july august 2013: reel west magazine

Method VFX Supervisor Ollie Rankin blows up the

Capitol Building in film starring Maggie Gyllenhaal

Vancouver’s Corbin Saleken shoots Patterson’s WagerIndie Theatres bring audiences to Canuck movies

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July / August 2013 $5.00

2013 western magazine awards finalist

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ItemsItems must be purchased together on the same sales receipt for combination offers. For each eligible product, offer is valid only while supplies last. Used or refurbished products are not eligible. This offer can only be combined with CCI sponsored programs running simultaneously. In the event of questions regarding claims, program or policy, CCI will review all documentation and make the final determination of claim eligibility. While CCI uses reasonable efforts to include up-to-date information, CCI cannot guarantee the accuracy of all information in this advertisement. Accordingly, CCI assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions in the content of this advertisement. Void where prohibited or restricted by lawhere prohibited or restricted by law.

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Untitled-3 1 13-06-18 4:46 PM

4 ProduCtion uPdate

5 bitS and byteS

7 legal brieFS

9 bC indie SCene

11 ProFile

12 beginningS

30 Final edit

Contents

Cover: Maggie gyllenhaal in White house DoWn; © 2013 ColuMbia PiCtureS induStrieS, inC ContentS: White house DoWn. © 2013 ColuMbia PiCtureS induStrieS, inCReel West Magazine is a Wholly oWned enteRpRise of Reel West pRoduCtions inC. it exists and is Managed to pRovide publiCity and adveRtising that suppoRts the gRoWth of the WesteRn Canadian Motion piCtuRe industRy. exeCutive publisheR: sandy p. flanagan. editoR: CheRyl binning. publisheR: Ron haRvey. sales: Randy holMes, adaM Caddell CReative diReCtoR: andReW von Rosen. aRt diReCtoR: lindsey ataya. photo editoR: phillip Chin. ContRibutoRs this issue: nathan Caddell. Janos MolnaR Reel West Magazine is published six tiMes peR yeaR. subsCRiptions Canada/us $35.00 peR yeaR (plus $10.00 postage to usa). Reel West digest, the diReCtoRy foR WesteRn Canada’s filM, video and television industRy, is published annually. subsCRiption $35.00 peR yeaR (plus $10.00 postage to us). both publiCations $60.00 (plus $10.00 postage to usa) pRiCes inClude gst. CopyRight 2013 Reel West pRoduCtions inC. seCond Class Mail. RegistRation no. 0584002. issn 0831-5388. g.s.t. # R104445218. Reel West pRoduCtions inC. suite 114 – 42 faWCett Road, CoquitlaM, bRitish ColuMbia, Canada, v3K 6x9. phone (604) 553-1335 toll fRee: 1-888-291-7335 fax: (604) 451-7305 eMail: [email protected] uRl: ReelWest.CoM. voluMe 28, iSSue 4. pRinted in Canada. to SubSCribe Call 1-888-291-7335 or viSit our webSite at reelweSt.CoM. Reel West WelCoMes feedbaCK fRoM ouR ReadeRs, via eMail at [email protected]. all CoRRespondenCe Must inClude youR naMe, addRess, and phone nuMbeR.

14 bRinging doWn the house Method studios vfx supervisor ollie Rankin describes the process of creating key vfx shots

for Columbia pictures’ White house down, in which a paramilitary group blows up the Capitol building.

18 tiMe to taKe the leap after winning a short film award at spokane for his time travel short, vancouverite Corbin saleken

jumps into his first feature, patterson’s Wager, starring fred ewanuik as a guy who can see two minutes into the future.

20 shoWCasing Canadian filMs despite struggles to make ends meet, independent theatres give local films a place to shine.

22 Raising the baR vancouver vfx studios are working on bigger, more technically challenging projects; post houses

set their sights on similar success with help from the d.a.v.e. tax Credit.

26 sound off vancouver’s post audio houses survive a tough market by finding their niche.

B UY MOR E. SAVE MOR E.Realize your cinematic vision in brilliant 4K quality with amazing deals on Canon Cinema prime lenses.*

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BUY 3 SAVE $900on any Cinema prime lens

BUY 4SAVE $1,600on any Cinema prime lensBUY 5

SAVE $2,500on any Cinema prime lens

*Offer valid on all EF Cinema primes lenses: CN-E14mm T3.1 L F, CN-E 24mm EF T1.5, CN-E 50mm EF T1.3, CN-E 85mm EF T1.3 and CN-E135mm T2.2 L F from July 1st, 2013 to September 30th, 2013 or while supplies last, whichever occurs first.

Eligible product(s) must be purchased by an end user customer from a participating authorized Canon Canada Inc. (“CCI”) dealer in Canada during the applicable period.

ItemsItems must be purchased together on the same sales receipt for combination offers. For each eligible product, offer is valid only while supplies last. Used or refurbished products are not eligible. This offer can only be combined with CCI sponsored programs running simultaneously. In the event of questions regarding claims, program or policy, CCI will review all documentation and make the final determination of claim eligibility. While CCI uses reasonable efforts to include up-to-date information, CCI cannot guarantee the accuracy of all information in this advertisement. Accordingly, CCI assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions in the content of this advertisement. Void where prohibited or restricted by lawhere prohibited or restricted by law.

Because It Counts is a registered trademark of Canon Canada Inc. Canon is a registered trademark of Canon Inc. © 2013 Canon Canada Inc.

Untitled-3 1 13-06-18 4:46 PM

3Reel West July / August 2013

Production uPdate

What’s coming. What’s shooting. What’s wrapped.

Summer is series time and a strong slate of new and returning American TV shows have arrived in town.

J.J. Abrams and Fox Television — which wrapped Fringe last Decem-ber after four years in Vancouver — are back with a new sci-fi crime drama Almost Human.

It’s executive produced by J.H. Wyman (creator of the series), Bryan Burk and Abrams, and set 35 years into the future when humans in the Los Angeles Police Department are paired up with life-like androids. Al-most Human stars Karl Urban (Star

Trek) as Detective Kennix who re-turns to the police force after two years and is assigned a human-like android partner, played by Michael Ealy (Sleeper Cell). The cast also in-cludes Minka Kelly and Lili Taylor.

David Geddes and Michael Wale are DOPs; Ian Thomas is produc-tion designer; Vladimir Stefoff is production manager; locations man-agers are Catou Kearney and Bill Burns; and Bob Comer is SPFX coordinator. Almost Human shoots July 24 through to December 12.

The series premiere of Bates Mo-tel was the highest-rated program in

A&E’s history so its no surprise the show is back for a second season, with production continuing through to early November. The Psycho prequel stars Vera Farmiga as Norma Bates, who is dealing with the dark impulses of her son Norman (Freddie High-more) and troubled relationship with other son Dylan (Max Thieriot).

Executive Producers are Carlton Cuse and Kerry Ehrin; the producers are Justis Greene and Tucker Gates; the DOP is John Bartley; the produc-tion designer is Mark Freeborn; the production manager is Heather Mee-han; the locations managers are Abra-

ham Fraser and Kendrie Upton.Also returning is the ABC fantasy/

drama Once Upon a Time, which shoots July through April. In storyline news, the third season will introduce the character of Tinker Bell and take place in Neverland, Storybrooke and the Enchanted Forest. The producer is Kathy Gilroy; the production man-ager is Dennis Swartman; the loca-tions manager are Scott Walden and Peter Pantages; and Clark Candy is production coordinator.

ABC is also shooting its Once Upon a Time spinoff series, Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, in B.C. The series is based around the classic Lewis Carroll fairytale Alice’s Adventures in Wonder-land and focuses on the romance and adventure of Alice (Sophie Lowe) and a genie named Cyrus (Peter Gadiot).

The producers are Gilroy and Joe Larzarov. Production began end of July with production manager Col-leen Mitchell and production coor-dinator Susan Crawford.

A new science fiction series for The CW has also landed in Vancou-ver. The Tomorrow People is based on a British series and follows a group of young people who possess super-powers as the result of human evolu-tion.

The series stars Robbie Amell (cousin of Arrow star Stephen Amell) as a teenager just discovering his pow-ers who meets a group of supernatural outcasts who help him realize that he’s not going insane. The series has Peter Schindler as producer; Charles Ly-all as production manager; and Greg Jackson as locations manager.

Another new series Witches of East End shoots July 16 to October

JJ Abrams Back to B.C. with New Sci-fi Series

Karl urban stars in high-tech, high-stakes action drama Almost human which premieres on FoX this fall. Photo By liane hentscher / foX

Reel West July / August 20134

Bits and Bytes

More Monkeys In Spacevancouver’s atomic Cartoons has the go-ahead from teletoon to produce a second

season of hit series Rocket Monkeys.

produced with toronto’s breakthrough entertainment, the space series features

the cosmic antics of monkey brothers gus and Wally. it also airs on nickelodeon in

the u.s.

in other atomic news, rachit Singh has joined the company as head of technol-

ogy. he is an engineering graduate with experience in designing for animation pipe-

lines and a knowledge of multiple programming languages.

