 Hello there. It's Thursday at noon. I know it is. Do you remember our arrangement? Thursdays at noon on CFUV. Are you ready to get started? What do you have in mind? What I want to do now is called First Person Plural. You make it sound excessively attractive. That's what I have in mind. The 9th annual Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival will be held February 7th through February 16th. Last year, over 11,000 people attended the festival. This year, 700 films were considered in assembling the program of over 40 feature films and over 100 shorts. In reaction to what many perceived to be a homogeneity among Hollywood films, independent film festivals have been growing in locations all over the world. Festival director Kathy Kay explains the importance of having festivals such as Victorias. I think it's important because it offers different viewpoints and cultural outlooks. And I think as cinema becomes more homogenized that it's really important that we hear from other people and other places. Part of it's cultural diversity, but part of it is just different viewpoints even within the same culture. We took some time this week to think about film as cultural production. We were especially intrigued about how digital technology is making filmmaking more accessible and blurring the boundary between high and low culture. Every part of the filmmaking process from inception to distribution seems to be affected by new technologies. Creation of films and videos is less expensive and less challenging because of the technology. Differences in distribution seem cosmetic nowadays. Video cassettes explore the space between the two media with titles that seem to draw upon film paradigms, titles that seem to draw upon television paradigms, and titles that are a departure from either tradition. The existence of commercial announcements does not suffice to explain the distinction. Cable television channels exist that show no commercials at all. Stations that show commercials sometimes show less than the CRTC limit of 12 minutes per hour would permit. Simultaneously, films shown in theaters are always prefaced by previous four other movies and sometimes prefaced by advertisements for other products, especially those on hand at the theater's concession stands. Never mind the product shots in the films themselves. As a practical matter, pieces nominally produced for cinema distribution are often intended by their makers for release to a video before the majority of the population of North America has had a chance to see them on the big screen. Are such efforts best described as mostly theater or as mostly video? This is not to say that challenges can no longer be found for filmmakers. Money is still part of the equation and money for the arts is tighter than it was 40 years ago in both the U.S. and Canada. Making socially relevant films, experimental films, and controversial films remains a struggle. Both social supports do exist to aid filmmakers in producing and distributing films outside of the Hollywood oligopoly. We spoke with two of the filmmakers who will be debuting their films this week at the festival. Sherri LePage and Tony Snowsill both reside in Victoria. LePage's From Baghdad to Peace Country and Snowsill's Criminal Acts are both funded by the National Film Board of Canada. We spoke with them about the challenges of making controversial and socially relevant documentaries and how support from the Film Board helped them and what it is like to have world premieres of their films in their hometown. We also spoke with Diane Searle, the executive director of MediaNet, one of at least two film and video collectors in Victoria which offer filmmakers a chance to learn more about filmmaking, create films and videos, and network with others in the industry. Searle discusses with us the democratization of filmmaking and the effects advances in new technologies are having on the industry. Don't touch that dial and stay tuned for an episode about filmmaking we call Talking Pictures. First of all I'd like to welcome you again to the CFUV Studios. I'd like you to tell us your name, the name of your film, and what it's going to be shown. My name is Sherri LePage. The film that I've done is called From Baghdad to Peace Country and it's having its world premiere during the Victoria Festival at Legends at 7 o'clock on Monday the 10th. Who did you have in mind for the audience for this film? What kind of people would you like to see it? Well, if there's a specific audience what I'm hoping it will do is reach people who are not necessarily really politically aware and involved in the issue of sanctions up until now, people who maybe wouldn't necessarily go to a political rally or things like that. And because I think this film is more inclined to reach people in an emotional way than in a political way. Your film was made in cooperation with the National Film Board, is that right? Yes, the National Film Board produced it so essentially it funded it and will distribute it. How is working with the National Film Board limited or enhanced your efforts to connect with the audience you have in mind? Well, it's completely enhanced it because the Film Board with its resources has a reach that's far greater than anything that I could do myself as an independent filmmaker. They distribute films not only across Canada but internationally. And so they're trying to get it broadcast in America for instance as well as across Canada. I'm putting it in festivals all over the world so there's no way that I could do that on my own. Are they looking at film festivals only or do they look at television showings as well, cable channels, that sort of thing? They look at everything and will sell or lend to community groups that want to have non-profit showings to educate people about the issues. What particular advantages or disadvantages does showing your film in a festival in your hometown hold? You're from Victoria originally, is that right? Yes, I live here. Well, it's really great to be having your world premiere in your hometown. I think it helps all of us who work here in film to be able to let people know that there's a really quite a large and active Indigenous community of documentary filmmakers here and not everyone knows that. When you think about the film industry, most people will think of feature films coming in from elsewhere to shoot here. Actually, there's quite a lot of projects and filmmakers that are happening right here all the time. Can we hear a little bit more about those and how that helps you out personally? There are quite a lot of documentary filmmakers who do social issue documentaries. I mean, a few I can name or asterisk productions that did a film called One Carlos and Reinventing the World, a series. I mean, May Street works out of here. They've just done a film on slavery that has been on PBS. Across Borders has done a number of things, the latest being a New Age to New Edge about environmentalists and the personal growth movement and how people are learning to change their approach