mature audience that actually goes out and watches arthouse movies.

StoryLab Productions

From the handout: StoryLab is a new brand of production house that proudly puts the story back in the script. [ . . . ] We are currently looking for film projects that are plot-driven including genre horror and comedies, large-scope true stories, dramas that have a lightness to the, and one-hour enviro-dramas for the television market.

Productions: Becoming Redwood (forthcoming)

Speaker: Chad Willett

Chad Willett said he and his partner Joely Collins have been actors for 20 years, but as they have aged they have found fewer roles for them, so they decided to move into producing. StoryLab is small and personalized, and seeks private funding.

Chad said that there are not a lot of good scripts out there. He can tell if a script is any good within five or ten pages. He seeks western and family scripts, and only smart sci-fi or horror projects.

Thunderbird Films

From the handout: We work almost exclusively in television, and while our slate encompasses every genre, we do significantly more production in live-action drama — procedurals and prime-time, one-hour dramas, ’tween and adult multi-camera sitcoms, and animated children’s television (mostly as co-productions. We are supportive of new talent in our writing rooms, but do require some level of experience, which will vary according to the medium. We work in most genres.

Productions: Da Vinci’s Inquest (1998), Hiccups (2010), Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008)

Speaker: Alexandra Raffé, Head of Production

Thunderbird is a distributor turned producer. The company is still interested in picking up finished productions.

Alex seeks Canadian projects destined for international markets. The Canadian market has shrunk recently, and can’t support a production all by itself. Television networks seek procedurals with a twist, as straight procedurals are not as much in vogue as they were a couple of years ago.

Writers should be at show-runner level. Alex said, “It’s extremely hard to get into this business. It’s even harder to make a living at it.”

Triton Media

From the handout: Triton Media is interested in developing and producing a wide of commercial programming for both film and television. [ . . . Triton] is interested in all genres, and looks only for well-written, original ideas.

Productions: Avarice (2011)

Speaker: Rupert Harvey

Rupert said he wants to establish a real movie-production industry in Vancouver. He seeks original, well-executed, commercial projects with a potential for international sales.

True West Films

From the handout: TWF produces quality feature films and TV for the international markets, with a focus on co-productions and co-ventures. [ . . . ] [TWF seeks] completed feature screenplays suitable for North American market and/or projects for international co-production, and TV series pitches suitable for US cable. All genres.

Productions: It’s All Gone Pete Tong (2004), Everything’s Gone Green (2006)

Speaker: Elizabeth Yake, President

Elizabeth said TWF seeks mostly features, and is starting to produce TV series. She likes everything, and loves spec writers. She got a laugh when she said, “And I want to win an Oscar.”

She wants dark and edgy projects suitable for American cable channels, and not filled only with white people. She doesn’t want to see any prairie movies, or “two people in a room” type scripts.

She seeks writers who are not also directors. You should have had something produced — but if you’ve had four or five things produced and nobody’s noticed, you should keep that quiet. She advised screenwrights to write 20 scripts to get good, and then learn to write a good synopsis. (True West’s website features log lines and synopses of their in-development projects, so that would be worthwhile studying.) She asked writers to submit a synopsis and a bio, rather than a full script.

Worldwide Bag Media

From the handout: Worldwide Bag Media was created in 2008 by owners Anna Wallner and Kristina Matisic [ . . . ] to produce mainly lifestyle series. In 2010 they expanded adding Heather Hawthorn-Doyle as their head of development to create series in multiple genres. [ . . . ] We are looking for writers who can write beat sheets, story edit, and have a clever and natural sense of dialogue.

Productions: The Shopping Bags (2001), Anna and Kristina’s Grocery Bag (2008)

Speaker: Heather Hawthorn-Doyle, Executive Producer and Head of Development

Heather said she seeks mainly non-scripted projects. She claimed that 70 to 80 percent of programmes on TV are unscripted, so it’s a fertile market. For scripted projects, she seeks only youth stuff, and for that she already has people in mind.

She wants to hear great ideas for multi-season programmes that she can develop with people. She mentioned, “If it has talent, you have to have tape,” — by which I assume she means that if you’re proposing a programme with specific on-camera people (yourself or others), you have to shoot a mock-up episode.