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Film Industry

Why Burn Notice Needs to Finish in Miami

We Need a Place to Crash for the Night. Any Takers?

 

Political commissions should come with their own laugh tracks, because it’s always hilarious when elected officials attempt to make “business” decisions. Burn Notice, The USA network’s ratings darling about Michael Westen, a former CIA operative who’s been ‘burned’ and left to rot in a South Florida purgatory, is on the verge of losing the old Coconut Grove Convention Center that it’s called home since 2006. The producers are now scrambling to find a new set for the show’s seventh season, which might lead them to abandon the city altogether. Miami Commission Chairman, Marc Sarnoff, is spearheading the eviction campaign to make room for a new waterfront park.

As Michael Bay demonstrated, the entertainment industry can do wonders for our city. Burn Notice has generated over a hundred million dollars for our local economy during its six year run, in addition to the 240 thousand it pays annually to rent the convention center. The production’s energy needs are met locally; they hire local crews and extras, and the supplies needed to construct, blow-up and rebuild their sets are purchased from local retailers. Think about that intricate chain of commerce. It affects a lot of folks in this town. Disrupting it would cause a deficit that won’t be refilled by building another park in Coconut Grove.

Additionally, the financial numbers don’t account for the fact that Michael Westen’s weekly exploits bring our city to the national stage every week. Unlike CSI: Miami – which was mostly shot in LA- and Showtime’s, Dexter, – which left for LA after one season because of the outrageous cost of hurricane insurance – Burn Notice is actually filmed on location. Many of Miami’s scenic views, local treasures, and cultural landmarks make it into the production, bringing an authenticity to the character of our city that hasn’t been seen on screen since the days of Miami Vice.

Miami is a powerhouse of productions, but its potential is still incubating; we don’t have the clout to defiantly piss off Hollywood. Remember: there’s nothing on film that can’t be built in a sound stage in New Mexico.

Mr. Sarnoff produced his own line of theater – but didn’t exactly inspire hope for a compromise – by telling producer Terry Miller to not  “get up at the mic because I’m not going to entertain a discussion. You simply need to see me,” during a meeting at city hall.

We have to ask: What would Michael Westen say?

When attempting to present your city as a promiscuous Mecca for the entertainment industry, it’s imperative that you  not evict a nationally syndicated, critically revered show that flushes your economy with money, especially if said show pays rent to broadcast a forty-five minute weekly advertisement featuring your city. You also don’t want to demolish the very building that makes the stream of income possible. It’s imperative that you not replace that building with a park that won’t generate an ounce of revenue and become nothing more than a parade ground dog poop. Igniting these lapses of judgment into action can result in volatile fallout between you and the very hands you’re trying to eat from. 

 Television is fickle and transient. Shows die all the time for a variety of reasons: the public loses interest, ratings drop, and we all move on. Burn Notice will not run like The Simpsons, unless we’re willing to watch Michael Weston cash his social security checks and shoot from a Hoveround. The show has a limited number of seasons left int the tank . It is asinine to boot the production while its still fertile with great PR and economic subsidies.

Coconut Grove is already drowning in parks; Peacock and Kennedy Park are both within a mile of the convention center. Can’t the residents survive another year or two without another one?

Miami is sexy. It’s an international Dreamweaver that penetrates global imaginations with its free flowing auras of vice, beauty, and sunshine. But this incident could leave a dark bruise that could deter future productions from casting us.

You don’t mess with the film industry. They’ll flip you the bird, pack up and leave for a brothel of suitors begging for their presence with incentives and tax breaks. And if they need Miami for a scene or two, they’ll just build it on a sound stage in New Mexico. We can’t risk being black-balled by Hollywood.

If Burn Notice can’t stay in Coconut Grove, then it is imperative that the show be allowed to finish its run within the community that nurtured its success. At M3 studios, we’re waiting with open arms and a production house that’s camera ready.

