Getting on the ladder @ Bradford International Film Festival.

At this years Film festival (BRADFORD) there is going to be a industry weekend. LINK .

There is going to be talks on Getting into film, earning a living, relationships between Writers, directors and producers, a talk with JIM CLARK a great editor, whose won an Oscar and edited some classic Brit flicks.

Should be great, a chance to learn from people that have been there and done that, plus a super chance to make some contacts and make a good impression on people in the industry.

Not sure if it costs anything, i have emailed to ask.

There are also a lot of good film showing, but it isn't cheap!

BLU BLU

A week or so ago I came across www.blublu.org, i'm pretty sure they are a collective or maybe it is just one guy... not sure.

Anyway,

Their/his/hers work is incredible. The Muto wall animation as had massive success on youtube, and it is deservedly so. BUT, there are other great, great pieces on the site. More wall animation, some ultra surreal brilliant normal frame by frame animation and massive pieces of art work which cover the side of houses! They are unbelievably detailed and you can spend ages looking at them. I would love to see one in person. 

I've sent them an email, but i haven't heard from them, i think this is because they are not english.

I would love to have them create a opening title sequence to a short film.

Please check out their site and give them some love.

KING OF KONG.

I recently bought KING OF KONG. Play.com Only £5, it truly is a bargain. Probably the best documentary ever made.

It is beautifully put together and you feel like your really fighting the battle with Steve Weebee (in joke). If I had to recommend one film this year it would be that. The DVD also contains some great special features.

The Evilest Man on the Planet

AND

The Nicest.

I've also watched One Day in September. Recommended in Critical Studies. It won an Oscar for best Documentary in 2000. It's a good eye opening piece that makes you think. A must see for people interested in the Munich Olympics. 

The Fall and Rise of Poor Old Mickey Rourke

The Fall is a adventure epic, told by a depressed man in order to trick young naive child to steal him drugs. Sound 

horrible... well trust me its great. 

The Man and young girl are in hospital together, he befriends the curious girl to help him steal morphine tablets to commit suicide. In return he tells her a epic tale of the 5 bandits.

The Fall comes from the strange mind of Tarsem, whose only other feature was the widely unpopular The Cell, which i actually liked. I think the problem people have with Tarsem is that he is wonderful weird. The Cell was undoubtably bleak and the story wasn't solid, but you couldn't knock the art direction. Even though this is Tarsem's second film he is known for style over substance. However, i feel The Fall as a nice mix of the two. It is a complete made up story (i think) which, you don't see much of in cinema these days. It has a great childish quality, which is helped with the bright colours of the fairy tale world.

This took Tarsem four years to make, this explains why he hasn't made a film since The Cell. He had locations in 24 countries! So he could bring life to his vivid imagination. I hear he had much trouble getting people on board to make the flick, which added to the length of the production.

But, i believe it was all worth it. The fairy tale world looked outstanding. However, Its long post production and distributing means it'll probably go unseen by many and won't get the critical acclaim it deserves.

WHICH...leads me on to my next point...

The awards ceremonies. Over the last month it's been the film award season, which has seen Slumdog Millionaire rightly pick up the gongs. It probably won't be a all time great, but it's a good fun film, which everybody can enjoy from film critics to the chavs at the end of your street. However, we haven't had the greatest year in film dramas, but we've seen some super action adventures... lets reflect! The Dark Knight, Iron Man, Cloverfield, Rock n Rolla, The Wrestler,

 COMEDIES... Wall-e, Pineapple Express, Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Step Brothers, Burn after Reading, Vicky Christina Barcelona. So, we've had a fun year and by the looks of things were in for another!

Poor old Mickey Rourke! I really felt for the guy this morning, i bet he thought he was a shoe in for the award. I'm surprised that before they announced the winner he hadn't already stood up. I'm pretty sure everybody thought he was going to win, even Sean Penn... did you see the size of his speech, it looked like a shopping list (not a big shopping list, a small one).

It felt more like an award ceremony for people who was due an award rather than deserved an award! And, if nobody was due one they flipped a card for the winner, with one side saying SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE and the other side saying CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON. But it seems instead of a piece of card they used piece of toast with Benjamin Button written in butter

Digital Shorts 2009.

Screen Yorkshire are holding a competition for a short film, winner gets around £16,000. You also get consultants with script writers and producers to help you develop your idea.

You can enter as many ideas as you like!

http://www.screenyorkshire.co.uk/training/new-talent/digital-shorts-0809

I am currently working on a script, which is going well. The deadline is March 31st and i wanted to have a few ideas to enter, but finding time is getting hard, between projects, work, research and sleeping it seems time to work on personal projects are slim jim.

I have had a few bands enquired about music videos, but bands have a tendency to cancel. I did find out that the band iLiKETRiANS who i was suppose to be working with last summer, but it turned out their project was too big for there budget. However, their song got used on The Wrestler trailer. That was a real kick in the balls.

Black Hole. Brief. Feelings.

This brief is becoming a real pain in the arse. Looking at the group we have it should be a piece of piss, but we keep hitting wall after wall of problems. Instead of putting our heads together we just seem to want to drift of into our heads.

The last week wasn't as bad, i think the embarrassing crit is what we needed. I believe we have a story outline now, however i thought that two weeks ago. The main problem is we have about 5 weeks to create a animation, which is no way enough time. After this reading week we start our major project, which again will take up most of our time. I can't see us finishing this brief.

The annoying bit for me is if we'd have gone with my concept in the first place we probably wouldn't be where we are now. I feel like it's my fault too, because i've been very argumentative, but i get like that when i cannot express my thoughts and feelings properly.

Even Matt (animation tutor) argued with me! Telling me my way of thinking is wrong! According to him i get inspired wrong... I think i know what is was getting at, but to laugh and say "i'm right, your wrong" is unacceptable, surely everybody seek inspiration in different ways.

At the end of it all i'm not happy.

I think it would be easier to switch briefs now.  I think i could knock out an itv2 ident in a week or two.

RatherGood.com

I've been following rathergood.com for good few years. I first spotted them on channel 4 around 2003. After seeing them i researched into how they created their animations and it turned out it was Flash. I taught myself Flash for a few years before taking a course.

Anyway

Not checked their page out for awhile, and when Graeme sent me that Wanky Shit Demon animation i've gone back and looked through their archive.

I've also emailed the creator Joel for advice on how they started and how they got their own paying work.

He has been nice enough to take sometime out and sent me some emails back.

I'll keep pursuing other influences for tricks of the trade.

Coraline.

Coraline is a new stop motion animation coming out very soon. 

Graeme told me to have a look at the website and it is truly an amazing site.

If your interested in Stop Motion check out this page http://www.coraline.com/#/?page=well&subPage=0

DO IT!

Another thing Graeme told me to look at was this short animation, pretty sick, but absolutely amazing! 

http://www.rathergood.com/demon