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Featured, Industry News

If a Mad Men fell in the Canadian TV forest, would it make a sound?

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In ancient Twitter times, maybe a year ago, a discussion popped up: where’s Canada’s Mad Men? Why can’t we produce something so excellent, so embraced by critics and audience?

My answer: we have. We had it before Mad Men. But we have to scale down our thinking from Hollywood levels.

Slings & Arrows was an intelligent, fun, carefully crafted series, and a critical favourite. I posit there is no show better, Canadian or American or Mexican. Girls is no cleverer or funnier or well-loved than Michael: Tuesdays & Thursdays. Durham County, Intelligence, Call Me Fitz, Less Than Kind – we have shows that in another country, with a larger population base, and not as overshadowed by the Hollywood machine — in a country with a healthy TV industry and more diverse media — these shows might have received the same kind of attention as a Homeland in the US or a Luther in the UK.

A crucial element to sustain these critical darlings, however, is buzz. Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Girls, all have tiny audiences compared to a network hit — even an NBC hit — yet command a much greater percentage of critical and social media attention than an NCIS.

The problem: Canada’s population base is 10 times less than the US. Canada’s TV critic community is even tinier per capita. Canadians consume American media, including television criticism, while our critics are time-sharing their attention with American shows. Homegrown TV is crowded out of every thought-space.

It’s easy to say Canadian media should write more about Canadian shows, but it starts to become a no-profit endeavor very quickly, and the Canadian media are struggling with that well enough now. They check in with the hits, and their favourites, but there’s little checking in beyond once a season, never mind the kind of obsessive episodic analysis that’s become a staple for American critics.

My direct comparative experience is out of date now, but when you get over a thousand people clicking on an article about House and over a dozen clicking on an article about Intelligence, you have to have a certain will – one not driven by chasing ads – to persist in writing about a low-rated but thoughtful Canadian series.

Audiences aren’t talking much either, because a cult audience in Canada is a microcult spread over 10,000,000 km2. There are pockets of chatter on social media, and if a particular show is in your bubble you’re bound to see talk of it, but there’s little spreading to the greater water cooler out in the wild.

We notice loudly when the Canadian TV industry produces more mediocrity. Let’s listen for the excellence falling among us too. Because in Canada, we have to listen very carefully to hear it.

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Awards, Featured, Flashpoint

Flashpoint’s Mark Ellis & Stephanie Morgenstern on Winning the WGC Showrunner Award

Flashpoint
On Monday, the Writers Guild of Canada held their annual awards ceremony and handed the prestigious Showrunner Award to Flashpoint creators Mark Ellis and Stephanie Morgenstern.

What does winning the Showrunner Award mean to you, coming off the heels of Flashpoint’s final season?

Five years of working on a show you love, that’s like five giant scoops of ice cream.  Having the luxury of ending a show on your own creative terms, that’s like getting whipped cream on top.  Seeing so many colleagues rewarded with nominations and awards for the bar-raising work they did on the show – work that made the rest of us look great just by association – that’s covering the whole thing in sprinkles.  And we couldn’t imagine a sweeter cherry on top than this very unexpected award … the most prestigious thing a TV writer can hope for.

When you started Flashpoint, did you ever think the series would get to the level it did, and find the audience reach that it ended up with?
Not at all.  Especially as the show was originally a two-hour MOW about a sniper dealing with the traumatic aftermath of his first kill … a very different project than the 75-hour episodic series it turned into.

From the beginning, we aspired to the white-knuckle suspense of 24 and the succulent, saturated production values of CSI Miami – which we explicitly referenced when we first pitched our ideas to CTV.  But the transformation from the slightly darker original premise into a more commercial “action procedural”‘ happened fast and smoothly, once CTV reconsidered it as a series.  That groundwork was laid in intense creative collaboration with EPs Anne Marie La Traverse and Bill Mustos, as well as our original executives from CTV – and when CBS joined up early in the process, they obviously brought a lot to the table as well, based on their strong track record in sustaining procedurals over many years.  What emerged from this was a formula that we hoped would welcome new viewers every week with a self-contained story, while rewarding the more committed fans with “loyalty points” – those story moments that add up to the more complex, slow-burn, (ideally) addictive character arcs where you have to keep coming back to find out what happens next.

