Last Friday afternoon, a small group of Film Production students had the chance to hear from Lance Hammer, whose film Ballast was one of the darlings of Sundance in January.

David Hauka, Head of Film Production at VFS, introduced Hammer by comparing his D-I-Y approach to filmmaking and distribution to Arin Crumley and Susan Buice (Four Eyed Monsters) and Lance Weiler (Head Trauma). “The information, unlike in my generation, is being shared now,” David said. “You don’t have to lose ownership. You are not limited by the old paradigms.”

Hammer, in town for VIFF, elaborated. “When I was making the film, I wasn’t thinking about the market at all. I didn’t want it to influence the creative process.” But he had to face reality after his film’s success at Sundance, where it won the Dramatic Directing Award for Hammer himself, as well as one for Excellence in Cinematography. “People accepted it there. Suddenly, the market jumped into the viewfinder.”

Hammer flirted with a well-known distributor of independent films before finally deciding to put together a team and go the self-distribution route. “I was going to give it away and cede control, and that didn’t make any sense.”

Now, he’s living proof of someone “not limited by the old paradigms”: leveraging social networking and online communities, and eschewing expensive P&A - Prints and Advertising - for a more personal, grassroots approach. But he also admits that the validation that comes with festival success and theatrical release is still important. “Ballast did well enough at Sundance, Berlin, and other places, so we had a decent chance at creating a lot of awareness. We’re relying entirely on our relationships with critics.”

Ultimately, it’s about creating a new marketplace and pounding the pavement - which also explains how he came to visit VFS in the first place. “What people aren’t doing so much is taking their films to film schools. Film school students want to see independent films.”

Can’t disagree with that. Ballast hits the Film Forum in NYC on October 1, then will see limited theatrical release starting October 17. You can check out the trailer here.

Early last week, we were fortunate to host Jonathan Simkin at our Entertainment Business Management campus. Simkin, an entertainment lawyer and partner in 604 Records (the latter with Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger, Simkin’s longtime client) spoke to an EBM Talent Management Class to discuss his career (he got his start as a criminal lawyer) and his advice for aspiring talent managers.

Among the lessons current EBM student Edwin Edrada took away from Simkin’s talk: “The 360 deal is useless!” (A 360 deal allows a record company to tap into all of an artist’s sources of revenue, including tickets and merch.)

But most of all, it was about finding the right clients and nurturing them. “You must have a very good relationship with your clients. Be blunt,” Edwin explains of Simkin’s advice. Above all? “Find artists that you and your consumers will care about.”

Congratulations to Maria Jacquemetton, writer and producer on Mad Men, which took the home the Outstanding Drama Series Emmy this weekend, beating out Boston Legal, Damages, Dexter, House, and Lost.

Maria is the former Head of Writing for Film & Television, and is now an Advisory Board Member.

If you haven’t checked out Mad Men already, you’re in for a treat! It’s on AMC, and season one is available on DVD.

UPDATE: In case you can’t make out Maria Jacquemetton and her writing partner Andre Jacquemetton in the pic of cast and crew on stage above, here they are again!

They met in the Foundation Visual Art & Design program at VFS, but it wasn’t until they took the Sound Design for Visual Media program together that Iryna Kucherenko and John Kochanczyk’s partnership solidified. Now they’re planning a months-long field recording trip in Africa: the first step in getting their new company, WaveBreach, off the ground.

The pair will graduate from VFS in October, and their ambitious plans - which also include documenting their African journey on film - will kick into gear soon thereafter.

We’ll let John explain:

Maybe you could describe how you met and arrived at the decision to collaborate and launch a new company?

We originally met in the Foundation program. We knew that we liked the entertainment industry, but still had little idea about the specific skills we wanted to learn, let alone searching for our career passion.

After completing a successful year, it became clear to both of us that sound needed to be explored. It wasn’t until around the 4th term [in Sound Design] that ideas started flying around about recording and how we could tie that further into our work.

Thus our little big trip started forming, which we initially thought was way outside our possible scope and current skill sets.

But once we started looking for advice on which methods and ways that should be considered, we received huge support from all of the instructors, which only got us more excited to continue and push for the best we can do.

What’s in the works for WaveBreach? What are your hopes for it?

WaveBreach was founded primarily as a sound recording company, aimed to supply sounds from particular geographic locations and for the requirements of various productions. Our current goal is to actively record as many safe locations as possible, capturing the current era of each country before globalization manages to change everything.

Our dream for WaveBreach encompasses a continually expanding international production company. Recording is the starting block, for all intents and purposes.

8 months in Africa - it sounds incredible.

Africa… Well, our purpose for the trip is to record the specific cultures, music, technology, geographics, wildlife, and anything that actually sounds cool. The trip itself is overall 8 months; however, this is broken down into two four-month segments representing the northern and southern areas of Africa.

Read the rest of this story »

Seeking You, the short animated tribute to Hong Kong by Jean-Julien Pous, has been made the subject of a great profile/interview by IT’S ART Magazine. The film came about in the 3D Animation & Visual Effects program at VFS while Jean-Julien was here on exchange from Supinfocom, and the interview’s well worth a read. And don’t miss the film itself!

Last year, we spoke with Game Design grad Sean Bosshardt about his work on Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. And now all Sean’s hard work has paid off!

Reckoning came out this week. If you haven’t played it yet, check out IGN’s sneak-peek here.

Sound Design for Visual Media graduate George Pereyra was Foley Editor on My Best Friend’s Girl, opening tonight! The comedy stars Dane Cook, Kate Hudson, Alec Baldwin, and Jason Biggs, and was directed by Howard Deutch.

Since graduating from VFS, George has been a very busy man indeed — working on both films and games! George was also Foley Editor on War, and served as Sound Effects Recordist on The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and the games Need for Speed: Carbon and Need for Speed: ProStreet.

Nick Halme, the Game Design grad currently writing the Vancouver Game Design blog, had his article Banning Videogames featured on GameSetWatch this week! Yes, this is the same Nick that, not two weeks ago, was entertaining us with his dispatches from PAX.

If you haven’t yet subscribed to VancouverGameDesign.com, why the heck not?

Just a quick note of congratulations to Acting for Film & Television grad Sara Canning, who has been cast in a major role in the upcoming Lifetime film Snatched. Sara headed to Winnipeg this week to begin her month of shooting. When the film has wrapped, she’ll be able to share more about the process.

We last wrote about Sara when she won the role of Nicky Hilton in the upcoming Hollywood Brats. Talk about a great year!

Another VFS student project has been featured on YouTube! The Room, by 3D Animation & Visual Effects student Christian Smith and featuring sound by Sound Design students Jose Enriquez Rivaud and John Sawa, was featured this week in the Animation category on YouTube pages worldwide. Already 101,000 views and hundreds of comments… check it out below!