timeimmortal

Full and fair disclosure: I’m still angry at Harper and the Conservatives for cutting the Telefilm new media fund. As a part-time gamer, part-time game historian, part-time game-maker, and technical officer for the Edmonton Game Convention, the loss of the Telefilm fund is, for me, something that stings…especially since we had hoped to draw funding for the Convention, in part, from Telefilm (who were really enthusiastic at the idea of a gamer-centric gaming convention).

Be that as it may, however, I do agree with Stephen Harper when he notes that much of the whining and pleas for money from the arts community in Canada simply do not resonate with Canadians. Much of the content that the arts community in Canada produces is, simply put, not worth the money spent on it. It’s just not that good.

That’s not to say it’s all crap, of course…but one notes that the best things coming out of e.g. Vancouver these days are not wholly Canadian shows. Things like Battlestar Galactica — an excellent series — make heavy use of Canadian talent and Canadian locations, because it’s the only way that a show with such consistently high-quality visual effects can possibly stay within its overall budget. And that Canadian talent is put to good use; many of the actors on that show are excellent or better. Likewise, the Canadian landscape has proven itself versatile and adaptable to the needs of a show that has involved a few instances of planet-hopping.

But in the end, BSG is still essentially an American show. Most of its funding flows from the Sci-Fi Channel, and its principal audience is State-side. The same can be said of shows like Stargate Atlantis — produced here, but mostly funded from abroad. Few wholly Canadian shows rise to match the quality of e.g. BSG, and fewer still enjoy any kind of comparable audience and popularity.

And in many cases, there’s a good reason for that. Even a cursory glance at the slate of programs that the CBC is running this season makes one scratch one’s head — the shows just aren’t that good. Hockey Night in Canada is still about the best thing the CBC has going for it, because it’s about the only show in Mothercorp’s lineup that doesn’t betray a leftward political slant (although, to his credit, Rick Mercer has come down on the right side of the freedom of speech/HRC debate).

And of course, this is just television we’re talking about. The arts community in Canada produces quite a lot of other stuff besides niche television shows…much of it of even lower quality, and lesser appeal, than Canadian television. There’s not a stage play that has been produced in Canada in…a long time…that I’d care to go and see, and even most Canadian “artists” (by which I mean painters, sculptors, and the like) produce material that simply does not resonate with me (and, I suspect, with many other Canadians as well). Some of it is disgusting, some of it is mediocre, and some of it is just damned odd…and the amount of crap sadly outweighs, and overshadows, what genuinely good stuff exists.

And we, the Canadian taxpayers, shouldn’t have to fork over dollars in support of things which we’ll never go and see, nor ever acknowledge as being something of substance and quality. Yeah, I’ll gladly pay to support Hockey Night, even if I don’t watch much hockey…but I’m not particularly inclined to support Little Mosque On The Prairie. I’d be okay with sending a few of my tax dollars to the producers of Corner Gas, but I’d rather not line the pockets of the people who work on This Hour Has 22 Minutes.

Canadian artists rallied to denounce the Harper government for its stance. Gordon Pinsent even stood up and said that Canadian artists “should be the landlords of [their] own industry, not the tenants.”

I actually agree. I think Canadian artists shouldn’t be government tenants, dependent on federal handouts. I think the art that Canadians produce should be able to stand up on its own merits, and generate revenue that doesn’t emerge primarily from federal coffers. I have no problem with the idea that the government might lend assistance to commercially viable artistic ventures…but in the end, I don’t think the government’s contribution should be the majority share of any particular art project’s funding.

Let’s come back to the Telefilm fund and computer games for a minute. If there is one thing that Canadian artists — new media artists, mind — do very well, it is computer games. Canadians make excellent games. And I’m not just talking about EA Sports out in Vancouver, which was for years the only decent EA studio. I’m talking about the various smaller developers who have produced a consistent string of excellent titles over the last few years. Relic (Vancouver) gave us Homeworld and its sequel. Ironclad Games (Burnaby) gave us Sins Of A Solar Empire, which I am told is just an astounding title. Edmonton’s own BioWare has produced a steady stream of hits, including Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Knights Of The Old Republic, and Mass Effect. And Ubisoft Canada (Montreal) gave us Assassin’s Creed, another critically acclaimed game.

Government funding went into some of these titles, but the government didn’t provide the lion’s share of the development money in any particular case. And it isn’t government money that let the games themselves turn a profit; all of these titles have been commercially successful, because they’re damn good. Because they were developed with the end user in mind, and offered something that gamers the world over were willing to actually pay money for.

It’s that last point that’s important: people wanted to support these games financially, by buying them. As Kateland at TLA notes:

In any given time, in any given culture, if patrons cannot be found who are freely willing to pay for the fare which is offered by the artistic community, is says something substantial about the fare which is offered, but apparently, not in Canada.

