Cara Mumford Films

I recently read Sheri Candler's post about Using Pinterest as a tool for your film marketing, and was intrigued. Not that I need another networking site, but the idea that it's based on visuals was appealing since filmmaking is a visual medium. After checking out the site ever so briefly, I asked for, and received, my invitation to Pinterest and quickly started pinning. It's fun... and a little addictive!

While I have ended up setting up some boards reflecting my personal tastes (purple claw foot tubs and steampunk guitars being too hard to resist), I have started some boards related to my films. Not so much for marketing at this time, focusing instead on the artistic style of the films. For example, this Tipi image is one I created for the treatment of "When It Rains," a hip hop / hoop dance film I'm shooting this summer.


Although I could upload the photo directly to Pinterest, I thought it might be more strategic to upload it here and then pin it... let's see if it really does drive referral traffic! In the meantime, you can check out the rest of my film's fledgling board here: "When It Rains" short film. I foresee adding images related to Canada's Stolen Sisters, which is the issue at the heart of the film, as well as dance poses and any "body graffiti" imagery I can find (the visual style we'll be using to relay statistical information to the viewer).

Any other filmmakers out there using Pinterest? I'd love to see your boards... just leave me a link!

Now that I’ve started a blog on this website (with weekly updates when my computer doesn't crash), I’ve decided to merge the blogspot blogs that I set up for each of my festival films with this one. I might eventually migrate some of the more pertinent posts over here, as well, but in the meantime…  

My short film, "December 6," will be screening at "Reflecting Lives: New Works from Aboriginal Women," a partnership between the Winnipeg Cinematheque, Urban Shaman Gallery and imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival. “Reflecting Lives” is a series of short film works by Canadian Aboriginal women artists, guest curated by Michelle Latimer.  

Curatorial Statement: "Now, more than ever before, Indigenous, female filmmakers worldwide are reclaiming the medium of film as an essential storytelling tool. In the past decade alone, great strides have been made in contemporary, Aboriginal cinema, creating opportunities for emerging women directors to realize their vision. Their work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, critically lauded for its undeniable authenticity: remarkable stories being told from the inside out. And yet it remains a tenuous path that female filmmakers must forge. The presence of Aboriginal women directors within the film industry is still disproportionately small, and it can be exceptionally challenging for those rising within the craft. For this reason, it's important to celebrate the emerging women who persevere with tremendous vision to enrich the creative renaissance that is Aboriginal cinema. In this spirit of celebration, all of the films you will see within this program have been directed, written and /or produced by emerging, Aboriginal Women."  

Artists: Terril Calder, Cara Mumford, Lisa Jackson, Caroline Monnet, Delia Gunn, Alethea Arnaquq-Baril

Friday, March 16, 2012 
7:00pm, FREE Admission 
Winnipeg Film Group's Cinematheque 
100 Arthur Street, Winnipeg, MB 
 
"December 6": Clever and uncompromising, this spoken word tour-de-force recalls the events of the Montreal massacre at L'ecole Polytechnique in 1989, making a bold statement for the abolishment of violence against women.  

Current blog: http://december6film.blogspot.com/
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/December6film
IMDb page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1829661/

My comments: I'm quite flattered to be included in a line-up with director Lisa Jackson, though I'd hardly categorize her as "emerging." Lisa is a CFC Director's Lab grad, TIFF Talent Lab participant and winner of a Genie Award for her short film, "Savage" (one of The Embargo Collective films commissioned by imagineNATIVE in 2009). I also feel in good company with Terril Calder, an experimental animator I met at my first imagineNATIVE Festival, and Caroline Monnet, whose gorgeous film IKWE was in imagineNATIVE's Non Compliance program with my film "echoes" in 2009. Unfortunately, I missed Alethea Arnaquq-Baril's film Tunniit: Retracing the Lines of Inuit Tattoos at imagineNATIVE 2011 but I would love to see it one of these days. (And if anyone knows whether the other filmmakers have their own website, please send me the link to include here.) Personal connections and film favourites aside, I'm proud to have one of my films selected for this important program curated by Michelle Latimer. I just wish I could be there in person and see the rest of the films!

First blog post for Cara Mumford Films, as Cara Mumford Films! (Meaning as of January 2012, I’m officially incorporated as Cara Mumford Films Inc.) 

I just found out that I’ve been selected for the latest round of the Bell Media Diverse Screenwriters Program. Sufficiently big and exciting news to launch the new blog! (And I will try not to abuse the exclamation point when excited, but I can’t promise anything.)

The gist of this training program is to develop a new TV show concept, under the guidance of a mentor, ending up with a spec script as well as a script, mini-bible and pitch document based on my original concept. Seems like a nice little package for a writer to have, although I’m not sure if it helps me advance my career writing feature films. I’m hoping it might at least help when looking for representation, but I’m not even sure about that. Does that make me sound naïve or unfocused? Possibly. But I figure that any opportunity to write and get professional feedback has to be a good thing for a writer. I’ll pay more attention to the business end once I have more tricks in my bag, and by tricks I mean more screenplays to shop around, more skills to work on my craft and more people in my network. (Speaking of networks, I’ve been realizing how much I miss my Calgary network now that I’ve moved back to the Toronto area; a big shout out to the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers!)  

But back to Diverse Screenwriters… I’ll be completely honest: TV writing was not something I went looking for. I may have ventured into the world of media arts as a writer but, somewhere along the way, I became a filmmaker first and writer second. So there has been no siren call to write TV… although I sometimes find myself thinking how much fun it would be to write for the character of Sheldon Cooper on "The Big Bang Theory"… odd given the fact that I’m not typically drawn to writing comedy either, but I digress.  

Now that I’ve been chosen for the program, however, I find myself wishing that I’d spent some time analyzing TV pilots (I’m assuming that we’ll be writing the pilot episode of our show… hope I’m not setting myself up to be the proverbial ass). Just yesterday, I was chatting with someone about “Grimm” vs. “Once Upon A Time.” Both new shows with fairy tale premises, both well acted with good production values. So why did I watch the pilot for “Grimm” and think, “eh, not bad, might check it out again” and then watch the pilot for “Once” and think, “need to find all of the weekly time slots for this show and see if I can watch it online if I miss an episode!” I want to write a pilot that grabs people the way “Once” grabbed me or, for other Canadians reading this, the way “Bomb Girls” grabbed me. (If you’re not familiar with “Bomb Girls,” check out the Global TV website: http://www.globaltv.com/bombgirls/index.html. While I’m thinking about Canadian TV, “Being Erica” is possibly the only show out there that causes me to think: “I wish I’d thought of that premise.” Another odd observation given my fanaticism for shows like “Dexter,” "Fringe" and “Battlestar Galactica,” but that digression, psychoanalysis or whatever you want to call it can wait for another day and another blog post.)  

So I’ve decided that between now and mid-April (when the program starts) I will watch pilots of shows that hooked me and shows that turned me off, as well as a few that were good enough to make me come back for another episode. If anyone has viewing recommendations, I would love to hear them!