Telefilm's Annual Report: This Much is True...
(Toronto) Wait! Don’t go away! I’m going to make this short, simple, and point out the obvious that you need to know in few paragraphs. YOU paid $400 million for this, don’t you want to know what’s wrong with at least the feature film side of it and why you, the English Canadian public, hate Canadian movies so much? Read on. It’ll only take a couple of minutes to get up to speed on the way things are and how they can be fixed.
Telefilm has released their annual report which reflects on 2005. It is a nice looking package and well designed, with a pleasing “new media” flare. Even the delivery of it is clever, in that one can tailor a specific package for a PDF file that you can download which covers the areas of interest to you. It is available at the Telefilm website or at this address: http://www.telefilm.gc.ca/annual%5Freport/
Needless to say, if you’ve read anything on the Canadian Film Insider, you are well aware that only stare-it-in-the-eyes truth is relayed here. Based on the truth that Canadians are paying for Telefilm, and they need to know where all those $400 million dollars plus is going. Otherwise, it remains some kind of “Black Ops” out of an American conspiracy theorist’s fantasies, doesn’t it? After all, the principles are perversely the same in a way: a government funded industry, of which the public knows very little about, costs them a great deal of money while various shadowy figures earn millions of dollars creating projects nobody sees. Difference is, in Canadian Film, the shadowy figures have publicists, a largely cow-towing print and TV media, and the funding is transparent. Their protection comes not from NSA and CIA and FBI, but from the more powerful force of public apathy.
Okay, let’s cut to the chase. Three things are obvious in this report, and this is pretty much all you need to know about it as far as English Canadian film goes:
1) In a pie chart, we see that Telefilm spent only 1.5% of its film investment on genre films like Horror/Suspense. In the chart on the top 20 Canadian funded movies at the box office here in Canada, we see that nearly 60% of the English Canadian created movie box office came from genre films categorized as Horror/Suspense. So now, putting 1 + 1 together we see that it makes 2. And then if we add most of the top grossing English Canadian films, and most loved Canadian films of all time into this, which are Horror/Suspense Genre films including those from, say, Cronenberg, Canada’s greatest stay-in-Canada director, then 1 + 1 equals 3, doesn’t it? Now, what percentage of the pie chart will be invested in genre films in the coming years by Telefilm? We shall see if a simple lesson is learned here or not in future reports, I suppose.
2) Although it is not obvious in this report without further research, the fact is that the biggest piggy at the trough of Canada’s “Black Ops” is Robert Lantos. He produced the two biggest turkeys in the report with Where the Truth Lies and Being Julia. Together they pulled in $986 thousand at the Canadian Box Office. Together they cost somewhere in the neighbourhood of $10 million dollars in production and marketing expenses out of Public Canada‘s coffers. Their actual total budgets much higher with a total of about $18 million for Being Julia, and $25 million for Where the Truth Lies. Each film failed to even begin to recoup half their budgets in world box office and DVD. Complete disasters. Lantos has been sucking Canadians dry for decades with this kind of nonsense, taking big, fat producer’s fees right off the top of the films’ budget. Good God, will this report finally put an end to backing that son of a bitch with our money?
3) Telefilm sure is pushing the New Media thing in this report and elsewhere. Let us hope that they recognize that most video games have little to do with anything resembling culture at all and are all about visceral thrills for 14 year olds. Almost all are rehashes of sequels of copies of remakes in a genre of one sort or another, and the enjoyment that comes from them comes from learning to play them until the player gets bored, and then they retain no cultural value whatsoever, because they had none to begin with. Very few “Canadian Stories” will come out of backing this avenue that will go anywhere. If Telefilm is smart, they will recognize that New Media from a cultural standpoint is best exploited as a way to promote Feature Films and Broadcast Network TV series and specials. That way, you actually do get Canadian Stories at the core of it all, and can hook a wide audience in interesting, and often cost-effective ways. And, just like savvy entertainment industries from Japan to Hong Kong to India to Hollywood, you can then market video game and New Media tie-ins to your product to soak up the money.
