Last weekend I went to a course put on by the DGC. It was called Introduction to Internet Marketing for DGC Members and was facilitated by Film and TV Director, Creative Consultant, TV Producer and 1st A.D. Peter D. Marshall. You can subscribe to Peter's excellent filmmaking newsletter over at his site actioncutprint.com.

Peter talked about everything from the more technical such as meta tags and SEO to utilizing web 2.0 sites like faceook and LinkedIn

Basically what I have is all the weapons to market both myself and any of my films or other media products already in my arsenal, but have yet to focus them. It's like having the best power drill on the planet and drilling at thin air. I'll be making some changes to my online presence, not the least of which will be to this blog.

Colleen Nystedt came in to speak to us about her site, movieset.com. I was extremely impressed with Coleen and her pitch. Movieset.com is going to revolutionize film marketing and the back-end tools bringing productions truly online (and for free) are of huge interest to me as a filmmaker. I had ideas about doing what movieset.com is doing myself, so it's a very easy product to get behind.

Here's Colleen on In the Lab with Leo Laporte:

Go behind-the-scenes with MovieSet™
Colleen Nystedt, Founder & CEO, MovieSet™

1. MovieSet™ represents a paradigm shift that advances the marketing of movies to the beginning of the production process.


2. Every movie has a core audience and the internet is the most sophisticated tool for identifying, targeting and engaging those fans.


3. MovieSet’s toolkit brings film production online creating efficiencies in scheduling and communications, and as a by-product allows fans a abbreviated view of the process.


4. As an aggregator, MovieSet™ enables producers to earn advertising and other ecommerce revenue creating new business models.


5. MovieSet™ is also developing its utilities for television, documentaries and games.

www.movieset.com

[source In the Lab with Leo: episode 79]

As well we hear from Trilby Jeeves who spoke about her experience with marketing film related services on the web, specifically her site buffooneryworkshops.com. I'm kind of a buffoon already, but I'm considering taking Trilby's next course:

"The Buffoonery Acting Workshop" will be two fun-filled days of discovering how to find authentic, believable and committed performances. It's going to be held in Vancouver, on April 26 & 27, 2008 at the Tooba Physical Theatre.

This workshop is available to no more than 10 actors. Registrations will be on a first come basis. As soon as 10 spots have been taken, this link will be closed.

Register Now.

Coming from the background and experience in this area that I already have I wasn't sure how much I'd learn, but I'm glad I went. I learned a lot in only a few hours. Thanks again Peter.

I hope so. I'm so tired of being unemployed.

Local TV/film production hopes tax credit will turn around slow times

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) - The local film and TV industry has taken a beating from the on-going writers' strike, but the provincial government has provided some light at the end of the tunnel. BC is boosting tax credits for the entertainment industry that provides thousands of jobs, ranging from actors to truck drivers.

With some productions slipping out of town to take advantage of better tax breaks in Ontario and Quebec, BC has matched their tax credit increases, boosting the basic tax credit to 25% (up 7 %) and the incentive tax credit to 35% (up 5 %).

Glenn Bottomley at the talent agency, Local Colour, says it gives him hope business will get back to normal once all the entertainment industry's labour problems are solved. He says the writers' strike has really hurt the talent business. "We're in the neighbourhood of being down 30 to 50 percent of where we would be at this time of year normally."

The Motion Picture Production Industry of BC salutes the tax credit improvements.

I'm in. Finally.

The Directors Guild of Canada, B.C. District Council has provisionally accepted me for membership in the category of Production Assistant. I've met all of the mandatory requirements and am now eligible to work in BC in any (that means any) DGC category incuding TAD (Traniee Assistant Director) and TAL (Location Trainee).

What a relief.

Next step is being ratified nationally. I'm sure that won't be until the new year. After that I'll be eligible for the health and welfare benefits as well. I'm already able to sign up for the RSP through Fidelity.

Thanks DGCBC. :)

An unemployed 1st assistant director, runs his house like a movie set.

Thanks to all the people (AD's) who sent me this.

I was in Harrison BC overnight on Tuesday put up in the Executive Inn by Circle Productions so I could get up and work as 2nd AD on a commercial at the Hemlock Valley Resort in the morning. The ad was for Coca-Cola® Snow Mountain which is under construction at the Stone Mountain amusement park in Georgia. We had a great time in the snow with actors and extras building snowmen, having snowball fights, roasting marshmallows and tubing. There was even an appearance by the Coca-Cola polar bear on a tube.

I was drenched from being out in the snow and tired from dragging my out of shape ass up and down the tubing hill at least 15 times, but I had a great time.

I met a relative, who was working as an actor on the shoot. His title? "Ethnic Father". Here's Alistair Browne:


Alistair was hilarious. What a friendly guy! We yacked a lot. He grew up in the U.K. so has a British accent and has lots of family in the Carribean. We ended up calling each other cousin all day. I've worked with his wife before. She was in Mind Games, an MoW I worked on last year. He's a great guy. Stay in touch Alistair.

I also met a PA named Justin who had some interesting tattoos. I was amazed when he showed me. He let me take photos.

