Amongst the most popular...

Our web series, Heroes of the North, was amongst the six most popular yesterday on the Koldcast network, barely a week after its launch.  Onward and upwards, as they say!

First EPISODE!!!

The first episode is finally online, both on Koldcast TV and on our site, www.heroesofthenorth.com.

Figurine!

My God!  It has been a while since I last posted.  So much work on the show!  We are getting ready to launch tomorrow and I have been working steadily, editing the shows, supervising the comics, etc.

One project that has been quite cool is the Figurines.  The first one that is close to completion if the character of Fleur-de-Lys.  Here's a sneak peek:

Comic book style Logos

Villains!!!

The Canadian

Here's another artist interpretation of one of our characters, this time by a Montreal based artist, Donald Caron.  Donald has an amazing painted style that is both vivid and very realistic.  His treatment of light is particularly fascinating to me.  Here's the result of his first contribution to our project:

Crimson

One of the villains we created in Heroes of the North is the character of Crimson.  I don't know why but I wanted a dark assassin version of the Little Red Riding Hood, complete with a wolf...   And we casted the famous fetish model Bianca Beauchamp to embody the character, a task she accomplished with gutso.   And to illustrate her character, we asked babe artist Armando Huerta.  This is the result:

Alice in Underland

I went to see Alice the other day - big tent pole movie in 3D - the saviour of cinema if you listen to some pundits.  Amazing art direction, a typical Burton staple, great photography, good actors in garishly beautiful costumes, a classical story, a director at the top of his craft, decent musical score...  Yet I was bored out of my skull...

I felt no wonder, no excitement at discovering this new world.  I did not hate the film but I was not engaged by it in any way.  I guess it left me indifferent...

Strangely, I felt similar after watching Avatar, probably the most spectacular film I have ever seen visually -  yet I felt somehow disengaged and frankly bored after a while.  And I wonder why.  The story of Avatar was not original by a iota but it is a familiar story that has been told many times before and usually worked.  So why does it not work so well here.  Why does it not keep my interest as an audience despite everything else around it being innovative and top notch?

Is it me as an audience member or is it that films now feel so perfectly manufactured? Note: although nowadays, special effects at that budget level are usually seamless, some work needs to be done with compositing in some shots, both in Alice and to a lesser extent in Avatar - there are no excuses for shoddy composites at such a budget level.  Nothing takes me out of a movie faster than noticing a bad integration.

Perhaps this is the problem - we now know so much about how movies are made, we no longer watch them for the story but also for the technique and it eventually takes you out.  But then again, I watch good movies from other decades, like the 60s, 70s or 80s  and 90s and I am still transported and entertained despite bad (by today standards) effects and lesser cinematic potential.  Alice made me think that there is not one movie in the last decade that has left a major impact on me the way films from other decades did.  Am I just getting older or the films are getting worst?

Figurine Vote

Thank you for participating in our Figurine Vote for Heroes of the North.  You can vote for your three favorite figurines.  Our first batch of figurines requires to make three.  Help us pick which ones should get made!  We are making THREE (3) figurines to start - you can still vote for your favorite and support two others.

Black Terror

Some time last year I found out that a whole collection of comic book characters has ended up in the public domain.  A few companies went bankrupt and never filed for copyrights when we still had to do this and therefore their property lapsed into the public domain.  One such company was Nedor.  Most if not all of these characters are from the Golden Age of comics and are therefore a little naive in their origins and/or powers.  The strongest character I felt was Black Terror and we decided to use him (with major twists) for our series.

For years I have been trying to do a superhero comic.  For a while, I even optioned Mark Shainblum's excellent Northguard property - but I kept hitting snags along the way - Canadian producers just don't seem to get it and/or are afraid the institutions won't back such a project, something in which they are most likely right.

Another project I was involved with, The Hunter, another superhero project that involved intricate wire gags created by Jeff Pruitt ended up going nowhere and after years of frustrations, we decided to do it for the web.