to some of the conflicts that are inherent in that by working on themselves and how that helps me. Well, it's really useful to be part of a network. Most of what I've learned about making documentaries, I've picked up on the fly from other filmmakers who are more experienced than I am. Even though I took a broadcast course in my youth, mostly I worked in news and I've never actually gone to film school. So it's kind of, you know, an informal mentoring, which is wonderful. A lot of advice, a lot of generous people who will give you their time and lend you their gear. And so for somebody who's starting out and doesn't necessarily have the resources to be able to do everything themselves, it's absolutely invaluable. So you got more than a little bit of help along the way. Oh, I did. I got an enormous amount of help on this project. Before the NFB came on board, I was trying to figure out how I could get it funded myself, which in the Canadian broadcast climate is really difficult to do to get funding for social issue documentaries, especially something that's potentially dicey as, you know, the Canadian government's policies on things like sanctions in Iraq. So, I mean, I had no money to be able to pay a crew to be able to do things, but the story was developing and events were happening. And so, you know, people like Bill Weaver were willing to come out and do some shooting for me just on spec and not knowing whether they would ever get paid or if it would ever turn into a project. That must have been convenient. Well, it was more than convenient. It was a lifesaver because some of the events in the film were never going to happen again. I mean, this particular one was Derek Houston's mother and child art piece in Saanich that was being done. And if I couldn't have covered it, it would not have been filmed. What do you see as being the future of this film after it's shown at the film festival? Well, I hope it'll have a long future. It's been invited to a couple of festivals so far. There's one in Powell River that's a young festival, and I'm going to be taking it up there next week to show it to high school students. It's been invited to the Festival des Films de Arles in Montreal, which is a really prestigious festival that I feel quite honored to be part of. It's being submitted to the Amnesty International Festival in Amsterdam and a festival in Prague and a number of other ones that I haven't heard about yet, but, you know, it is an ongoing kind of thing. I hope that some broadcasters will be running it. We'd like to see it on air before the war happens, of course, but I have very little control over that. Tell us a little more about the content of the film. I'd like to hear more details about that. Well, the film is about Derek Houston, who is an artist who lives here in Victoria. He's primarily a landscape painter, and while he's not a household word like Robert Bateman, he's certainly collected both in Canada and internationally. He went to Iraq in 1999 as part of a peace group that was going to see firsthand how the sanctions against Iraq were affecting civilians, especially children. And he was, like everyone else on that trip, absolutely horrified with the state of things there, especially children dying of cancer with no painkillers and the lack of food and the destruction of the whole educational system and the infrastructure and everything. So when he came back from Iraq, he had a real need to speak up about it. He's always had an interest in social justice. After a while, he finally figured out that he could get more interest in what he was saying about Iraq by doing something that was a lot more kind of imaginative than just trying to talk to people. And so he launched a mother and child art project in which he's making these huge and really beautiful outlines of a mother and child in natural materials in different parts of the world. It was hay and sandwich. It was wildflowers and grasses in Scotland, and he's been building a peace sanctuary out of stone in northeastern BC. There's a little town called Hudson's Hope, which is really beautiful, and that's the main part of what we filmed. The film is about both his process as an activist and as an artist and turning the anger that he felt at the situation into something positive and a way to reach people in ways that maybe you don't in other kinds of media. You seem as a small producer in this field, so to speak, to be somewhat at the mercy of, well, financing. Of course, I'm sure that's true of everybody in this field, but I would guess that the small boats feel the currents more strongly than the ocean lighters. Oh, you're absolutely right there. Funding is increasingly a nightmare for documentary filmmakers. Had it not been for the NFB, I don't know whether this project would have been done. It took two and a half years for the story to unfold and broadcasters aren't necessarily willing to wait that long. I mean, what you have to do is get broadcast licenses, and when you have a certain percentage of your budget and broadcast licenses, you start applying for funds from all kinds of different government-related funds, and there are far, far more people applying for money than they have money to support. Well, that's always the case. I'm a friend. Well, it's like any other kind of art, certainly. You talked briefly about the context in which these films get made. You mentioned that your background was in news or media. I can't remember which term you used. How is this a departure from that? How is your new career different from your old career? You can be as specific as you like on this when I realize it's somewhat personal. That's a big question. Well, I spent 14 years working for CBC Television News in Edmonton and Vancouver. Since I moved to Victoria, I've been working as a freelancer doing medical education videos and then working on other people's documentaries. And I guess I would have to say the main difference between doing the broadcast news and doing documentary is the amount of depth that you're able to go into in documentary. In news, you have to try and get to the nub of the story in a couple of minutes. And there are lots and lots of nuances and lots of detail and lots of thoughtful analysis that you never have time for or room for. And the thing that I love about documentary is that I'm able to look into something for months on end and really think about it and talk to other people about it and try and find some different way of expressing the story that might immediately come to mind when you've got to pump something out every day. I've heard TV journalism and died before it's a lack of depth because of the time considerations. First in particular, who's working for a TV station in town, which will remain nameless, was limiting to me about having gone to journalism school for X years, only to get out and be told your job is to tell an in-depth story in 90 seconds. She was somewhat non-plus by that. Well, I can imagine. I mean, I guess maybe not every story needs that much in-depth, but there's certainly