New Learning on Screen Award

Awards ceremony 2015

The BUFVC Learning on Screen Awards 2015 ceremony will be held at the BFI Southbank, London on the evening of Thursday 23 April 2015.

This year, the College HE award will be presented at the Association of Colleges annual College HE conference on 4 March 2015 in central London.

The awards ceremony showcases all nominated entries and announces the winners, and is followed by a networking drinks reception.

“I would recommend that anyone who cares about learning and film apply for a Learning on Screen award.  Even if you just get shortlisted it’ll be a treat just to attend the awards evening – you’ll meet some wonderful people and learn about some interesting projects.” – Lucy Worsley, guest speaker at the 2014 awards.

Independent Practice and Fincher

For my independent practice, I decided to take inspiration from a director that I have grown attached to recently, David Fincher.

For a long time I haven't really understood David Fincher, I found his films overly long and too plot heavy, that was until I found a great analysis video that I saw on youtube via Tony Zhou. In it he explains the core tenants that David Fincher uses in his work and how he is able to make incredibly interesting thought provoking stuff whilst using relatively bland and simple setups.

Fincher never uses handheld except for a few occasions, The Social Network for example only has a single shot that isn't attached to a tripod, and the most he has ever used was in Se7en where it was used in only 5 scenes. As well as this he also tends not to move the camera at all and tries to get all the action in the single frame itself, rather like how Steven Spielberg tends to try and capture everything necessary in the wide first before cutting in, the exact opposite of the style of Christopher Nolan who tends to use very subtle handheld and lots of inserts.

This look is tricky because a lot of the time it tends to look boring and feels like its not going anywhere, however if it is used with the correct type of script dialogue and plotting, the overall effect glides through it and distracts you, and this is exactly what Fincher does, he gives new scenarios and new pieces of information for each moment that you might get bored and lets the characters react and play around with it, thereby making you concentrate more on them than the camera placement.

As of such Fincher's films look very distinct from the majority of talent out there, and this oneiricism is a fantastic breath of fresh air particularly when he is remaking a film (he Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) or adapting something from real life (Zodiac) because I grow tired of seeing so many of these films done poorly without much taste for the former, and the latter becoming predictable and monotonous due to simply going through each life event uninterestingly.

For my independent practice I intend to copy and take inspiration from these key tenants to challenge myself. I will film it using handheld only when absolutely necessary, and for the most part simply static shots. The only problem that I feel I will face is how to progress the story along without it appearing obvious as to what style I have used as currently I haven't decided to include  much dialogue in the film. I am therefore considering using some kind of subtle background music to prevent the boredom of listening to a student film in silence.

Screentest: The National Student Film Festival

There is a festival showing student-made films only. You can enter your film for free, click the link below and the deadline is on 15th December.

I managed to contact the festival, asking about the copyright on both music and media footage and they say:

'Unfortunately yes, we do require copyright for music used. We find a lot of our film submissions include music by the director or someone they know who works with music, so you could potentially do this as an alternative'.

If you do have a copyrighted material in your film, you can't put your film unless you have to get permission from the owners of the copyrighted material or you'll end up by pay a lot of money when the owners would sue you if it is shown in festival or the festival won't accept your film without the owner's permission.

Winner of 2014 Screen Test.

https://www.haatchiandlittleb.com - Explore this incredible, heartwarming bond even further in their new book, Haatchi and Little B - in stores July 8! Last year we made this film as part of our documentary filmmaking course at the University of Hertfordshire. We managed to find this special family and document an incredible few months of their lives.

Yr. 2 Group Film Project Update

So... five days, 3106 words, roughly 15 pages... the first draft script for "Writers Block" is now complete 

'Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red' by artist Paul Cummins. Poppy Memorial at Tower of London.

In 2014 the Tower of London will be commemorating the centenary anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War through a major art installation, in collaboration with ceramic artist Paul Cummins. The Tower's dry moat will be filled with 888,246 ceramic poppies -- one for each British fatality during the war.

A few weeks back I visited the World War 1 memorial, 'Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red' created by ceramic artist Paul Cummins, with setting by stage designer Tom Piper, at The Tower of London. It is an immense Installation and I like many of the millions that have flocked to see it found it a profoundly moving spectacle, despite the crowds, 'gentle jostling and sense of fun'.

However I do feel Jonathan Jones, writing in The Guardian,  does make some very important points and valid arguments regarding the memorial.

'By the time Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red is completed – and it’s nearly there now – it will consist of 888,246 ceramic poppies, each representing a British fatality in the first world war. It is deeply disturbing that a hundred years on from 1914, we can only mark this terrible war as a national tragedy. Nationalism – the 19th-century invention of nations as an ideal, as romantic unions of blood and patriotism – caused the great war. What does it say about Britain in 2014 that we still narrowly remember our own dead and do not mourn the German or French or Russian victims?'

And in a later, article, defending his arguments against the severe backlash he wrote:

'In so explicitly recording only the British dead of world war one, this work of art in its tasteful way confirms the illusion that we are an island of heroes with no debt to anyone else, no fraternity for anyone else.

The war poet Wilfred Owen did not want us to remember him and his contemporaries with the bland sentimentality of this installation. He wished instead we could witness what he witnessed, a young man dying in a gas attack:

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer … My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori.

A true work of art about the first world war would need to be as obscene as cancer. But Owen, who died soon after writing this, is “represented” by one of those ceramic flowers now, his bitter truth smoothed away by the potter’s decorous hand.'

Links to the full articles are below: