Latest posts from National Screen Institute - Canada (NSI)

The National Screen Institute – Canada (NSI) is pleased to bring its newest training initiative in partnership with TELUS Optik Local to Kelowna and Prince George, British Columbia on April 9 and 10.

These free workshops, entitled FROM CONCEPT TO CAMERA: Developing Your Story for the Screen, take place in Kelowna at the Rotary Centre for the Arts, 421 Cawston Avenue on April 9 and in Prince George at the Prince George Civic Centre, 808 Canada Games Way on April 10, both from 1 to 6 p.m.

Presented by TELUS in association with NSI, the workshops will address the development process from concept to camera. Training is delivered by NSI facilitators Brian Casilio, Mike Fly and Angela Heck. The workshop is open to the diverse community of producers and content creators in the Kelowna and Prince George areas.

Emerging filmmakers and mid-career professionals are encouraged to attend this professional development opportunity to help develop their own projects and network with other filmmakers and content creators. TELUS will also provide information about its TELUS Optik Local grants and TELUS STORYHIVE.

Training will cover script and story development with Brian Casilio, development and production with Mike Fly and marketing and distribution with Angela Heck. The day will conclude with a networking reception.

The workshops are free of charge but registration is required.

To register for the Kelowna or Prince George workshops, email your name, contact information and the city you’re registering for to: [email protected] by April 7.

About TELUS Optik Local

TELUS Optik Local supports compelling, original stories told by filmmakers from BC and Alberta by providing production funding, training and exposure to new audiences. Programs are distributed for free on TELUS Optik TV on Demand and online.

About the National Screen Institute

Renowned for having given many emerging filmmakers, television writers and producers their first breaks, the National Screen Institute provides training and production support through courses like NSI Totally Television, NSI Drama Prize, NSI New Voices, NSI Features First, Movie Central Script to Screen, Shaw Media Diverse TV Director, NSI Aboriginal Documentary, TELUS STORYHIVE and TELUS Optik™ Local.

NSI also offers exposure through the NSI Online Short Film Festival and provides vast resources and support to those in the film, television, and digital media industry at nsi-canada.ca.

All media enquiries

Laura Friesen, Manager, Communications & Alumni Relations
Tel: 204.957.2999 or email: [email protected]

Congratulations to the following NSI grads who picked up awards in Toronto this past weekend at the Canadian Film Festival.

NSI Drama Prize film Divorce Photographer (pictured), from writer/director Christine Buijs and producer Shannon Fewster, received a special jury prize.

Jeremy Lalonde and Jordan Walker (NSI Totally Television) won best feature for How to Plan an Orgy in a Small Town. The film also won a best actress award (Joey King), best ensemble cast and best costume design.

Dusty Mancinelli and Harry Cherniak (NSI Features First) won best short for Winter Hymns. Dusty also won best director and the film won best cast in a short film.

Sean Garrity (NSI Features First) won best director for Borealis.

We read a lot of stuff each week. Here’s a few bits ‘n bobs from the past couple of weeks packed neatly into one post for your convenience. Happy reading!

• • •

‘Peter and Wendy’ and the perils of crowdfunding a web series

It’s supposed to be a golden age for digital entertainment, but one popular web series is facing the harsh reality of crowdfunding your way to creative freedom. The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy (pictured) won a 2015 Geekie for best scripted series, was nominated for a Streamy Award, and received press coverage in Entertainment Weekly and USA Today. But now it’s hit a wall. Read the full story

The biggest quirk about Canadian Netflix users

Canada was the second country to get Netflix, but it has always felt insecure about its catalog of titles, according to CEO Reed Hastings. Hastings told Wired that every Netflix country has its own quirks, and that Canada’s is that its Netflix subscribers constantly think the depth of their streaming catalog is inferior. Read the full story

Evolution of TV: measuring TV and video audiences across all screens

As TV viewership shifts online to over-the-top services and connected devices, audience measurement models need to evolve. In Think With Google’s latest Evolution of TV article, they explore how combining TV panel-based ratings with digital census-based data will enable marketers to understand an ad’s effectiveness in detail. Read the full story

Report reveals top 5 online activities of Canadians

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announced they have added a public opinion research report to the public record of its proceedings, in turn revealing a bit about how people in Canada use their computers and phones. The research gathered results through a questionnaire completed by more than 30,000 Canadians and found some surprising results. Read the full story

Meet the stars of Snapchat with thousands of followers and eye-popping earnings

Once dismissed as a sexting app, Snapchat has swelled into a messaging and digital-video powerhouse valued at $16 billion. Snapchat stars get paid to temporarily take over a brand’s official account on the app, or to create original programming and interactive campaigns, which the brands sponsor. Read the full story

Congrats to NSI grads Lauren Corber (NSI Totally Television) and Joe Kicak (NSI Drama Prize) who received funding as part of BravoFACT’s latest announcement.