no time to really do any serious thinking about what you're doing when you have to come up with something every single day. But then there are also current affairs shows and documentary shows where you do get to see viewpoints that are a bit more complex gone into. Thank goodness, so far we still have that in Canadian television. So it's a broader palette. I would say so. I mean, certainly the CBC's got a number of documentary strands, like the passionate eye, for instance, I know Vision used to run a lot more documentaries than it does. That was the place where we all used to go for broadcast licenses because Vision did have a really good reputation for using documentaries that are about ethical issues quite broadly. And now they're a bit more narrowly focused on faith and religion than they were. So, you know, sometimes you can still do things there, but it's not as open as it was. You're speaking of the cable TV channel. Yeah, Vision. I think it's 52 now. Well, that's most of what I needed to know. If there's something else you'd like to add at this point, maybe mention some of the people who helped you out on the crew for this project. Oh, absolutely. The key grip, the gaffer, that sort of thing. Of course, I would like to acknowledge and thank Derek Houston, the subject of my film for trusting me with his story. It's a really major responsibility to reflect someone's story that way, especially someone you know personally. I was very lucky to have Mandy Leith as an editor. There's a saying that a good editor is partly technical and partly psychic and partly creative and Mandy is all that and more. There were a number of people who did the shooting. Doug Showquist in Vancouver is a freelancer and Bill Weaver here did some of the shooting. We're really lucky to find people who were on the peace tour with Derek in Iraq to be able to use some of their footage. And of course Tracy Friesen who was the producer at the National Film Board who got this project a few days after she started work there and has been really amazing in her ability to guide and make it all work out. So I'm really grateful for the film board's participation. Well, thanks again for coming out today. I appreciate it. Well, thanks for having me. You're listening to First Person Plore on CFUV 101.9 FM, Victoria. I'd like to start by getting your name for our listeners, the name of your film, and when the film is going to be shown during the film festival. Well, my name's Tony Snowsill and I am the director and writer of Criminal Act, which is a National Film Board documentary dealing with a theatre program at the William Head Prison. A local film as far as Victoria is concerned, but one I think that is of national interest because of the implications that exist for the treatment of prisoners and what they do for themselves. And I think possibly the importance of the arts in this case, theatre, assisting in the rehabilitation of inmates. The film is going to be shown on Saturday, February the 8th, that's this coming Saturday at 1pm at the Capital Six as a part of the Victoria International Film Festival. So I think it's actually the first day of screenings. I'm not entirely sure of that, but I think it is. This is actually its world premiere. Who did you have in mind for the audience for this film? Who did you envision seeing it? Who would you like to see it? Well, that's rather a difficult question in as much as, to say, an adult audience is very general. But I think that anybody who is interested at all in social issues of any kind would find this interesting. And I think most particularly in light of the kind of press that has been around the Canadian Correction Service, I think that they get a bad rap very often. There are people who believe that William Head, for argument's sake, is a real soft touch for the people who are living there. While it's certainly better than most prisons, it's still a prison. And one's life in a place like that is constrained. You mentioned that you thought that the film had national relevance? Yes, it does because there are implications in here for the role of the arts, I would say, and most particularly the role of theatre in rehabilitation. The kinds of things that spring from the inmates' involvement in the theatre society at William Head is that they develop communication skills that they might otherwise not have an opportunity to develop to the same degree. I think also the fact that they are really forced to cooperate in an environment where cooperation is generally at a minimum because people are protecting themselves. And most importantly, I think, is that once they get on stage, they have to lower their guard and lower the barriers and let people see them. And by see them, I mean they are open and vulnerable in that context because they're dealing with emotional issues very often on stage. And that's a very difficult thing to do in prison because it does make you vulnerable. I mean, it gives other people the opportunity to perhaps take advantage of a misinterpretation of those emotions that you're showing. You made your film in cooperation with the National Film Board, is that right? Well, the National Film Board produced it, and I directed and wrote it. Okay. How is working with the Film Board limited or enhanced your efforts to connect with the audience you have in mind? It's a great benefit to be working with the Film Board. First of all, the mere fact of financing documentary productions is very important in and of itself. And then having being relieved of the producing responsibilities and having somebody take those things on leaves one free to work as a director and writer. So, and we had a very good producer in Tracy Friesen. It's just a very good working relationship. The other thing too is that the Film Board has the means of disseminating it very, very widely and also publicizing it in ways that I probably would be unable to do myself. You're from Victoria. What particular advantages or disadvantages does showing your film in a festival in your hometown hold? I wouldn't say that there are any disadvantages. I think that there's a great advantage for the film industry in general here in Victoria. It's not very big, obviously, because this is a fairly small town. But there are more and more people moving and working here. I think largely because of such a hell of a nice place to live with the kind of technologies that are available now. Being off the beaten track a little bit isn't too much of a problem. One goes over to Vancouver for some of the post-production and so forth. It's rather a nice break, but I don't see that there's really any disadvantage to being in Victoria. Nor is there a disadvantage to showing it in a film festival here. In fact, I'm rather glad that it is being shown here first, because I think it's pretty nice to have a locally produced film, the locally made film, being premiered in one's hometown. Do you get over to Vancouver much? For business reasons, I mean. It's only in as much as film work takes us over there. There are obviously occasions