Sheffield Documentary Film Festival wound up on Sunday, with a brief interlude before the Scottish Documentary Film Institute hosts the Edinburgh Pitch on Tuesday and prior to the Edinburgh Film Festival officially kicking off on Wednesday. Filmtastic week. As was probably part of the rational to shift Sheffield to June (which it has wanted to do for almost 4 years), many of the commissioners who…

“The reality is a single stream only amounts to 0.003p, which means I would need millions of streams to earn at least the minimum wage” Ayanna Witter-Johnson, singer-songwriter Last weekend The Guardian published some great insights from 25 figures across the music world around the state of subscription-streaming, as Spotify passes 155 million Premium subscribers and ahead of a uk.gov report…

The first London Brazilian Film Festival hit town last week with the warm and vocal audience participation of the city's expat community, and a couple of cinematic gems. You get the sense that organizers ‘Inffinifo' want to express that there is so much more to Brazil, and it's cinema, than the sex, violence and poverty stereotypes reinforced by its big hits over recent years. However, and despi…

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…

  Award-winning actor and comedian Red Buttons has died at the age of 87 He was one of the first funny men to show that comedians could also be Oscar-winning actors. He won the Supporting Actor award for Sayonara (1957), in which he co-starred with Marlon Brando as a U.S. airman who embarks on a tragic romance with a Japanese woman. He was also a quick-witted master of his craft as a com…

Brilliant actor Paul Scoffield, star of A Man for All Seasons, the Crucible and Quiz Show, has also passed away.David Paul Scofield, CH, CBE (21 January 1922 – 19 March 2008) was an award-winning English actor of stage and screen. Noted for his distinctive voice and delivery, Scofield won both an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award&nbs…

Jon H from Finland at JonHs.net has pulled together a remarkable list of 9-11 related documentaries online. All are free to watch and most are created by unfunded groups and individuals. There's a few extreme conspiracy theories but it's is still an impresive collective example of citzen filmmaking. So much seems to have happened in the five years since Tom ran up the stairs…

  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…

Earlier this week I was kindly invited to see the re-opening of Alan Bennett's The History Boys at the Wyndham's Theatre. It was a case of a friend of mine having to go along for a national daily newspaper to get a morsel of something (something, anything, a crumb of gossip, just get someone to say something, anything) to put in their diary pages the following day. The m…

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…

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…

A few months ago I downloaded an open source add-on for Joomla, the (free) software that powers Netribution. It's a powerful tool which should make a nice addition here at some point - and it was free. So impressed was I after half an hour of using it that I checked out some of the add - available for it. I could buy alternative templates for $19 a time, an iPhone version, integration with other…

Dead pan and wry are often traits associated with the national character of Edinburgh International Film Festival’s own natives, the Scots. So it’s intriguing to witness Argentinian and Greek directors – Ana Katz and Filippos Tsitos respectively - tackling family drama or existential inevitability in a dry-as-a-bone manner. Whether Argentinians or Greeks are noted for irony is moot, but consideri…

I recently heard from a music industry insider that Radiohead make some 80% of their income from touring, which opened up the question of why they put so much effort into packaging, selling and protecting albums. A question that has now been answered. Free from a record label after their six album deal with EMI had come to an end, one of the most revered bands of the last 20 years have taken th…

We were chatting the other night about how the Death Star, for all its evil genius as a total killing machine, was really badly designed. I mean from a defensive point of view – a huge open port, with no gun turrets inside, leading to a big self destruct button. And Darth, despite all his Jedi training, is a pretty lousy pursuer of Luke. So we wondered if, at the end of Episode 3…

If the 80's were epitomised by the Action film and the 90's were the domain of the more thoughtful independent film, then the early 21st century could easily come to be defined by the dominance of the comic strip adaptation. Ever since 'X-Men' and 'Spider-Man' hit the cinemas, Hollywood has been desperately trying to find the Next Big Thing. Even multi-award winning directors like Sam Mendes and…

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…

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…

How Do I Sell My Film Part One - DEMOGRAPHICS Netribution and film distributors WYSIWYG have joined forces to present on-line WYSIWYG's essential Guide to Film Distribution. We're both interested in building a strong industry for independent filmmakers. This means creating films that people want to see and buy. It does not mean sacrificing creative integrity, but it means business. To do the b…

"The Love Bug features a car that comes to life. Is it powered by the love of Jesus Christ? We aren't offered any evidence that this is the case so we must, unfortunately, assume that it is in fact animated purely by the power of the Lord of Darkness. I still feel an urge to pray whenever I see a Volkswagen Beetle." Watching4Jesus.com is a website run by the Divine Church of Holy Interventi…

The beautiful music of Elgar could be heard amongst scrap metal, bin bags and shrieking gulls yesterday as players from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra played a recital in their most unusual venue ever - a London rubbish dump. The special concert was held to promote the new Channel 4 series Dumped, which starts on Sunday night (Sept 2nd, 9.00pm) and sees elev…

 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…

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…