Tyler Gibb - Writer, Director, Editor, Filmmaker

There’s a lot being made these days of the Olympics in this country. Canadian sports organizations got together a few years back and created the “Own the Podium” initiative to, among other things, give us a sense of pride or ownership, if you will, over our top athletes. It’s been enough to make a few visiting nations bristle a little bit during these 2010 Winter Games so all signs point to it working so far.

My question is, can we hire these guys to do the same for the Canadian film industry? Would that be possible? Could we Own the Box Office?

It’s okay, it’s okay… This is not a rant. Not at all actually. It’s a battle cry.

I was driving into town today to one of our blessed socialize film industry functions when I spied something poke itself out of the car in front of me. Amid the blowing snow and splashing slush the passenger in the car ahead of me was rolling down their window and erecting a full sized Canadian flag at the end of a sturdy pole. No doubt a symbol, at that moment, of support for our athletes. What would it take, I thought to myself, to see that kind of dedication, enthusiasm and obscene patriotism for a Canadian movie?

I found the answer over muffins and juice at the film thing later that morning. So allow me to take you inside the hallowed halls of today’s Canadian cinema glitterati. Behind the curtain. Into the mindscape of this country’s next generation of filmmakers… The answer is: We have to make better movies.

Wait! Let me rephrase!

We have to make movies people actually want to see.

Okay, that actually sounds even more insulting to our forefathers of cinema but, please, don’t shoot the messenger. It’s the truth. It’d be really easy just to blame the public. Try to argue that if they’d just blindly wave a flag to support us the same way they support… speed skating or whatever, then we’d be getting somewhere. Do more people really want to watch speed skating than see a Canadian film?

Yes! They do! Why? Because it’s fun. It’s got excitement and tight clothing and it’s shot in HD - it’s the whole package.

Last weekend I saw a new film. A new Canadian film but not a Canadian film if you know what I mean. It’s called The Wild Hunt. It’s a crazy, funny, shocking, twisted and dare I say thought-provoking movie. Okay forget I said that last part. That part’s not important right now. You want to be entertained, I want to be entertained, this movie will entertain the hell out of you. And that’s what’s been lacking. The Wild Hunt comes out in a limited release in April.

Go see it. It is the beginning. Forget what you know. There’s a storm brewing in the Great White North. Own it.

T

Continuing in my do anything once for free just for the experience manifesto I took the opportunity to play soundman on a small but ambitious production this past week.

The soundman’s job, like many positions on a film crew, is a pretty unsung responsibility. Sound really is fifty percent of your film and bad sound will pull an audience right out of the moment faster than anything on the screen. Yet the director of photography’s title still seems to come with a little more prestige than that of the soundman.

So I donned my headphones and hoisted my boom pole and did my thing. The experience was a great one. My back is still a little sore and my sleep schedule will be screwed for another few days but that’s par for the course. What was really great was not being the guy in charge. I felt like I was on vacation. Or at least, maybe, visiting a dominatrix of some kind.

Just thinking about a shooting location in strictly sonic terms was a great eye-opener. Being in the vicinity of an airport is a fairly obvious no-no but scouting locations previously I wouldn’t have immediately thought about the perils of situating your set near an open intersection. On straight bits of road cars roll at an even clip but at intersections you have to consider the volume of accelerating engines. Also, if you’re in a low-income housing area you may want to consider that a lot of those cars may have noisier mufflers than elsewhere. The neighbourhood garbage pickup rotation is also something that’s worth factoring in to your schedule.

This of course assumes that you have a pick of several locations. And anybody who’s ever tried to put together a small but ambitious shoot will tell you that this is a pretty rare luxury. But anything I can do to help out my soundman will be on my mind the next time I go into a production.

Yeah, I’m still dwelling on the future of the film business…

I don’t mean to, and I promise you that this little corner of the web will not turn into just another kvetching post by just another dork with nothing but an opinion. I just have to share one more gem from the world of distribution and more specifically marketing.

As stated in a previous post, I heard some bewildering thoughts from some film executives recently. One particular kernel that’s been rattling around in my head since then came from the mouth of a marketing professional. The wisdom in what he said was as simple and accurate as it was soul destroying. He reminded his audience (an audience of filmmakers, I might add) that cinemas are not in the business of showing movies, they’re in the business of selling popcorn.

Also, the Easter Bunny isn’t real and there is no doggy heaven. You’re a man now. Stop crying.