when one needs to go over there, and that would be dealing with going to the film board or some of the other agencies that are in Vancouver. Also, most of the post-production facilities are over there that we would use. It sounds like you think Victoria is, quote, off the beaten track, close quote to use your words, only somewhat, and that it is in a good way. Is that generally the impression you've gotten from working here in the film industry specifically? Yeah, I mean, when I say that it's off the beaten track, what I mean by that is that for English Canada, the two major filmmaking centres are Toronto and Vancouver. A lot of the people that one would deal with are in Vancouver or Toronto. So you're away from that on a face-to-face basis. So I mean it's off the beaten track in that sense. But being away from, I suppose, the centre of things isn't much of a problem these days, as I said, because of the technologies that are available. Are you comfortable with most of the new technologies? My understanding, for example, is that film editing is done largely on computer nowadays and that 10 years ago that would have been unthinkable given the state of the technology at the time. Yeah, well, I think that there was an evolution here when, I mean, videotape itself has been around for a long time. But the technology to make it as totally portable as it is, you know, for recording purposes, that then also to be able to use it in post is a relatively new phenomenon. But the principles are fundamentally the same, whether one is editing film on a bench or on with a computer. One still has to structure, one has to consider how the film is going to be put together, how it's going to be structured. The editor still has the same problems to deal with, the same solutions to find. It's just that the technology is different. One is one is chemical, one's electronic. But creatively, it's essentially the same, although there are numbers of things that you can do very simply in contemporary technology, electronic technology that will far more come to some with film. So the difference is one that strikes you as relatively insignificant? Yeah, from a creative point of view, there isn't really much difference. It's just the mechanics are different. The end result is essentially the same. It's just that some of the processes are different. And it's just a matter of then understanding what those processes are in order to be able to use them as best as one can. How did you come to filmmaking? Is it something that you've done since childhood? Or did you have a career before this one, as it were? No, no, no. I came... A previous life, whatever you'd like to call it? Yeah, no, I came at it through television very, very early on when I first arrived in Canada. I'd been in... I'm from Australia and I'd spent a couple of years in Europe. And then when I came here, it was quite a long time ago, the 50s. Television wasn't all that old then. It was quite young. And I started working in the CBC. I just kept on going, I guess, with the way I put it. So it was just through starting in television when television was young. Television was young and I was young. And it just snowballed from there? Yeah, I mean, I stayed in the business and kept on... I just kept on working. I eventually went out on my own and made films independently. What do you see as the future of this film? Do you have any showings planned for it after this? Have you thought about television distribution at all? Well, the film board looks after that and they have it in front of some broadcasters now. And I'm sure that it will go to... probably go to other festivals as well. I would see it certainly being broadcast. I don't think there'll be much question of that. And I think it might have... this possibly might have resonance in the United States because what we see in this film is so totally different from the kinds of things that I think one would expect to see in a prison in the United States. I don't think you'd see anything like this. Because this is a very different philosophy, I think, towards incarceration that exists up here. But I do... I think that one of the things about the theater company itself, I think one would need an environment very similar to William Head and by that, I mean one where everybody's not locked down in separate little cells every night. As you probably know, they're housed at William Head and kind of condominium-style residences with half a dozen people to a house. And that fosters some cooperation to begin with. They have the freedom to move around 80 acres of ground when they're not either performing the duties that they have to while they're there or taking programs or whatever else is required of them. And so I think that the environment, the physical environment of William Head is conducive to perhaps more than another environment to the development of the theater company. And it's been going for 21 years, so I think that's a testament to it. The reason that it's been able to go on as far as I can make out is that it's always maintained by the people who have long-term sentences with all the lifers, that they provide a kind of continuity, that they may go away from it for a year or two, but then they come back. And there are people who are a member of that theater company now that have been there since and been actively promoting it in William Head in the time that I've been going out there, which is now well over three years. If you'd like to put in a plug for some of the other films you've done, now would be the time for that. Well, I spent a lot of time working in the Aboriginal community. And I've made a number of films around those issues, one on Aboriginal child welfare, another one which was called Our Children, Our Future, and another one called The Walk with Dignity, which was way ahead of its time because I made that some years ago and it was about Aboriginal self-government. I don't think too many people understood what we were talking about when I made that. Well, I thank you for the time and the interest. Sure. Thanks a lot for agreeing to speak with you today. Oh, no, that's my pleasure. That's my pleasure. To start off, I'd like to know more about what you do for Medianat, the sorts of things that you find yourself doing on a day-to-day basis. Well, I'm executive director of Medianat and I have been for about three and a half years. And it's changed a lot over that time because we grow in a lot during that time. So at the beginning I did everything from booking equipment to putting equipment out to actually running out of my house for a period of time. Now we have another staff person, so a lot of my time is spent raising money to keep the organization going to get the funding for the equipment, to get the funding to cover expenses for staff and office space. On a day-to-day basis, a fair amount of my time is spent on the phone with other people trying to set up things like programming that we want to bring in someone for a workshop or something like that, speaking with members about what they would