TORONTO – Patrick Boivin can’t say his debut feature film, “Enfin l’automne (Fall Finally),” will be in theatres everywhere this weekend alongside other new movies including “Shark Night 3D” and “Apollo 18.”
But the Montreal-based animator and filmmaker says he’s excited to be screening his film for an even larger audience.
He’s premiering it Sunday on YouTube, and proudly says his movie will be the first Canadian feature to be uploaded to the site.
While most filmmakers would probably be disappointed if their film debuted online, for free, Boivin says it’s the ideal way to launch his movie.
“Enfin l’automne (Fall Finally)” is the story of two best friends, performing artist Jack and cafe owner Jerome, who both have eyes for the same girl. Jerome gets the girl, with Jack’s blessing, and the ensuing story is an urban tale of normal everyday life, friendship and love. Most of the dialogue is in French, with English subtitles, although one character speaks English.
Boivin and his filmmaking partner Olivier Roberge sank $45,000 of their own money into the movie after getting a series of rejection letters from financiers. Although they had a minuscule budget to work with, it doesn’t show; it’s beautifully shot and has the look and feel of a studio-produced film.
That the movie looks so good is probably not surprising to fans of Boivin’s work. While he’s no household name, he has a large following online, with almost 166,000 YouTube users subscribing to his feed of videos, which include short films, stop-animation projects and music videos. Collectively they’ve been viewed more than 121.5 million times.
His buzziest project was “Iron Baby,” a take-off on the “Iron Man” films starring his young daughter. With near Hollywood-level special effects, he digitally fashioned her with an “Iron Man”-style superhero suit and had her take on – and defeat, of course – a team of gun-toting bunnies. He’s also done professional animation work for Lego, LG, Google and Disney’s Pixar.
Given his engaged online fanbase, Boivin believes YouTube is the best place to showcase “Enfin l’automne (Fall Finally),” especially given his previous experience at film festivals where he screened some of his shorts, like “Radio.”
“Even after all the places we went maybe 5,000 people saw ‘Radio’ (in theatres). After a month on YouTube there was 350,000 views – so that’s a terrific way you can reach people,” Boivin says.
“And since the channel I have is really popular now I know that people will watch the movie.”
He’s hesitant to predict how many people will see it but his goals are modest; he’s not aiming for tens of millions of views.
“If we get 2,000 views in the first month we’d be happy but we could also get 30,000 – it’s hard to say.”
Even if the film goes viral, Boivin feels it’d be wrong to try to sell the film to a distributor and get it in theatres, given that the cast and crew on the project made virtually nothing for their work. He also got some great music to soundtrack the film by offering independent musicians credit in exchange for using snippets of their songs. If the project made money he’d feel obliged to share revenue with them too.
“This was for the love of the art,” Boivin says. “We’re not going to do it this way again, this is something you do once.”
It’s also a little easier for Boivin and Roberge to screen their movie for free knowing that their next project is going to get a little more help. The duo recently secured funding from Telefilm Canada and is looking forward to doing a film with “real money.”
Making the movie with their own money made them stretch their budget to the fullest, which will be valuable experience for their next project, Boivin says.
“Sometimes I feel like things in movie-making cost way more than they should, I know we can do a really, really good movie for the money of a low-budget movie in Canada – which sometimes is around $1 million. Personally I know we’re going to be able to do amazing things with that,” he says.
Boivin believes what he’s done with “Enfin l’automne (Fall Finally)” will become far more common in no time, although some filmmakers may seek some form of digital ticketing before screening their movies online. Just last week, YouTube began offering movie rentals through the site in Canada.
“This is the near-term future of independent movie-making,” he says.
“I know people who got money to make their movie but in the end it was seen by a couple thousand people and that’s it. On YouTube, you can reach the whole world.”
Comments