Festive Film Showcase

No it wasn’t a screening of comfy Christmas Classics. Organised by Lee Thomas and his team from Screen WM it was an opportunity to learn what you need to get there, what it was like, and tips for how to make it work, from four people whose films the screen agency had recently supported.

First up was screenwriter Geoff Thompson, whose Coventry-based feature Clubbed is out in the New Year. His main advice was work hard and be motivated. If you can work 8-10 hours in a factory, doing a job you don’t really enjoy, surely you can do the same hours as a writer? Motivation? Geoff is going for his Oscar. He’s already got his BAFTA three films back.

Next up was Natasha Carlish, co-producer on ‘Souled Out’ set in the 1970’s Stoke Northern Soul scene (currently in post-production). Her advice to would-be co-producers was to ‘bring added value to the partnership, swallow your ego and be prepared for masses of paperwork.’

Justin Edgar’s second feature as director, Special People, has been winning audiences at festivals and in cinemas, as well as grabbing headlines in the press. His recipe? Never give up, look for a good marketing angle and hire the best PR person you can afford.

Lastly, and a treat for us as we got to see his horror feature The Children in full, was writer/director Tom Shankland. What I gleaned from the Q&A with Tom was be prepared to change and adapt the script as you go along, get good feedback from test screenings before your final edit and never tell the audience the full story. Always hold something back.

Nuff said.

Tom Shankland

The Digital Divide

Last Saturday I had the privilege of chairing a panel discussion at Deaffest, the annual film and tv festival for the Deaf community held at the Light House in Wolverhampton. The theme of the session was ‘What is the future for moving image media with sign language?’ and our panel was drawn from broadcasters, funders, policy leaders and academics. During the discussion one of the panellists, Jason Hall from Screen WM, asked the audience (who were almost all from the Deaf signing community) to put up their hands if they had ever posted a video on YouTube, be it a film, a video blog or just their mate’s birthday party. Not a single hand went up. For us on the panel this was quite significant as it hints that an important disadvantaged community in our society is not accessing the tools and platforms which could meet their communication needs. Ok, so the audience is not representative of the estimated 100,000 people who use British Sign Language as their first language, and YouTube is not everyone’s communication tool, but I do think this warrants further research.

Serious chatting

Fifty years ago I guess nobody would have thought you could make a living out of chatting, or take it seriously. It’s what you do over a coffee, a  pint or waiting for a bus. If you wanted to rant you got on a soap box in Hyde Park. Now you have chat shows, blogs, columnists, chat rooms, twitter and talk radio. The opportunities for having your say have never been greater.

This morning, the chatter at the well-attended Birmingham Social Media Cafe, was deafening. I’m not joking – I could hardly hear myself think! I thought about this as a paradigm example of the world we live in now – there is so much information and chatter ‘out there’ it can be quite overwhelming sometimes. However, if I was to choose between chatter and silence I think I’d agree with Adrienne Rich when she writes:

‘what in fact I keep choosing

are these words, these whispers, conversations
from which time after time the truth breaks moist and green. ‘

Electric dreams

The Creative Networks event at tic last night saw Tom Lawes in great form talking about his life and career as musician, composer, sound designer, film producer and more recently cinema owner. His experiences over the last four years of refurbishing, relaunching and developing the Electric Cinema provide a great example of what you can do through sheer determination, hard work and creative enterprise. Tom is up for Outstanding Business Development at the Birmingham Creative City Awards tomorrow. If he doesn’t win I’ll be very surprised. Hats off to you Tom.

Also at the event were Chris Pinches and Huw Bowen from Coventry-based Entanglement Productions, promoting their low-budget sci-fi thriller Schrodinger’s Girl. They demonstrated some great SFX using ‘before’ and ‘after’ footage of the same scene. If they could work some of their techniques into a simple workshop package I’m sure it would go down a storm in local schools and colleges. Anyway, here’s the trailer from the film. Good luck lads.

Hello!

Welcome to my blog. As you can see its in development and I still need to add more stuff about me. I’ve started out practising with a few posts on events I’ve attended recently before taking the plunge and going public. As the title suggests, the blog will be mainly about my work and interests as a media consultant. Depending on how this one goes, I may start another about my social and leisure interests.

Feel free to browse and add comments.

Steve.

Where’s the Comedy?

At Mark Presdee’s excellent screening event of Annie Griffith’s Edinburgh-set comedy feature ‘Festival’ last night, we discussed why there aren’t enough British comedy features reaching a wide audience and enjoying box office success. We’ve got a rich culture of comedy and humour in these islands, reflected in live perfromance, on tv and radio, but sadly not enough on the big screen. Why is this? Is it the writing, lack of development funding, wrong format or what? Some of the biggest comedy classics have come from the US (think ‘Some like it Hot’, ‘Toy Story’, ‘Blazing Saddles’ and so on) and they don’t even get irony yet! All we have is Monty Python and a string of formulaic rom-coms from Working Title. Maybe we need a Head of Comedy at the UK Film Council. Now there’s a thought…

Creative Media Networking Event – 13th November

Popped along to show my face at this – its only 5 minutes from where I live, and the offer of free coffee and biscuits was enough to get me out of the house.  Turned out it was organised by those nice people from Creative Launchpad. When I got there Dave Roberts was in the middle of a presentation about the importance of getting out there and meeting people (yippee, that’s what I’m doing!) and establishing your networks. Dave is no longer with CLP, having moved up into the higher echelons of parent organisation Tribal, but they bring him back for these events as he’s a good motivational speaker. Also there was Paula Trew, a business advisor at CLP. Paula gave me good solid advice when I was preparing to go freelance, and loads of homework which I still haven’t completed.Turned out the event wasn’t really for me, more for newbies to the Creative Industries.

After-event music was provided by South Birmingham Community Radio. Station Manager Peni Whelan is looking for more volunteers, especially on the admin side, so if you’re interested give her a bell. Her number’s on the website.

Not Flip enough

Went to the well-attended Flip animation-fest launch last night at tic. Thought it was more like back to college than festive launch as it took place in tic’s main lecture theatre without a wine glass or crisp in sight.  Just as well as a large part of the audience were animation students or recent grads, keen to learn how to get on in the business.

Key speaker was Camille Deakin from C4’s recently launched animation site 4mations. Explaining the reasoning behing the site, Camille said Youtube had grown too big to find stuff by chance – most people were directed there. There needed to be a dedicated place for people to post and discuss content. Camille also touched on the thorny subject of funding – although there’s little money around to commision new work, the opportunities are greater than ever for people to get their work out there and seen. Doesn’t have to be completed work – you can build up a following through work in progress. Local animators Brothers Macleod were singled out as good examples, with over 4000 followers on Youtube. Also Suspicious Productions who launched ‘Life According to Dinosaurs‘ on Facebook and now has its own website and spin-offs including wallpapers, badges and t-shirts. They’ll probably make more money from the merchandise than from the films.  As Camille pointed out, the future market for animators is online, but nobody’s cracked it yet.

Blogging 101

Hi welcome to my first blog. I’ll be writing about film and media matters from around the West Midlands and beyond.

I was helped in setting up this site through the excellent advice and guidance of Pete Ashton. Pete runs a free Social Media Surgery every Thursday afternoon from 4-6 at Rootys cafe at the Custard Factory in Birmingham, where he’s available like a field doctor to address all your aches and pains about blogging, twittering and other ‘how do I do this’ things.

I’m off to the Flip launch at tic tonight – will tell you all about it tomorrow.