like to see happen, and doing the finances. That's a fairly big chunk of time. And then working with the board and with the staff person to make sure that things like the equipment rental are working properly and we've got the policies that we need to have to make it all work and that things are evolving in the right direction. That's most of it. Does Medianat have an actual mandate? Yes, we do. We have a five-part mandate. I won't go into the whole thing, it's a bit long. The main part of our mandate is to assist film and video makers in making their work. And that's done primarily by providing equipment at extremely low cost for people. So a film maker, a video maker can walk out of Medianat with $30 or $40 or $50,000 worth of equipment. Obviously that would be very hard for them to either buy impossible or to rent at commercial rates. I want to clarify, they are expected to walk back with it at some point. They are expected to walk back with it. And actually it's been really interesting. We have had no troubles at all in four years. We've had basically no broken equipment, no lost equipment. It's very much an honor system. People are obviously insured and they're liable, but we've been incredibly lucky. That part has gone really well. So basically it's about access. So anyone who wants to make a video for whatever kind of moral purpose, ethical purpose can do that. Someone decides that they want to cover the piece march. Our cameras have been basically every piece march. If someone wants to be making a short dramatic production, they can take out the equipment and they'll have the lights, the sound, the camera, the editing gear. Everything that they need. So basically it means that anyone can be making video regardless of their level of economic means and that's really the central part of our mandate. Second to that would be assisting those people in terms of learning the skills. It's an incredibly complex medium to learn. There's just so many parts to it, from the sound to the light to the aesthetic parts of it. So we help people with that through workshops, through setting up a community where people are learning from each other, giving each other feedback on their work. And they're also crewing on each other's shoots. Then we also have workshops so that we bring in people with more expertise to assist people as well. And then it's also really important when you're making a film or video to see other work, that's good. So we bring in as much as we can in terms of screenings as well so people can see that. And we also have a more public face as well and that's been kind of slower up and running. But we've done some collaborative screenings with Sinus and Tifference and we'll be doing festivals in about a year's time. Best of the festival is bringing work from all across the country so people can see it. And Edges, which is a regional film festival, so we'll be showing the best of work from Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands in a festival specifically geared to showing local work. And that will have a broader appeal so that more people in the area can get a taste of what's going on in an independent film, both locally and across the country. And then we also have a public education mandate in terms of what kind of issues are happening in film and video and how can we assist with getting understanding about those issues out in the community so that some of the things that need to be changed can change. In what ways do you think the newer technologies are changing the production of media? They're changing it a lot. The main thing they're doing is they're democratizing the medium, which I think is a very good thing. It means that anyone basically with very little financial resources can now come and find a way to join Medianet or Cinevic and have equipment for little or no cost. They can pay for their tapes and they can make something. Now, they won't be necessarily paying their crew if they're doing that without any kind of funding, but things can be made for very little cost, and that wasn't the way that it was at all when it was just filmed as an option. So what it means is work can be made without having to go through the fairly strict and in terms of drama say, you know, write a script, get funding for a script from the certain places that funds scripts and then go out and get funding for the shoot and carry on kind of step by step, but needing funding agencies because you just can't make enough money to make the film yourself any other way, and that has now changed so that someone can make a film fairly inexpensively. It can also be a more experimentally oriented film because you can do things with video that you can't do very easily in film in a lot of ways and certainly it's not for low cost. You can go and get funding after the fact, so you might have a way of working that doesn't sell well on paper but would be incredible visually and you would have an opportunity to actually make that film and try and have it funded after the fact and then transferred to film for theatrical release or possibly not, just put it out there in a DVD format. So the expense is changing what is being made. A much more organic process is possible because many people can own or have frequent access to their own equipment in video. Then you can make a piece over a longer period of time instead of the traditional 28 day shoot and then you go into an edit. You can decide to make a feature. There was one at the Victoria Film Festival a few years ago that was a very interesting piece that was made over three years every second weekend with a digital camera. That's not the kind of thing you're going to be doing if you're usually working in film. It can happen but it would be much more rare. The look of film and video are different and individual artists really have to figure out how to make whichever one they're going to use. For them still the film look is preferable for most people for most purposes. Certainly when it's going to be projected that will be the case. That's less true when people are just looking at a TV release on something. So for the documentary makers, it hasn't really been a problem at all. I think it's been almost complete gain in terms of documentaries. Almost all of them are now made digital video. Video cameras are much less obtrusive and no one doesn't notice you when you're making a digital camera. So things like gorilla film making if you're in a different country or someplace here where you would be pretty obtrusive and perhaps not even allowed with a film camera or even a larger video camera. You can have a small video camera and blend right in. So it means there's places you can get to those events you can cover. And that's important both from what is covered in terms of the material that you can bring away. It's also very important in terms of the presence that is there, and I hope this as well that wouldn't be happening if people didn't have access to those kinds of things. At the WTO conference, for instance, there was a lot of footage that came out of