Category Archives: Uncategorized

Metropolis calls for new correspondents

For the upcoming series Metropolis is looking for new video journalists/TV producers outside of the Netherlands to join our global collective. A great opportunity for reporters to produce commissioned stories for an international audience.

Metropolis is an innovative TV show and website that shows remarkable stories from everyday life from all around the world. All reports are produced by professional local video journalists. We are looking for new video journalists to join our global collective.
Metropolis employs a correspondent network of more than 70 video journalists and TV producers from across six continents. As a Metropolis correspondent you explore your local surroundings to capture remarkable stories in everyday life. Weekly global topics are the starting point: what is it like to be an outcast, how are children raised in your culture, how do people deal with a broken heart, what are local dangers and how do people deal with them?

What we offer

– A great opportunity to show the world stories from your country to a global audience
– The possibility to produce reports on a regular basis
– Work that can be combined with other documentaries/projects
– Appropriate remuneration for each contribution

What we ask

– Great eye for unexpected and remarkable characters and stories
– The ability to make a professional and personal 5-minute report
– Experience in making TV reports and/or documentaries
– A lot of enthusiasm to join a unique global collective of video journalists!

How to learn more

Don’t hesitate to contact us! Please contact editor Iris van der Spoel i.vander.spoel@vpro.nl
Surf our website to find reports from all around the world, more information on the project and of course all episodes.

Here you can find more information on how to join and a link to the topic list our correspondents are working on this Autumn.

Summer at BFI Future Film

(Left to Right) Noel Goodwin, Gillian Hathaway, Natalia Remfeld, Gary McQuiggin, Jacob Dwyer, Dan Allen and Ollie Hall.

Noel Goodwin and our Video-Art Bursary winners at the premiere of their Doc Next Network commissioned films.

Well what an exciting summer it’s been here at BFI Future Film! We’ve hosted our own D.I.Y. Sci-Fi Filmmaking course, as well as the National Youth Film Academy, with 6 short films being made in total, all of a phenomenal standard.

Our video Art bursary work is all completed and we’ve posted them all to our Vimeo Channel, so go and have a look! One of our young winners said “I think, hands down it is a fantastic opportunity, not only to produce a film with a little bit of money but also the mentoring. It was great experience and it was also fantastic seeing everyone else’s work develop too!”

On a similar note, we recently launched a new bursary with Step2TV. After the success of our previous bursary schemes, we’ve decided to create another Documentary bursary, with 4 places being offered for young filmmakers to receive a £500 budget, mentoring by an industry professional and entry into the Reality Capture Pitch with the chance to gain broadcast credits and a worldwide audience. The call-out for this amazing opportunity can be found here.

As you can see it’s been busy, busy, busy here, and the fun doesn’t stop yet. The BFI just had the press launch of the 55th BFI London Film Festival, and we at BFI Future Film are hosting a 2-day festival called Connect and Collaborate as a part of it all. As well as screening Better This World, we’ll be hosting Fever Pitch, a pitching competition which will see one talented young person win a £2000 production budget, professional kit loan and expert mentoring and on the Thursday we’re running a workshop on Collaborations with IdeasTap and a Networking for Beginners session (For more information on the events and to purchase tickets click here.

Casting and Acting: Lessons from the Loach Team

24 Sep 12:00 Blue Room

Come along to this workshop where you’ll learn from industry professionals about acting in films. We’ll be watching clips from our Ken Loach season to see how one of the masters of British cinema does it, as well as talking to some of his team about his approach to working with actors.

Tickets are just £3 – OR bring a mate and you both get in for a fiver!

Masterclass: Inside filmmaking with Loach’s crew: Production with Rebecca O’Brien and Eimhear McMahon

4th October 17:00 in the Gallery

What exactly is involved in getting Loach’s films from script to screen? Rebecca and Eimhear will tell us how they help maintain Director Ken Loach’s prolific output. Iyare Igiehon will lead the questioning but you will also get a chance to ask your own questions.

This is the last in our series of Ken Loach masterclasses and looks set to be a great one! For more information on the event, click here.

Masterclass: Inside filmmaking with Loach’s crew: Sound and Editing with Jonathan Morris, Kevin Brazier and George Fenton

26th September 17:00 in the Gallery

An opportunity to uncover the complexities and challenges of turning hours and hours of footage into a coherent and entertaining drama. Iyare Igiehon will discuss editing techniques with the editor and sound editor who work regularly with Director Ken Loach, whose prolific output as one of Britain’s foremost filmmakers we are celebrating this month. You’ll also get a chance to ask your own questions.

This is the third in our series of Ken Loach masterclasses, for more information Click Here

BFI London Film Festival: Future Film’s Connect and Collaborate Festival

Education screening: Better This World Wed 26 | 10:15 | Vue West End

As part of the 55th BFI London Film Festival, BFI Future Film are hosting a 2-day festival called Connect and Collaborate.

As well as screening Better This World, we’ll be hosting Fever Pitch straight afterwards, a pitching competition which will see one talented young person win a £2000 production budget, professional kit loan and expert mentoring.

Then on the Thursday we’re running a workshop on Collaborations with IdeasTap and a Networking for Beginners session.

