Simon Fraser (IV)

As the guy who has processed all the submissions to the Canadian Comedy Awards from 2008 to present, I’m fortunate to find myself in a position where I get to view all of the videos that are submitted. This builds the great pride that I have in my peers and my culture on an annual basis.

However, it can sometimes be frustrating when a submitter has not really done everything they can to put their best foot forward, video-wise. So I give to any who might care some pointers for videos that accompany your submissions to the Canadian Comedy Awards.

For the record, I’m publishing these tips independent of the Canadian Comedy Awards. These tip are my best practices. So if you have any issues with what I’ve written here, take it up with me or comment below; don’t waste the time of anyone at the CCA’s.

My hope here is that it becomes easier for jury members and voters to be able to judge the quality of the talent, rather than the quality of the tape.

1. We Need To Understand What You’re Saying
   It is almost impossible to judge a cacophony of voices echoing in a large room or anything quieter than a stage whisper. Ensure that the people in your video can be heard AND understood. Otherwise, jury members and voters may not have any basis to judge the submission.
2. We Need To See Some Faces
   It is hard to make out little white blobs at the other end of a performance venue. Ensure that the people in your video are recognizable. Otherwise, jury members and voters may not know who they’re supposed to be judging.
3. We Need To Know Who’s Who
   If you are submitting to one of the single artist categories (such as Male Improviser or Female Improviser) and everybody in your video is wearing the same kind of outfit, identify which one of the similarly-adorned people you are submitting. For instance, in your video notes, write “[Name of submission] is wearing the red tie.” Otherwise, as above, jury members and voters may not know who they’re supposed to be judging.
4. What Everybody Else Does
   The majority of submissions to Live categories are delivered as audible video recordings from live performances. We can see the visual elements of the performance and hear the sounds of the performance. Some of them are edited highlights, some of them are a continuous clip.

   Most TV and Film submissions submit video of entire episodes or films with their selected in and out points for their jury and voter clips.

   Radio submissions submit MP3 files or audio CDs.

   Web Clip submissions submit their entire web clip.

   If you stray too far from how everyone else has assembled their videos, you may be shooting yourself in the foot. If you submit a montage of shots without audio and set to music, you may have made a nice music video but you’ve probably wasted your submission fee.

5. Jury Video & Voter Video
   With the exception of the Web Clip category (which shows the full clip), you have a maximum of 15 minutes for your Jury Video and 2 minutes for your Voter Video. I have to embolden this because every year, many submitters screw the pooch on this.

   If you go over the maximum amount of time for your clips, your clips shall be chopped off at 15 and 2, and no one will hear that punchline at 15:05 or see that hilarious sight gag at 2:03. THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS.

   Jury clips have a maximum of 15 minutes running time but do not have a minimum running time. So you do not need to scrounge together a full 15 minutes if you only have an exemplary 10 minutes, or an exemplary 5 minutes… or 7 minutes. Fifteen is only the maximum.

   Edited videos are allowed. You can make a highlight reel from multiple performances, suffice that they all occurred within the respective awards year. So choose your most exemplary content. Use clips that feature your submission. Do not use clips in which the first appearance of the artist you’re submitting is five minutes into the clip.

6. E. I. Y.
   The Canadian Comedy Awards does not edit video for you. You cannot specify multiple in and out points in your submitted video and expect CCA staff to patch those together. If you want to use multiple clips to build your jury or voting videos, you need to get these clips edited yourself before submitting them. Otherwise, you’ll get a phone call or email and you’ll have to pick which one of your in and out points you want to use, and the rest of them will be ignored.
7. Direct Messages & Commentary
   Do not directly address jury members or voters in your videos, in overlaid text, voice or image. In other words, do not insert “VOTE FOR ME!” messages into your videos. Any additional production to your videos that directly addresses jury members or voters will be cut out of your video and, in the most extreme cases, your submission will be disqualified.

   Do not insert commentary into your video. Any commentary in your videos will be cut out of your videos and, in the most extreme cases, your submission will be disqualified.

8. Aspect Ratio
   All jury members and voters view videos in a 4:3 aspect ratio. If the submission video(s) you send are already in 4:3, no change to the image will occur. If the submission video(s) you send are in 16:9 or any other ratio, they will be letterboxed at the top and bottom to fit a 4:3 ratio.

   If you’ve made an aspect ratio error in your post-production process and you have a stretched or crunched image in your submission video(s), it will not be corrected. What you send is what gets viewed by jury members and voters.

9. Your DVD
   Please ensure that your submission DVD is not set to auto-play AND chapter menus are not removed.

   There was once a huge mix-up because a DVD that was submitted was set to auto-play and the menus had been removed and the submitter failed to indicate that there was more than one chapter on the DVD. The result was that the jury in that category was viewing a video that barely contained the artist for whom it was submitted. Fortunately, this particular mistake was corrected before the jury process ended but it could have easily been prevented by the submitter by NOT setting to auto-play and NOT removing chapter menus.