there that told a lot of people what it was really like there. Excuse me, do you mean the Seattle conference? Yes, that's the Seattle conference. Yeah, there was a lot of video footage that came out of there. And I think that will have an impact in terms of people knowing they're being watched or at least I certainly hope so anyway. Also, it's more intimate, and you may have mixed feelings about that. It's probably somewhat easier for some people to speak in front of a video camera than if you have the whole shebang there. And just even the size makes a difference. You can travel with a video camera and have one after access all the time. You can be collecting images over time, so for people who are working experimentally or in documentary fashion where there's a lot of gathering of things that you may not know you're going to run into, that's also a real plus. Projection is still problematic in terms of video. It's getting better, but projection is problematic. I think that's one of the bigger hurdles that video has to overcome, and the technology is getting so much better fast that that is happening. At this point it's uneven at best. Sometimes you see a projected theatrical release and it's fabulous. You can't believe it's video. And sometimes you see it and it's not good. So that's still a problem. But it's still possible to shoot something and get it transferred to film afterwards. So that's an option people can go with. Distribution, it's changing the face of distribution a lot. It's very expensive to ship around film prints from all over the country at the same time. They have a theatrical release for anything. It's very expensive. Hollywood does fine with that because they have so much money to pump into advertising that at least a reasonable amount of the time they're going to fill the theaters. Distribution is very, very problematic. Many good features don't make it to the theaters at all or have a one-week release in a theater here or there. It takes something like Errat, for instance, Adam McGuinty's latest film. That was in the theaters for I don't think it was more than one or two weeks at Christmas. And it was an amazing film, an absolutely amazing film in terms of the wallop that it packed and the story that it told. Yet, if the crowds aren't coming out fast enough, it just doesn't stay. DVD or other digital means of putting work out in places, it costs nothing, basically, costs absolutely nothing and you can put it in an envelope and ship it. So it means that different kinds of venues can show work outside the normal system and that's a very positive thing and people can self-distribute their work. Also, things going on to the web is something that's happening a lot now. So there's a democratization there too now. There's still a problem of getting people to see their work. That's obviously a huge challenge, but it is physically much easier to distribute that video than a film. So I would say overall what video does is it's changing who can make film, it's changing what stories can be told, and it's changing the fact that it can be done outside the system. And I think that that's very good. How does one go about getting membership in MediaNet? Use phone 381-4428 and we can take care of you that way. Or our email is info at media-net.bc.ca Well, I have what I need. If there's anything else you'd like to add, here's your opportunity. Okay. Well, I think one of the things you mentioned was where does the Victoria fit in, in terms of Canada, into the whole picture. And I think historically we've had a very, very strong documentary community. There's been a constant stream of socially relevant documentary coming out of Victoria for 10, 15, 20 years in kind of increasing volume over time. And it's been broadcast all over the world and it's high quality work. That's very similar to what has happened in terms of Canada on a whole. The documentary work came first and the drama has come later. And that's the same thing that's happening in Victoria. The drama is happening slower than the documentary. And I think that the digital is what's really making a difference here. Because there's no movie industry here, people haven't been able to historically make a film by getting cheap roll-ins at the place that they shoot or that they're working in. And they can't get people to help them and call back in favors and make their first film. That hasn't been available to people in Victoria. But now that digital is happening, then people here have a lot more options to be making work. There's also a fairly decent experimental kind of strand here. I'll make a rick-rack on who shows work all over the world has been here for quite a long time. And there's a little strand of people on big stages, but that's also, I think, on the rise as well. And I think Victoria's going to see a real increase in terms of what's happening here, particularly in the drama and the experimental, because the doc is really already up to speed. And I think there's something about being away from the center of Vancouver and Toronto that has the potential to make different kinds of work be made here. And I think that we're going to see some interesting work coming up here. Well, thanks, Diane, for agreeing to speak with us today. You're very welcome. On CFUV, Victoria's Public Radio 101.9 FM, 104.3 cable, and on the internet, cfub.uvag.ca Giving Sociology an edge! Giving Sociology an edge! Giving Sociology an edge! Giving Sociology an edge! Giving Sociology an edge! Giving Sociology an edge! It was interesting to me to do these interviews this week, because they ended up having several themes. For instance, one thing was you can't do it by yourself. Not only did you need funding, but you also needed expertise. You needed a network. You needed people who could show up and help you film something even before you had everything in order. I mean, Sherri's story about having to cover, you know, get something filmed before she actually knew whether she could make the movie or not, and therefore, finding somebody who was willing to come out and film it, not knowing whether they were going to get paid or not, was an excellent example of what I'm talking about. That's a network that she had available to her. It was an informal network that she had available to her. And it was there because she was part of a community of filmmakers. And I think it's interesting to find out that a town as small as Victoria, and Victoria is pretty small by Canadian standards. Well, I'd say it's large by Canadian standards, small by American standards. It's just under 100,000 in the city and just over 300, I think, in the metro area. It depends on how you define the metro area, but for the sake of a one significant figure number, 300,000 is best. So anyway, here we are in Victoria, not a very big city. And yet it is obvious that there is a nice network going on amongst documentary filmmakers. And that network made it possible for a film to be made in this specific case and probably for many films to be made. So that's one thing. That was one thing. And