I took my ideas for the Hunter and integrated them with the origins and concepts of Black Terror, plus we added a hint of a horror twist to it and the character was born.

Here's Félix Laflamme amazing rendition of the character:

New Trailer and Web Series of the Week on VLOG!

Vlog, a Montreal TV show about the best (and the worst) of the web has featured us as the Web Series of the Week on their popular show.

For the occasion, we whipped up a Trailer:

You can view it here:Heroes of the North Trailer

The New Messiahs...

It seems every time there is a turmoil, there is a breed of people racing to become the "leaders" to guide the lost masses to a safe haven.  Nothing wrong with that in principle but unfortunately, a lot of times, these people seem to be merely preying on distressed folks, trying to sell them a dream of salvation...  in exchange for their hard earned money...

Manifestos explode all over the place, making outrageous claims, people become overnight experts and present models that will save the entire industry, most of it under ludicrous claims or poorly thought out opinions...

Most of these require your financial support, often only to prove that it works...


I am doing a lot of research these days in order to find a solution that works in light of all that is happening and it seems to me that if you do not subscribe to a specific model or view, or if you point out flaws, you are automatically assaulted while the ones selling the models are hailed as experts and messiahs yet no one has anything concrete to show for themselves - their argument is resuming itself to: give me your money and I'll show you it works - or something to that effect... For me, it feels like people are preying on desperation and a lot of people have left their critical sense at the door.  Which tends to happen when people are afraid.  They want to feel safe again and are willing to follow anyone with a glimmer of an answer.

Every discussions (almost) are shot down by a loudmouth who claims to have a plan - but it always involves either giving them money or hare brain schemes that make no business sense whatsoever...

When did we fall so low as filmmakers? Is that a side effect of the democratization of the tools? Are we a bunch of loudmouthed morons now?

Comic book art

As part of our transmedia storytelling experiment on Heroes of the North, we are doing some parts of the storyline in the form of comic books.  This is a process that requires us to actually seek out artists and get some artwork done and I must admit this is something that I like very much.  I never had the opportunity to work in that medium before and it is a lot of fiun.  Here's a sneak peek at the cover for the character of 8 Ball created by Marcus Smith, aka MAS.

A blog article definitely worth reading in light of my previous post:

http://shootingpeople.org/fromthehip/2009/11/25/what-is-independent-film-worth/

Is the future of independent films a mere Hobby?

I have been reading about the future of the film industry (and medias in general) for a while now. I have seen a lot of creative ideas (Kickstarter, crowdfunding, Artemis project, CwF+RtB, etc.).


I am a filmmaker and I used to earn a decent living selling my films worldwide. In the last few years, the bottom fell out and the prices are dropping so low that making the films become unsustainable. Everybody is scrambling for the exit and looking for a new business model or looking for ways to go back to the status quo. While I agree that it is impossible to stop piracy and pointless to sue for that, I however wonder about the viability of a CwF+RtB model and other propositions, like crowd funding (which is a legal grey area and I believe it is only a matter of time before that plug is filled).


So as far as I can tell, the reasoning goes a little like this: spend years building an audience for your film, in order to convince them to finance you and your film, keep them posted on the progress, shoot the film, give it for free along with some reasonably priced swag they can't download, and keep promoting the shit out of it until you eventually (or more realistically hopefully) break even then start again... Fun perhaps, but at this point, it's not a business it is a hobby! You cannot sustain an industry like this! 


If you factor in all the time and effort to make the film, plus all the time you spend "connecting with fans" and providing them with (free) added value, you end up making less than a quarter of a penny an hour for your time! I love my job but I also need to pay my bills! Under the CwF+RtB model, not only do I need to raise the money to make the film, a difficult proposition even under the "old" model, now I also need to find cash to finance the schwag ( and the warehouse to store it - you can always go "print on demand" style, but the costs are higher, diminishing your chances of selling it unless you want to make pennies of profit - and let's face it, only the hard core fans will buy the swag!) and spend even more time connecting with the audience than ever before, plus add all the support time of maintaining what is now also becoming a retail business!!! I fail to see how it is sustainable for indie filmmakers with limited resources to begin with. It does not appear to make economical sense to me. Maybe I am not understanding it right but feel free to enlighten me. I'd like to understand what I am missing.

