Documentary Update: Boston Latino Film Festival Screening

Boston Latino Film Festival Screening, originally uploaded by donshades.

Good news - our Film has been selected for screening by another festival. This time it's State Side at the Boston International Latino Film Festival. The nice people over at BSide have put our trailer up on their website. We'll have an official film site up by the end of the week.

More Lynch

I'm addicted to this man.



But not because he talks in an informed way about creativity; I love him because he does bonkers things like this:

I Agree with Lynch

So I think we're all agreed that the future of a large part of the work we do in digital is increasingly about the creation of interesting content. Be it small films on your phone, episodic dramas or secret codes buried about the net (remember Lost...?). A danger to be avoided is the James Bond ("Casino Royal") route.

Cut to:-

XCU sony ericsson handset

Onscreen Text: ELIPSIS

This means educating our clients, fighting their urge to go full screen on logos, or to be honest even have the sponsoring brand's product appear in the film at all:

My view on it all? I Agree with Lynch.



You just can't argue with that.

Crazy Film Projects with Dare

Radio silence and lame 2nd life related blog posts of late are most definately the product of a Bonkers volume of film work going through the pipeline at Dare right now. Some exciting advertising bits about to break out of the doors and on the interweb...along with some great motion graphics work and a short interactive film for Barlcays.

Last week we undertook a two day location shoot in the dizzy heights of North Hackney for our outher Barlays Client.

The shoot was Dare's biggest to date; and saw us taking over a Pub and some poor dude's house. We installed false walls in the house, clamped a prop car outside the house and built a false bathroom inside the location bathroom.



Most people at Dare are under the illusion that shoots are glamorous affairs. Trust me they're not. This one had three exterior set-ups - and it pissed it down with rain...



To me the volume of great material we got down on camera is testament to the amazingly talented group of people involved in the project. It's top secret so I should go on about it until we put the project live, but for now here's some on-set pics of the ga

29minutes @ Speakers Corner

I was strolling through Hyde Park on sunday afternoon and came across this rabble... I love polemics at the best of times; but this is just great! Some amazing performances. I shall return with a better camera and an angle at some point.

Exciting Times, Convergence and The Great Technology Waterfall

Well; these are exciting times. In the last three weeks I've been glued to my technology blogs; and the underlying theme on Convergence is one which is plain to see.

First up was some great work from adrien.noterdaem (don't be put off by the page turn effect on his site!), who has used papervision, a globe camera, and some techno-creative wizardry to present us with a 360degree interactive video.

Here's a quick youtube screengrab, but I recommend you try it out for yourself.



Next came the amazing 2nd life hybrid space project, posted below.



And now you can have your own live interweb TV station, as brought to you by the nice guys over at Mogulus. This allows you to mix pre-recorded videos with multiple live feeds. You can also add graphics and overlay audio tracks at run time... and what's great is the service is free! Could this be the ultimate narcissistic exercise? I'm quite sure myself that it'll spawn a whole new wave of rubbish content, badly executed live events and recycled projects masquerading as "the real thing". Hence I would exercise a note of caution to anybody wanting to broadcast just for the novelty value; but I doubt anybody will listen to me.

What's really exciting for me about all these things is that they are great examples of convergence. The Great technology waterfall; where we start in the reservoir of the Military, before going downstream to University land before hitting the world of Pornography then into the world of the Populous. The Military usually develop the hardware, 360degree cameras, mobile communication stations etcetera. Then the Universities get involved and develop software; such toys as iptv, distributed location independent databases and browser plugins. Then comes the great content vacuum; lots of stuff, new channels, but no message to broadcast. It is nearly always the Porn industry who are the first to hook up these bits of technology and software in order to present us with download, live broadcasts and virtual simulations of X rated content in order to satisfy the lust which is hard-wired into human nature. Eventually these developed systems disseminate into the wider realm and while multinational co-operations will always develop ways to charge you for these services; the great converging brains out there on the web will also work together to bring you the service for free. That's the part I love.


Also check out Earthmine - GPS/Google Map/ Photo mashup - still in it's early stages but looking like it'll cause quite a stir.



What we have in with these first noteworthy projects of 2008 is the coming together of technology, ideas and innovation. It is still early days, but the potential here is very exciting stuff for all. The old divisions between 'Creatives', and 'Tech-heads' are breaking down; with the key players of the now being creative-techologiests, strategic-producers and techno-planners.

Ooh it's going to be an exciting year...

Doing it Yourself - My first Documentary

We are screening it on Thursday 6th December, the day I get back from Berlin.

Here's a teaser clip. It's rough around the edges, and suffers from lack of experience, zero budget and not enough time - but I'm fucking proud of it.