My Cree app launchvancouver aboriginal filmmaker loretta todd has launched My Cree, a language app

developed to help youth learn the endangered Cree language.

the app groups words and phrases into useful categories such as activities, family

and food, which are spoken by barbara Mcleod, a fluent speaker of plains Cree,

who has 30 years’ experience teaching the language in saskatchewan.

the app, developed with support from british Columbia film and Media, also fea-

tures vocabulary quizzes, speaking practice, a pronunciation guide to the basic letters

and sounds of Cree, plus images and music videos to reinforce learning.

My Cree was developed with andrei iancu and his team at dynamic-leap labs,

as well as Peter Strutt and strutt Roar Media. illustrations are by Chris auchter. the

app is available on itunes.

todd also produced the children’s series Tansi! Nehiyawetan – Let’s Speak Cree,

which recently sold to fnx - first nations experience, the new aboriginal channel

launching in the united states. it also airs on aptn.

Australian Kids Band Gets Animated in Vancouvervancouver’s bardel entertainment and australia’s stella projects are co-producing the

preschool series Lah-Lah’s Adventures for Knowledge network, bbC Kids Canada,

Cbeebies channels worldwide (except in the uK), and seven network australia.

the 12 by 26 minute series introduces kids to the world of music via the adven-

tures of australian children’s band lah-lah and combines live action performances

with animated backdrops. shooting will take place in sydney with animation work at

bardel’s studio.

executive producers are grahame grassby for stella projects and delna bhesa-

nia, Frank Saperstein and leonard terhoch for bardel entertainment.

21. The Lifetime series stars Julia Ormond as a mother witch, who’s daughters, (played by Jenna Dewan-Tatum and Rachel Boston) don’t know about their heritage. The series is based on the books by best-selling author Melissa de la Cruz and ex-ecutive produced by Maggie Fried-man (Eastwick). Paul Lukaitis is the production manager; Michael Rob-erts is locations manager and Melis-sa Crich is production coordinator.

Also back shooting since late May is an eighth season of Psych and a 9th season of Supernatural, which began production July 11.

Psych is produced by Gord Mark; shot by Scott Williams; production designed by Erin Norlin; and pro-duction managed by Wayne Bennett.

Supernatural is produced by Rob-bie Thompson and Todd Aronauer and coproduced by Brad Buckner and Eugenie Ross-Leming. The DOP is Serge Ladouceur; the pro-duction designer is Jerry Wanek; and the production manager is Craig Matheson.

On the Canadian series front, a third season of Arctic Air begins production in August with Chris Rudolph as production manager; Hans Dayal as locations manager; and Cathy Fullerton as production coordinator. And executive producer Alex Raffe begins shooting Some As-sembly Required in August with Lucy MacLeod as production manager and Jennifer Pitcher as production coordinator. n

the Definitive Producing Workbookproviding a comprehensive overview of national and provincial funding bodies and engaging stories and words of wisdom by seasoned producers.

to order your copy contact:604-451-7335 / [email protected]

Wicked WrapsOdyssey Media has completed production on its latest feature – Way Of the Wicked, which shot in Squamish, B.C., and features actor Christian Slater (Interview With the Vampire).

The supernatural thriller follows a teenager — with a murderous reputation for the supernatural — who sets his romantic sights on the daughter of a local police detective. Worried, the cop enlists the help of a myste-rious Father Polotti (Slater) and together they uncover the truth about Robbie’s evil ways.

The movie is directed by Kevin Carraway and pro-duced by Kirk Shaw and Matt Kelly.

Odyssey Media is a film and TV financing and pro-duction company with offices in Brisbane Australia and Vancouver, BC.

ChriStian Slater stars in Way of the WickedPhoto c/o odyssey media inc.

For the Record...in Reel West’s May/June issue, blyssful productions’ Dads was incorrectly described

as a half hour pilot. it is actually a nine-minute sizzle released as a digital half-pilot to

build audience and leverage financing. a half hour pilot is yet to be produced.


C F CHANDLER FOGDEN

L A W C O R P O R A T I O N

Doran Chandler Kyle Fogden

201 - 120 West 3rd Avenue, Vancouver BC V5Y 1E9

[email protected] | www.chandlerfogden.com tel 604 684 6377 fax 604 684 6387

F i l m | T e l e v i s i o n | N e w M e d i a | M u s i c E n t e r t a i n m e n t L a w

Lori Massini Kim Roberts, Of Counsel

C F CHANDLER FOGDEN

L A W C O R P O R A T I O N

Doran Chandler Kyle Fogden

201 - 120 West 3rd Avenue, Vancouver BC V5Y 1E9

[email protected] | www.chandlerfogden.com tel 604 684 6377 fax 604 684 6387

F i l m | T e l e v i s i o n | N e w M e d i a | M u s i c E n t e r t a i n m e n t L a w

Lori Massini Kim Roberts, Of Counsel

János Molnár PhotographyA motion-picture photography company

janosmolnar.com604.339.4083 • [email protected]

Behind the scenes • Set Stills • Location Photography • Portraits

Victoria Filmmaker Wins BursaryWriter/director Maureen Bradley of Victoria is the 2013 winner of the National Screen Institute’s Jim Murphy Filmmakers Bursary for her feature project Two 4 One.

The prize rewards innovative marketing ideas from feature filmmakers enrolled in the NSI Features First training course.

“Part of Maureen’s marketing proposal included build-ing her secondary audience – the LGBT demographic – for her film in the tradition of Better Than Chocolate in 1999,” said Jane Gutteridge, member of the bursary jury.

Two 4 One is a romantic comedy about Adam and Miriam, two oddball thirtysomethings who have a one-night stand and both wind up pregnant.

“I’m just a few months away from shooting so finding out this great news is like a gift from the heavens,” said Bradley. “With a micro-budget production, every dollar is critical and this couldn’t come at a better time. “

In other NSI news, the Winnipeg-based organization is now accepting applications for its NSI Features First development program for writer/producer teams work-ing on their first or second feature film.

Teams receive market-driven training and a cash award to put towards a story editor and further project development. Training is provided by top names in the industry including Don Carmody, Julia Sereny and Martin Katz and takes place over 10 months, conclud-ing with selected teams attending the Toronto Interna-tional Film Festival in support of their projects.

Applications are due September 19, 2013. For more info go to www.nsi-canada.ca

New Doc on Growing Up OnlineVancouver’s Tabula Dada Produc-tions is shooting a CBC documen-tary with The Sound Research on youth born after 1995.

Titled Generation Edge, the film puts the spotlight on kids who are growing up with social media. The doc asks the question “What do you get when Gen-X parents raise a generation in a hyper-connected, media-saturated world that’s teetering on the brink of political and economic collapse?”

Tabula Dada has also begun pro-duction on its first table top video game Eon Altar, in association with Flying Helmet Games.

Eon Altar is a cooperative role-

playing adventure that blends the experience of classic tabletop gam-ing and modern video games. In the game, five friends fight through dun-geons to uncover ancient secrets and compete for glory and wealth, along the way battling monstrous creatures and overcoming environmental dan-gers. The game uses personal hand-sets to control character’s actions, and a tablet to wander through dungeons.

Tabula Dada Production was founded in 2006 by Haydn Wazelle, Anand Ray Raghavan and Angela Konieczny to specialize in the de-velopment, production, and delivery of digital entertainment.


LegaL Briefs

As production counsel, we are frequently asked to ne-gotiate deals for the com-

missioning of original underscore and theme music. Most composer

agreements for independent film and television productions are package deals, in which the composer is paid an all-inclusive fee for a set number of cues and/or minutes of original music. Package fees are generally in-clusive of all composing, recording, musician and related fees, subject to certain exclusions, and the amount of the fee will depend on factors such as the composer’s profile and résumé, the quantity and nature of the music to be delivered (electronic or live mu-sicians) and the production’s budget.

Composer agreements differ from most other key talent deals due to the fact that the music has the potential to be used independently from the production for which it was origi-nally composed, and due to the man-ner in which royalties can be derived from the public performance and reuse of the music. As a result, there a few different structures available for the ownership of music publish-ing rights, each of which allows for a trade-off of future revenues that can offset differences on the composer’s fee. The balance of this article pro-vides a summary of the four options that we most typically see.

Music Composed as a ‘Work-for-Hire’ for the ProducerSo-called ‘work for hire’ deals are the structures that we most frequently see in our practice. Under these struc-tures, the producer is deemed to be the owner of all rights, including mu-sic publishing, in the compositions and recordings. In addition to the ex-clusive right to use the music in their production, the producer is entitled to the so-called ‘publisher’s share’ of public performance royalties, which represents 50% of all worldwide roy-alties payable for the public perfor-mance of the compositions embodied

in the score, including via television broadcasts of the production. Under this structure, the composer is enti-tled to the 50% ‘writer’s share’ of such royalties. If the compositions are reg-istered properly, then the producer and composer will receive these roy-alties directly from their public per-formance rights society. Depending on the number of broadcasts, the du-ration of the music, and the number and size of the territories in which the production is broadcast, these royal-ties can become a meaningful rev-enue stream for all concerned. If the producer subsequently licenses the music for use in other projects, then both the producer and composer can benefit for years to come.