We had ambitious hopes of course, but from where we stood, the level of success the show eventually hit wasn’t even on the landscape of realistic possibility at that time.  Especially for a show so firmly resolved not to pretend to be American.  But these were (and are) changing times in TV.  And the mountains that our EPs moved to make it happen, the way they pushed for the highest standards from every technical and artistic department, and the awesome, visionary talent of our signature director David Frazee launched the show with a level of polish and unapologetic swagger we didn’t often see then on homegrown shows.  US and international audiences aside, what we’re proudest of is that Canadians watched it in serious numbers, and (from what we hear from the fans) that they felt it was theirs.

What was the biggest challenge that you faced as showrunners in making this series?

When the pressure hits – and pressure is pretty much a constant on a speeding train like a TV show – it can feel overwhelming.  There’s so much time-sensitive business to stay on top of.  The toughest thing to remember, even in the darkest times – when you’re sure this is the episode that’s going to break you, when you literally don’t know how you’re going to keep breathing – is that it’s just a show.  It’s just TV.

Your blank computer screen may not fill fast enough, you could fail to find a brilliant yet diplomatic compromise between all the creative voices needing to be heard, you could disappoint everyone and never work again.  But there are human beings out there who risk a heck of a lot more every day than a missed deadline, some who are busy facing life-threatening danger in fact, not in fiction.  So you get over yourself and get back to work.

We learned the best way to do that is to step back, breathe deeply, and remember why you love what you do.  Re-read your original pitch document, the one that was so full of passion and ambition.  Remember that your dream to have a shot at making a show actually came true.  The risk of a long-running show is that in the chaos and storm of its practical demands, you forget why you began, the fire you once had to push this boulder up the hill.  In our own case, every time we reconnected with the real people from our fictional world, every time we dipped back into research, the inspiration came back stronger than ever, which made the struggle feel manageable and (ultimately) worthwhile.

Tell us about the experience of being honored in front of your friends and peers at the WGC Awards.

We were very, very moved hearing Larry’s heartfelt introduction, and Denis McGrath’s fiery followup.  It meant the world to us to be embraced this warmly by the community – especially given that we’re relative newcomers who’ve been blessed with a nearly obscene amount of good fortune.

We’ve heard that you may have a new series in development – is that correct, and if so what can you tell us about that?

We actually have two – one with CBC, one with CTV, both dramas – and we wish we could tell you more but we’re going to have to wait…

If you could step in to a “guest showrunning” position, past or present, on any Canadian show, which one would it be and why? 

There are definitely shows whose writing rooms we’d have loved to hang out in and observe from the inside – not as “guest showrunners,” more for the great company, and to watch and learn.  Like The Eleventh Hour for the dazzling convergence of talent in the room.  Bomb Girls for the great female-fuelled stories set in a fascinating time.  Slings and Arrows because of its smart and subversive take on classical theatre, a world we’ve both known from up close as actors.  Among the shows in the works right now … the rooms of Orphan Black and Played have some Flashpoint alums on their staff and both sound like a lot of fun.

In the meantime, we’ve been many reading scripts from emerging TV writers and we’re struck and inspired by what a huge wave of great material is coming down the pipes …

What are you watching these days? 

We try to keep up with all our Canadian shows.  Orphan Black is audacious and exciting.  Our daughter likes Modern Family, Stephen Fry’s QI and The Office, so we watch those shows with her.  LovingHomeland, Downton Abbey and The Walking Dead.  Also … a ton of spy-themed films, docs and series.
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Featured, Orphan Black

Interview: Jordan Gavaris on Orphan Black’s feline Felix

ORPHAN BLACK Episode 103

 

Jordan Gavaris, named one of Playback Magazine’s Top 10 To Watch in 2010, is being watched a whole lot in Space’s new hit Orphan Black, which was the highest-rated original series debut in the channel’s history. TV, eh?’s Martha Marcin talked to him about his inspiration for the character of Felix and his astounding costar Tatiana Maslany.

Martha Marcin: When I watch Orphan Black, I actually forget that I’m watching a scifi series. That element is really subtle and in the back ground, do you agree?

