Legendary producer Verity Lambert died yesterday - one day before the 44th anniversary of the airing of her first production on the 23rd November 1963 - the BBC's iconic Doctor Who. Lambert cast William Hartnell in the title role and established the show's format which has endured to this very day - a centuries old alien wandering time and space with his companions in his Police Box-shape…

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…

  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…

  "Most of the independent films that we have seen or heard about suffered from one problem: finance. Some have come and gone because the young independent producers have failed, and are still failing to source the big budget required for production." Sound familiar to you? It certainly will if you are a filmmaker in Bulawayo. It looked strangely familiar when it caugh…

“Our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers.&rd…

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…

well....its quite a mad story.... it all started when I was planning to make a short film -'eating out' - in August 2003... managed to get my actors, crew, location, camera, lights etc all via favours but still needed £200 or so to feed everyone and get us all through the 2 day shoot.... which was a problem until a friend called me saying she had a new job as cre…

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…

Last year I built the website for a new documentary due to premiere this year about the issue of land-grabbing in Africa. I'd first been introduced to the production team at an remarkable week as part of the Swim Lab, and been struck silent as the director, Joakim Demmer, explained in plain terms how while we are sending billions in aid to countries like Ethiopia, we are also, inadvertently, he…

  At a time when international cinema and DVD revenues are declining and TV audiences are dwindling, why would a young company spend time signing up distribution rights for all sorts of independent content from all over the world? The answer might elude, confuse or scare many of the traditional media giants, but this is exactly what Wysiwyg Films is doing - and why? Because they looked t…

"In 1744 a simple experiment was conducted in Sweden to reproduce the underlying cause of the Aurora Borealis in a laboratory, what we would now think of as a room. A small hole in a shade "the size of a large pea" let through a ray of sunlight that then was refracted through a prism. The small patch of light broken into a spectrum of colour…

Allan Kaprow (August 23, 1927 - April 5, 2006) helped to develop the "Environment" and "Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well as their theory. His Happenings - some 200 of them - evolved over the years, and attempted to integrate art and life by blurring the separation between life and art, and artist and audience. He has published extensively and was Profess…

"Memes don't exist, tell your friends" spouted the t-shirt of Hugh Hancock when I first met him at a Dundee hotel loby for a Scottish Screen new talent event. Hugh, for those who haven't read James' Wideshot interview with him, is one of the pioneers of the Machinima movement and through his Strange Company (whose t-shirt he was sporting) has made 16 Machinima films…

There's not been a new post here in over four years, so maybe Netribution's 21st birthday today is a good time to update on a little expirment with "Web Monetization" (their zee, not ours). Web Monetization is a way to donate to the sites you visit without needing to have a separate subscription for them or even having to hit a donate button. After signing up with a provider (at the moment there…

From the ever dependable BoingBoing comes details of Brain Water, a exquisite Mayazaki-esque short 3D animation from Johann Poo, by way of Jason Li. I like its illustration of the power of playful communication. Incidentally - in light of recent revelations about Vimeo's terms of service, Lumiera's Raffaella Traniello brings news of Vimeo's answer to her in their forums that they are working on…

 The only people who truly know how much blood sweat and tears go into the making of a feature length movie are those who have done it themselves. The effort required is also in indirect proportion to the size of the budget - the smaller the budget the greater will be the effort required.  This particular story is that of Neil Oseman ("Hereford's Stephen Speilberg…

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…

Do you know those moments where everything seems larger than life? Where the taste of baked beans rivals haute cuisine? Where the hazy sunlight and slow summer pace make you feel so much lighter you could have lost a stone in weight. It's as if the great post production supervisor in the sky has decided to apply a luminosity filter, upped the brightness and contrast, balanced the audio…

  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…

Producers are different things to different people, making this question difficult to answer. There are no detailed job descriptions and no two producers handle their jobs in exactly the same way. Is it any wonder that  both audiences, and many 'insiders', are bewildered by the proliferation of producer credits in films? The producer credit has often…

   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…

"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…

  Uncover Favourite UK Film and TV Locations When I lived in Oxford a decade or three ago, it would have amazed me to imagine that my modest street in the working-class neighbourhood of Jericho would one day witness scores of escorted tour parties earnestly retracing the murder investigations of Inspector Morse. But at last this sign of the times has gained a name. Set-jetting is d…

In 2006 we wrote here about this new idea of crowd-source financing to fund films, which had funded a few short films – a couple of years before IndieGoGo and Kickstarter took off. We'd followed the growth of a new website 'craze' called YouTube, that was making the industry sit up sweaty, followed their first feature filmmakers Arin and Susan and written about alternative exhibition as Secret Ci…