A variation on the ‘work-for-hire’ structure is available where the com-poser is required to accept a fee that is lower than the one they would typical-ly accept. Under a ‘co-publisher’ struc-ture, the composer retains a portion of the publishing rights in the composi-tions which form the underscore. In the most common form of co-publish-ing structure, the producer is granted ownership of such compositions, but accounts to the composer for 50% of the ‘publisher’s share’. As a result, the composer collects half of the publish-er’s share and all of the writer’s share, while the producer is left with only the remaining half of the publisher’s share.

License of RightsIn some situations, producers will agree to composers retaining own-ership of all music publishing rights. In these cases, the composer grants an exclusive or non-exclusive license to the producer to use the music in the production, and in all promotion, publicity and trailers for the produc-tion. If the license is exclusive, the composer is prohibited from licens-ing the use of the music in any other projects, but is entitled to both the writer and publisher share of public performance royalties. If the license is non-exclusive, the producer will still have all rights to use the music in and in connection with the produc-tion, but the composer retains the

Striking a Chord:Negotiating Composer Deals

Kyle FogdenEntertainment lawyer

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Wolfcop wins CinecoupAfter a whirlwind 15-week competition, a team of Saskatchewan filmmakers have won up to $1 million in financing for their indie feature and a Cineplex release.

The project Wolfcop beat out 89 other projects from across Canada to win the inaugural CineCoup Film Ac-celerator, a unique competition to kickstart feature film projects. The competition began with 90 filmmaking teams from across Canada that applied with a feature film concept trailer and over the course of 15 weeks produced content to package their projects and build audiences on CineCoup’s social web platform.

The Wolfcop team is made up of Bernie Hernando (Producer, Marketing Strategist), Lowell Dean (Direc-tor, Writer), and Hugh Patterson (Producer).

In a release CineCoup Founder and CEO J Joly said: “The calibre of independent talent and entrepreneur-ship this country has is undeniable. A big congrats to Wolfcop, the CineCoup team is stoked to be working with them and our partners to bring their concept to the big screen for 2014”.

CineCoup expects to announce its next cycle of in-take for applications at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2013.

Legal Briefs continued on page 28

Editing Awards for the WestSeveral Vancouver-based editors picked up awards at the third an-nual Canadian Cinema Editor Awards.

Charles Robichaud won in the half-hour broadcast short form cat-egory for the R.L. Stine’s The Haunt-ing Hour episode Uncle Howie. In

lifestyle/reality, editors Al Flett and Erin Cumming picked up the award for the Ice Pilots episode Crash Landing.

The Canadian Cinema Editors is a professional organization represent-ing 250 picture editors across Cana-da in all media.


Cine Gear Expo, Los AngelesMay 30 - June 2, 2013

Location: The Studios at Paramount, Hollywood, CA, USA

Cine Gear Expo, New YorkSeptember 27-28, 2013

Location: The Metropolitan Pavilion, NYC, New York, USA

phone: 310.472.0809fax: 310.471.8973

email: [email protected]

Where Industry Professionals Meet

ExhibitsSeminars

Film Screenings & CompetitionNew Products

NetworkingTechnical Awards

Special Events

www.cinegearexpo.com

2013

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phone: 310.472.0809fax: 310.471.8973



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phone: 310.472.0809fax: 310.471.8973



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phone: 310.472.0809fax: 310.471.8973



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indie scene

The Oscars of British Colum-bia. When describing the Leo Awards to people not in

the biz, that is the best way of con-

veying the essence of these B.C.-only film and TV awards.

The Leos celebrated its 15th anni-versary at the June 7 and 8th Awards show and handed out awards not only to features and TV projects but also short films and music videos.

And just as the Academy Awards boost one’s career (except for Oscar winning actors the year after their win!), so too do the Leos. At least that’s what the recent crop of win-ners and nominees are hoping.

Steve Deneault picked up the Best Director prize at the Leos for the short Binner. Nominated in eight Leo categories, Binner stars Hroth-gar Mathews, as a street-wise back-alley drifter who’s only friend winds up dead so he embarks on solving the murder.

“The hope is that [after winning an award] people are encouraged to get in touch and see your film,” says Deneault. “And that the awareness of the feature film we are developing is raised, given the recognition we re-ceived at the Leos.”

Binner also won for Best Overall Sound & Sound Editing for Miguel Nunes.

Corvus, directed by Darcy Van Poelgeest, received seven nomina-tions and won for Best Musical Score.

Set in the late 30’s, Corvus is a short film following a detective, Ian Tracey, as he pieces together a young woman’s murder using his unique ability - psychometry - the ability to ‘see’ related images by touching an object. The story is pulled from a TV series concept called Lotus Land that Van Poelgeest is developing.

On his Leo nominations, Van Poelgeest says “I’ll be sure to wave those accolades like a rusty axe if it helps me secure the some funding or support. Believe it.”

The Leo Award winner for Best Short Film and Best Production De-sign is Shhh, a fantasy/ horror tale

about a boy who is terrified to go to the bathroom at night because a hair-eating monster waits for him there — essentially a twisted, veiled story about bullying.

Freddy Chavez Olmos, originally from Mexico but now working as a Visual Effects Artists in Vancouver, co-wrote, produced and directed the short.

“Ideally, we would like to do a co-production with Canada or the US so we’re hoping that our Leo win opens new doors and opportunities,” he says. “Our short film is our busi-ness card.”

Even if a filmmaker doesn’t win a Leo, they feel being nominated has benefits.

The Weather Girl, a short comedy for the 2012 Crazy8s Film Event, was nominated in 3 categories. The film follows a former weather girl who tricks a couple of door-to-door evan-gelists into looking after her cranky wheelchair bound father while she takes off.

“It increases the film’s opportunity to be screened,” says writer/director Carleen Kyle. “And, hopefully, it will help my next short film get made, an adaptation of a short story by Robin Evans titled Pumpkin.”

Winner of the Leo for Best Music Video is Jitters, a rap video set in the prohibition era of the late 1920’s, fea-turing the music of Madchild with Matt Brevner & Dutch Robinson. It was shot by Nelson Talbot and Gra-ham Talbot and produced, directed and edited by David McDonald.

“I’m currently hoping to get repre-sentation as a music video director, and hope that winning a Leo for this video will help,” says McDonald.

He was also nominated for ‘Hip Hop Video of the Year’ at the 2013 Much Music Video Awards so I’m sure his search will be successful. McDonald’s next music video is for Juno Award nominated DJ/Producer Felix Cartal.

Student short films are also cele-brated at the Leos. Winning this year is Marathon, written and directed by Jon Anctil while at Capilano Univer-sity. Filmed in stereoscopic 3D, it fol-lows the crew of the spaceship Mara-

Leo Awards Boost Profile

Daytime Emmys for Horror SeriesVancouver-shot R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour picked up three Daytime Emmy Awards, at the 40th annual US TV show awards held in June.

The horror/fantasy anthology series won Daytime Emmy’s for outstanding children’s series, outstanding achievement in costume design/styling (Farnaz Khaki-Sadigh), and outstanding achievement in art direction/set direction and scenic design (James Hazell, Produc-tion Designer, Teresa Weston, Art Director and Jona-than Lancaster, Set Decorator), at the 40th annual US TV show awards held in June.

Paul ArmstrongProducer

ChriStoPher lloyd guest stars in the haunting hour: the series

Photo c/o the huB network





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Indie Scene continued on page 28

The ninth annual Vancouver Inter-national Women in Film Festival is open for submissions.

The festival showcases films of all lengths and genres by emerging and established female filmmakers from around the world over four days be-ginning March 6, 2014.

Films must have women in at least three creative roles and be complet-ed after March 2011.

The early bird film submission dead-line is August 15 and regular entry dead-line is September 15, although films can be submitted as late as October.

Organized by Women in Film and Television Vancouver, the festival of-fers cash awards for films, network-ing events, and workshops.

New this year, the festival is offering Screenwriter Mentorship Awards to three Canadian female screenwriters. This prize pairs them up with an ex-perienced, senior screenwriter for pro-fessional feedback on their submitted script and career mentoring, as well as a staged reading of their screenplay, and an opportunity to pitch at the VIWIFF festival. Deadline to enter is Nov. 1

For more info go to womeninfilm.ca.

VIWIFF Call for Submissions

The upcoming Vancouver Interna-tional Film Festival is boosting the spotlight on local filmmaking with the addition of two awards and a new screening program.

The B.C. Emerging Filmmaker Award is a $7,500 cash prize spon-sored by the Union of British Co-lumbia Performers and the AC-TRA Fraternal Benefit Society; and

the Best B.C. Film award, offers a $10,000 development bursary from Astral’s Harold Greenberg Fund.

An inaugural B.C. Spotlight film program will consist of an adju-dicated competition and show-case of local films and an industry party.

