BlogFox

I’m very excited to point everyone to this new Kickstarter, months in the making, to try and help us provide hundreds of free copies of “Billy Bishop Goes to War” in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of World War I.

The lack of a commercial quality, physical DVD for “Billy Bishop” has been something that’s been really frustrating over the past few years, as that’s the only format that veterans organizations and veterans care facilities ask if we can provide them (few are set up to work with iTunes or other electronic platforms). I’m incredibly hopeful that with everyone involved in the film on board and the support of the great “Billy Bishop” fan base, we can make a small gesture of thanks this November to amazing service members and worthy organizations, and contributors can get some cool stuff as well.

Even if you don’t have any space in the budget this month, sending out a tweet, e-mail, or facebook post would be hugely appreciated as well.

There’s a nice little video with myself and the great Eric Peterson over at the kickstarter so go watch how terrible an actor I look like next to someone who is really, really, really, good at being in front of a camera.

Hi all!

People seem to be liking the film industry / history writing I’ve been doing over at Quora, so if you’re one of the folks mad I don’t have more time for long-form industry ramblings these days, there might be something there to scratch your itch?

Here’s a list of every Quora I’ve answered as one gigantic list

Or here’s a few direct-links to whet your appetite:

• Are movies earning money during their theatrical runs faster than 20 years ago? How is this changing the theatre business?
• What movie has the most on-location international settings?
• Why does the cinema industry still support flat and scope aspect ratios now that 35mm is dead?
• Why do movies look smooth at 24fps, but video games look all choppy?
• How did TIFF become such an important international film festival?
• How can you tell if a movie is a “success” or not?
• Is “Box Office” the same thing as “Profit” (NO, NO, NO, stop doing this random people on the internet!)
• How much does it cost to license a song for a movie?
• What’s it like to be a film producer?
• Does anyone still do test screenings in the age of the Internet?
• How can I self-distribute a film I made?
• If Box Office doesn’t equal profit, is this because of this dodgy “Hollywood Accounting” I’ve heard so much about (Arrrrgggh)
• What is the purpose of those coloured pieces of plastic on film set lights?

And many, many, (many) more… including topics as disparate as Toronto chicken bylaws, or (possibly the most read thing I’ve ever written in my life) 90 words about the history of Scooby-Doo.

The Internet everyone!

Hey everyone,

Sorry there hasn’t been much updated on this front. Tonnes of interesting developments to chat about in the ever-crazy media world – and not enough hours in the day. As I race pell-mell towards the end of the year, I really do want to make getting this space into some kind of shape one of my new years goals.

In the meantime, if you’re really wanting more of my patented media babbling I’ve written a tonne of possibly interesting stuff over at Quora.com including bits on the transition to digital screens, why sound often gets short shrift in micro-budget film-making, feature film format and theatre profitability, and some realities about the shrinking home video market.

Hopefully that will keep you busy in the meantime. As well you can always see what I’m up to in more granular detail over at @blogfox – my twitter handle.

And, finally, can I humbly suggest that the shiny new iTunes version of Billy Bishop Goes to War would make an amazing holiday gift for many on your shopping list with a passion for Canadian military or theatre history (or both!) (or neither!!). I’m still amazingly proud of this feature film, and want to see it get into more Canadian homes. What Eric Peterson and John Gray do in that film is phenomenal… how often do you get to see a film that’s been polished for 30-odd years by it’s creators?

Happy holidays everyone and let’s get the joint jumping again in the new year!

NB: Oh yeah that creepy photo is courtesy of the most recent issue of “Fine Cut”, which interviewed me about the reality of piracy in Canadian indie media – check that out too…

Kickstarter raising millions for creative projects, prospective donors lining up with their wallets out, does the age of “Crowd Financing” shepard in an exciting new era of film financing? Actually I think there’s some potential troubles there worth talking about. To the shiny new videoblog thing! [Read more →]

I’ve been talking a lot on Twitter about trying to find a new format to talk about issues in film and television and it’s finally time to share this “very-much-still-a-work-in-progress” experiment called Video BlogFox!

Episode Fun Fact ™: Yes, I absolutely shaved and put that shirt on specifically to resemble my cartoon avatar as much as possible.

“Google Fail” posts usually have absolutely nothing to do with what I normally blog about, but are attempts to fill gaps in the mighty collective internet knowledgebase. They are triggered by rare cases where Google has failed me in my search to find some piece of information, or easy instruction on how to do something, and I’ve had to solve the problem myself like in “the olden days” (with hardtack, and liberal application of cholera).

I’ve been using the excellent “Disqus” WordPress plugin for a number of websites, but have been increasingly frustrated that there didn’t appear to be an easy way to modify the shorthand comment count links that appeared in the themes (usually “0 Comments”, “1 Comment”, or “# Comments”). Traditionally in WordPress this would be done through simply modifying the comments_popup_link function in the theme. However because Disqus overwrites this link any customization to this function (like not displaying “0 Comments” at all) were ignored. [Read more →]

I thought this was a big hit?

Hey all – I’ve been working on a bold Blogfox experiment for this month, which I was hoping to roll out this week – but that’s been back-burnered for a few days… so I’ve given myself ten minutes to jot down a couple of things I *have* to get down regarding “ye olde funnybooks” before they become too dated: One is about the value of a “hit” in any media, and the other is how to really look at “profit margins” when comics publishers move into digital distribtuion. Napkin calculations ahoy! [Read more →]

Now that I’ve, hopefully, made a passable argument that dynamic and varied story engines were not a strength of 1980s kids television – let’s look at a different, but related, aspect of those shows (and kind of the underlying point of this whole series of posts) – The Universes they were set in. [Read more →]