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Random selection…
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE (16 December 1917 – 19 March 2008) a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, most famous for his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, and for collaborating with director Stanley Kubrick on the film of the same name, has also died at his home in Sri Lanka.Clarke served in the&nbs…
The low budget digital film making revolution is sweeping the industry like a big brush. But in this case the brush is made of pixels, ones and zeros as opposed to the usual brush construction of celluloid, photosensitive dyes and developing chemicals.
One of the leading exponents of this 'Cinema Electronique' is Dutch auteur Hans Von Looz. His films such as, 'Breaking My Patience', 'The Nutters…
"You see he didn't start out as a robot. He was a policeman who was gunned down so naturally they transplant his head onto a robot body to keep him alive and turn him into Cybocop. But the thing they forgot was his balls, isn't it? He thought with his balls. They controlled his instincts. "Do I shoot the criminals? What are my balls telling me?" That was how he operated. Without them he's just a…
If there's one thing more stressful than getting married, it's making a
fully improvised comedy about the process in real time. Debbie Isitt,
writer and director, kept a diary of the making of her film Confetti, an extravaganza of jealousy, nudity, ball boys....and improvised dialogue.
Coventry. September 2002
I first decided to make a wedding come…
Come in come in. Is anyone there?Just lost a whole page of data when I went to upload it. PHUT. gone, finito, marrungad, kaputo. I was logged in, but when the upload completed it told me I could not have access to that page without being registered and shuit me out! And my data went west, wasting a whiole precious hour of work Oh boy am, I not nice to know at the moment..... I have some…
2005
was a turning point in the entertainment industries, the year that
Hollywood's tried and tested methods of reaching the masses finally had
tio give way - to iPods, TiVos and Xbox 360s. What lessons will 2006
bring? The lesson of changing markets, that's for sure. The best
admission of that came from NBC Universal TV chairman Jeff Zucker; "The
overall strategy is to make…
It should have won an Oscar for best animated short,
but its use of copyrighted images prevented that (albeit printed onto paper and folded into origami shapes). When I briefly met
Virgil Widrich, whose Copyshop did stretch to Oscar glory, at the Hull International Short Film Festival, he
thought that Fair Use laws would be enough for this film to get a US
release and Oscar nomination. But…
Hallam Foe, Edinburgh 2000, Protagonist, Rataouille & Planet B-Boy
"You know, everytime someone says they don't believe in cinema, someone, somewhere makes a sequel to a bad movie."
I'm slammed head first into multiplex A&E. Pulse falling, blood pressure dropping fast. I don't believe in anything any more. A sugar rush of Butterkist popcorn barely gets me into the trailers…
I stumbled across some of my old writing still online on Netribution from over two decades years ago that was so bad I wanted to cancel myself before anyone else had a chance to. I was scrolling down my old year 2001 design for old raw HTML Netribution pages untouched in 20 years, and still looking much like it did then (other than screens are much bigger so there's a lot of left/right padding)…
Part 1 - Three reasons why the Digital Economy Bill will damage British businesses
Part 2 - What can be done? Five steps the UK content industries could take to offset piracy losses
A few weeks ago I chatted with a single dad in his 40s, working in a brewery. He's a biker, Sun-reader and towards the right politically, hating to see his taxes used to fund free school meals or asylum seekers.
Ne…
That's a wrap; wind reel and print - but did you remember about the trailer? It's often the last thing a filmmaker thinks about, but it might be the first indication anyone has of what the feature is about, how good it is and whether or not to spend some of their hard earned pay on going to see it next week. It's your pitch to the punters, so let's make it a good one. Here's how. A trailer should…
Hollywood
cult film director and producer, Frank Q Dobbs, has died at 66. Dobbs,
a Texan who loved writing Westerns, became a legend in the Texas film
industry. He died from cancer.
Dobbs
was from Houston, and though he spent a lot of time in Hollywood, he
often preferred to film in his native Texas. An old colleague described
him as a real friend to the Lone Star State. "Frank…
I arrived for once a little early, as the last gold balloons were being lifted into place. I decided to walk the block, attempting to hide my game industry noobiness with some assertive power walking. Ah a river. I will gaze across it with a sense of confidence, a metaphorical eye on the future. All is fine.
So as I was scribbling this blog in a cafe in Bristol, the guy opposite told me "I never…
How
many notices have we seen from directors who have a great idea for a
film, have written a script themselves and now ‘just’ need a producer
to raise a hundred thousand to make it? What could be simpler? And
let’s not forget that all-important incentive… no fee, but you’ll get a
VHS copy of the film if, and when, it’s finished! Wow, as a prod…
So, Digital and Culture Minister Ed Vaizey has backed MP Clare Perry's calls to create a firewall of Britain to support the seemingly reasonable aim of protecting children from pornography (and potentially keeping adults from materials classified under the Obscene Publications Act). With the web now moving further towards the TV, the suggestion is not much of a surprise.
While it's tempting…
In the rush and work pressures surrounding filmmaking, it's all too easy to overlook some essentials, but these are often the factors that can lift a film from the mundane level to the exceptional. James MacGregor's notes reveal some of the secrets of real film craft.....
Storytelling on Screen
Your focus is on telling the story, not just o…
Anyone
trying to gain employment in the Britain's film industry knows how hard
it can be getting a foot in the door. Three years at film school and
all the enthusiasm and determination in the world still can't guarantee
you a job in an industry that measures success in terms of who you have
worked with and what films you have worked on. Here's a story that
shows how one aspiri…
In Britain we like our television scriptwriters to be lovably eccentric -
think the anarchic Paul Abbott, the flamboyant Russell T Davies or the
wonderfully indiscreet Andrew Davies.
In the US, TV dramatists are a more serious breed altogether.
"It felt like it had to be some sort of thriller, like the original The
Day of the Jackal with Edward Fox a…
All is clear now. The middle east crisis. Homer Simpson vs Ned Flanders. Almost every fight I've ever had. Thanks Norman McLaren & BoingBoing. (this won the best animated short Oscar in 1952)
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The Defence Medical Services Department (DMSD), part of the Ministry of Defence has appointed iceni Productions to produce a unique Defence Nursing web video project. The year long project will see the Midlands based video production company iceni, filming Defence Nurses across the UK giving a fresh perspective on the world of Nursing within the Military.
The nursing video, which will be ava…
This year has seen something of a resurgence of interest in the political movie with 'Good Night. And Good Luck' and 'Syriana' both doing well both critically and financially. In contrast, the British Film Industry hasn't produced a political film since the late eighties. One man aims to change all that. Tobias Blennerhassett has produced some of the most successful films ever produced in this co…
“Obscurity is a far greater threat to artists and authors than piracy” Tim O'Reilly
Copyright law was originally created to settle a dispute between English and Scottish publishers in the early 18th Century and has grown today into a fundamental aspect of the creative 'business'. Some would argue that the development of copyright law has been driven by the needs of distributors to protect invest…