10. Just The Facts
    To avoid confusion in the processing of your submission, do not put video content on your DVD that has nothing to do with your submission. Your submitted materials should not require a goose hunt to process them. If your submission DVD has your submission videos plus some other stuff you’ve done, MAKE A NEW DVD THAT DOESN’T HAVE THE OTHER STUFF. TV episodes and films are the exception here since they are typically submitted in their entirety.
11. Multiple Submissions per DVD
    You can put more than one submission’s clips on the same DVD, as long as you list all the submissions’ tracking numbers on the DVD. For example, if you are submitting a film that has 1 submission each in the Film Directing and Film Writing categories, 2 submissions in the Male Film Performance category and 3 submissions in the Female Film Performance category, send the one DVD and label it with the tracking numbers for all 7 submissions.

I think it’s possible to let your problems work for you. They can affect how you tell a story, but any story can be told any way.

The simplest possible method to tell the story is for you yourself to deliver the story directly to camera. And there’s even different ways of doing that – video/film diary, home video/movies, various styles of news report, documentary/mockumentary, etc.

That’s the simplest. Everything else is an expansion of that.

When Friedrich Nietzsche declared that “God is dead”, in no way did he imply that humanity give up on its quest for the enigma that haunts us all, the indescribable feeling of reverberating viscera. Glory is glory. Grace is grace. Always.

Movies have a similar effect on most people on this planet as their feign of emotion, challenge and journey strike the common chords that drive humanity. The escapism of entertainment is debatably necessary to keep us sane (or insane depending on which side of the debate you would find yourself). The power of the voice, the stage, the screen, is second only to the power of the audience.

With great power, as the old saying goes, comes great responsibility.

As an artform, movie-making is unique in that it requires the talents and skills of a few artists to a few hundred artists. The process of making a movie requires thousands upon thousands of manhours of not only hard work and great effort but also of training (years and years of training and learning from one’s experiences) and a focus of one’s character. Actors are actors because they have no choice. Writers are writers because they have no choice. Animators and set designers and cinematographers are what they are because, as artists, THEY HAVE NO CHOICE. Anyone with a muse is a slave to it, whether they like it or not.

However, you now no longer need to be an artist at all to create art. The years of training spent by such remarkable actors as Meryl Streep, Marlon Brando, Julianne Moore, Warren Beatty, Jessica Lange, Gary Oldman, Vanessa Redgrave, Om Puri, Catherine Deneuve, Toshiro Mifune, Liv Ullman and Sean Penn was all for nought. Their talents are now pointless. It is truly a Brave New World – NOVELTY, CELEBRITY, COMMODITY.

How did this happen? When did it all go amiss?

Today.

Hollywood died today and with it, all our self-possessed dreams of captivating the hearts of humanity.

A new website has reared its oh-so-ugly and malignant head today – www.whowantstobeamoviestar.com. The retarded brainchild of a “winning combination of industry professionals and major entertainment companies,” Who Wants To Be A Movie Star? asks the most self-indulgent question ever posed to the movie-going public – what is the price of your dream?

Through an affiliation with Yahoo Auctions, you (Yes! You!) can bid on and win “lead and supporting roles in a feature-length motion picture with guaranteed distribution”.

A press release issued by the film’s P.R. firm states that “Thomas Edison once said that genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration, and now we’re giving you the chance to prove it.” BULLSHIT! You (Yes! You!) are being given the chance to DISPROVE Edison. You don’t need to spend years of hard work and effort and PERSPIRATION learning how to hone your talent and skills. TALENT AND EFFORT ARE NEGOTIABLE. All it takes is money and a mouse click.

What exactly is a “winning combination of filmmakers, web experts, entertainment executives and business professionals”? Since the site only premiered this week, what exactly is it that this particular combination has won? Other than my f*cking wrath.

The “About Us” section of the website claims that “We will also have the satisfaction of making history by blending together the power of the Internet with the magic of Hollywood and creating something new and exciting.”

Oh my, where do I start?

The satisfaction of making history?! I make history every morning I wake up! I make history with every trip to the bathroom! I make history with every step I make, every breathe I take, every orgasm I fake! So do you, so does everybody. At this very moment, every person on this planet is making history. Are you satisfied?!

Is that the same “magic of Hollywood” that had one of the finest screenwriters of our time, Robert Towne, writing MI:2, the most awful piece of drek that has been force-fed to the movie-going public in the past year? Is that the same “magic of Hollywood” that is running scared from the industry-wide effects of The Blair Witch Project? You bet your ass it is. Keep running, fothermuckers.

Yeah, I want to create “something new and exciting” too. Let’s put on a variety show. I’ll get the funny hats. Shit or get off the pot! Or simply get off the pot (i.e. grass, marijuana, weed, spliff).

In the website’s “Partners” section, it states that WWTBAMS “represents a paradigm of collaborations between new media powerhouses and entertainment entities.” Wow, that sounds like such an attractive creative cesspool. Facelessness never sounded so good.

Who will the “lucky winner” be? Whoever you are, they’re going to give you the job and YOU’RE going to pay THEM.

I would like to take this opportunity to urge every rich and highly untalented bastard on the planet Earth to hike the bids as high as they can so that this “film” can die the horrible death it so generously deserves – by being as financially successful as it possibly can. Straight to Hell, boys; do not pass Go.

Stanislavski is dead. Long live Stanislavski.

Addendum: shortly after this was published, the director of WWTBAMS Tony Markes invited me to view some of the post-production process. I replied, accepting his offer, but I never heard back from him. I’m not sure what happened to the movie. Or its “stars”.