 

M3 Staff

Press Release: M3 Studios, Proposes A Solution To Burn Notice’s 7th & Final Season’s Dilemma with Coconut Grove Convention Center

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

M3 STUDIOS, MULTI-MEDIA STUDIOS, PROPOSES A SOLUTION TO BURN NOTICE’S 7TH AND FINAL SEASON’S DILEMMA, IN THE HOPES OF MAINTAINING THE SHOW’S PRODUCTION IN SOUTH FLORIDA

M3 Studio’s filming infrastructure is a viable alternative to TVM’s current difficulties of shooting in South Florida

You’ve all seen it.  Roommate relationships ending the aggressive way:  clothes and expensive equipment flying out the window, pulverized soon after on the pavement below.  I’m sure Burn Notice, the veteran USA jam-packed action thriller, might wish there was a better solution to its similar living arrangement conflict with Coconut Grove, than experiencing this scene for the neighborhood to see.  Unfortunately for Burn Notice though, it doesn’t have the option of couple’s therapy like in USA’s freshman drama Common Law when dealing with the commissioners.  Lucky for TVM productions, M3 Studio’s has a solution.  We’re looking for a roommate and we see some good chemistry between us.  And trust us, we know how to treat our fellow cohabiters; M3 never opens a door with a sock on the doorknob, never leaves dirty dishes, always calls before having company, and never makes you build your own offices overnight (like some people have had to do.)  Interested in us, Burn Notice? Cause we sure are in you.

So what makes M3 your best relocation option?  While Marc Sarnoff, Coconut Grove Commissioner, suggested the drama be relocated to the upcoming Miami Entertainment Complex, is just a warehouse with the bare essentials, Fox Entertainment Studio’s Head of Production Robert Lemchen disagrees.  Lemchen said in response: “The cost of moving the show to another facility would be around $1 million,” so high because of moving costs associated with electrical wiring installation and a significant amount of necessary upgrades.  Though there will still be a cost to rebuild some of its sets, M3 Studios is a professional film facility already electrically wired, air-conditioned and ready to house television and film productions of Burn Notice’s stature.

M3 studios is a one-stop-shop, located 15 minutes from anywhere in Miami, a 122,000 sq. ft. facility that includes seven fully-equipped sound stages and studios, 60,000 square feet of flex-type space, easily transformable into production offices, standing sets, rehearsal space.  There are also four on-site parking lots that can be used as backlots for Burn Notice’s production.  M3 Studio’s is a fully air-conditioned, soundproofed, sound- conditioned 7-soundstage facility with lightning grids throughout, built in jails, interrogation rooms, un-used raw spaces, elephant doors to all stages, dressing rooms, make-up rooms, green rooms, full support areas, & plenty of backlots. We also have below-the-line capabilities, a convenient on-site transportation/limousine service and an in-house photographic studio with a large CYC wall, passenger elevators with freight elevator.  Plus, all amenities are strategically placed to provide one place to shoot, produce, edit, and master the production.

Don’t believe that a fully functioning studio infrastructure already exists in Miami? Just talk to some of our current roommates: Queen Latifah’s Flavor Unit Productions, Univision’s Al File de La Ley, Telemundo’s Relaciones Peligrosas & MTV’s newest series.

Oh, and Burn Notice, feel free to come tour the house anytime you’d like;  M3 is located at 4000 NW 36th Ave Miami Fl, 33142 and we can’t wait to meet you. A beautiful friendship awaits.

 

Aaron Sorkin and a Generation of Digital Multitaskers

Aaron Sorkin has made a career writing on behalf of idealism. His films and shows – including “A Few Good Men,” “The West Wing,” “Moneyball,” and “The Social Network” – often feature heroes or anti-heroes on quixotic journeys to dismantle and remake the status quo. At the tenth annual Wall Street Journal: All Things Digital Conference, he discussed his own quixotic battle with a modern audience of distracted multitaskers who want their news in 140 characters or less while engaging with multiple screens (Laptops, tablets, televisions smartphones) at the same time. He also offered insights into his writing process while discussing two upcoming projects: “Newsroom,” a new HBO drama chronicling the behind the scenes conflicts of a cable news channel, and a Steve Jobs biopic based on Walter Isaacson’s biography on the late cultural icon.


