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…

"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…

  21 Minute Film School Have you ever had a desire to make a movie? If so, set 21 minutes of your hectic life aside and read on!        1. The Idea for a film  Ever have a great idea for a movie? Sit down and see if you can decide which character’s eyes we see the story from (the point of view aka P.O.V.) This is likely the main…

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…

The opposite of Ultimate Improv's NYC Grand Central Station freeze, with a wink to T-Mobile's Liverpool Street Station antics. To promote a Flemish reality TV show.

  Before editing software was developed and even before there were any edit suite controllers, video tape was edited by manually slicing it by people using very sharp razor blades. This was a process known as Kamikaze editing. Early editors also used a microscope, a cutting block, magnetic developing fluid and degauzed (demagnetised) razor blades. For a clean edit, the tape had to…

  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…

  Writer Simon Rose on Getting His Story to the Big Screen I can't be the only writer who, after sitting through umpteen appalling movies, has thought, "Surely I can do better." By 1994, I was itching to write a screenplay, but a subject eluded me.  Then I heard about Graeme Obree. This down-at-heel Scot built a revolutionary bicycle from scrap and washing- machi…

  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…

Caine, Hopkins, Connery, Finney, Attenborough, Guinness, Mills, Gielguid, Olivier. Names that epitomise the very best in British acting talent. But one name towers above them all; Sir Wilberforce Reddington. He made his first screen appearance as Willy Reddington playing Third Cockney Urchin in 'It's a Right Bloomin' Caper Alright' in1937. From then on his face became a familiar fixture on Briti…

From IADT Nashville: What makes a good animated movie? While beautiful art is certainly important, it takes an engaging story and memorable characters to help an animated film truly stand out. Here’s IADT Nashville's list of the 10 best animated films since 2000. What do you think? Did we leave anyone out? 10. Monsters, Inc (2001) No animation studio has more consistently produced great movies…

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…

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…

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) {google}2976945051371832639{/google}   

Amateur: barely a few letters from Auteur - but what, in our social media world, is the difference? If there was a dividing line of the 51st Krakow Film Festival, it was between the crowed-sourced YouTube world of Life in a Day and the personal journeys of documakers turning their lives and experiences into art. Less a debate between high and low art, as between the home movie and the knowingly…

With more people in Britain now watching TV on digital sets rather than analogue, this seems a fitting time to revisit what the BBC's digital chief had to say about the future for the industry that he foresaw. This is the text of the speech by Ashley Highfield, Director of BBC New Media & Technology, at the Royal Television Society on Oct 6 2003   I was reading an article…

  How Do I Sell My Film Part 2 - Delivery Format Netribution and film distributors WYSIWYG have joined forces to present on-line WYSIWYG's Filmmaker's Toolkit.... Okay. So you now know who will watch your film. Well, that means you can also estimate how many people you have as potential audience. That gives you an idea of how much money you can spend. It also tells yo…

From LazyFilm: There are only two things that can make any motion graphic artist flinch and that's rotoscoping and chroma keying. Why? Mainly because both processes are time consuming and arm numbing. However despite all these, rotoscoping and chroma keying still remains to be very important in the industry we move in. Which is why, lately, software companies are launching new…

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…

French-based video sharing site Dailymotion is continuing its short-run free streams of independent British films with the Online World Premiere of the new feature One Day Removals, directed by Scottish filmmaker Mark Stirton. The 88-minute film will be available online from 12pm GMT on Friday 30th January, until midnight on Monday 2nd February. {dmotion}x86rbx{/dmotion} [the ALLVide…

Screenwriter and script reader Danny Stack has written up 11 commandments for script readers on his blog. Even if you don't get paid to read, it provides quite an insight into the life of those who write those painful rejection letters. Eg: 7. All Scripts are the Same, but Some are more Samey than Others A lot of scripts follow the generalised style of screenwriting and so-call…

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…

“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…

  Jon Williams and his creative team spent in excess of two years crafting their underground comedy Diary of a Bad Lad and a further year taking it through post, producing a film that many film luminaries have acknowledged to be fresh, original and different. After getting endorsement for their product from people like Chris Bernard, Alex Cox and Nik Powell, you would think th…

With a new chair this year in the shape of Scotsman, Alex Graham, presiding over a delegate list now 2,500 in number and Aussie Heather Croall still proving to be an assured hand in the Director’s role, Sheffield Doc/Fest 2012 is still on a steady and upward trajectory. Funding and making docs is tough territory but in these financial anni horribili the festival itself succeeded in not only keepi…