Norflicks Productions Ltd. - Announcements

Norflicks Announces New Project “My _ Life

It doesn’t happen nearly often enough in our business that we get something really different to work on. That’s my good luck at the present.

David Papp is my invaluable assistant and has been for a year or more. Among the things we’ve discussed is the difficulty of young people like him, well trained and competent, getting to do shows for a network and thus learning early and firsthand how important an audience is in maintaining our creative edge.

These discussions led to the idea of developing a TV series with some of his former fellow students at Seneca. We decided, or rather David decided, that six would be an appropriate number, including himself. They would handle all aspects of the production, from production itself, writing, shooting, editing, directing – the works (even in one or two cases, the music).

What David and his fellow filmmakers (Kathryn Fudurich, Megan Murphy, Eui Yong Zong, Marina Perez and Kat Keene) decided to do, was a show about their generation. We had suggested the title “My _ Life,” with the space used to provide the adjective the filmmaker would want to add, such as My Fabulous Life, My Interrupted life etc. But in this case of this series, the person telling their own story would be the subject aided and abetted by our staff, helping the story teller, in other words an autobiography rather than the biography we’re used to.

All this opened the door to the use of the Internet. The series would solicit people’s stories, urging but not requiring them to submit a short version of their story on video. From those received, the filmmakers would choose thirty-nine subjects for a six minute video.

Why thirty-nine and why six minutes?

Because My _ Life is to be a competition. Each of the first thirteen shows of a twenty-six part series would have three six minute videos in competition with one another. The competition was to decide which of their stories would be told in a complete half-hour version. And these thirteen winners would make up the last half of the season, twenty-six programs in all.

So, the Internet would supply the candidates from among whom our filmmakers would choose thirty-nine.

The television public would choose thirteen for the final thirteen shows in the series.

It seemed like a good concept, but I need to stress that these were not to be simply documentaries about people. They were autobiographies. In other words, we were working with people who might or might not have some film skills, but who wanted to have their story told in their way. What the skilled staff of My _ Life was doing, was helping to convert those autobiographies into superior television.

We then decided as a sales device to introduce our staff to the broadcasters by having them do a video illustrative of what the show would be like. So there’s one that depicts the sort of personal video we think we might expect from a solicited but unspecific appeal to young people to share their lives.

Then there are two short promotional videos designed to make people want to do that.

Finally, there are two six minute videos, illustrative of the kind of docs that will appear in the first thirteen shows. Each of these featuring one of the My _ Life staff, that is the students who, with David, constitute the production team for My _ Life.

There is an add-on to all this. Megan Murphy, one of our team, had already done a film about a young woman which had helped inspire our format and David decided that it should be included to show how the format works when the subject is not a filmmaker.

As you can see, this is a show with a very different concept, but the concept is not only designed to provide a marketable product. That’s extremely important. But I also think there is a great story in a generation that is more and more taking to the streets to express its anger and dismay at the world it is going to inherit. This is not a show about big causes, it’s about individuals and their struggles. It is highly personal, but we think that will take us closer to the truth of what’s happening than all the omnibus documentaries that television provides.

So stay tuned. See if these young people can sell it.

So what’s Norflicks’ role in all this? We provide a corporate home and advice when asked.

For more information and to meet the My _ Life crew and view their films, please visit www.thisismylifecanada.ca