The government purse is not a finite resource. The purse is only filled by sweat of the brow of the taxpayers via the coercive arm of Revenue Canada. Life is about choices and so is government. The government cannot go on funding indefinitely and without concern to the cost of each program which it currently funds.

And so I find I’m torn. I agree, overall, with the decision of the Canadian government to restrict arts funding. I just wish they hadn’t killed the Telefilm fund in the process. In the end, though, that’s not a total loss either. Certainly, none of the above-listed game companies is going to be hurt all that much by it, and even the Convention will be able to find alternative sources of funding. That’s because they, and we, keep in mind the most important thing: the people. These companies, and our Convention team, intend to produce something that others will see as worthwhile, and not just something which will earn appreciative nods from a select handful of artistés and intelligensia.

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I have no talent for thinking up slogans, but this is important even to mention:

The Covenant Zone bloggers will be demonstrating in support of Mark Steyn and Maclean’s magazine, and against the ludicrous operation of “human rights” law in this country, when Mark’s hearing in front of the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal kicks off, next Monday, June 2. We will meet at 8 AM in front of the Provincial Court House at 800 Hornby where, according to the BCHRT website, the hearing will take place.

We welcome all bloggers, readers, and informed and outraged citizens to join us. (Also: we will be discussing this tomorrow at our regular Thursday evening meeting in the atrium of the Vancouver Public Library, central branch, 7-9 pm, in front of Blenz Coffee — look for the blue scarves.)

Now since many people interested in this “trial” are not in the Vancouver area, we thought we would offer people a way of participating in our demonstration. We intend to carry signs and hand out leaflets. The problem we have is how to communicate the current “human rights” travesty in some catchy phrases or slogans. This is an invitation to send us ideas. We want slogans and/or aphorisms or short statements that can appeal to ordinary citizens, to communicate something of the evil that will be unfolding in the court house to those who may not know what is going on. We want phrases that will be memorable, perhaps even one day historical.

All I can think to say is to re-word Chesterton: free speech means speaking the unspeakable, or it means nothing at all.

Anyhow, all the details are here. If you’re in Vancouver (and my tracking software suggests that more than a few my Readers are from there) on June 2, show up for this!

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Time for another panoramic. I’m not sure, but it seems to me that I took quite a lot of panoramic images in Vancouver — while I don’t think I took as many as I did while in England, I wonder if the overall frequency, relative to the duration of the trip, was higher?

Anyhow, the picture:

This is a small harbour along Westwater Drive near Richmond, British Columbia. It’s on the road that more or less connects the area near Finn Slough with Steveston, a harbour community south of Richmond, and apparently the home to more than a few interesting shops.

Anyhow, Grace’s parents stopped the van so that both Grace’s sister and I could take some pictures of the harbour (it is a good view, even if it is a bit cloudy), and for whatever reason I decided to take yet another panoramic image set.

Edit-wise, I matched exposures between the images (as usual) and did some basic editing to clean up chromatic aberration, digital noise, and other issues. I then exported each image as a TIFF file, and loaded the whole lot of them into Hugin.

Experience with other harbour panoramics has taught me that a lot of control points are necessary for images of this nature, so I went a little bit crazy in defining said points, but I think it worked out for the best. Hugin did its job well, and I have only found one notable misalignment in the image so far. And it’s a big image (nearly 11,000 pixels wide).

Once the panoramic had been rendered, I loaded it back into Lightroom and did a few additional edits, including saturation adjustments and some additional exposure tweaking. I also set the Clarity to -100, which gave the image a slightly diffuse, not-quite-misty feel that I like.

Once we got back to Vancouver, Grace and I wasted little time in getting caught up in preparations for her grandfather’s 75th birthday celebration, which was scheduled for the coming weekend. Her various family members had been periodically referring to the names of some of the expected guests, and had mentioned more than once that a couple of them were residents of a place called Finn Slough.

Grace’s dad decided to take us driving past the slough one afternoon, and I have to admit it was an…interesting experience. Sobering, I think, would be the best word for it, because the slough is certainly a very stark picture of the reality of poverty, especially when one can drive only a few hundred metres up the road and find decadent rural mansions.

Yes, people do live in there. It’s quite a close-knit community, I’m told; they don’t tend to welcome outsiders, and the “privilege” of living in the slough is only granted to newcomers if one of the current residents moves out or passes away.

Edit-wise, this shot received the Vivid preset that I occasionally (very occasionally) use, which boosted the colours in the shot quite nicely. I needed to do a fair bit of chromatic aberration reduction, and then manually adjusted the master hue setting to diminish the intensity of the greens in the grass. A few shadow adjustments rounded things out, resulting in the image you see here.