Here's his left arm:


It's going to be entirely dedicated to the films of Stanley Kubrick. The above is a creepy rendition of Jack Nicholson in The Shining holding his axe. On the other side of his arm is Dave from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it's not quite done so he asked me to hold off. The plan is to have tattoos of symbols from all of Kubrick's films down to his wrist including a large Lolita on his forearm. He mention that the tattooing in his underarm for The Shining really hurt. I bet.

Here's a shot of his right arm:


This arm is all about Star Wars. Boba Fett, Darth Vader, Bespin's Cloud City, storm troopers and Han Solo encased in carbonite have made the cut so far because, "Empire is the tits!" according to Justin. Slave Leia from Return of the Jedi will grace the inside of his forearm from elbow to wrist as he continues.

I've actually considered tattoos of pop culture stuff I like a few times, but am too much of a chicken to go ahead with it. Justin appears not to have the same concerns as I do.

I worked on this movie and finally got a copy of this travesty on DVD. It stars Mariel Hemingway, who was very nice, and David Keith, who didn't like me very much. Ugh! Here's a screenshot of absolutely the best thing about this film:

I worked on a TV show last night at Richards on Richards for CMT and Rugged Media. It was for two episodes of Live and Up Front featuring country artists Carolyn Dawn Johnson and Emerson Drive. Not being a country music fan I wasn't looking forward to this. As expected I didn't enjoy most of the music although I recognized some of it. That's something. Also, to say either of these artists aren't pros in there genre would be a lie. They definitely gave it there all. Passionate art is hard to slag, even if it is country music. Blech.

Anyway, I got meet and work with some cool folks. The artists were pretty nice too.

One of the guys I met was operating the gigantic mixing board with the dual 32 inch plasma monitors in the huge Winnebago at the back of the club. He's worked with Bob Rock on a number of albums for artists like Aerosmith and AC/DC.

I spoke with him at length about AC/DC. He told me that Angus Young, the lead guitar player, is a very funny guy who neither drinks nor smokes anything other than cigarettes which he does with vigor. He also told me that Young played the whole track Thunderstruck live, a smoke hanging out of his mouth. Cool!


Here's a video of the song live at Donington:


So all in all the night wasn't a bust. I had lots of fun and learned a lot. I think I actually prefer working on music video style stuff.

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Watch the video at pitchpage.com

I laughed really hard at this. Probably because it's true! Zack is 100% correct.

Just an aside. Roz McNulty, the President and founder of pitchpage.com (a place for film industry professionals to showcase their demo reels via streaming video) helped me to get my very first paying gig in the movies. Thanks Roz! You rock.

After a difficult day a struggling actor returns to his neighborhood and is shocked to find a cadre of police and fire trucks surrounding the smoldering remains of his house.

Explaining who he was he asks "What happened?"

"Well," one of the officer's says, "It seems that your agent came by your house earlier today and while he was here he attacked your wife, assaulted your children, beat your dog and burned your house to the ground."

The actor is struck speechless, his jaw hanging open in disbelief... "My agent came to my house?"

Thanks to Gregrrr, 1st A.D. extraordinaire for this little film industry giggle. I needed that.

Now back to some humour:


That's what you get when a bunch of bored 12 year olds in 1978 have nothing but time on their hands, cardboard, shitty costumes, a love of the film Jaws, a Super8 camera and tons of imagination. The music and effects were very recently added and no doubt it has been recut as well, but overall a great online video experience. Well done!

I'm a sucker for the shark movie so anything Jaws related immediately gets my thumbs up. It is one of my all time favourite films. It was the very first DVD I ever bought and we've watched it again and again. I think we'll watch it again this weekend.

Speaking of funny Jaws parodies, do you remember the 1975 novelty song Mr Jaws by Dickie Goodman? Whether you do or not, here it is:

You can buy it and more novelty songs like it here.

Okay, now that we've seen something nerdy and sort of dumb lets tak a trip to the other end of the spectrum. While surfing I was introduced to an amazing video via Pistol Wimp. Check it out:

In a rare public appearance, photographer Gregory Colbert shares an astounding film from his exhibit, Ashes and Snow, and announces his new initiative, the Animal Copyright Foundation, which aims to collect royalties from companies using images of nature in their ad campaigns. For more than a decade, Gregory Colbert has traveled the world and collaborated with 40+ species to create "Ashes and Snow," a ground-breaking exhibition of more than 100 photographs and three films, housed in the Nomadic Museum. Colbert's extraordinary sepia-toned images reveal a rarely seen poetic beauty in man's relationship to the animal kingdom. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. at TED Talks Duration: 18:42)

More on Gregory Colbert and the Animal Copyright Foundation on Ethan Zuckerman's blog.

Hopefully there will be a way we can see the rest of this exhibit. Perhaps somehow Carol and I will find enough cash to travel to Tokyo to see the entire exhibit. It's not looking that way right now, but you never know.

Meet a sheepdog who's afraid of sheep, but has a definite affinity for cows. Guiness may not be the hardest working farm dog, but her family loves her just the same. You can watch here video here:
Atom Films: Useless Dog

I'd have posted the whole video on my site but they only allow a preview with pop ups, so no thanks. The video is fantastic anyway. Anyone who has ever had any kind of relation ship with a dog will love this short film.