Jordan Gavaris: It is, we call it the “gateway scifi show”. It’s scifi for anyone who thinks that they don’t like scifi. I think it does a lot of what the more iconic scifi shows do, by blending social fears into the storyline. Right now I think that the big one we are all having is the identity crisis. Who am I? Who are you to me? What does it all mean? And with the advent of technology we can be anybody we want to be. There is an anonymity behind the computer screen, and I think it’s getting more difficult as the years go by to be a genuine human being. I think (cocreators) John (Fawcett) and Graeme (Manson) have done a really nice job of blending those issues into the script.

Yes I did notice, even though it is still early in the show that there is an underlying theme of identity running through it? The identity of Sarah as one of, apparently many, clones. Will Felix be wrestling with his identity going forward as well?

Yes, Felix and Sarah are both orphans, so they are inherently outsiders, but Sarah all of a sudden stumbles onto this lineage and these familial bonds that she has, this connection to something bigger that herself. Now, in spite of the fact that it is a very strange connection, it is family in a sense, there’s someone that she has a tie to, and Felix still doesn’t have anybody. So the further she becomes invested in this mystery, trying to figure out who she is, and where she comes from, the further she gets away from him, and I think that frightens him a little bit. So he does grapple with his identity in that sense.

What was your first thought when you were introduced to Felix’s character? What did you think of the character of Felix. Inspirations?

Well my initial inspiration was, believe it or not, a feline. He was sexualized, he was quite irreverent if not bitchy, he was only nice half the time, he is very dominant but in a graceful way, he’s very territorial, quite impetuous. Then I started trying to move like a cat; they enter a room and they look at everything like they own it, and that’s what gives Felix his presence, that oomph on the screen. It’s me playing a cat.

What was really important and what came naturally was the relationship between Felix and Sarah. I have two older sisters myself, and I was able to project all these feeling onto Tatiana (Maslany) because she is so open, and so lovely that it came naturally. Those were my real inspiration points.

This is a very complex and wonderfully convoluted story we have here. How do you keep things straight? Are you privy to all the twists and turns before you shoot an ep?

Oh my word, it’s hard! There are times when Tatiana will come out, and … it’ s so embarrassing! When she is playing the clones there is a clear delineation, but occasionally we will deal with characters becoming other characters, and it does get confusing. You have to stop yourself and ask her, “Which one are you again?” Trying to keep the story lines straight is a task, but the writing is so good that you don’t have to look very far. And I was impressed at how fast paced and sleek and stylish the first few episodes were, and how much information is thrown at the audience, and you keep up, you get it all, It’s a testament to John and Graham and the creative team…and the audience as well. We are obviously attracting a very smart group of people.

Absolutely, there is a huge amount of information, there is a lot going on, and I was never confused and always entertained. That is a huge testament to the writing and the show in general.

That’s so great to hear.

I don’t normally talk about costars but I have to in this case: Tatiana Maslany is amazing. OMG!

Oh yes, I know!

The way she keeps all those different clones mannerisms and accents. I think in the 3rd episode she played 4 different clones, including Sarah who’s pretending to be a 2 more clones on top of that. I was blown away because I kept forgetting it was the same actress…even when there were 3 clones on the screen together, at the same time. Each with distinct mannerisms, accents, bearing.

I’m not sure what you read about the casting process but John and Graham knew if they were going to move forward with the show it was going to take a very special actress to be able to do this. Because when you are in a situation where the actor is very good, but is only good at playing shades of themselves, and doesn’t have the same breadth or range, then you’re in a situation where you basically get a glamourized CW show. And this show is so much more than that.

When they found Tatiana and I tested against her, it was magic. I walked into the room, and I had read that scene a hundred times, and I had gone over it and over it, and I walked in and she was standing there with a bourbon in her hand (it wasn’t really bourbon) and she was Sarah and I was Felix, and it was this lovely moment where everything sort of fell into place and we connected and it sweeps you away. I owe the part to her as well because my test was good because of her. She is one of the most extraordinary women I have ever met and one of the most extraordinary actors I have ever met. She is just an extraordinary human being.