VIFF takes place Sept. 26 to Oct. 11, 2013.

VIFF bumps up local content and prizes

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Indie Feature Takes FlightReally Real Films and Two 4 The Money Media recently wrapped production on the $1.5 million feature If I Had Wings.

Set in B.C. and shot throughout the month of July, the film is a coming of age movie about a blind high school student who dreams of being a distance runner and forms an unlikely friendship with a 16-year-old who lives on a reservation and longs to escape a cycle of poverty and crime.

A family affair, Really Real’s Cynde Harmon pro-duced, company partner Allan Harmon directed and their kids Richard (Continuum) and Jessica Harmon are characters in the movie. Other cast include Craig Bierko (Body of Proof), Jaren Brandt Bartlett (Arctic Air), Lorne Cardinal (Corner Gas), and Jill Hennessy (Law and Order).

The film was production managed by John Prince and production designed by Alex Royek. Karen Zajac was locations manager and Ernest Jackson was the special effects coordinator.

Blind American Idol 2009 finalist Scott MacIntyre wrote the words and music for the film’s theme song.

Corus and Telefilm have partnered on the Family Feature Production Fund, a pilot program to bolster production of English-language live-action feature films for kids.

The Fund will contribute financ-ing towards the making of up to two films a year with production budgets between $3.5 million and $5 million. International treaty films are eligible.

The selected projects will also receive

financing from Corus Entertainment and a broadcast on one of its networks.

“We’re excited to be teaming up with Telefilm Canada on this one-of-a-kind program to kickstart an underserved niche in the Canadian feature film in-dustry and fuel the growing demand for great family films in both the theatrical market and for broadcast,”,” said John MacDonald, Corus VP, head of TV programming and production.

Family Feature Fund Launches

riChard harMon and Jaren brandt bartlett in if i had Wings

reel weSt July / august 201310

ProfiLe

Carol tarlington Acting CoachCarole tarlington is the president of vancouver’s tarlington training, a young actor train-

ing studio. she has over 30 years experience working with young actors and recently re-

leased the book I Wanna Be an Actor! A Handbook for Young Actors and their Parents.

hometown: i grew up in sydney, australia. left to live in london and greece. i came

to vancouver, Canada in 1969 by accident, intending to stay just a week or two on my

way home to australia and i’m still here! a happy accident.

Start date: i started out as an actor and worked with the ensemble theatre in sydney.

the theatre, started by 8 actors and a talented, method trained director from u.s. in

the 60’s, has now become the most successful theatre in australia. in vancouver, i

worked as a high school teacher of drama and also got a Masters degree from the

university of victoria.

in the early 80’s i started a unique theatre for young people, The Vancouver Youth

Theatre. it’s mandate was for young people to work with adult professionals to create

plays from the young people’s ideas. during the creation of the plays, the young actors

were taught the craft of acting. it was very successful and i am very proud of the work

we did at vancouver youth theatre. in the 1980’s it was a unique concept and i know

it helped to shape many young people’s ideas and careers.

in the early 80’s, the film industry took off in vancouver and a board member at the

theatre suggested i become an agent. i thought “Well, how hard could that be?” so i

said o.K. and tarlington talent, an agency for young actors was born. i soon discov-

ered agents worked very hard indeed. but it was all exciting and creative and i loved it.

but i eventually sold the agency. i love teaching and directing, so i opened tarlington

training, an acting studio for young people. later, i decided to go into casting, team-

ing up with dorothy szymanska and we were lucky enough to be hired to cast the

series, Cold Squad, and many other productions.

Most Memorable working experience: from such a diverse career, there are really

too many to pick one. however, working with the team from the tv series Edgemont

and omni films was a delight.

worst day in the biz: When one of my young actors -- who was cast in a major

american movie -- neglected to inform his drama teacher that he wouldn’t be able

to do the school production. he was already committed to the movie, with contract

signed when i found this out and the drama teacher would not release him. the cast-

ing director was beyond furious, and said that MgM would sue me. they didn’t in the

end, but it was a horrible time.

Current Project: i have just written a handbook for young actors and their parents,

outlining the many things they should know before they jump into the business. it’s

called I Wanna Be An Actor and has chapters devoted to agents and photographs,

resumes, auditions, life on the set, training, and all that business stuff that actors often

don’t consider. it also outlines for parents the things they should consider as a family

before getting into the business. it always amazes me how many people jump into the

entertainment business without having a clue of what it is about. being aware that as

an actor you are engaged in a business is absolutely essential for success.

what’s next: Retire maybe? definitely write more. Keep tarlington training going as

the best place for young actors to learn their craft. n

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My dad was John Allen, an outstanding clarinet player who played first clarinet in the Kitsilano Boys Band under Ar-thur Delamont and then in the Vancouver Symphony Or-chestra under Allard De Ridder when he was just a teen-

ager. So music, classical music, surrounded me when I was a kid growing up. Films and filmmaking didn’t interest me at all, only music.

At an early age I began writing my own music and performing it for neighbours or my Dad’s friends. And so when it came time to go to uni-versity, music was the only thing on my mind. After a formal education in music at the University of Manitoba and at McGill in Montreal, I spent several years gaining experience as a studio musician.

In 1986 I heard that Stephen Spielberg had just created a program at the University of Southern California for composers to study and learn how to write for film. The teachers included Henry Mancini, Gerry Goldsmith and Bruce Broughton. These guys were the real thing. I was extremely im-pressed. But tuition was really expensive, and I couldn’t afford it so I applied for a Canada Council Grant, which I fortunately got. There were only 14 spots in the program. I was lucky enough to be accepted.

So off I went to Hollywood. It was the experience of a lifetime and every-thing I expected it to be. I met all kinds of famous film and music personali-ties, many of whom assured me I had a future as a composer.

The training at USC was more of a revelation about what happens in the real world than an education in the traditional sense. Of course there was a lot of talk about music, but there was also exposure to a lot of very experi-enced and talented people who passed on their secrets about music and the film world, how to compose under pressure, and how to balance aesthetics and business, which is probably the hardest thing to do.

What became apparent to me is that talent really does matter. Without it, some actors or composers or directors or DOP’s will have some sort of success, but they won’t go the distance.

In 1988 I moved to Vancouver for family reasons, and went on to score a hundred films or more … and still counting.

My first feature was Cyborg 2 with Angelina Jolie and Jack Palance, which I scored here in Vancouver, and the second was Crackerjack, starring Chris-topher Plummer and Nastassja Kinski. Vancouver was a great place to be in the 90’s, and sure there was a temptation to return at some point to Los An-geles, but there was more than enough work here to kee me busy. It hasn’t slowed down in 20 years.

Of course I love it. Although I work mostly with Los Angeles produc-ers, I would like to stress that there are a lot of very talented people here in Vancouver as well as in Los Angeles.

Writing music for film is an evolving art, and experience counts for ev-erything. There are only two writers in a motion picture; the scriptwriter and the composer. It is all about storytelling, and composers, just like the scriptwriters, must understand this. Having a lot of musical talent is not enough. A successful composer needs both musical talent and creativity, AND the ability to understand scripts and storytelling.

Of course every craft has its downsides. A lot of sacrifice is necessary to get established, and persistence and determination is necessary to succeed. I think this is true of any artist in any field.

My first business partner was basically a bully and was determined to sink our ship, so I had to weather through that storm both emotionally and finan-cially. It was a huge price tag, totally drained me in every way, but I knew at the time it would be worth it in the end …. and it was. Once free from that partnership I was able to work successfully, simply because I was unhampered.

I have scored over a hundred films in a career spanning over two decades. I have worked with all the LA-based studios and production companies, as well as CBC and the NFB here in Canada. Some of my recent local film proj-ects include Industry Works Pictures’ American Mary, Brightlight Pictures’ Profile for Murder and for Legacy Filmworks, The Clockwork Girl.

Like everyone else in this world, occasionally I get overwhelmed. I think that it is just too difficult, there is too much stress, too many demands, not enough money and not enough time. But you persist.

And in the end, it’s all worthwhile. n

To Hollywood and Back

Composer Peter Allen had the experience of a lifetime at a Southern California composing program, but its right here in

Vancouver that he’s carved out a successful career.

Beginnings


SePteMber 2012 Being smaller in scope than most of the films he’s famous for, White House Down has the shortest end-to-end schedule of any recent Roland Emmerich film. So, while principal photography was in full swing,

Volker Engel and Marc Weigert, the production-side visual effects supervi-sors, had an awful lot on their plates. They had built up a small in-house visual effects team, seeded from Uncharted Territory, a facility they co-own, which allowed them to juggle the demands of onset supervision, as well as over-seeing concept work and pre-vis.