Lauren got money for Bickford Park and Joe got money for Must Kill Karl.

Bickford Park is about a woman who secretly starts taking skateboarding lessons from a handsome teenager to avoid dealing with the problems in her marriage.

Must Kill Karl is about a group of friends who decide enough is enough with their ‘friend’ Karl – he’s that one friend in every group who shows up uninvited, drinks all your booze and hits on your girlfriend.

Devoted teenage boyfriend Marshall worries his girlfriend Iris, who has Asperger’s Syndrome, might be losing her grip on reality when she tells him she sees another world.

Creative team

Writer/director/producer: Simone Stock
Writer/producer: Jay Randall
Producers: J. Miles Dale, Misha Skoric

Filmmaker’s statement

When my own son was diagnosed – incorrectly as it came to pass – with autism, my desire to explore silent and marginalized voices came into bloom. Iris is my second in a series of films about young people with autism and the people that love them.

The modern teenage world often leaves young people with Asperger’s Syndrome – a neurological disorder on the milder end of the autism spectrum – behind. The intense social dynamics of teen life, rich in subtlety and nuance, are foreign territory for Asperger teens. They exist at the social margins, many lonely and depressed.

Girls with Asperger’s syndrome exhibit behaviors very different than boys. They are prone to extreme anxiety, especially in social situations and will often retreat into elaborate fantasy worlds of their own making where they find comfort.

Iris is a window on the turbulent world of the aspie teen girl.

About Simone Stock

Writer/director Simone Stock was nominated in 2012 for TIFF’s best short for Motown Morning, made at AFI.

Her short Iris won Muskoka Film Festival’s best Canadian film prize and has screened at many festivals including Cannes.

Second unit work has taken Simone to the Arctic shooting a baby polar bear (Midnight Sun), throughout Rwanda (Shake Hands with the Devil), rural China for Chow Yun Fat-starrer The Children of Huang Shi and, most recently, London for the feature adaptation of bestselling book A Street Cat Named Bob.

Her screenplay Little Big Fish won Whistler Film Festival’s China-Canada gateway screenplay competition in 2014 and is in development with Zhao Zhiping of Beijing Guoyingshengshi Culture Communication.

Simone is currently writing sci-fi feature Polaris, shepherded by Vancouver’s WIDC program and Toronto’s WIFT script incubator program.

Maria has to understand her own expectations as she’s invited into the already warm relationship of Adrian and Alana.

An intimate look at one woman’s need for independence and intimacy.

Creative team

Writer/director: Natty Zavitz
Producers: Natty Zavitz, Jon Riera, Connor Illsley

Filmmaker’s statement

Onto Us was originally a short story that many friends told me privately that they related to. The friends who were finding an independence to their sexuality and the friends in relationships who were looking to expand the sexual limits of their commitment.

The film tries to observe rather than judge.

Shooting it made a bleak January day much warmer.

About Natty Zavitz

Natty Zavitz’s relationship with film began when he insisted on having the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup screened for his sixth birthday party. And then his seventh, eighth and ninth.

Raised in the Toronto storytelling community, Natty’s approach to film is rooted in honesty and narrative progression drawing major inspiration from Rohmer and Linklater.

He studied performance and writing at the University of Guelph and acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. His first feature screenplay Talk Like A White Boy is in development with Peter Harvey Productions with Andrew Hines attached to direct.

He has written and directed the short film Onto Us starring Laysla De Oliviera, Paula Brancati and Andy McQueen.

Acquainted, which he wrote, will be his feature directorial debut. It’s a bittersweet romance about not-so-young love.

A mourning pre-teen girl reconnects with her father.

Creative team

Writer/director/producer: Johnathan Sousa
Producer: Michelle Arvizu

Filmmaker’s statement

This is a film about love, loss and trust. The perfect recipe for a lasting relationship.

When I wrote this piece I asked myself this question: Can we adjust to losing the source of all our love? Our ‘heart’s Google’ so to speak; the place we go to for all the answers about life?

The film is created in the postmodern ‘splice of life’ style – desaturated, shot mostly with natural light on a 50mm lens, to allow for a voyeuristic experience, with the characters and their inner struggles becoming the focus of the piece.

Accompanied by a naturalistic sound design and an earthy woodwind tone score, Withheld is both heartwarming and thought-provoking.

About Johnathan Sousa

Johnathan Sousa has been in the Canadian film industry for just over five years. Originally a Ryerson Theatre graduate, Johnathan first found his love for film as part of the Actors Conservatory at Norman Jewison’s Canadian Film Centre.

Since then he has starred in such films as Ingrid Veninger’s The Animal Project, Relative Happiness, What We Have and Kidnap Capital.

Withheld is Jonathan’s directorial debut.