Sintel - The latest from the Blender Foundation

Sintel is the latest release from the Blender Foundation. They've come a long way since 2005 when I watched the Elephants Dream, the first film from the foundation. The plot of the film has received some critisim but I felt it held together well and was quite watchable something I did not feel was the situation with the Elephant's Dream.



The technical challenges the team have taken on for this film are numerous, massive landscapes, snow, sand, fire, humans and animals are all done very proficiently. There were a couple of times I though the camera movement was not very natural but the photography was also very good.

All in all a very watchable short film and I wish the film all the best in the up comming festivals that it's showing at.

Where the wild things are

"Heads on and We Shoot: The Making of "Where the Wild Things are" will be released on 1 October 2009, but you can pre-order now.

London International Film Festival

The official opening of the 2009 London International Film Festival is on Monday 31 August 6pm at the Renoir Cinema.

However tonight is party night for the festival goers at the Roxy, The Brothers McLeod join with animation and film night organisers Paperbag with DJs and musicians.

The Monday night even will be no-less special with a special preview of Mary and Max by Adam Elliot and the results of the POOP Golden Poo Awards.



http://www.liaf.org.uk/

Will 2009 be the year of 3D?

Happy New Year animation ramblings fans, it certainly looks like 2009 will be the year of 3D films.

Film directors such as James Cameron, Robert Zemeckis and even George Lucas have been talking about how their new films will be in 3D and DreamWorks Animation chief executive Jeffrey Katzenberg stated that "all of DreamWork Animation's films will be both authored and offered in 3D"

NVIDEA have been demoing new active glasses for showing such films at home and Novo have produced the worlds first consumer 3D webcam which has the extra advantage of looking a little like the Johnny 5 robot from the Short Circuit films.

Smoke and Mirrors 48 hour challenge

The Post Production company Smoke and Mirrors is running a short film making competition where the challenge is to make a film in 48hours.

The entrants have to be teams from UK based advertising and production companies and must register by 10th October to be given the secret topic that they must make their film about.

London In Motion

Forwarded press release

Do you have an interest in urban life and/or Eastern Europeans in
London?

The ‘London in Motion’ project consists of two series of
extra-curricular documentary film workshops open to UCL postgraduate
students and staff as well as non-academics from the wider community.
Films completed during the course will be screened at the LIDF and the
Canary Wharf Film Festival in 2009.

The course is experimental in nature. It will provide access to the core
concepts of documentary filmmaking, as well as offering an opportunity
for content-rich insights from The Bartlett Faculty of the Built
Environment, the School of East European and Slavonic Studies, as well
as professional filmmakers. Key films and key texts will be viewed and
discussed.

Students will be encouraged to use all forms of new visual media to tell
a contemporary London story. The challenge will be to see how film
enriches and provides research insights, while at the same time creating
new ways of experiencing that research. The course has been designed by
PocketVisions.

Applications are welcomed from postgraduate students and staff from UCL,
as well as non-academics in the wider London community who can
demonstrate an interest in either the theme of the built environment
and/or Eastern Europeans in London. The deadline to submit your
application is 1st September 2008. Please visit
www.london-in-motion.ucl.ac.uk for more information.

‘London in Motion’ is a joint initiative between PocketVisions, School
of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies (SSEES), and the Bartlett
(Urban Film Society). It is funded by UCL Futures.

Dime Novel Screen

I stumbled across Dime Novel Screen via a real life friend on Facebook.



Thursday, 6th September 2007
From 8 pm — FREE ENTRY
THE SASSOON GALLERY
rear of BAR STORY
213 Blenheim Grove, London SE15 [underneath Peckham Rye Station]

It sounded interesting so I thought I'd quiz them further, Patrick Samuel kindly provided some very comprehensive answers.

Flea Circus Director: What is the typical length of a Dime film?

Patrick Samuel: The length of films tend to vary greatly. Sometimes from short animated clips or visual experiments lasting under 2 minutes to documentaries and stories that last 15 minutes long. Most films fall into the region of 7 to 12 minutes though.

FCD: How many films do you show at each session?

PS: The night itself is split into 3 sections. The first part is the Welcome Screening. This usually lasts anything from 15 to 30 minutes and we always show the Favourite of the Night from the previous month along with other "welcome material" (a music video, or an animation, things which did not quite fit into the next part). The next part is what filmmakers generally aim for. It's called the Selection Screening and usually comprises of 5 short films. It all depends on the length of the films themselves.

Each film in this selection is followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers, questions from the audience and discussions with special guests as well.

The final part of the night (after the audience have voted and the Favourite has been announced) is the Open Screening. This is for people who just happened to bring a short film with them on the night. We show it then and there for them. If the panel agrees, then we include it in the following month's Welcome Screening or Selection Screening.

FCD: Who is a typical Dime Novel Screen film maker?

PS: Our filmmakers range from students to first time filmmakers to industry professionals. We’ve had Ben Hopkins, director of the modern British cult classic The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz and 37 Uses For A Dead Sheep showing his first ever piece National Achievement Day as well Nadya Brand, producer of the most recent music video for Within Temptation and star of the horror movie Broken showing her short film Prey. Soon we’ll have The History Boys and Amazing Grace actor Stephen Campbell Moore as a special guest with his short film!