My company, Method Studios, is in negotiations with them to take respon-sibility for two of the most elaborate visual effects sequences in the movie: the

Diary by

Ollie Rankin

diary feature

Blowing Up the Capitol Building

Method Studios supplies key visual effects sequences for Columbia Pictures’ White House Down

White House Down is an American action film about an assault on the White House by a paramilitary group. It stars Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx and is directed by Roland Emmerich, who’s helmed other blockbuster disaster films like Independence Day (1996) and The Day After Tomorrow (2004). The movie was budgeted at around $150 million and had a hefty slate of VFX shots, so the films producers turned to Vancouver-based Method Studios, who are one of the lead VFX vendors on the film. In the following diary, Ollie Rankin, a VFX supervisor at Method, describes what it’s like to have the job of blowing up the capitol building.

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blowing up and subsequent collapse of the Capitol dome and three US Army Blackhawk helicopters attack-ing and being shot down by a group of terrorists on the roof of the White House. Method had recently com-pleted an exciting package of visual effects shots for G. I. Joe: Retaliation, featuring a night-time helicopter gunship raid along with some elabo-rate pyrotechnics and destruction. So we are ideally positioned to take on this kind of work. We would also be able to build on the in-house R&D that had been done for the pyro and destruction work on films like Abra-ham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Wrath of the Titans.oCtober 2012 One of the unex-pected challenges the filmmakers face is that there is a very strict no-fly zone around the White House. Traditionally, with an action movie based on a real location such as this, most of the wide shots would have been filmed on location with CG ad-ditions and alterations made in post. However, since they would be unable to get a helicopter in close enough to shoot the south side of the White House, where much of the action takes place, this approach was ruled out.

It became clear to our clients that since the Blackhawk attack sequence would feature the White House and its grounds, along with the helicop-ters and trees, more prominently than in any other sequence, we should be responsible for building those CG assets, to be shared with the 11 other facilities that would be contributing visual effects to the movie. So a team at our LA facility set about researching and recreating the White House and Blackhawk he-licopter in highly-detailed CG form.

In Vancouver, where the bulk of the work would be carried out, we began development in earnest on what we recognized as the most challenging effects we would been called upon to do. Highly detailed CG explosions and extensive de-struction simulations promise to be very demanding and we wanted to get a head start on figuring them out.noveMber 2012 While a lot of the shots on our docket are going to require substantial CG animation, rendering and effects, there are also a significant number of action shots that had been shot with actors and stunt performers on bluescreen, that

JaMie FoX stars in White house Down along with Channing tatuM (pictured above) and Maggie

gyllenhaal (pictured below)© 2013 columBia Pictures industries, inc.


simply need backgrounds inserted behind them. We schedule the work such that while the CG department is developing the assets and technol-ogy required to complete the more elaborate shots, our compositing and matte painting artists are tag-team-ing these bluescreen shots.

We put every single live action shot through a match-move process, to generate a representation of the camera that had been used to film it. In the past this was usually reserved for shots that would have CG added to them, but with the ever-expanding 3D capabilities of our preferred com-positing software, Nuke, we are able to place a matte painted environ-ment into shots without needing to involve the CG team.

The matte painters first create a fixed depth 360 degree cyclorama including the background trees, buildings and horizon. This could be inserted as a flat background in the most simple shots by the compositing team, while the matte painters work to separate out individual objects, to bring depth and add detail into the portions of the cyclorama that would need it – for instance in shots where the camera movement should reveal parallax. Each time the matte painting assembly increased in sophistication, the next level of complexity of shots was able to undergo compositing.deCeMber 2012 The trees on the grounds of the White House and the surrounding parks are proving to be a greater challenge than we had ini-tially anticipated, for several reasons. We had evaluated a number of third party tree libraries and tree generat-ing tools. We settled on SpeedTree as its bundled library includes many of the varieties of tree that are repre-sented on the White House grounds and its generation tools allow a little more art direction than some of the other packages.

The first complication is one of lo-gistics. Made up of thousands of in-dividual leaves, twigs and branches, each tree is on the order of 10 million polygons in its digital form. Multiply that by hundreds of trees and the memory footprint balloons.

The second complication with trees has to do with matching real-ity. There are some very iconic trees – especially in the South Lawn of the White House – that we need to match quite closely in appearance since the movie was going to feature

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some live action aerial footage.The third complication is that in

reality trees are constantly moving and it is a real giveaway to see a com-pletely static CG tree. Branches sway gently in the breeze and leaves flut-ter, producing flickering highlights. Moreover, because a lot of our shots involve low-flying helicopters, we are going to need to have the trees affected by the rotor wash and in one shot we would even need to crash a helicopter into a tree.January 2013 It’s not unusual for a visual effects schedule to be dictated

by preview screenings and trailer de-liveries. As a film comes together, the studio will not only want to screen it to test audiences, but also to start building buzz among cinema goers. We are quite lucky on this project in that the pre-vis which Uncharted Ter-ritory had put together for our Black-hawk sequence was sufficiently good to be used in preview screenings. The only sequence we would need to pro-vide “temps” for, is the explosion and collapse of the Capitol building and by this stage our pyro and destruction R&D was quite far advanced.

However I always aim to assemble every shot as early as possible, because doing so inevitably reveals unexpect-ed challenges and allows us to judge where extra detail will need to be add-ed. I set an internal deadline of the end of March to have a rough version of every shot with some representation of everything that needed to be in it, which we could then iteratively refine.

This involved animating the heli-copters and the people inside them, for every shot, as well as animat-ing the terrorists on the roof of the White House, lighting and rendering

all these and doing at least a first pass simulation of any smoke trail, fire or explosion called for in the shot.February 2013 Out of the blue, we are asked to take on a couple of one-off, trailer-only shots that are entirely outside the scope of our original body of work. These shots involve large crowds of people flee-ing from the White House, which is a capability not supported by our in-house crowd pipeline. We assemble a dedicated team to focus exclusively

“I always aim to assemble every shot as early as possible, because doing so inevitably reveals unexpected challenges and allows us to judge where extra detail will need to be added.” - Ollie Rankin, VFX Supervisor,

Method Studios

Diary Feature continued on page 28


Chelah horSdal stars in Patterson’s Wager.Photo By corBin saleken


Corbin Saleken’s short film win at the February 2013 Spokane In-ternational Film Festival provided the push he needed to finally go ahead and make his first feature, Patterson’s Wager, which shot throughout July in Vancouver and Squamish.

His short film, The Vehicle, featuring Garry Chald and Gillian Barber, was named Best Short of the Northwest and Saleken got a nod himself, taking home the Most Promising Filmmaker award. All this at the tender age of 41.

“I kind of joke about that” says Saleken. “Fifteen years out of film school and now I’m promising at 41 years old. I have no idea how they arrived on that award. But I think they gave it to me to give me a little push because I’d been talking about doing a feature and at the end, the programmer came up to me and said ‘oh we’d love to see that feature someday.’”

Saleken, who works in the film department at Simon Fraser University, had no shortage of projects to pick from for his long-awaited feature, as the University of British Columbia graduate had already written seven full-length scripts. So it came down to choosing the one which would work best.

“The first is terrible, the second is ok, the third isn’t that great, the fourth is my dream project that I want to make some day and five and six are geared towards potentially being able to be made for a low budget,” says Saleken.

In the end, Saleken decided on his sixth script, Patterson’s Wager, after discussing the project with a friend.

“In October or November a friend of mine took me out for dinner and I pitched her the story and when I got to the end she had tears in her eyes and I thought OK, that’s kind of a good sign. Maybe I should try to make this.”

Saleken is trying to be mum on the details of the script (he’s wary of spoil-ers), but it revolves around a man (Fred Ewanuik) who has the uncontrollable ability to see two minutes into the future. For those that have seen The Ve-hicle, the subject matter of Wager shouldn’t be surprising: The Vehicle revolves around a man who claims he’s been sent back in time to be with a woman.

“I’m fascinated with taking one fantastical, speculative element and plunk-ing that into a realistic setting” says Saleken. “I mean you saw The Vehicle. It’s not a movie that cuts away, no, you actually have to have a conversation and deal with it. So that’s the idea with Patterson’s Wager. He’s dealing with this, but in this realistic way where he thinks he’s going crazy. He’s in his living room and it starts raining right in his living room and then it stops and he goes outside and everything happens again a minute later, so he just thinks he’s going crazy. Then nothing happens for a couple of weeks, and then an-other instance happens. There is an actual reason for it, which is kind of real, but he has no idea why it’s happening.”

Salenken is funding this project himself, an endeavour that comes with nu-merous caveats and difficulties, especially when it comes to filming locations. For starters, the script prominently features a casino, which was hard enough for Saleken to lock down (he brokered a deal with Chances Casino in Squa-mish), but he also had to come to agreements with the numerous companies who had their products in the casino.

“I had to get clearance from all six slot machine manufacturers,” he ex-plains. “On a big shoot, there would be a department that goes and gets clear-ance from all these places, but that’s me, I’m the department. So I went and called Vegas and all these places; called Sony and Heinz Canada. I even had to sign a contract with Heinz, they were actually pretty protective of their brand but they said OK.”

The cast features Ewainuk, Chalk and Barber along with Chelah Horsdal, Michelle Creber and Anne Openshaw, all of whom generously agreed to work for next to nothing under the UBCP Ultra Low Budget Agreement.