that came through with Diane Cyril's interview as well because here's MediaNet, one of two collectives that we know of, and there might be more in the Victoria area. So if you don't automatically know a bunch of filmmakers or haven't informally networked into a bunch of filmmakers, here are some organizations that are available to you to connect with filmmakers through. That is expedient. Having to do the whole thing on a bootstrap basis would just be impossible, especially if you expected your film or video to be distributed rather than being the sort of thing that you keep around the house and don't actually show to anybody except when your friends are over and they're too drunk to get away with any repetitive. Making a film is one thing. Having somebody look at it is quite another. This is an issue we've run into making radio shows. You got your production, then you got your positioning. Yes, exactly. And I would guess that it's a hundred times worse for film and video people. And distribution has a lot of social context to it because films that well, social and economic, films that are made by big organizations in the major film industry that already have theaters connected to them. There are some theaters that are owned by the same companies that make movies. Their distribution problem is nothing. They either have the money to do the advertising to get people out in order to get theaters willing to show their films or they already own the theaters and they put it out in their own theaters. We used to call that a vertical monopoly when the New World Order came to pass. Yes. That was a big change in multimedia or in mass media, I should say, in the 1980s in the United States and that was that vertical monopolies were considered good? Well, not just considered good, but were allowed. I mean, it wasn't just that they were bad before they were illegal before. Well, I shouldn't speak to the statue then, but I'll speak to the culture. The rule in the 80s was oligopoly is good. The rule in the 90s was oligopoly is the only good. The rule in this decade has been if you say anything that implies oligopoly is not the only good, we're going to get you. So that's the dominant position. But what we've looked at this week with these filmmakers and talking to the executive director of one of the collectives is what the other people are doing. That the oligopoly would lead you to believe through their media campaigns that no other films are being made and that no other films are being attended. That there is no audience for the other films. But the truth of the matter there is that other films are being made and they're being made through other kinds of social capital than having a lot of money and having a distribution center. The differences in, quote, distribution clothes, quote, have become blurred since television came onto the scene. The original made for TV movie pointed to this. This was probably in the 40s because I know they were giving an Emmy for it in the late 40s for the best made for TV movie and then they stopped again for about 20 years and then started giving it again. And it points to the overlap between the two media. If you make a film that is shown in theaters and then later on television have you made it for the theater or for television? The answer is who cares. I would say with cable television, especially with the newer channels, and more blurred. Yeah, I would also say with the advent of the VCR. It used to be that you had to wait one or two years after a movie was released to actually see it on television. With the advent of the VCR, some movies are made for the theater. They don't work in the theater, so they go straight to video. Some marketer somewhere decides that they're better on video. So even if they were intended for a theater audience, they end up on your television screen in one way or another. I would say that the decision on that may even be made earlier in the production cycle. It may be that the filmmakers go into the film being told by their corporate masters. This one's going to the theaters for two weeks at most after that's going to video planned accordingly. And another example from semi-ancient history is the B-movie, which came to prominence in the 1950s. It's a low budget. It's going straight to the drive-in. And it's a place for pop to take mom and the kids on a Friday night. Just enough stimulation to get pop interested, but not so much that mom and the kids are offended or shocked out of their sensibilities, whatever those might be. These B-movies were put together by people who knew full well. They were going straight to the drive-ins and everybody knew it. So this sort of resignation occurs very early in the process, I would guess for the most part, the production process, and I would guess that it's not that new a thing. It's really easy to bitch about the oligopoly. But I think that it's very interesting to see that there are ways to counter that. And these two films that we talked about this week are the kinds of films that have to think about countering that. There's no way it's going to a drive-in. There's no way that it's going to a theater. So why make a film if the distribution is not going to be available to you? And the answer is you really believe in the film. And there are other ways to distribute a film than through the major dominant ways of distributing it. And I think it's interesting at this point that the National Film Board came up twice in talking to these filmmakers. We basically looked for filmmakers who were local, who were in the festival, and who were premiering new work. And what we came up with by looking at that were two filmmakers who were doing the world premiere next week. It turns out that both of these films were National Film Board films. We didn't go looking for National Film Board films, but it turned out that the two that were making their debut were. And I think that's very telling. Both of them talked about how distribution was the thing that the Film Board was going to help them win the most. That the Film Board was in fact capable of pushing the film into distribution into places that as filmmakers they would not have been able to do on their own. I mentioned the new cable channels earlier. I think that this is a medium by which democratization of production of media has been improved. People talk about the local cable monopolies, but in fact the local cable monopolies have to negotiate with municipalities to be the local monopolies. And the municipalities tighten the screws reasonably hard on them. The local cable monopolies don't have monopoly power. Well they do have monopoly power but it's a state sanctioned monopoly as it were. The state regulated? Yes, and the state meaning in this case the government of the municipality usually is pretty cagey about what they get in return for granting the monopoly. It's not democratization at the consumption end. It still costs money for cable television. And right away that's not going to be democratic. But in terms of production of media having 20, 25, 