For a plethora of reasons, television is replacing Hollywood for a lot of the quality cinema being released these days. This change can be viewed through the migration to smaller screens by Hollywood regulars like Dustin Hoffman and Michael Mann (Luck), William H Macy (Shameless), Thomas Jane (Hung), Claire Danes (Homeland), and Steve Buscemi (Boardwalk Empire).

Our appetite for condensed media and instant results has shrunk has evaporated our attention spans from a whopping twelve minutes, to a paltry five, according to this study http://socialtimes.com/attention-spans-have-dropped-from-12-minutes-to-5-seconds-how-social-media-is-ruining-our-minds-infographic_b86479. At one point, it was a whole twenty minutes. This gaping hole in our intellect has created a wide chasm that comprehensive writers like Sorkin must learn to cross. The way his audience watches his work has undergone a facelift. He’d be the first to admit that his material doesn’t make for good “background” music. It requires active participation and concentration, but the medium of television gives home court advantage to other distractions. The living room has become the wild west of digital ADD.

We don’t just watch TV, the way we do when we go to the movies, where we’ve invested (by purchasing a ticket) in the content and where social rules (for the time being) still frown upon using a cell phone in the theater. At home, we sit in front of the screen, check email, order stuff from Amazon, talk on the phone, get NBA, NHL, and MLB updates, while delegating our remaining brain capacity to absorb whatever content is playing on TV.

With millions of potential distractions competing for our attention, how does an old school craftsman like Sorkin change his approach? He doesn’t. He writes the “same way as the guys who wrote I Love Lucy” because “Storytelling is a very old art form, and the important parts of it don’t change at all…I still worship at the altar of intention and obstacle.”

The conversation also covers the accessibility that the digital age offers to aspiring filmmakers, where Sorkin comments on the fact major studios are no longer needed to finance start ups. Anybody can make a movie. But at the end of the day, you still have to “distinguish between what’s good and what’s bad. He also marvels at the intuitive trend of modern technology and cites how many toddlers can pick up a tablet and instinctively know what to do with it. If he could ask Steve Jobs a question, it would be “What’s that magic trick?”

Check out the full interview below for more insights into the mind of one of Hollywood’s smartest screenwriters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN0yzItFWhU&feature=plcp

 

Filmed At M3: Mann – Get It Girl ft. T-Pain

West Coast rapper Mann hit up M3 Studios with T.Pain to shoot part 1 of his newest music video “Get It Girl”  Directed by Ali Zamani.

While T.Pain has used M3 Studios for countless videos this was Mann’s first video at our facility. We truly enjoyed having both Ali & Mann on the lot.

The music video features a great party vibe, a hook by T.Pain and of course girls.

Check out the Mann – “Get It Girl” feat. T. Pain music video below, which was just released.

M3 Studios state of the art facility, accommodations, infrastructure, amenities, support areas and with its knowledgeable staff its no wonder its become the top destination for brands, ad agencies, film productions, tv networks, record labels, and world class artist number one choice as the go to place for their production needs.

Another satisfied client and another successful production shot at M3 Studios Miami.

Coming In 2012: Can DiCaprio and Lurhman Strike Gold with New Gatsby Movie?

Baz Luhrmann has never been accused of being subtle. His films (Romeo and Juliette, Moulin Rouge) are camp extravaganzas filled with anachronistic music and visual overdoses of color, so it’s no surprise that the trailer for his adaptation of “The Great Gatsby,” an American masterpiece with a reserved, grimy tone and a passive narrator, created a buzz as mercurial as the mysterious Jay Gatsby himself. Like a shot of prohibition era bathtub whiskey, reception is divided between those who are happy to have another serving of the classic, and those who are turned off by the unconventional flavor of the new direction. The title character isn’t introduced until the third chapter in the book, so his characterization up to that point is revealed by the gossip of clueless speculators.  Likewise the Internet is crawling with trolls ripping into the guts of an unfinished movie – that won’t be released until Christmas – based on a two minute put together by a marketing team with no emotional or creative input into the finished product.

This isn’t the first time F. Scott Fitzgerald’s bacchanalian portrait of the “roaring twenties “ has made an appearance on the screen. Its predecessors aren’t exactly memorable, except perhaps for the lack of chemistry between Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. Luhrmann’s version, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, and Tobey Maguire, offers a refreshing perspective on the themes of greed, obsession, and opulence that defined the tale of a man, ashamed of his modest upbringing, who turns to bootlegging and other illicit activities to raise a fortune and regain the woman he lost.

