Submitted article from Zenia Mai Enriquez: Can you outsource video post-production work?  Can outsourcing efficiently provide the cost advantage benefit without sacrificing quality?    The outsourcing industry is booming and it is expected to grow even further in the coming years. Driven by improved yet low-cost telecommunication capacity and the upswing of technology…

"The mother has challenged the Anjuna polica head on and got the backing of the Goan state minister - a remarkable achievement" BBC News informs me that the mother of Scarlett Eden Keeling   - who was horribly murdered in the neighbouring beach to here on Feb 18th - - has five children and had left her alone while she went off travelling with her boyfriend. The DailyMail.co.uk says in fact she…

When I was very young I was never as excited by films as I was by going to the theatre - it wasn't until my teens that I started geeking out on films.  The only only exception to that is Buster Keaton, I watched anything and everything by that man. The fact that he directed and wrote and stared in his films was one thing. But that he did his own stunts -  that made him a God…

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…

Thursday, March 19, 2009 To Whom it May Concern: Please in what city and country was the Church bombed in the movie The Reader, where 300 Jewish Woman died.  Are the only survivors Ilana and Rose Mather? Does anyone know if the name of her book is Memoir?  Is this book still in print? Best Regards, Sharon Corr

Well this festival left me reinvigorated for what a film fest can be. Excuse me if I spiral off into hyperbole, but the programme, the people and style of fest just don't seem to fit in with the way that everything else seems so hyper-defined and funding-box-ticking, it was just programmed really imaginatively and diversely. It felt instinctive and well informed. In short, totally cool.   I…

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…

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…

This year has seen something of a resurgence of interest in the political movie with 'Good Night. And Good Luck' and 'Syriana' both doing well both critically and financially. In contrast, the British Film Industry hasn't produced a political film since the late eighties. One man aims to change all that. Tobias Blennerhassett has produced some of the most successful films ever produced in this co…

Roy Disney, nephew of Walt and general protector of Disney, has passed away. I was lucky enough to meet Roy in 2000 at the Belfast Cinemagic Conference, and it has stood as one of the more memorable encounters of my working life. I was quite nervous beforehand yet without need - he was warm and genuine in his convictions, unassuming with a quiet strength. [Netribution, Dec 2000] Roy worked for…

  Music videos The End of the World  REM's The End of the World As We Know It sung by George W Bush {youtube}V3CmXGKXOmk{youtube} Familjen - Det snurrar i min skalle Swedish Grammy nominated mashup of archive evangelists to Familjen's music. {youtube}QfU-4Y4_akY{/youtube}  Mashups The Vadar Sessions Before Star Wars, James Earl Jones starred…

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…

  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…

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…

  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…

   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…

“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…

Legendary film-maker Ingmar Bergman has died at the age of 89. Cissi Elwin, CEO of the Swedish Film Institute, comments on Ingmar Bergman’s passing. "Probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera" Woody Allen "This is a day of sorrow in the world of film. One of the world’s most prominent f…

The new Tax Relief system for British films offers producers up to 20% of their budget in cash. The system replaces Section 42 and 48 which offered a tax break of up to 40% and also introduces a host of quite complex new clauses to limit and define which films are eligible for relief. Love it or hate it, it is a piece of legislation which will effect not just which films get made in the UK in th…

 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…

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…

Come in come in. Is anyone there?Just lost a whole page of data when I went to upload it. PHUT. gone, finito, marrungad, kaputo. I was logged in, but when the upload completed it told me I could not have access to that page without being registered and shuit me out! And my data went west, wasting a whiole precious hour of work Oh boy am, I not nice to know at the moment..... I have some…

  Tom Swanston Reports from  the NORDIC CO-PRODUCTION FORUM Haugesund, Norway  21-23 August 2006 This year the beautiful coastal town of Haugesund, Norway was host to the first ever Nordic Co-Production Forum, held from 21st to 23rd August. The town is situated on a long sea inlet in the South West of the country, a 45-minute flight from Oslo.   The…

I arrived for once a little early, as the last gold balloons were being lifted into place. I decided to walk the block, attempting to hide my game industry noobiness with some assertive power walking. Ah a river. I will gaze across it with a sense of confidence, a metaphorical eye on the future. All is fine. So as I was scribbling this blog in a cafe in Bristol, the guy opposite told me "I never…