Those are the three points and interpretations to take home from this Telefilm report for those in the know.
Telefilm has released their annual report which reflects on 2005. It is a nice looking package and well designed, with a pleasing “new media” flare. Even the delivery of it is clever, in that one can tailor a specific package for a PDF file that you can download which covers the areas of interest to you. It is available at the Telefilm website or at this address: http://www.telefilm.gc.ca/annual%5Freport/
Needless to say, if you’ve read anything on the Canadian Film Insider, you are well aware that only stare-it-in-the-eyes truth is relayed here. Based on the truth that Canadians are paying for Telefilm, and they need to know where all those $400 million dollars plus is going. Otherwise, it remains some kind of “Black Ops” out of an American conspiracy theorist’s fantasies, doesn’t it? After all, the principles are perversely the same in a way: a government funded industry, of which the public knows very little about, costs them a great deal of money while various shadowy figures earn millions of dollars creating projects nobody sees. Difference is, in Canadian Film, the shadowy figures have publicists, a largely cow-towing print and TV media, and the funding is transparent. Their protection comes not from NSA and CIA and FBI, but from the more powerful force of public apathy.
Okay, let’s cut to the chase. Three things are obvious in this report, and this is pretty much all you need to know about it as far as English Canadian film goes:
1) In a pie chart, we see that Telefilm spent only 1.5% of its film investment on genre films like Horror/Suspense. In the chart on the top 20 Canadian funded movies at the box office here in Canada, we see that nearly 60% of the English Canadian created movie box office came from genre films categorized as Horror/Suspense. So now, putting 1 + 1 together we see that it makes 2. And then if we add most of the top grossing English Canadian films, and most loved Canadian films of all time into this, which are Horror/Suspense Genre films including those from, say, Cronenberg, Canada’s greatest stay-in-Canada director, then 1 + 1 equals 3, doesn’t it? Now, what percentage of the pie chart will be invested in genre films in the coming years by Telefilm? We shall see if a simple lesson is learned here or not in future reports, I suppose.
2) Although it is not obvious in this report without further research, the fact is that the biggest piggy at the trough of Canada’s “Black Ops” is Robert Lantos. He produced the two biggest turkeys in the report with Where the Truth Lies and Being Julia. Together they pulled in $986 thousand at the Canadian Box Office. Together they cost somewhere in the neighbourhood of $10 million dollars in production and marketing expenses out of Public Canada‘s coffers. Their actual total budgets much higher with a total of about $18 million for Being Julia, and $25 million for Where the Truth Lies. Each film failed to even begin to recoup half their budgets in world box office and DVD. Complete disasters. Lantos has been sucking Canadians dry for decades with this kind of nonsense, taking big, fat producer’s fees right off the top of the films’ budget. Good God, will this report finally put an end to backing that son of a bitch with our money?
3) Telefilm sure is pushing the New Media thing in this report and elsewhere. Let us hope that they recognize that most video games have little to do with anything resembling culture at all and are all about visceral thrills for 14 year olds. Almost all are rehashes of sequels of copies of remakes in a genre of one sort or another, and the enjoyment that comes from them comes from learning to play them until the player gets bored, and then they retain no cultural value whatsoever, because they had none to begin with. Very few “Canadian Stories” will come out of backing this avenue that will go anywhere. If Telefilm is smart, they will recognize that New Media from a cultural standpoint is best exploited as a way to promote Feature Films and Broadcast Network TV series and specials. That way, you actually do get Canadian Stories at the core of it all, and can hook a wide audience in interesting, and often cost-effective ways. And, just like savvy entertainment industries from Japan to Hong Kong to India to Hollywood, you can then market video game and New Media tie-ins to your product to soak up the money.
Those are the three points and interpretations to take home from this Telefilm report for those in the know.
posted by atom bruce mckellar at Thursday, October 19, 2006
<< Home