Those who criticize Luhrmann for failing to replicate the serious tone of the book should keep in mind that Mr. Gatsby is ultimately brought down by his futile attempts to recreate the past. Adaptations that aren’t given the space to roam from the source material are seldom met with critical praise.

Though the film takes place in 1920s, elements of the trailer are unmistakably modern, perhaps as an attempt by Lurhmann to apply the story’s theme to a contemporary audience. It was shot in 3D with a budget that was well over a hundred million dollars, which is unusual for a film not featuring talking robots, nuclear explosions, and masked vigilantes.

Much of the criticism also comes from the trailer’s score, which features music from Jay-Z, Kanye West, and Jack White’s cover of U2’s “Love is Blindness” instead of tunes native to the time period. It’s not known yet whether Luhrmann will use modern music for the film itself, but based on his previous work, it would not be a surprise. It may not be a bad thing if he does. The book was written over fifty years ago, and chances are, much of the movie going public has not read it. Fans of the novel do not need to be persuaded to buy the ticket, but if the film hopes to turn a profit, it better attract those who aren’t familiar with it.

In any case, any press is good press, and the current uproar incited by the trailer has to be good news for the film’s producers.

Checkout the trailer below and give us your take.

Movie Monday Review: The Avengers

If you went to the movies this weekend, the odds are nine to one that you saw The Avengers. Marvel’s latest hymn of adrenaline serenaded the hearts of nerds and casual fans alike, smashing opening weekend records along the way, as if the Incredible Hulk himself spiked the box office during a touchdown dance.

It became the fastest film in history to gross 200 million domestically (twelve days), set single day records for Saturday (69 million) and Sunday (50 million), and cashed a combined international check of 640 million dollars. To put it in perspective, only eleven films in history have joined the billionaire’s club. The Avengers will likely be the twelfth by month’s end. It will enter the one percent of cinema royalty where it will mingle with such monumental films as Avatar, The Dark Knight, and The Return of the King.

There were an insurmountable number of variables that went into the film’s production. A few of the more intriguing components are as follows:

The Set Pieces

The “Helicarrier” is a giant aircraft carrier with flight capabilities and a half-mile waistline. It’s iconic to the comics; so it was important to memorably highlight it on film. S.H.I.E.L.D’s floating fortress filled two of Albuquerque Studios’ soundstages (the whole production took six of eight), was as wide as half a football field, and took five months to build.

The Cameras

The film was shot using cameras on two ends of the financial spectrum. It was Seamus McGarvey’s (cinematographer) first venture into the world of digital video and he chose the Alexa by Arri. With its tonal range, clarity, and resolution, the Alexa is praised for bridging the gap between the film and digital shooting formats. It has been featured in a plethora of feature projects since its release in 2010. McGarvey used a 1.85:1 aspect ratio to account for the varying heights of the characters and the Manhattan Skyline.

With its 220 million dollar budget, splurging on elaborate set pieces, an all-star cast, and top end equipment is to be expected, but some of the film’s more intimate shots were filmed using Canon’s EOS 5D Mark 3 DSLR. With an ISO range as low as 50(L) and as high as 102400(H2), compact portability, and pristine HD quality, the Mark 3 proves that quality doesn’t require Tony Stark’s credit limit. It has also been featured in Iron Man 2 and Captain America: The First Avenger.

The Marketing

Marvel’s financial success blossomed from one of the more fertile  product placement seeds in recent memory. Who among us didn’t gasp at the sight of Mjolnir (Thor’s hammer) as it crashed into the Earth after Iron Man 2? Tony Stark may have nonchalantly used  Captain America’s iconic shield as a prop, but it enchanted the audience because it foreshadowed the origins of Steve Rogers. The Avengers has already grossed more revenue than Thor, Captain America, and the two Hulk films did throughout their theatrical runs. Its presence radiated throughout the public subconscious years before its debut, and every Easter egg, and post credits scene left the audience foaming at the mouth like Pavlov’s dogs.

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