"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…

  Actor and documentary-maker Kenneth Griffith has died at the age of 84. He was born in Tenby, Pembrokeshire and had been  a familiar face on TV and cinema screens since the 1940s, including the 1960's cult TV hit, The Prisoner. Griffith, who died at his London home, also made often controversial films on such subjects as the Boer War - on which he was an expert - an…

A new plugin allows you to embed video from sites like YouTube, Google, Current.tv or Vimeo into postings. It takes a little while to get your head around, but it's worth the effort if you want to programme your own web page. To embed videos to your content use the following Mambot Strings per video provider. Do not include the space after the first curly bracket - that's incl…

The beaches of Goa are a bit like the United Nations, so many pepople from around the world, so many ambassadors of peace. They mostly seem lovely wise souls who will probably one day run companies and countries. Meanwhile in the US a very real battle continues, the ultimate in a way. And it is a battle which - if the Clintons push it too hard, could perhaps split the Democratic party…

Added a story about Bad lad film after my first successful attemopt to upload and somehow managed to lose it in the system. Tried uploading a false story and it made the front page. It seems that the truth, in this case, will simply not out. Andy was looking over my shoulder and asked whereabouts he would upload his Carnals? Do we have somewhere they can be put as yet?

The day Greg Dyke was pushed out of the BBC was a grave one for both the corporation and broadcasting in general, yet Mark 'the scissors' Thompson was reportedly seen that day skipping around the Channel 4 office where he had been Chief Executive for barely a probation period, gleeful in the news that the top job of broadcasting could finally be his. And now, the Big Picture thinki…

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…

2006 was certainly a year of trailer mashups. To quote the Misshaken Pictures' Mashifesto: "As our collective history burrows deeper into the digital coalface we begin to see it recombined, re-imagined, re-invented and e-rased. Heirachies of media code are becoming silly putty in the hands of the majority and the global mirror increases at an unprecedented rate, a miasma of Id…

   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…

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…

On a day where celebrities seemed to dropping like flies, it's a shame that the obits for British scriptwriter Troy Kennedy Martin  probably won't be as extensive as they should be. Needless to say the man was a man who had a hand in helping to create and write some of the best UK TV shows ever made including 'Z-Cars' and 'The Sweeney'. His TV shows helped pave the way for intelligent genre fare…

It was an inspired idea – creating a feature around the ultimate fantasy of a girl from village India dreaming of Bollywood stardom and to fulfill it, running away with The Truck of Dreams, the mobile cinema that rumbles around the dirt roads that pass for off-the-beaten-track in rural India. It was a dream also for London-based director Arun Kumar, a first feature with global themes, financed a…

Open source is one of those phrases that gets thrown around, from the Cabinet Office now asking for it in government ICT contracts, to cyber-libertarians saying it heralds the start of a post-capitalist age. But what does it actually mean? And given how much of the for-profit digital world depends on open source - from Android phones to the Safari browser, Facebook’s servers to YouTube’s interfac…

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…

  Sunflower3 - from vimeo's danLinfield

As the season finally closes in on us, for those tired of the same old re-runs on TV or wanting to avoid the family warzone of the living room and watch TV on a computer under your bed - or better still are looking for films to share during the post-dinner web video show-off - I've pulled together some of our favorites of the year. In the first bundle I've focussed on anima…

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…

Forget Buddhism, Kabbala, and Scientology - there's only one religion that the Hollywood A-list want to be seen to be worshiping these days - Knowledgology. It began five years ago when the Reverend Doctor-Professor Solomon Profundis set up The Knowledge Hub, a spiritual retreat where burned out celebrities could recharge their batteries and at the same time broaden their religious horizons. Her…

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…

I'll never forget watching Truly Madly Deeply as a kid, a film I hold responsible for a crush on cellists (Altman's Shortcuts also playing a part). Anthony Minghella did much more besides making deeply heartfelt and tender films - from chairing the BFI to Grange Hill, Inspector Morse and promoting the family ice cream business on the Isle of Wight. All thoughts to Hannah, Max, Carolyn and the res…

  Bader Ben Hirsi could make quite a screenplay out of his experience directing the first feature film ever made in Yemen, the ancient land at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula. His results though, have impressed the Arab world, who are bound to be his sternest critics. Ben Hirsi's film has just scooped the Grand Prize at the Cairo Film Festival. James MacGregor, who has spent ma…

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…

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…

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  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…