The saving grace for the first-time feature director has been another mem-ber of the cast, his long-time friend who he met in film school, actor Alex Zahara, who doubles as both producer and casting director on Wager, as well as acting in the film.

“Oh, he’s my secret weapon, my good luck charm,” says Saleken. “He was basically the reason I got the cast I did for The Vehicle. He knows pretty much everyone. With this one, I had some ideas; the cast was all my first choice but Alex really helped me in putting it together.”

For his part, Zahara was intrigued by the project as soon as he got the script.

“We’re all storytellers,” says Zahara. “But I tell ya, at the end of the day, Fred and Chelah said the same thing: We do so many not-so-great American mov-ies of the week. Well your soul can only put up with that so often. You have to do something enriching and artistically pleasing. And this has a really great message behind it. Anybody can sit down and watch this and you’re not going to be disgusted or shocked or anything. You’re going to be transported into that world, you’re going to be enticed and brought along and hopefully some tears and laughter will be shed. Shock sells and all these nasty movies of the week sell. People don’t want to admit that they’re soft. They want to be cool and muscular and watch all this stuff. This is a really great story. Everybody that read it instantly said yes.”

Salaken has high hopes for his first feature. “In a perfect world, it will get into some festivals, Toronto or Sundance,

who knows,” he says. “The Vehicle was the first real success I’ve had at festivals. I loved going to them.”

Talking to Saleken, there’s a definite feeling that he yearns for more, that he’s got more to offer. That award back in Spokane set the bar. All Corbin Saleken has to do now is jump. n

Short Award Pushes Feature Production

Corbin Saleken directs his first feature-length filmstory by

Nathan Caddell

feature story


Ken Charko owns the dunbar theatre in vancouver, a single-screen venue since 1935. Photo By katja de Bock


On a warm summer evening in June, the Dunbar Theatre on Vancouver’s West Side was filled to the brim with hundreds of people attending a private screening of Gifted, an independent, B.C.-produced youth adventure movie.

When theatre owner Ken Charko announced the film, he emphasized the evening was a possibility to “build BC film”, alluding to the ubiquitous “save BC film” awareness campaign by industry workers.

“Dunbar theatre was the most accommodating, and he [Charko] was the only one that would let us play a film at 7 p.m. on a week night,” says producer Russ Rossi, who paid Gifted’s $95,000 budget out of his own pocket.

“Ken actually bumped Star Trek for the film,” he adds. “He’s very supportive of independent film.”

Rossi, a driven man, who had no time to wait for funding, filmed his “hybrid movie” –professional equipment, amateur actors– with three of his children as the main characters and was happy to find a screening venue near his home.

With the Build BC Film-idea, Charko aims at slowly changing film industry rules that are over 20 years old. Similar to the requirement for radio to play a certain amount of Canadian music, he would like to see a percentage of screen time reserved for Canadian film.

“This will help build B.C. film to the point where we don’t need [tax] cred-its,” Charko explains. “And people who have the talent have a place to show-case their art.”

Charko shows Canadian films whenever he can, but this is not easy, due to agreements with film distributors.

Movie theatres have to keep films in the theatres for at least two weeks and cannot pull them, e.g. for a one-time matinee screening of a kids movie or premiere screening of a Canadian independent. This is epecifically difficult for single screen venues such as the Dunbar Theatre, which would like to offer a more varied program.

“What it means is that when I get a film in here, I have to hold it for two to three weeks,” said Charko. “We should be able to change the films more rapidly. And the more rapidly we change our films, the more people will come in here and the more money we’ll make.”

Charko, who belongs to Cinema Buying Group, a collective representing 7,303 screens (295 Canadian) across North America, is also unsatisfied with the rebate arrangement between studios and theatres that invest in digital equipment.

Movie theatres that invest in digital and 3-D equipment get some money back from the studios. However, it requires a lot of paperwork. Additionally, the rebate is very low, while rental fees are increasing.

“They’ve now increased my film rental cost to make up for the rebate mon-ey that they have to give to us,” explains Charko.

But on the positive side, Charko has invested over $300,000 in new seating and 3-D technology, and its paying off.

“We are one of the busiest screens within the Lower Mainland,” he says.Though Dunbar claims to have the best popcorn in town, most profits are

derived from ticket sales. Charko doesn’t believe those who say the business mostly depends on concession. “That’s an absolute wives-tale,” he says. “The industry has really misled the pub-

lic to think that, whereas the actual fact is there is more revenue from ticket sales.”But the Rio Theatre in East Vancouver views concessions differently. The mul-

timedia venue has benefitted from winning the fight to obtain a liquor licence. “It’s much better, it makes an enormous difference for this theatre in par-

ticular. Any movie theatre makes money at concession,” said Rio programmer Rachel Fox.

The Rio has shown Canadian films several times this year, including Jen and Syliva Soska’s American Mary and the Farpoint Films documentary The Sheepdogs Have At It.

“It’s pretty amazing if you think about it, in a month, we’re showing two Canadian films, one of them from B.C.— American Mary,” says Fox. “We’re giving them four days each.”

“We also have some great one-night events showing films that just wouldn’t be shown theatrically otherwise,” Fox said, pointing to Comforting Skin, a fe-male-driven horror film made in B.C., which attracted well over one hundred people on a Sunday night.

Jay Daule runs the independent Twilight drive-in in Langley, B.C. “The Canadian films that get general release, I do pick them up,” says

Daulet, who had 150 cars coming to the 2 a.m. screening of the Canadian horror movie The Colony in June.

“I don’t have the problems that many independents have,” says Daulat. “I have a niche market. My market was abandoned by the major chains.”

Outside of BC, another independent theatre chugging along is Jeff Larson’s Napier in Drumheller, a town of 9,000 about 1.5 hours east of Calgary.

Larson depends on high attendance to cover his recent investment of $53,000 to go digital.

While Napier does not screen a lot of Canadian films, the local public li-brary rents the theatre several nights per year to run art house films including Canadian Oscar nominees such as Barney’s Version and Monsieur Lazhar.

Other independent theatres aren’t as enthusiastic about Charko’s idea of a quota for Canadian films in Canadian theatres.

“It might not be in a theatre’s best interest, like a single-screen neighbour-hood theatre, to say you have to show x per cent of Canadian film,” says Fox. “Anytime we take on a Canadian film, it’s a huge risk.”

The reality, she says, is that it can be hard to pack theatres for indigenous films.“If you’re a neighbourhood theatre, why should you be put in a position

where you are essentially mandated to lose money,” says Fox. Canadian media industry associations are looking at ways to promote in-

digenous content.At the Banff World Media Festival in June, Telefilm, The Canadian Me-

dia Fund and the Canadian Media Production Association, announced the #eyeonCanada promotion campaign.

It aims to raise awareness about Canadian audiovisual content with the gen-eral public primarily through social media and special events such as set visits.

Fox thinks any help getting the word out is a step forward. “The reality is of course, promotion,” says Fox. “If people don’t know that

you’re screening a film, because they haven’t heard of it, it’s that much more difficult to get them to come out.”

Theatres like the Dunbar are showing that art and commerce can mix and lower budget indie films can pack houses alongside the blockbusters.

When Rossi and his guests left the screening of the B.C. film Gifted, the sidewalk was filled with people lining up for the next show, Man of Steel. n

story by

Katja De Bock

feature story

Independent TheatresBuilding B.C. Film One Screen at a Time


Post-Production feature

Local VFX studios are not only busier than ever; they are working on bigger, more challenging productions.

“There is good signs of health across all VFX facilities in Van-couver and I anticipate that continuing,” says Image Engine execu-

tive producer Shawn Walsh. “The level of achievement in the last 18 months across all the facilities is significantly higher. The technical expertise, quality of work, and creative execution is hitting a new high water mark.”

Method Studios is in the midst of a building expansion so they are able to accommodate the increased workload.

“It will be the largest VFX studio in Vancouver,” says Method President Chris Kubsch. “The amount of work in the feature film market is increasing. There are a lot of work opportunities and we are trying to catch it.”

While the local VFX industry is booming, post-production houses in the city haven’t seen the same growth opportunities.

Part of the problem is that post is not included in the D.A.V.E. tax credit, which offers a 17.5% labour rebate on digital animation and visual effects. Many in the industry believe that this incentive has given the local VFX in-dustry a leg up in a competitive marketplace.

“If you look around the city you notice two things, all the visual effects companies are doing extremely well and the post facilities have been strug-gling,” says Alex Tkach, owner of North West Digital.

He says one of the reasons the VFX industry is done so well is because of the D.A.V.E incentive.

But the good news is that sound and picture post facilities joined forces last spring to lobby the provincial government and have a commitment from the Liberals to include post services in the D.A.V.E credit. It’s anticipated that the amendment to the tax credit will take place this fall.