FCD: Do you have animated films?

PS: We love animated short films and it’s great that Dime Novel Screen attracts so many of them. From the very first night we had Christoph Steger with his animated documentary Mother; Leo Bridle with Still Life With Flowers; Katy Davis with Gone Fishing; Elinor Geller with The Spirit Child; and Max Hattler with Collision to name but a short few who brought with them their award winning animations.



FCD: Given that I'd have never heard about you had you not been on Facebook, do you think that social networks are reducing the numbers watching and making films or do they help?

PS: I think that social networks such as Facebook and Mysapce are a great way to promote events such as this one. The amount of promotion that we do through them is astounding and the best of it is that it’s all free. The development of the internet over the years has allowed us to upload, view, comment on and pass on videos to each other is another great step forward in making filmmaking accessible to anyone with a camera and allowing them an outlet for their creativity. It has also meant that there is also a lot of junk floating around the internet as well and events such as Dime Novel Screen is a great way to sort through it all and present to its audience the top of the bunch and let them vote for the ones they like!

FCD: Finally, how would people get involved with Dime Novel Screen?

PS: People can get involved with Dime Novel Screen in a many number of ways. If they’ve made a short film they can of course contact us and we’ll let them know how to submit their film (usually by posting a DVD). We then invite them for an interview and photo shoot to promote them on our site with a filmmaker profile. Filmmakers are also encouraged to attend on the night of their screening for their Q&A. You can also get involved by of course coming down and member of our audience, voting for the films, participating in the Q&A’s and letting us know what you thought of the night. Another way is to support us by promoting the event and/or helping us to fund it as it’s all non-profit. As the organiser, I cover the costs myself and work with a team of volunteers and together we keep it going because we all love film and want to support the people who make films by providing them with a lively screening event.

Many thanks to Patrick and hopefully I'll be providing a report of one of their sessions at some point.

The Dime Novel Screen night of short films and live Q&A's with filmmakers in the unique setting of the Sassoon Gallery on the 6th of September from 8.00pm.

Film Distribution

The promotors of Shrek III have demonstrated just how to make Americans watch your film with major sales this weekend, knocking Spiderman 3 off the top of the charts.

Luc Besson is not so happy though, he has criticised the film distributors for the poor response from US audiences to the Invisibles film. Normally about half a film's takings comes from the US and the other from the rest of the World. The Invisibles made only $15m in the US but made over $90m which does give cause for concern over how it was released. The distributor Weinstein Company are not particularly well known for promotions to a younger audience, Besson speculates other reasons why the film did not float well:
"Why the critics didn’t like Arthur was because they changed so much of the film and tried to pretend the film was American. The critics aren’t stupid. They watched the film, they vaguely smell American but they can feel the film is forced for an American audience. The film is European. It’s made by a Frenchman."

Arthur and the Invisibles is now available on DVD.

Other useful links on film distribution:
www.launchingfilms.tv
Big Film Shorts

Script resources

Today I stumbled across (with some help from the Stoic Talk newsletter) a series of resources for script writers. This would have been brilliant about 2 years ago when I was evolving the script for the Flea Circus for which the review process consisted of a series of discussions down the pub or ideas thought up whilst wandering with a cigar. These were followed by a revision of the script followed by more discussions weeks later. Of course the actual reading out loud of the script was the greatest test of it's quality and Olivier who voiced the Ring Master made some on the fly changes when he did the reading.

So you don't make my mistakes, here's some links.

New Producers Alliance
Straight Curve
The Script Factory

The NPA is a charity with a series of events including the script tank, "after reading, the writer and/or producer/director are given feedback and constructive criticism aimed at helping them to redraft and market their work"

Straight Curve is a company that provides training on script writing, comedy, sound and general film making. It also has facilities available.

The Script Factory claims to be Europe's Premier Script Development Organisation and provides networking and training for script writers as well as a Script Writing Diploma course.

Films go digital

The cost of printing on film and distributing the reels are large, the film projector mechanisms are costly to maintain and require experts to maintain. This all adds up to higher costs for cinema goers and less profits for the film makers. Some cinemas such as the one in Leicester square have been digital for some time now but the films are still "printed" onto a hard disk rather than a film and distributed physically. Approximately 7% of the cinemas in the US have digital projection.

Given the improvements in networking recently this old style process could be a thing of the past. In a collaboration between several distributors and cinemas the idea of sending films over the wire. The Digital Cinema Implementation Partners believe that they will be able in increase the flexibility of cinemas and provide greater supply for hit films and for niche films to have short runs at no additional cost.

In the home video market there are plans too with the DVD Forum in Tokyo approving the CSS Managed Recording Specification. This technolgy would initially allow kiosks and shops to download and burn DVDs on demand for playback at home. It is believed that the new format would work with the majority of home players.

This all looks very promising but Peter Broderick a consultant from Paradigm thinks that the cinemas need to Rethink Film Distribution completely.

Shorts

A couple of links to some short films

http://www.pixar.com/shorts/
http://www.guerrillafilmmakers.com/