Thursday, June 5, 2014

Edmonton Filmed Entertainment Fund/ Filmmakers find each other

May 20 Edmonton Filmed Entertainment Fund: I was going through my old news articles and I found this Edmonton Journal article “Zooming in on Edmonton” by Jamie Hall on Dec. 19, 2012.

Here’s an Edmonton Sun article in 2011:


In Mar. 2012, there’s this Play Back article, here’s an excerpt:

The Edmonton Filmed Entertainment Fund, a partnership between the city of Edmonton via the Edmonton Economic Development Corporation and L.A.-based Kilburn Media, is structured as an equity investment fund for pre-sold film projects.

“Pre-sold is perhaps the most important criteria,” Edmonton film commissioner Brad Stromberg tells Playback Daily.

“It’s not looking to be a development fund where we’ll give somebody a grant and hope their project goes well,” he explains.

Stromberg adds that Edmonton is looking to make a profit on its investment by targeting projects that already have a deal in place.”


http://playbackonline.ca/2012/03/01/new-edmonton-investment-fund-aims-to-create-work-in-the-city/

http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=02e01aca-6821-4555-92f2-1c384cea7518&p=1

I’m going to add this to more resources I have to look up.

Filmmakers find each other: I also cut out this Edmonton Journal article “Filmmakers find each other” by Jamie Hall on Jun. 21, 2010.  Here are excerpts of it:

It is sheer happenstance that the names of former Edmontonians Ian Clay and Binh Hunyh appear on the credits of what is essentially a made-in-Hollywood feature film. Currently making the rounds of the international film festival circuit, Losing You was co-written and directed by Clay and produced by Hunyh.

The story is about an actor involved in a long-distance relationship who drives across the country with his friend after he thinks he overhears his girlfriend being sexually assaulted during a phone conversation.

So far, it has won awards at the Worldfest Houston International Film Festival, the Canada International Film Festival (in Vancouver) and the award of merit from the Accolade Competition.

Most recently, Netflix, a major vehicle for renting and streaming DVDs online, said it would consider uploading the film if enough interest is shown by potential viewers.

Clay was a high school English teacher by day and filmmaker by night, while Hunyh crunched numbers for Sony Pictures Entertainment. They became friends and, ultimately, collaborators.

"Ian has been a good support for me through the years and has given me sound advice about living in Los Angeles; in return, I have helped him in his entertainment pursuits," Hunyh said. "For Losing You I worked directly with him to produce the film while still working at Sony Pictures. Ian was the backbone of the film; he not only wrote a brilliant script, he was also the executive producer and director."

"I got my first taste of working in the entertainment industry," he (Hyungh) said.

Clay, who's now 30, graduated from the University of Alberta, where he studied criminal justice, drama and English. He arrived in L.A. via the United Kingdom, stopping in New York along the way to teach in the South Bronx for a year.

For the past six years, he has spent his days talking to students about English and his evenings and weekends talking to his fellow actors about their craft. "As soon as the day is over, and the grading is done, there is another life I live, which is filmmaking and acting," he said.

He bankrolled the movie using some of his own money, plus money he borrowed from a bank. Hunyh, meanwhile, helped with financing and budgeting. Clay used his summer off to film the movie and then edit it.
"My teaching pays for these adventures; I knew a major studio wasn't going to make this film so the only way it was going to get made was if I did it," Clay said.
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http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=b42bd10f-9d2c-42aa-a830-ab1276308bdf

Here’s more info:
 
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1269699/

My opinion: I went on imdb.com, and there are no reviews.  The rating was 8.1/10 from 7 users.  I checked out the trailer and it looks like a really indie film.  It looked low budget and real.  I see suspense, drama, and tension.  It looked good.

May 25 Gugu Mbatha- Raw: She’s been in the news because of her new movie Belle.  She was in the TV show Touch and Undercovers.  That’s where I saw her from.

On imdb about Belle: “An illegitimate mixed race daughter of a Royal Navy Admiral is raised by her aristocratic great-uncle.”

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2404181/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_6

I was reading “Being biracial is not a modern concept” by Johanna Schneller on May 10, 2014.  In the article:

“It does seem, however, that Dido Belle is a role Mbatha-Raw was born to play – as proof, she stayed with the project for the seven years it took to pull financing together. Because it’s a British story, she contends, it’s about class as much as race. “Society defines you as something, but you don’t have to accept that,” she says.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/belle-shows-being-biracial-is-not-a-modern-concept/article18590335/

My opinion: I thought that was inspirational, so I’ll put it in my inspirational quotes.  I also thought that it took 7 years to get this movie produced.

May 26 Meet up: That Screenwriter’s Meet up last week sure has an effect on me.  One of them asked why it’s taking so long to write the Rain script.  I have said I was working at my job.  I also said it’s the big confrontation scene where I’m stuck at.  

Yesterday I went and worked on it.  I wrote one page to the scene.  I had my notes to look at.  Then I thought to send that one scene to the writer in residence at EPL.  I didn’t send my scripts to any writer in residence’s in 2013 or this year until now.   

May 27 JJ Abrams: He created Alias and produced the new Star Trek movies.  I cut out this article called “Prolific Abrams keeps secrets” by Horatia Harrod on Jan. 28, 2014.

"I'm drawn to typewriters and printing and papercraft, and the idea of actual bookbinding and box-making," he says.

"I do think there's something about the digital age that is increasingly dehumanizing us. We're in this very weird place where we're being pulled into experiences that aren't really experiences at all. When you're printing something on a letterpress, even though it might take a long time and it's imperfect, isn't that the point?"

"We're living in a moment of instant information ... but I think there's nothing wrong with a sense of anticipation."

Late last year, Abrams found time to publish a novel. S is not just a book, but a J.J. Abrams' production, complete with an enigmatic online trailer and teasing backstory.

The book wasn't actually written by Abrams: that job was given to a writer named Doug Dorst, who batted ideas back and forth with Abrams chapter by chapter. In truth, S is an extraordinary creation, a beguiling fake artifact: the main text is a book apparently printed in 1949, the pages lovingly yellowed. In the margins, a love story plays out in the alternating annotations of two American college students, and there are also editorial interventions in the footnotes that point to a shadowy global plot centred on the author of the novel.


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