“The industry has fought for this for years,” says Finale Editworks president

story by

Cheryl Binning

Vancouver VFX Industry Raises the Bar; Post Houses

Create AllianceBusiness is booming for local special effects studios and post

companies look to similar success with inclusion in D.A.V.E. tax credit

gener8 opened its doors in 2010 and has since become a leader in converting 2d movies into 3d.


Don Thompson. “It will hopefully bring more work to Vancouver and more jobs for post, just as the VFX industry has at-tracted attention and work.”

Tkach is also optimistic.“If we get in D.A.V.E., the post pro-

duction sector will boom,” he says. “It is a huge incentive to keep post work here.”

Ultimately talent and infrastruc-ture is critical to land work, but Sam Trounce, DI Producer at Digital Film Central, points out that tax incen-tives help start conversations.

“Other territories are being so ag-gressive that we need the support of incentives or we will lose our talent base,” he says.

Based on the success of their lobby effort, the audio and video post-pro-duction companies are in the midst of formalizing the Vancouver Post Alliance, a collective of post facilities and independent post supervisors. The aim of the organization is to provide a unified voice for the local post sector.

“We wanted to build an effective lobby group within the industry and long-term we hope to develop training and certification and other benefits to the post community,” says Thompson.

The Vancouver Post Alliance is expected to be formally up and run-ning with a board in place over the next couple months.

VFX industry maturesand growsVancouver’s VFX companies are coming off a busy year and predict further growth over the next 18 months.

Method has locations in the U.S., Australia and England, but Kubsch says Vancouver is the largest feature film facility for the company.

“We are growing and adding re-sources, in particular we want to ex-pand the animation VFX side of our business,” he says.

Method’s recent projects include White House Down, an action film di-rected by Roland Emmerich and star-ring Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx. Method was the lead vendor on the film and worked on key explosions in-side and outside of the US Capitol, the collapse of the Capitol’s iconic dome, the crashes of three Black Hawk he-licopters into the White House, and the interior shots of a helicopter’s tail section crashing through several floors of the White House.

The studio also worked on the lat-

both image engine and digital Film Central had a hand in the making of summer blockbuster elysium, starring Matt daMon.Photo By kimBerley french © 2012 columBia tristar marketing grouP

Finalé editworks was involved in the post production of Reasonable Doubt starring doMiniC CooPer.© reasonaBle douBt Productions (mB) inc.

Zero Dark thirty features the work of vancouver vFX studio image engine.Photo c/o image engine


est Die Hard movie; the IMAX 3D concert film Metallica: Through the Never; and the military sci-fi move Ender’s Game.

“The talent pool in Vancouver is re-ally under-appreciated,” says Kubsch. “So we are taking advantage of that

and want to grow that talent. It’s an exciting time to be in Vancouver.”

Image Engine has spent the last two years hard at work on Neill Blomkamp’s (District 9) latest fea-ture, Elysium, which has an estimat-ed budget of $115 million.

The Sony Pictures sci-fi film stars

Matt Damon and Jodie Foster and takes place in the year 2154 where two classes of people exist: the very wealthy who live on a pristine man-made space station called Elysium, and the rest, who live on an over-populated, ruined Earth.

Image Engine was the main ven-dor and also provided visual effects department services on the big bud-get movie. The studio worked on about 70% of the 1,000 VFX shots, with the remaining outsourced to other companies, including Method Studios, MPC and The Embassy.

“It was a big investment creatively and technically on our part,” says Walsh.

Image Engine also did 540 shots on the Universal Pictures super-natural film R.I.P.D., starring Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges, including creature work.

The studio also played a key role in Fast & Furious 6, creating complex computer-generated structures and massive dust simulations and digi-tal explosions. They also worked on CG vehicles, digital doubles, face re-placements, rig removals, set exten-sions and green screens on the film.

Walsh points out that it isn’t just technical expertise that’s important to land work from American studios.

“It is one thing to have the tech-nical underpinnings to support so-phisticated work and a mature talent base, but the larger the project, the more important it is to have manage-ment expertise,” he explains. “We are proving that we have strong strategic management in Vancouver and we’re showing the studios that large proj-ects with high expectations can suc-cessfully be completed here.”

Walsh says that when choosing vendors, studios are looking at a wide number of factors, including talent, tax incentives, and manage-ment capabilities.

“A lot of factors are making people see Vancouver as a much more ma-ture production location for VFX,” says Walsh. “As a result we are get-ting more complex and creatively challenging work.”

The only downside of a developed industry is rising costs, adds Walsh.

“As centers become more mature they become more expensive and we have to be viligent on that,” he says.

A newer player on the block is Gener8, which opened its doors in 2010 and has gone on to become a leader in converting 2D movies into 3D. The company has been rapidly ex-panding and now has over 140 people working in its Vancouver facility.

Founder and CEO Rory Armes says the market for 3D films is on the rise, pointing out that that the num-ber of 3D movie screens worldwide has more than tripled since 2009. In 2012, 39 3D films were released as compared to just six in 2007.

Gener8 has developed proprietary technology called G83D to convert film into 3D after filming is complete. This allows filmmakers to shoot in a less labor intensive and less costly 2D format and convert to 3D in post – and still get the same quality as films shot in full 3D.

Gener8’s technology places a 2D film in a computer generated 3D space, modeling the world of each scene and mapping the 2D image into the 3D world.

Armes points out that shooting in 3D is expensive and complicated but their company’s conversion process offers more consistent, higher qual-ity results at a better price.

“There is a lot more greenlighting on the conversion process as studios

“Cost and quality are important. The tax credits gave us an opportunity to have them take us seriously.”

- Rory Armes, Genr8

gener8’s modern vancouver studio

gener8 has over 140 people working in its vancouver facility


GET READY.OCTOBER 2-5, 2013

Post-Production feature

Fight or Flight: Vancouver Sound Studios Evolve to Survive Tough MarketvanCouver’S PoSt ProduCtion sound industry has slowed down over the past

couple years but local sound houses have found ways to survive by finding niche markets.

“We’ve been really busy sometimes and then not busy at all,” says steve bush,

audio engineer for sound Kitchen studios, which has worked with Warner bros., the

vancouver symphony and the vancouver Canucks, among others.

he offers up a hopeful yet realistic take on the company’s business.

“very up and down in the last six months,” says bush. “and we’d expect that to

kind of be the same in the next few months.”

sound Kitchen is keeping busy by finding their market in Canadian projects and

doing pre-lay work for animated projects. Meanwhile pinewood sound, which has

worked on The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Planet of the Apes and The

Bourne Identity, is now doing a lot of Canadian and american tv movies, and doing a

lot of automated digital Replacement (adR).

“business has been steady and it looks to be the same for the next three to four

months,” says Jean turner, operations Manager at pinewood sound turner. “but

we’re not swamped.”

Changes in technology continue to impact the studios.

“it’s ever changing and allowing us to do our jobs more cost effectively,” says turn-

er. “We see changes happening every day. it’s amazing.”

but while technology increases efficiencies, resources are decreasing.

“the budgets are getting lower while we still have to maintain high quality stan-

dards,” says turner.

new technology is also forcing the sound houses themselves to evolve.

“there’s always new technology. it makes it more accessible for junior people doing

it at home so we have to combat that with our expertise and experience,” says bush.

“there are always new technologies and small little plug ins for the gear we work with

that help make our day to day processes go easier but as far as serious technologies

go, what we do hasn’t changed in a while.”

bush also notes that some vancouver sound studios haven’t survived changes in

the marketplace.

“We’ve seen some other studios go out of business for whatever reason, whether

they’re retiring or whether they just don’t have enough work. that’s a bit of a trend

we’re seeing but we’re still here doing our thing.” n – By Nathan Caddell

realize companies such as ours can offer great results at a better price,” says Armes.

Gener8 has done 3D conver-sion work on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows: Part 2, Ghost Rid-er: Spirit of Vengeance, Iron Man 3, Prometheus and The Amazing Spi-der Man.

“The D.A.V.E tax credit got us to the table faster,” says Armes. “Cost and quality are important. The tax credits gave us an opportunity to have them take us seriously.”

Post houses find their nicheOn the post-production side of the business, local companies are evolv-ing to survive in a tough business climate, and seeking out areas where they can specialize.

Just over a year ago Finale Editworks acquired and integrated Technicolor’s DI theatre and finishing services into their expanded facility, allowing the post house to offer Technicolor DI fin-ishing services including Digital Cin-ema Packages and film outs.

“This acquisition has added a lot of higher end DI projects for us,” says Thompson.

Finale has worked on Reasonable Doubt, starring Samuel L. Jackson, and Vancouver shot movies That Burning Feeling and Lawrence & Hol-loman. The post house is also finish-ing a large slate of MOWs.

“Access to Technicolor’s colour science is key to the deal; as well as being able to share marketing oppor-tunities in LA and Vancouver and le-veraging their global brand, so it has been a really successful venture for us,” says Thompson.

Thompson credits his company’s success to evolving to keep pace with changes in the industry.

“Part of our growth and success is investing and spending time learning and building relationships on set and that is paying off now,” he says. “We couldn’t stay static and do what we were doing five or ten years ago.”