You can totally feel the chemistry the two of you have together on screen, it draws you in and it feels totally effortless.

It was crazy. I sort of like to pretend we were brother and sister in a past life, or something. Or maybe we were married. Who knows? (Laugh). We had something, there was an almost supernatural connection. And you pray for those moments, because that generally is what sells the relationship on screen.

You touched on how the writers and producers needed to have a strong actress to portray Sarah because the entire show hinges on her. It reminded me of Dollhouse, did you ever watch it?

Yes, I’m a huge Joss Whedon fan.

Me too! I love his work, but I have to say it was the lead that just that was not able to pull off multiple different characters that she had to.

I know, and Ringer was much the same as much as I love Sarah Michelle Geller, and I think she is extraordinarily talented actress with a lot of charisma, but I just don’t think…You know, as I said it could have easily turned into a CW version of a clone show, but instead what we got was a riveting piece of drama, a character study really, a character driven piece just because of the way that Tatiana approached all these women.

Is her head exploding by the end of a shoot?

(Laugh) Oh I get the odd message from her, “Oh I’m going to crawl under the kitchen table,” or “I’m all over the map,” but I have pretty much the same ones. Before the premiere I said I was hiding in a bathtub somewhere.

I’m a bit of a TV junkie, and looking at the characters we play, I was nervous because they are not the nicest people in the world, they are sort of the anti-hero. And I made some bold character choices, some very big ones, and I was nervous that it wasn’t going to come across, that people might be put off. So I was having minor coronaries at three in the morning and I would send her little text messages and she would be doing the same.

Orphan Black airs Saturdays on Space.

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Featured, Industry News

CanCon basics from an expert wonk

A few podcasts ago, cohost Anthony Marco and I grilled Canadian media policy wonk Kelly Lynne Ashton, who has been my resource for a lot of “is it CanCon or not?” type of questions. She answered a lot of questions around funding, coproductions, the CRTC and vertical integration that keep popping up, so I thought I’d include a partial transcript in a post for easier reference for all. I also thought I’d get Rachel Langer to help transcribe (thanks Rachel!)

On Vertical Integration Re: The Bell/Astral Merger
We’ve got the vertical integration policy which encouraged cable companies owning broadcasters owning prod cos owning internet service providers. Over the years the commission encouraged that under the idea that bigger is better and these companies needed to be bigger to be able to compete international and be stronger Canadian companies.

The market has shown that big companies have evolved. Whether we agree with it or not, the horse is out of the barn. They’re big companies. They own almost everything. We do need competition, we need to have different options and voices, but one of the problems is that Astral wants to sell. We can’t make them continue business.

Regarding Our Blended System
We are completely muddled. Every cable company argues out of both sides of the mouth. “It’s a free market, you have to let us do what we want to do” then “but we survive because of regulation”. So we are blended. Everybody knows it’s a blended system, but when you’re standing in front of the commission [CRTC], you argue out of one side of the mouth or the other…frequently at the same time.

On Mandatory Carriage
It’s the individual broadcasters who are looking for mandatory carriage. Other than Sun News, it’s Vision, Starlight, APTN — these are small guys and they’re looking for mandatory carriage to have a secure revenue stream, because they’re niche broadcasters, for the most part.

As for Sun News, their arguments aren’t very strong. They’re a news service. News was released as a competitive, it’s not a protected genre. For mandatory carriage there is a very high standard that you need to meet of exceptionality. You have to be an exceptional service that is necessary to Canadians, and there are all the other news services.

On the Power of the CRTC
The CRTC is growling more than they used to. They have the same tools that they’ve ever had. They seem to be much more willing to use those tools, and be aggressive with those tools. [In terms of enforcing consequences] the big hit is pulling your license, but they can also issue a short license. With Shaw Cable, they didn’t fulfill a number of their obligations, and they didn’t do the reporting they were supposed to do and they were playing games with the services they didn’t like, so they got a short license – instead of the usual 7 years, they got 3.

It’s a real pain [for broadcasters]. Those license renewal hears are huge. The amount of staff you have to put in, the amount of money and projections and studies– it’s actually quite costly to have to go through that process, so to have to go through it twice in the normal period you were expecting, it’s a real wakeup call to any licensee.

