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Judith Keenan, founder of BookShorts, advances a new genre
of entertainment – short films, animations and interactive
media that capture the spirit of a book in moving images.
Short filmmakers taking inspiration from works of literature
is certainly not a new idea. However, Keenan was one of the
first to take inspiration a step farther, and marry the creation
of the moving pictures with the release of the work upon which
it is based, and introduce both to the public simultaneously,
in context that supported both filmmaker and author.
• The First Prototype
• A New Genre
The First Prototype
BookShorts launched its premiere production,
What Casanova Told Me, to the filmmaking industry at Canadian
Film Centre’s Worldwide Short Film Festival in May 2004,
to professionals in digital media at DigiFest (June 2004)
and to the book publishing industry at Book Expo Canada (June
2004). BookShorts made its large-scale public debut at The
Word On The Street, Toronto (Sep 2004).
BookShorts have now been premiered in a whole host of distribution
channels ranging from the Internet to in-store retail kiosks,
film and literary festivals, national television broadcasts,
individual author events, librarian and teacher conferences
– and the list is growing. A highlight of 2006 initiatives
was the invitation to BookExpo America as a sponsored program
in Washington, DC, opening the door to US-based publishing
clients. South by Southwest Film Festival was the first to
premiere a BookShort in the US, presenting JPod in its theatrical
world premiere.
BookShorts founder Judith Keenan has precedents – she
produced the first-ever video timed to the release of a book
in 1994, to help attain visibility for Canadian author Douglas
Cooper’s novel Amnesia (Hyperion) in the U.S. The resulting
3.5-minute short aired on U.S. television stations, secured
numerous additional cities on the U.S. reading tour, and was
played pre-readings in bookstores to attract audiences. The
book went to re-print twice, and the visibility through press
coverage was a factor in Cooper’s subsequent publishing
deal with Time Warner Pathfinder; he became the first author
to publish a serialized novel on the Internet.
Directly after, there were a number of initiatives whose aims
were similar. Starting in ’95 and for a short-lived
run, Barnes and Noble produced “BNTV” which presented
online videos based on a variety of fiction and non-fiction
titles. An animated short for Hamlet, the short film for Dennis
Lehane’s hard-boiled detective novel Prayer for Rain,
and film director Mark Pellington’s interpretation of
Don J. Snyder’s Of Time and Memory went beyond the typical
“shoot an author while they read” treatment and
were modeled closely on movie trailers. None had the BookShorts
commitment to creating stand-alone, short films with a complete
narrative arc within its three to five minute duration.
In 2000-2001, Keenan lead a team at Twinkle studios in New
York in the production of animations to complement the release
of Daniel Clowes’ David Boring and Chris Ware’s
Jimmy Corrigan. In collaboration with Pantheon US, these animated
shorts were placed with Amazon.com, BN.com and a host of other
online retailers.
Upon her return to Canada, Keenan noted that awards shows
were the only sponsors in creating filmed pieces based on
authors and their works, most notably The Giller Prize and
Toronto Arts Awards. These were effective in the context of
larger broadcast events, but the shorts were used only once,
and were not conceived to have a life outside the context
of their respective award shows. CHUM’s BookTelevision
was seminal but uncommitted on a consistent basis to producing
short-form video pieces wherein authors read excerpts cut
with still or moving images inspired from the book, or atmospheric
works that interpret a book’s essence. Bravo!FACT regularly
supports the short films of prestigious and innovative filmmakers,
some of whom use books, poems, or short stories as source
material.
In no case was there a mandate to co-ordinate the film release
with the books, or intentionally and strategically use one
medium to support the other.
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A New Genre
Creating media that “looks and
feels” like advertising is the antithesis of BookShorts’
goal.
Judith aims to create self-contained shorts, that is media
from which the viewer or player will derive a satisfying entertainment
experience, and by having done so, want to delve further into
the world the author has created by reading the book.
The advent of digital filmmaking and desktop animation has
made the production of BookShorts
even more affordable.
New distribution outlets exist now that did not exist a few
short years ago, including broadband and social networks,
cable television specialty channels, screenings on airplanes,
in bookstores, and in movie theaters before features.
The ease of retailing shrink-wrap and downloadable products
internationally has especially re-invigorated the potential
for BookShorts.
Developing shorts for any type of book – fiction, non-fiction,
children’s titles -- will be lucrative for authors,
filmmakers, musicians, book retailers and broadcasters.
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