I often call on examples from the beleaguered music industry to point to what I think we’re headed toward. This popcorn point casts a pretty dire shadow over this comparison. It’s my understanding that once upon a time, before there was a gramophone in every home, musicians made recordings in order to send them around to radio stations. These recordings were then used to promote the artist’s tour of live shows. This concept has basically come full circle. Musicians no longer make any money on the sale of recordings (truth is they never really did, most of that revenue went to their record labels). Either way, that revenue stream is drying up, yet recordings are more prolific than ever because musicians are realizing that these recordings are great promotion for their real income; selling tickets to live shows.

So what’s the film industry equivalent of that? If making a movie is the equivalent of recording and album then what’s the film equivalent of selling tickets to a live musical performance? I doubt that using a digital download of Avatar would be much good as a promotion for a stage version of that film. I suspect something may get lost in such an adaptation… So as far as this comparison goes, the closest I can figure is that if I make a movie what I’m really doing is promoting popcorn.

Hm.

Should I be allocating money for my next production to buy stock in Orville Redenbacher? Is that what it’s come down to?

Maybe there is hope.

I attended a panel discussion not so long ago that featured a number of film distribution executives. I expected to hear a lot of new ideas about how these middlemen moguls were going to exploit the new media to ring in a new era of digital distribution. Video on demand, mobile content, convergence… Instead they proclaimed DVD sales are still their top earners with no signs of letting up and that what we really need in this country are more cinemas.

It was weird.

The most that was said about anything remotely digital was that we have to continue to fight piracy.

I’m not sure whether or not this should be terrifying or encouraging. With the biggest distributors afflicted by some kind of collective denial of reality does this open up the floor for some new blood to make some new moves? Or is the film business seriously not going to do anything to help save itself (the way television is at least attempting to do) and wind up in the same calamitous straights as the music industry? I don’t have any answers here, I just write stories. All I’m saying is it was a little weird—

More cinemas?! Are you serious? Yeah, sure, to accommodate all that extra 3D traffic which is bound to be our savior, right?!? Because we never tried that before! Maybe vibrating seats - no wait, tried that too! Maybe, like, a cinema only you can drive your car into it and park there… No wait… Unless these new cinemas that we need so badly to save the current distribution model are 3D equipped, smell like a Honda and have seats that tickle your prostate while you’re watching the movie I just don’t see it happening. Call me a skeptic!

Sorry… Sorry, I let that get away from me for a second.

(Now, digital distributors! Now is the time to strike! Coup d’état! Coup d’état! Converge!)

Back in December, while driving, I was chatting with a new friend and mentioned that I would soon be putting winter tires on my car. He asked me why people did that; changed their tires for the winter. I was a little surprised by the question. Though I supposed it was a justifiable one for a life-long city dweller who would have no need for car ownership let alone seasonally appropriate radials. So I did my best to explain to him my understanding of tread patterns and varying rubber densities. Not to mention that here in Quebec, it’s the law.

After dropping him off, I reflected on the common adage “there are no stupid questions”. It’s a good one. The only thing that keeps us from asking questions - questions that for some reason we think we should already know the answer to - is pride. And I’ve never been a big fan of that measure of pride. Never the less I still often fall prey to this arrest in learning myself. It’s something I’m going to focus on changing in the new year. Mostly because I’m embarking on a new project, a new film, which will likely bring me into contact with people who have a lot to teach me. I hope to make “I don’t know, tell me” my new mantra.

It wasn’t until I got home that something occurred to me regarding my new friend’s inquiry about winter tires. It wasn’t that he’d never owned a car, or even ever seen a television commercial for Bridgestone Blizzaks. It’s that…

He’s from Toronto.

Toronto, a city less a part of the “Great White North” than many states to the South. A city beleaguered by our nation’s ever lasting (and mocking) memory of a particular winter that saw their mayor call in Canada’s armed forces to help clear the streets of snow. A city where, indeed, people could feasibly grow up never having purchased a set of winter tires. Well, it’s January now in Montreal and if I hollowed out the snow bank outside my window I could use it as a garage. I just hope my friend got a good pair of boots by the first snowfall.

There are no stupid questions. Just different routes to the same eventual destination of knowledge. “I don’t know, tell me” or maybe “Ask now so you don’t get snow-jobbed later.”

PS. This I do know: Refrain news coming soon.