North West Digital is also adapt-ing to changes in the industry.

“We have been going through a transition from doing series work to more MOWS,” says Tkach. “We also moved into 3D animation last year and finished our first fully animated feature Clockwork Girl.”

“Our business model is changing,” adds Tkach. “I am still doing post but

I am looking at animation and VFX to fuel our growth. VFX is a healthier part of the budget – it is competitive but at the end of the day it’s a part of the industry doing well.”

North West did 40 VFX shots on the feature Deception (starring Cuba Gooding Jr.), including a signature scene where a yacht is blown up. The company also worked on the trailer for animated film The Monkey King.

Digital Film Central is also upping its game, doing DI work, VFX inte-gration, and IMAX release masters on Elysium.

“We developed a pipeline for VFX whereby a lot of the decisions made in DI were brought forward into produc-tion,” explains Trounce. “We worked with Image Engine to create a stream-lined work flow that allowed them to achieve higher quality of shots. So that is a new angle for our company.”

Elysium was an opportunity for the company to raise the bar cre-atively and technically.

“It allowed us to push the envelope in terms of process and development and create some new techniques and tools to apply to other projects,” says Trounce.

“We have a lot of experience mak-ing images as smart and polished as they can be in a theatrical environ-ment and Elysium is a culmination of those years of experience,” he adds. “ I would say it is one of the biggest movies to be finished in Vancouver, the biggest budgeted movie anyway.”

Typically a project the size of Ely-sium is posted in LA, so this is a ma-jor coup for Digital Film Central.

“It proves we have the talent to pull it off in Vancouver and that is good for the entire Vancouver indus-try,” says Trounce, pointing out that Sharpe Sound worked on the sound mix for the film.

Digital Film Central also recently worked on the documentary The Good Son, Becoming Redwood and season one of Arctic Air.

The post house is also doing a lot of DCP – digital cinema packages, the digital equivalent of mastering film reels.

“That is a new technology that has blown up and become mainstream and we are at the forefront of that,” says Trounce. “DCPs are cost effec-tive and offer more quality control than film prints. It makes theatrical screenings accessible no matter the budget. It’s egalitarian technology.” n

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on those shots, hoping to prevent any loss of momentum towards the final delivery of our main body of work. It turns out that the scale of those shots require almost our entire facil-ity’s render resources for a couple of weeks, so there is a definite impact on our overall schedule, but once the trailer is delivered, we absorb that dedicated team into our main crew and quickly made up the lost time.MarCh 2013 By now we have com-pleted the initial batch of bluescreen shots, so we are awarded an addi-tional batch, taking place earlier in the film and involving the terrorists over-running the security detail on the roof of the White House.

Meanwhile, having earlier com-pleted the master CG Blackhawk helicopter, we now embark on de-signing and building in the accumu-lated damage the three helicopters sustain through the course of being blown out of the sky and crashing. In tandem to this, we are also work-ing on the equal and opposite reac-tion – the dynamic effects from the things they were crashing into. A tree, the ground, the White House and a fountain all needed to react be-lievably to having a 10 ton helicopter slam into them. aPril 2013 With the distraction of trailers largely behind us, we are full steam ahead, cranking out iterations

and increasingly being rewarded with the visual effects artist’s favourite word: “final”. As the marketing machine start-ed to gain momentum, more and more of our shots are identified by the film’s producers as being trailer-worthy, but at this stage in the game it no longer has an impact on our schedule. May 2013 From the very beginning, we’d identified the group of shots that would prove the most challenging: the three helicopter crashes and the Capitol destruction shots. So it is no surprise to anyone that as we approach the final weeks of our schedule, the he-licopter crash shots still need the most work. We are pleasantly surprised at how quickly the Capitol shots have come together and since we assembled the crash shots six weeks prior, there are no major surprises left. Each week now we are completing shots that had seemed out of reach only a few weeks earlier and, because our other shots are being approved on schedule, we were freeing up people and render re-sources to make a big push on those hero shots at the end. June 2013 As we predicted back in October, the helicopter crashing into the tree is the last shot to finish. It has more artists working on it, more render layers, more custom R&D and more hand-offs between differ-ent software packages than any other shot we did in the film. And when it is declared final, we popped a bottle of champagne on the spot. n

Diary Feature continued from page 17

right to license the use of the music in other projects, such as other film and television productions, adver-tisements and video games. Where such a non-exclusive license struc-ture is used, we generally suggest that the producer secure a holdback period in which the composer is prohibited from licensing the music to others, so that the music will be unique to the production during its initial release period.

In situations where the producer’s music budget does not match the composer’s fee expectations, it may be possible to bridge the gap by uti-lizing one of the above-mentioned alternative structures for the owner-ship of publishing rights.

Kyle Fogden is an entertainment lawyer with Chandler Fogden Law Corporation. Kyle advises television and film producers on development, financing, production, distribution and intellectual property matters. n

Legal Briefs continued from page 7

thon who get stuck on the wrong side of the galaxy.

“Hopefully now our Leo win can demonstrate that the universe of Marathon is worth expanding into a feature film and that myself and Mal-colm Oliver, my fantastic producer, are just the guys to do it,” says Anctil.

And that kind of confidence is what’s required for getting any film project going. Awards in general, and the Leo Awards in particular, continue to help give filmmakers a much appreciated boost.

Paul Armstrong is a film producer who also produces The Celluloid Social Club and the Crazy8s Film Event. n

Indie Scene continued from page 9


Twice voted Western Canada’s Trade Magazine of the Year, Reel West is the most informative magazine for the film, video and digital production industry. Each bi-monthly issue features articles for and about the people, places and events that shape our industry.

finaL edit

The 12th annual Directors Guild of Canada Award nominees include sev-eral Western filmmakers

and projects. Vying for best TV movie direction

are David Frazee for Calgary-shot Borealis and Anne Wheeler for The Horses of McBride, which was also

made in Alberta. Sean Garrity’s My Awkward Sexual Adventure is nominated for best feature film and Vancouver-produced sci-fi series Continuum is up for best TV series drama. Alberta-produced Heartland has two nominations in the best fam-ily TV series category; and Winnipeg series Less than Kind is vying for best

comedy series.The awards will be presented on

Saturday, October 26, 2013.

Kevin Costner teams with Sea to SkyVancouver-based Sea To Sky Entertain-ment has inked a first look deal with Kevin Costner’s Treehouse Films.

Costner, along with Treehouse creative executive Jasa McCall, will develop and produce scripted TV programming, which Costner may also direct and/or act in, depending on the project.

Sea To Sky Entertainment is a TV production and distribution joint venture between Lionsgate Enter-tainment and Vancouver-based Thunderbird Films. The company is developing television projects for U.S. and Canadian broadcast and ca-ble networks, with a strong emphasis on co-productions.

Costner has acted in movies like The Bodyguard and Dances With Wolves, and most recently the Em-my-winning History Channel series Hatfields & McCoys, which he also produced.

“Hatfields & McCoys was an ex-traordinary achievement, and when we learned that Kevin wanted to expand his activities in television, we were immediately interested in meeting with him,” said Kevin Beggs, president of Lionsgate Tele-vision Group, in a statement. “We’re excited about the ideas he wants to pursue and delighted to be in busi-ness together.”

Thunderbird Films is headed up by President and CEO Tim Gamble and recently produced the sitcom Package Deal. n

Western DGC Award NomineesMy Awkward sexual Adventure is nominated for a best feature

film at this year’s directors guild of Canada awardsPhoto By sascha drews

Announcements & AppointmentsBill Marks has joined CineCoup Film Accelerator as Head of Production. Marks is a writer, director and producer whose film career spans over two decades. His directing credits include 14 Days in Paradise and Curse of the Iron Mask. He has produced a number of films including A Dark Truth, Compulsion, Casino Jack and Split Decision.

“It’s great to be filling out the CineCoup executive team with an industry veteran of this caliber who under-stands the importance of innovation,” said CineCoup CEO J. Joly.

Marks first responsibility will be to produce Wolfcop, the first project to be green-lit through the CineCoup program.“I think Cinecoup is easily the most exciting development for independent feature films in Canada today,” Marks

said in a statement. “I am thrilled to be involved with an organization that will reset everyone’s expectations of what is possible for filmmakers and audiences alike.”

Women In Film & Television Vancouver (WIFTV) has a new board President: Rachelle Chartrand, with Carleen Kyle elected as Vice President, Krista Magnusson taking on the role of Treasurer and Sarah Kalil becoming Secretary.

WIFTV has also appointed seven new directors to their board: Laura Adkin, Katherine Brodsky, Amanda Burke, Jill Hope Johnson, Carla Jones, Monika Mitchell, and Dasha Novak.

“ I am honoured to be elected as the president and look forward to continue building something special to-gether,” said Chartrand in a statement. “With two national studies recently released highlighting the continuous gender inequality in the Canadian film and television, the work that Women in Film and Television Vancouver does is as important as ever and we have many exciting things in the works for 2013/2014.”


july august 2013: reel west magazine

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