I'm off to Berlin for a while for some fear and loathing. In the meantime I'll leave you with the clip, the blurb is below.


Rio Blanco: The Mine and the Farmer (preview) from donshades on Vimeo.


On the 21st of April 2004 5000 farmers from Huancabamba province, Northern Peru, marched to protest against a proposed mine in their area. Farmers feared possible contamination of their fresh water sources and were angry they had not been consulted over the project. Although meetings had been prearranged for the 21st of April to start a process of dialogue, representatives from the Peruvian government and the mining company failed on two occasions to arrive at the specified times (the mining company is Monterrico Metals, based in London). On the 22nd of April the farmers arrived at the mining site and were again told to wait for the representatives from the Government and the mine. While waiting and without forewarning, a group of police started firing tear gas at the protestors. In the ensuing chaos a protestor, Reemberto Herrera Racho died; according to the police he fell down a hill; according to eyewitnesses he was hit in the head by a tear gas bomb.

Rio Blanco, The Man and The Mine is an investigation into these two days. It draws from footage shot at the time, interviews with protestors on the march and press coverage of the event to build up a picture of what happened and how it was portrayed afterwards in the national and international media. The documentary highlights the top-down way in which many multinational companies operate in the developing world and the conflicts that arise from the lack of dialogue between company and community.

My Latest Film...

Is just a simple sketch really so don't get excited.

I like socks, but why is it near imposable to find a matching pair at 7am on weekday mornings? So i decided to extract revenge on my now ex-girlfriend's sock drawer.

Missing Letter:



Those of you who follow the links I post over at my iVideo, Time and Space blog will know my fascination with stop motion animation. I had the flu a few months ago and the boredom drove me to play with my new camera. An overdose of night nurse, 10 nurofen and a bottle of wine later and later I found I'd taken lots of pictures of socks.

Prize to the person who spots the missing letter.

Ethan Haas Was Right?

Who is Ethan Haas? and what is The Clover Field Project? Looks like a film from the guys who made LOST. They're doing a good job of creating some Buzz on the net right now by selectively releasing conflicting bits of information to the world of film geeks; and now Paramount have released an official trailer which only throws up more questions.

This is Buzz working at it's best, with a neat Blogger Link also to colour the mood.

Script Secrets, Secret Geeks

I spent the weekend attending the Script Secrets, Screenplay writing course over at Raindance. Nice going guys, it was most informative. I don't really want to be a screenplay writer, but I thought that since Dare were prepared to foot the bill then learning a bit about the craft of the writer could only put me in better stead to pursue my romantic ambitions of becoming a truly great interactive director.

What did I find? Well I found myself amongst quite a bizzar collection of odd freaks, geeks and oddballs; even by my most liberal and accepting standards.

Dispel romantic notions of troubled creative writers, twisted on drugs, alcohol and ether; staying up all night exorcising various inner demons via hacking away at their typewriters. No. They're just a freak minority of social misfits who want to live out their fantasies of love, lust, valor, honor, betrayal, mystery and intrigue by hiding themselves in their retrospectively created fictional worlds. Where were the twisted, sworded intellectuals, aspiring to write themselves a better future; pointing through this great medium of fiction to the way we should be aspiring to live? Absent that day it seems, instead a collection of flag waving Greenpeace activists who want to mothball all aircraft travel along with the strong contingent of over zealous gushers, obsessed with conspiracy theory.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

Really.

I wish these dudes, who made me realise a few things, all the best of luck in a cut throat business.

1. I need to widen my criteria of acceptance and scrub the "of a certain type", from my, "All freaks, geeks and twisted people accepted" sign.
2. We NEED people like this. Dreamers.
3. Nothing ever got created by people who give in to Mr Cynical.
4. Working in Advertising has made me too quick to judge.

In reflection I think that this craft of the word-smith is perhaps one which requires a strong streak of unconformity and an introverted nature; as to master these cynical tools of juxtaposition and cruel manipulation of mood requires reflection along with the ability to bite your own tongue while you wait to construct your thoughts with a more informed eloqunce.

Long live the great screen writers.

The Magic of Film Editing

A good history, I shall show it in my lecture to the Dare School guys and recommend watching it in full for homework.
Part 01:

Part 02:

The power of Ten

great!

Everyday Man

Today I am interested in Super 8 film. The contrast Ratio, the highs and mids, the look.... the feel.

Editing

A nice little Doc about telling stories.

Pulp Fictiopn Typography

This Rocks

All Hail Jan Svankmajer

Darkness Light Darkness Jan Svankmajer
Uploaded by NilbogLAND