For more information on the events and to purchase tickets click here.

Congratulations to E!!!

Our network parner Creative Initiatives “e” (Poland) is on the shortlist for the Evens Prize for Media Education! With the second Evens Prize for Media Education, to be awarded in 2011, the Evens Foundation continues to highlight the importance of Media Education and to support sustainable projects in this field in Europe. The aim of this prize is to stimulate efforts to increase media literacy by raising critical awareness, which implies comprehension and cultural awareness, and by encouraging media creativity. Both of these contribute to the development of highly aware, active and responsible citizens.

The call for nominations was aimed at projects in the field of Media Education that focus on improving intercultural communication competences. Existing Media Education projects that can clearly demonstrate an attempt to use media production as a communication tool for young people to enter other cultural systems could apply through the application form on our website.

The Prize money of 20.000 € will be dedicated and divided by the external Jury Members and the Evens Foundation and will be used to create a new dimension to the winning project(s).

More…

Lab Sweet Lab

Whether you were born into the networks or simply are interested in digital creation, nowadays there are places and communities where you can learn, create and share knowledge. These laboratories (labs) are mediation spaces dedicated to practice, expression and creation as much as critical commitment on the role of technology in art and society. Individual users, artists, engineers, researchers and designers go there to research and produce in the free culture spirit. In a “lab”, the future is not merely imagined, it is lived!

What if our planet had become laboratory? From Do it Yourself (DIY) to Do It Together, whether linked to a lab or “lab-less”, these keen new media creators and explorers might well enable us to change our home into a “lab sweet lab”…

To give some reference points regarding the digital society, MCD and PiNG (new media culture resources space in Nantes), have drawn up a cartography of media labs in Europe, which reveals their specificities, questions their present and future roles and reports on these new learning, creation and co-operation dynamics.

Avec la participation de nos voisins les labs / With contributions from : aaaanet, Access Space, Ars Electronica Futurelab, Audiência Zero/AZ labs, Baltan Laboratories, Citilab, Constant, CRAS, Crealab, Culture Lab, DigiLab, Dorkbot Paris, Drugo more, EngageLab, ESC, Freaknet, Geek Physical, Hangar, Illutron, Kawenga, Kibla, Kitchen Budapest, Kuda, labIII, Labomedia, Le Cube, MAD, MaMa, Martu, MediaArtLab, Medialab Chrzelice, Medialab-Prado, Napon, NK, Pixelache, PNEK, PVA MediaLab, V2, Zemos 98, ZKM.

Technology hero myth?

Nathan Goldberg reminds us that the driving force behind the current popular freedom movements is brave men and women, not the technology hero myth. There was a time when all you had to do to make a revolution revolve was throw yourself in front of a tank or set yourself alight.

Not now. You need to bring a mobile phone at least to the barricades before storming. Smartphone is even better. Then you wave it at the non new media savvy media and before you can say Mark Zuckerberg, be praised, the head of this revolution is Fidel Facebook.

The story now goes that the Arab uprisings unseating the tyrants are successful because of the power of Facebook and its comrade Che Twitter. This is disrespectful, hero myth nonsense, the driving force of the revolution is anger and in many cases tremendous courage of people who are being slain and face death for the sake of a better future, one that many of us take for granted.
Any of the techie journalists and others who are now salivating at the thought of being part of the revolution, thanks to the social networks, albeit from behind a computer scene, are simply having a good old fashioned, vicarious wank.

However, as in all good stories, there is also a truth. It is that the ghastly regimes around the world are on notice. The social media has you covered. Your crimes will never again go unnoticed. There is a new truth out there and it will find you out. And as much as China bans the social media, even its day will come when it has to account for its wrongs against its own people.

Fact, most young people rely on Facebook, Twitter to get their voice heard, the western media is fast becoming surplus to demands. That way their message gets out unvarnished, it’s what they want.
It will not save some of those people from perishing. Yes the truth will out, but as it does the lights will go out in the lives of so many young people, killed by weapons ironically supplied by the arms dealers such as UK premier David Cameron to tyrants around the globe.
If it is important we know who the real heroes of the revolution are, we must also be aware of the villains. All of them.

By Nathan Goldberg, originally published on wowdewow.co.uk.

Call For Evens Media Prize Foundation

With the second Evens Prize for Media Education, to be awarded in 2011, the Evens Foundation continues to highlight the importance of Media Education and to support sustainable projects in this field in Europe. The aim of this prize is to stimulate efforts to increase media literacy by raising critical awareness, which implies comprehension and cultural awareness, and by encouraging media creativity. Both of these contribute to the development of highly aware, active and responsible citizens.

The call for nominations is aimed at projects in the field of Media Education that focus on improving intercultural communication competences. Existing Media Education projects that can clearly demonstrate an attempt to use media production as a communication tool for young people to enter other cultural systems can apply through the application form on our website.

The Prize money of 20.000 € will be dedicated and divided by the external Jury Members and the Evens Foundation and will be used to create a new dimension to the winning project(s). Only projects that fulfill all criteria can submit. Deadline is 15th April 2011.

More info…