On OWN Network operating under the original licence’s educational mandate
To bring it back to Oprah Winfrey [and the OWN Network] the commission is doing something it always had the power to do, but wasn’t willing to do and that is a mandatory order. That is telling a licensee “you have to do this and we are filing the order with the federal court.” The federal court has much greater penalties than anything the CRTC has. They can fine, they can seize assets, they can seize personal assets of the directors of the company.

On Network Reporting Obligations
[Networks] DO have annual reports, but all that info is deemed to be confidential so the commission aggregates it. So what the stakeholders, the unions and guilds are trying to do is to get that info a little bit disaggregated so you can actually have SOME idea whether say Corus or Shaw or Bell is living up to their expectations as a group.

You can’t get [stats for] one channel. What is publicly available to everyone in annual reports — “this is what is spent by Canadian broadcasters.” They argue the info is competitive between one service and another. I’m not going to defend it, I’m just saying this is the game we have to play.

On the “Confidentiality” of CanCon Reporting Data
The CRTC says that they’re privy to all the information and we have to trust them, that they’re reviewing it all. We do know that they go back. We hear the commission being frustrated and saying “You didn’t meet your CanCon regulations”. … We want to encourage the current commission’s toughness. It’s gotten more and more opaque. We used to get data whenever a company was buying another company (like a Bell/Astral), we used to get a lot of financials but then they just started calling it confidential.

On Determining CanCon Requirements for Productions and Co-Productions
It’s not that complicated. [For measuring CanCon] first we’ve got CAVCO. It’s a point system. You have to have 6/10 points for any show to be Canadian. That’s your writer, director, top two lead actors, composer, designer, editor. Plus on top of that the producer has to be Canadian and own all the copyright, and you have to have spent 75% of the money in Canada. So that’s a basic outline [for a completely Canadian show] and one of the writer or director has to be Canadian.

The funding system is set up for 8/10 point productions. Those are the truly Canadian shows. Flashpoint is 10/10. (Any Canadian Media Fund show) is 10/10. There are some exceptions – you can bring in an American lead if you apply for certain exemptions, but generally [the CMF funded shows] are 10/10.

Co-Productions: Two countries have agreed that when they work together the resulting product will qualify as domestic under each country’s rules. So for example, a Canada-UK production. You’ve got UK leads, UK writer, UK talent, but it still qualifies as a 10/10 Canadian production. It gets complicated here. It applies for broadcast [but not necessarily funding]. It depends on the size of your budget, whether it’s worth going to CMF. A lot of the copros don’t, but I think Borgias did.

There is a minimum level of Canadian involvement [required]. So first off, when you’re talking about copros, the idea is that overall your minorities and majorities are going to balance out, so other countries are not just using Canada as a source of financing. That’s the idea. I myself have looked at the stats, and overall they balance. But overall means feature films, it means docs, it means animation – a LOT of animation is done through copros. Overall it balances. Where there’s a problem is really prime time drama.

We started to bring to people’s attention that while the system worked overall it was NOT working with prime time drama – there was an imbalance there. When you’ve got excessive minorities (and you can name them all, The Tudors, The Borgias, The Pillers of the Earth) they’re using Canada for post-production, that’s how they’re getting their minimum. The minimum you have to do with the minorities is 20% of your budget. They’ll have a couple actors who are killed off early. Name actors with red shirts. ;)

On Canadian Awards for Copros
First off, do we want to be known as a country of post production? I agree that composers and post-houses and editors are important but they’re not the only part of our sector that we need to be supporting. When we celebrate Canadian, do we celebrate minority co-prods? I was offended when Telefilm said “We do such great Canadian productions like The Borgias”. … Some of the other countries have separate categories for international productions.

Regarding American Shows that Shoot in Canada
They get production service tax credits. So they do get funding from the government, but the benefit of that is that they employ crews. They don’t [count as CanCon].

On US-Canadian Co-Ventures
A co-venture is a very definite term. …Defying Gravity was a co-venture. I believe it was a co-venture because it didn’t have a US broadcaster. It had an American producer. It was a co-venture between a Canadian producer and a US producer to allow the US producer to have creative say.

