Inspired

Its rare these days that i feel inspired by what a living person has to say but then last week... i was inspired into action...

In my parallel life as consultant in education (actually this pays far better than producing films!) i went to one day of a 2 day conference hosted by Futurelab exploring the conditions, tools and strategies to support innovation in education.

I had some fun on the talkaoke (mobile talkshow) run by the artists collective, The People Speak
and additional fun Scratching or programming interactive stories and art online and then there were some seminars and people talked around and around about issues/ problems (as people at conferences like to do) and i got a little bored except for the looking at the storycubes that had been used to capture people's ideas and thoughts the previous day.

I was debating whether to leave early and hop on the 3.05pm back to Manchester but then the final session by Natalie Jeremijenko, a Visiting Professor at NYU - a replacement session i believe - revived my brain back into the present... and projecting into the future with possibility and how people can make a difference to their environment through structured people participation...

See fav sites: How stuff is made. For other projects read here:

Coming up ...

18th September 2007
Content360

25th September 2007
Digital Cinema 2007

18th October 2007
The UK Film Finance Summit

28th Oct - 2nd Nov 2007
B3 Moving Image Lab

November 22nd 2007
The Commissioning Conference 2007

7 - 11 November 2007
Sheffield Doc Fest

Urban Screens - Manchester 11-12 October 2007

Urban Screens Manchester 07 explores the conditions for urban screens from a multitude of perspectives, making it relevant to media specialists, designers, artists, architects, urban planners, broadcasters and theorists.

The omnipresence of public displays such as LED, LCD, plasma screens, large scale projections and media facades demands a critical reflection of their impact on cities and on our perceptions of them. At the same time, they offer new and exciting possibilities for artistic and non-commercial use as well as for community development and play.

Departures

Venizia Digitale, Venice Sept 3rd and 4th 2007

I'm off to Venice to hopefully uncover more about strategic business models for developing cross platform projects.

Edinburgh Film Festival

Ahh... Edinburgh - the madness of the fringe, the serenity of the book festival, the aesthetics of the Arts Festival and the joy of cinema at the film festival combine to make me one inspired and happy creative producer...

Seeing Warhol's lifesize print, 'Silver Elvis', in the flesh at the Scottish National Gallery was one of the highlights of my trip - definitely worth catching and great programming alongside the film festival.

Warhol was a hoarder and obsessed with capturing aspects of his life for future record, including recording the conversations he had during the day. He kept everything and when he moved from one studio to another he boxed up truckloads of his personal hoardings and transferred it to his new studio. Each box had a date stamp on it. These boxes of letters, receipts, telegrams, photos, programmes, sketches, became his time capsules. A few have been opened and are on display at this exhibition alongside his classic 'screen tests'.

A film i quite liked when it came out is Mary Harron's 'I Shot Andy Warhol' based on the true life story of 60s radical feminist, Valerie Solanas (who shot Andy Warhol). I am very interested in this cross-fertilisation between art and film. The way in to many film ideas for writer/directors is an image - a strong image that just would not go away. A great movie from last year, The lives of others began in part as the image of a man with headphones listening.

I find this a good approach to get on the same page as those writer/directors i work with. What is the central image of this film that keeps you awake at night? If this image can be captured and conveyed - it really helps others to 'see' the film. Which can help a script or pitch come to life.

Opportunities approaching...

SUBMISSIONS

Deadline 1st September 07

IDFA
Cross Media Documentary projects

TRAINING

EAVE Producer training with/ without project

Deadline 6th September 07

Alchemy

Creativity Works at Curzon, Soho, London - 17th Sept 2007, 7pm

B3 Media are hosting another Creativity Works event, this time at the Curzon Soho, as part of the London Design festival.

Creativity Works showcases everything from short films, music video and animation to moving image works from emerging filmmakers.

Its a great night to network with other filmmakers, meet the B3 team (myself included as production executive at B3) and see new work.

To submit your film for consideration... goto the B3 website

Deadline 31st August for submissions.

To attend the night email: ticketsATb3media.net with your name and number of tickets you want. The last event at the Curzon was packed out so don't forget to book.

Identities.tv at the ICA, 7 Aug 2007

Identities.tv
A programme of short films exploring themes of identity that I worked on at B3 Media will be showcased at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London.

This programme brought together spoken word, screen based and sound artists to collaborate in the production of short 5 minute films. The showcase includes a screening of the commissioned films and Q&A with the filmmakers around their practice and how they found this unique collaborative experience.

Tickets are free: email ticketsATb3media.net with identities.tv in the subject line.

Digital Futures - Digital Academies

The Media Training North West Digital Futures programme has recently been exploring how media is changing, how audiences are consuming differently, but more importantly how content producers can capitalise on these developments.

Having attended quite a few of the digital futures seminars i was keen to get on the digital entrepreneurs academy as part of the programme which was for producers to hone cross or multi-platform project ideas with input from industry mentors which would then be pitched to North West production companies.

I pitched a Web 2.0 project to MultiMedia Arts and found out today that i won the pitch and subject to contract will be producing the project through Sept and October.

I developed the idea for my pitch whilst in Australia. A number of different things inspired me, including, bizarrely the pattern on the floor of the carpet at the Powerhouse Museum in Melbourne (see pic above). It got me thinking about how content is distributed on the web and thinking on solving the problem that user generated contend is distributed all over the place.

An unconventional view

Recognise this?

I'm in Sydney, at the opera house. Perhaps not the conventional view of the place but the inside is just as fascinating as the outside.

I spent four great days in Melbourne effectively producing a new media project called 'A DAY IN THE LIFE' at a Neuroscience Convention. Of course because the content is user-generated - the joy is there is little to do except hand out the camera packs and talk up the project to potential users.

With the conference over and nearly 200 camera packs handed out - i thought a trip to Sydney was warranted - to see the opera house, the museum of moving image, the harbour...

Exodus Shorts Film Festival masterclass - 20th June 2007

I am delivering a scriptwriting workshop at the Exodus Short Film Festival at the Cornerhouse on the 20th June 07.

The workshop will be a practical workshop covering 'image and meaning' and generating strong visual ideas for scripts.

Writers will do what they do best in this workshop ... write!

B.TWEEN 07 - June 14 - 15th 2007

I am looking forward to attending B.TWEEN 07 an interactive media forum held in Bradford at the National Media Museum. Its pitched as 'Innovation, Information and Inspiration for Digital Entrepreneurs...
Turning Creativity into Cash'. Which sounds pretty good to me.

[NB: Click here to check out what you missed]