100 extra channels pretty much guarantees that if you put together a reasonably good film and you've gotten some reasonably good financing or funding or simple let's call it distribution assistance that someone somewhere is going to show your film. Maybe it'll only be viewed by 500 people at the first airing but someone's going to see it. It's going to be out there and the option I point out, the option to view it will be there for anyone who subscribes to whatever channel it winds up on. This in addition to the usual film distribution media. Yeah, but there are other distribution channels and I think that the festival is an interesting example of that but it's not the only example. Like Sherry mentioned that the film board would make the film available to peace groups who wanted to talk about the question of sanctions in Iraq. Sometimes that can get you more viewers than the television viewing. I mean you have 500 people who are subscribing but if you show a film at grassroots groups all throughout Canada and each one of them has like 50 or 100 people attending you can beat that that 500 mark fairly quickly and you can beat it in a much more intimate setting in which it might even be possible for the filmmaker to be present in order to discuss the film. That has I think a stronger social effect in the sense that it's not just passive viewing but it's interactive discussion and therefore it sticks with the viewer longer. It's not just a film that you saw it's something that you got engaged in that you talked about and I think that distribution doesn't get talked about very much in major media outlets. Possibly. There's already a market for the not quite a theater not quite somebody's home video technology. They talk about it in terms of home theater systems and big screen TVs but these are becoming popular not just in family settings so called but with the small groups you describe. It's not quite having a theater it's not quite the technology you get at the multiplex but at the same time it's better than sitting at home watching on the 19 inch or 13 inch or whatever you have. And as the multiplexes start throwing in more bells and whistles the gap is going to get greater still and the niche in the middle the quote intimate setting close quote that you mentioned is going to be one that's filled by more and more technological producers. You see them already in sports bars and community centers all sorts of places and the hook here is very simple come watch this program on a better screen than you have at home. Yeah it was interesting and Diane was talking about the difference between film and video in part being about what was projected and what wasn't. That film projects better onto a big screen than video does. I know that I took a course in 1994 that was discussing sort of the future of television and the future of film and one of the things that was predicted then that I see beginning to happen is that as the technology for flat screen television got better and especially high definition TV which were already seeing some channels broadcast strictly in high definition television and a push is being made now to get consumers to go out and purchase high definition televisions as that moves towards completion if you will from a consumer point of view what's going to happen is you're going to see theaters opening up that have huge plasma flat screens that show digitally created films so the movies are going to actually be digital and they will be as aesthetically pleasing as what we've seen on big screen filming with projection and this is on purpose in other words the people who make these things made a goal back 10 or 15 years ago to move towards pushing high definition television so that they could indeed sort of blend the public screening of things on large venues on large television you know large digital screens and not lose what they had with big screen projection and that way you don't have to worry about whether you're making a movie to be distributed in theater versus making a movie to be distributed via television it really blurs the lines and that's what they were hoping to do is really blur the line that way they have multiple distribution channels available to them what I think is really interesting though is that by doing this they've actually developed technology that's more accessible but I think that a kind of I don't like to use the word democratization that Diane used but there is a kind of leveling of the playing field going on through these new technologies and what's interesting is right now it's actually more expensive to be a consumer of these technologies like a plasma television costs you an incredible amount of money it depends on how much you want to spend you can spend almost any amount of money you want five figure prices are not in common for the high-end models yeah and that'll get cheaper I mean you know how new technology does that in the marketplace but creating the digital film has actually gotten a lot less expensive so it's actually more accessible on the production end than it is on the consumer end particularly if you're smart enough not to buy all the equipment yourself if you were a producer which is where these collectives come in yes the whole idea behind them is to make it possible to swap off equipment in some sort of organized manner so I guess one of the things I picked up then as a sociologist is that there was this kind of technology taking on a life of its own in the social world this is something that Neil Postman talks about in his book Technopoly where technologies get made for specific purposes but they morph into other things the example he gives in the book is a clock we think of clocks as very much connected to you clock into work, you clock out of work that clocks were invented to help us schedule our time for our secular lives industrialism and if that's not a word it should be but do you know who invented the clock I don't know who invented it monks monks invented the clock I think it was in France I can't remember for sure in order to mark the points in the day when they wanted to pray so the technology was actually intended for religious purposes the point is that the technology started out being for one purpose but it's being used for other purposes and I see that happening with digital technology the access that people have now to digital cameras to the software to create films to create small works of film has opened up in a way that the inventors of the technology never really envisioned it happening you have been listening to First Person Plural because how people get along with each other still matters First Person Plural is a show created for Community Radio by Carl Wilkerson and Dr. Paddy Thomas to examine social and organizational issues First Person Plural is performed, composed and produced by Carl Wilkerson except we're noted for more information about First Person Plural Dr. Paddy Thomas or Carl Wilkerson visit our website www.culturalconstructioncompany.com or email us at fpp at culturalconstructioncompany.com