A production with an American pre-sale (like Rookie Blue)… they don’t own a piece, there’s no need for a formal designation.

On the Public’s Understanding of Canadian Shows
I honestly don’t think that many Canadians think that much about whether a show is Canadian or not. If they find out it’s Canadian then they’re pleased and they’re happy and they’re proud. I do think that people are proud of the fact that …we have a really strong lineup right now. When you tell people that these shows are Canadian they’re surprised because they thought they didn’t like Canadian TV.

For more from Kelly Lynne Ashton, listen to the podcast or read her wonktastic blog. 

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Featured, Industry News

A modest proposal: How to get Canadians to watch Canadian television

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The news that Canadian network executives will be speaking on an Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television panel on how to get Canadians watching Canadian TV gave me a flashback to the Canadian Media Production Association’s proposal that caused me to be more enraged than engaged.

I’ll be interested to hear the Academy webcast and from people attending the session — the panelists are smart people who’ve worked in the industry for ages — but first here’s my modest proposal for them (non-Swiftian version). Consider it a checklist for networks before they ponder more transmedia extravaganzas, online games that gamers would ridicule, sharing more effing “success stories,” or putting the responsibility of basic promotion onto the audience.

The Basics

  • Make more shows. Why are Canadian networks full of American shows we can watch on another channel? Most shows — American, Canadian or Ukrainian — fail, so if you’re only making a couple a year, odds are good you’ll only get a hit every several years.
  • Invest more in their quality. This means you, broadcasters, not the funding agencies. More writers than executives? Higher production values? More marketing? Consequences to continued failure?
  • Schedule regularly and well. The Listener is the rare show that’s managed to find a large, steady audience despite being bounced around from timeslot to timeslot, and with long, unpredictable gaps between seasons. And consider the compatibility of lead-ins and timeslot competition, unlike City and its beleagured Seed.
  • Create exciting promos to launch the series. See the striking difference between ABC’s jazzy Motive promo and CTV’s sedate promo for example.
    • Promos is plural – don’t play the same one over and over and over and over again or audiences will flee from it over and over and over again.
    • If it’s a comedy, make the promo funny. Actually funny. If it’s a drama, make it dramatic. This applies to the shows too, by the way.
    • Put the promos online and make them embeddable so other websites can help do your marketing for you. Show promotion shouldn’t be treated like a state secret.
  • Create episode-specific promos
    • See above – exciting, embeddable.
  • Have episode-specific photos available to media and fans. How many times do we have to use the same group cast shot, with all of them standing and staring at the camera?
  • Populate the show’s website well up front, and keep it updated.
    • At a minimum, I should be able to easily tell when the next episode will air and what’s exciting about it.
    • Use your promos, make all other content you do embeddable or copy and paste-able (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to grab an epsiode description only to have it be Flash or part of an image and therefore not grabbable).
  • Make sure the show’s IMDb page and Wikipedia page are updated.
  • Social media the hell out of your show… but not in a spammy or smarmy marketing way.
    • Teach everyone involved with the show the mores of the social media channels they’re using.
    • Get your cast and key creatives (showrunner, director, whoever) to not just live-tweet shows but respond to fans – set up a search for the name of the show and the star and respond to comments and questions.
    • Find out where your audience is and go there. Think beyond your own official channels. Tumblr? Pinterest? A Facebook page other than the official one? Forums? Fansites?
  • Research before getting interactive. See what your fans do online, or fans of similar shows … especially before you try to make them do something else. Are they making videos, or fan art, or discussing issues? Tap into that. Go where they are, and support them in doing what they do. Tap into a competitive spirit or a desire for recognition.
  • Cut the BS. Don’t get ridiculous parsing the ratings, or call everything a hit.
  • Respond quickly to journalists on deadlines. Treat credible bloggers like online journalists. Offer actual stars for interviews.
  • The usual marketing suspects: ads, billboards, bus ads, banner ads on the network’s family of sites and other targeted websites, etc.

The rest

  • Get creative, think outside the box, be the first to do something new and shiny, and I’ll cheer you on. But first make sure you’ve got the basics covered. Few Canadian shows do.

I’m sure I’m missing some basics – any others you can add?

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