I was lucky enough to attend the CFTPA Prime Time in Ottawa conference last year thanks to the CFTPA Atlantic Mentorship Program. For the past three years, the Mentorship Program has hosted Jump Start, a series of workshops and presentations for Interns.
Jan Miller jump-started Jump Start with her Pitcher Perfect workshop – an intense and entertaining forum for the interns to develop and test their pitching skills. The participants who were brave enough got a chance to pitch ideas for stories they are passionate about. It was an excellent introduction to the other interns in the program.
Next we all were given free iPod Touches since the Prime Time Conference decided to go completely paper-less and used the iPods as a replacement for traditional delegate bags. They even developed an application specifically for Prime Time that included maps, schedules, videos, and an intranet messaging system that connected you to any other delegate.
That night, we attended the CFTPA Indie awards ceremony hosted by Cathy Jones. Stitch was nominated for Best Convergent New Media for The Border, but the winner was Anash Interactive, an awesome site made by Reel Girls Media that has an online comic book builder.
After the awards, the interns had a showcase for their own projects. One that blew me away was an animated short by Joel MacKenzie, a hilarious Halogonian. I found his demo reel and it has a few scenes from the 8-bit short he showed at the conference.
The next day was full of panel discussions and key note speakers. There was a lot of talk from the traditional media producers about how the government needs to update tax credits and co-production treaties with other countries. And the new media producers tended to talk about how the government should avoid putting Can Con guidelines on the internet.
More interesting than either of those topics was the irony of some producers complaining that there is no revenue to be made in new media at one panel and then complaining that the film/tv industry cannot make money unless the government steps in at another panel. I’m probably over-simplifying, but there was definitely a bit of desperation in regards to the future of media.
I enjoyed Steven Comeau’s panel on New Media and the CRTC, Rob McLaughlan and Tom Perlmutter’s vision for the National Film Board, and Darren Throop’s inspiring story of how he went from running a used record store on Barrington St to being the CEO of E1 Entertainment.
The folks from Film Nova Scotia were nice enough to take all the Halifax interns out for a meal at an amazing Thai restaurant. They were some of the funniest and most down-to-earth people I met at the conference.
I shared beers with a lot of great people from the Internship program, and came out of the conference with new friendships and an iPod.