What about Production Value?

With all the talks in the indie film circles about the "New Way of doing business", some things seem to be left out there.  Production Value is one of them.  Most indies already have a hard time financing themselves, often resulting in low production values.  Decent sets, costumes, effects and so on do cost money.  While salaries in the motion picture industry are seriously out of whack with reality, even if we brought them down to a more reasonable level, shooting a film is still a huge money investment.

With the perceived decline of the value of a film due partially to piracy, but most likely a whole lot of other factors, one has to wonder what will happen in terms of the quality of the films made in the future.

Heroes of the North Artwork sneak peek

As part of the Heroes of the North web series project I am currently creating, we have commissioned various comic book artists to make a rendition of of one our Heroes of the North characters in their own comic book style, as a comic book cover if you will.

The artists we have lined up so far are:

- Al Rio who will draw Fleur-de-Lys;

- Joel Adams who will draw Nordik;

- Marcus Smith (aka MAS) who will draw 8 Ball;

- Donald Caron who will draw The Canadian;

- Felix Laflamme who will draw Black Terror;

- Armando Huerta who will draw Crimson;

The first piece of art is in.  It is a piece from Al Rio.  It illustrates a scene from the Fleur-de-Lys Origins episode where she fights some bad guys on a golf course and uses her electric gauntlets for the first time.  Enjoy!

First Official Press on Heroes of the North

WebTV Hebdo, a local website talking about Quebec web series, just put up an article about our little show today:

Heroes of the North WebTV Hebdo article (in French)

Medusa Rising

I made shorts and features for the last twenty years.  I did dabble in webisodes with a group of actors in the early 2000s but it went nowhere for a variety of reasons.  However, I always liked the immediacy of the medium.  Combined with my frustration at trying to make superhero movies - I tried to make three in the last two decades, to no avail, we decided we would create our own web series based on Canadian superheroes of our creation - with some that are public domain for good measure.  So that is our main project at the moment, the Heroes of the North web series.  However, you cannot have good heroes without good villains hence we came up with a terrorist organization called Medusa, the logo of which is above.

The future is in flux...

I have been a filmmaker most of my life.  I started making films with my brothers and neighbours in our backyard when I was twelve years old.  I never really stopped.  I still do it.  I am one of the lucky few amongst the independent filmmakers that can say that he earns a living doing it.  At least I used to - well, technically I still am but it has gotten harder than ever - and it was never easy to begin with...  But now, the world is changing.

Technology is responsible for the change.  It gave us wonderful, lightweight cameras that rival the beauty and resolution of film.  You can now edit an entire feature in your bedroom for less than the price of a used car.  And that is wonderful.  It also means that the medium has finally been democratized: cheap and accessible means that everybody can do it.  And they do!  By millions, if not billions, filling servers at YouTube with countless cat videos, amongst more interesting content.  And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that - I am glad it is happening.  I have discovered fresh faces, innovative ideas, seen beautiful stories well told I would most likely have never seen otherwise in the old order of things.

Conversely, technology has made possible a distribution model with a cost of near zero, a way of making virtually identical copies of media and henceforth, just like music before it, print, film and video business models are slowly eroding and should, for all intent and purpose, disappear down the line.

Some say it is evolution in a way and I agree.  Things change.  Whether we like it or not.  Things were not easy before however, and they are about to get way harder.

This is why I started this blog.  To think out loud.  Exchange with others.  To find new ways.  I agree with a lot of the things I have read on other blogs (see list on the side).  But I don't think we are near a definitive answer yet - everything is in flux.  And things will get way harder before they get any easier.