Ava DuVernay’s Array teams with Google for $500,000 filmmaker grant

Ava DuVernay’s arts and social impact collective Array has continually made good on its mission to amplify the careers of underserved creatives and crew members in film and TV, with a number of initiatives across its various production, distribution, and nonprofit arms. Now Array is extending its reach even further with the help of Google. Announced today, June 2, Array is partnering with Google Assistant to offer a $500,000 grant to an emerging filmmaker. The Array + Google Feature Film Grant, which is specifically geared toward creatives from historically underrepresented communities, is intended to cover the production costs of a filmmaker’s first feature and will be staffed through Array Crew , the collective’s database for hiring below-the-line workers. “Our nonprofit organization Array Alliance has had a strong relationship with Google for a couple of years through various initiatives,” DuVernay says. “This partnership came about pretty organically as both teams discussed the furthering and fostering of equitable moviemaking.” The recipient of the grant will be selected by an advisory committee within the independent filmmaking community, including Gabrielle Glore, festival director and head of programming at Urbanworld; Francis Cullado, executive director of Visual Communications Media; Crystal Echo Hawk, founder and executive director of IllumiNative; María Raquel Bozzi, senior director of education and international initiatives at Film Independent; and Smriti Kiran, artistic director of the Mumbai Film Festival. “It was important because we truly believe in collaboration and the community model at Array,” DuVernay says of opting for an outside committee instead of an internal selection process Read More …

This startup lets you make money like an Airbnb host—for screening movies

Back in early March of 2020, Christie Marchese was feeling good. She’d just received a $100,000 investment for a new company that was set to launch that month. Her plan was to apply the Airbnb model to the movie industry and turn individuals into movie screening “hosts” who would be given the tools to organize film screenings in places like churches and community spaces. This would bring smaller, independent films to areas of the county they might not normally travel to, and also allow filmmakers and others to help build a bigger audience for a film that, say, was only destined for streaming.   “Our thought was, can you have a movie theater chain that distributes independent films, foreign-language films, to a much wider network of theaters that aren’t traditionally theaters? Where you don’t have to show a movie five times a day for three weeks to barely break even?” says Marchese, who’d already dabbled in the entertainment space as the founder and former CEO of Picture Motion, a social impact agency that builds campaigns around TV shows and films. “So can we use mixed-use spaces? And can we create a financial model that encourages entrepreneurship or that taps into that—to sound super cheesy—gig economy? Where someone could make $500 hosting a movie one night a week? That’s pretty good money.”   [Image: Kinema] Then, of course, COVID-19 hit. Suddenly a company built around in-person gatherings was an unsustainable proposition. Marchese’s dream of disrupting the movie theater business was put on hold. But rather than wait the pandemic out, she turned to her CTO, Tim Knight, and asked, “can you build a virtual cinema?”   After all, people might not be able to attend a live, screening of a film, but they could attend one digitally. Knight came up with a prototype for a digital platform with built-in, live text chat and video broadcasting capabilities so that after a film is streamed, audiences can participate in a panel discussion or virtual chat with a filmmaker Read More …

What performing magic over Zoom taught me about the beauty of illusion

I’m sitting in front of a computer while holding nine playing cards and looking at a gallery of frozen faces. Moments ago, I was performing an interactive card trick for a hundred people  as part of my virtual magic show. But my internet cut out and now I’m waiting for Zoom to reconnect. I assume everyone watching is holding nine playing cards and waiting for further instructions. It’s a real-life version of a recurring nightmare in which I step offstage to retrieve a missing prop and can’t find my way back. This isn’t the worst thing to happen during the almost 250 virtual magic shows I’ve conducted since the pandemic shut down live performances. During a corporate show last April, because of an IT slip up, a participant was made the meeting’s host. Not a huge issue, except the person in question had left his eight-year-old son Max to watch the show alone. As my performance continued, Max muted and unmuted me, then paused my video to share his progress in a computer game. He would switch on my video and let me continue for thirty seconds only to switch it off again Read More …

Why Amazon’s $8.5 billion acquisition of MGM should be blocked

In Tuesday’s announcement of Amazon’s $8.5 billion acquisition of MGM—the historic film studio behind the Rocky , Legally Blonde , and James Bond  franchises—Mike Hopkins, senior vice president of Prime Video and Amazon Studios, naturally dropped two major Hollywood buzzwords.   “The real financial value behind this deal,” Hopkins said, “is the treasure trove of” —ding-ding-ding— “ IP in the deep catalog that we plan to reimagine and develop together with MGM’s talented team. It’s very exciting and provides so many opportunities for high-quality” —ding-ding-ding— “ storytelling .” Yes, in the latest proposed media merger, intellectual property will be married with innovative storytelling to create a company like no other. This has never been done before . . . if you don’t count Disney, Comcast, Sony, ViacomCBS, or the 10-day-old prospective merger of Warner-Discovery. Indeed, just as Marvel and Star Wars spin-off TV shows now populate Disney Plus, prepare yourself for a Rocky -themed reality-TV show (with real boxers!) and as many Bond prequels as Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson (the highly protective producers of the franchise) will allow for, to roll out on Amazon Prime Video.   What is more worrisome, though, is the even greater monopolistic foothold that this deal gives one of the world’s richest and most powerful companies, one whose market cap is not in the billions but trillions. Now, beyond just selling its own products, like baby oils, in its own marketplace and thus edging out smaller, independent businesses, Amazon will be doing the same thing with movies and TV shows at a scale of 10 times what it’s currently been doing in entertainment. Read More …

The blockbuster global success of ‘F9’ exposes the myth of streaming’s inevitability

As COVID-19 has turned Hollywood upside down, leading to new levels of disruption-seeking, what constitutes “radical” thinking seems to have no ceiling. Most notably, WarnerMedia decided to throw its entire 2021 slate onto HBO Max (alongside their theatrical release), a move that precipitated the $43 billion spin-off of WarnerMedia with Discovery last week. Other studios may be less audacious, but every studio in town is treating movie releases like advanced calculus, hauling in the analysts and Harvard MBAs to try to divine the best strategy to launch their precious, $200 million pieces of intellectual property out into the COVID-tattered world. Generally, the answer lies in a tepid solution—a hybrid of streaming and theatrical—that attempts to cut losses but, at least this far along in the pandemic, tends to give some kind of a boost to new streaming services.   Given this environment, Universal’s decision to release F9 in theaters only last weekend—with no streaming option—is perhaps the most radical move of all. Yes, that’s right: putting a movie in a theater where people can sit in a socially distanced way to eat their popcorn and enjoy the show is suddenly the new vanguard. [Photo: Universal Pictures] Even bolder: The “wild” experiment worked. Last weekend, the latest in the Vin Diesel-fueled action franchise racked up $162 million in foreign markets including China, Korea, and Hong Kong, a number that is not that far off from “normal” box-office figures in those areas for a Fast and Furious film. This makes it not only a COVID-19 anomaly, but the first and biggest sign yet that studios can start nudging the MBAs toward the door and start to re-embrace the good ol’ fashioned but still proven box-office model. Read More …