I am very pleased to be able to announce an opportunity for all readers of this blog who are aged 16-19- the BFI Talent campus at the National Film and Television School!
The BFI will be announcing today that the new BFI Film
Academy residential two week Talent Campus will be delivered by the National
Film and Television School (NFTS).
From today, the NFTS will be taking applications
from 16-19 year olds all over England, to select 54 participants for this
unique educational opportunity. The BFI Film Academy Talent Campus is an
intensive 13-day training course which will enable the UK’s most promising young
film talent to develop a range and breadth of film disciplines.
Nik Powell Director of the NFTS said: “The
NFTS has a commitment to educate the best creative talent to the highest
professional standards for tomorrow’s screen industries. We are very excited to
be able to open our doors to younger students and offer them tuition by some of
Britain’s best film experts in our world-class studio facilities.”
Participants in the Talent Campus will choose a specialism, such as Directing, Producing,
Editing, Cinematography or Sound Recording,
and form teams that will be tutored by film industry experts to make short
films using the School’s film studios and world-class teaching facilities. Tutors include
Cinematographer Brian Tufano (Trainspotting, Billy Elliot), Director Brian
Gilbert (Wilde, Tom & Viv) and Producer Michelle Eastwood (In Our Name). There
will also be Masterclasses from some of the country’s leading film-makers and
visits to the BFI, BAFTA and Pinewood Studios. The students’
films will be screened at the end of the course at a London event attended by
industry professionals. Following the Talent Campus, support will be given to
the participants in obtaining further training, work placements or jobs in the
industry.
The residential course will be based at the NFTS and the Lane EndConference Centre, in Buckinghamshire during the Easter holidays (April 2-12) with an introductory weekend on March
9-10th. Every 16-19 year old across England who can show talent and
enthusiasm for film is eligible to apply for the Talent Campus, including the
approximately 500 young people already enrolled in the BFI Film Academy Regional
Network programme. The deadline for applications is Monday February 18, 2013.
The NFTS was founded 40 years ago with the help of its President Lord
Attenborough and runs Post Graduate MA and diploma courses but this is the
first time it has opened its doors to younger students.
The School has a reputation for producing some of the most talented
film-makers in the world. Its student films have won 5 Oscars, 8 BAFTAs
and graduates include 2013 Oscar nominees Roger Deakins and Stuart Wilson
(Skyfall) and Dario Marianelli (Anna Karenina) and students Timothy Eckhart and
Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly whose graduation film Head Over Heels is in the short animated film section. www.nfts.co.uk
The BFI’s aim is to ensure everyone, particularly
young people, wherever they live, can learn about and enjoy the widest range of
film. In 2013 the BFI Film Academy network is operating across every
region of England giving a diverse group of young people from all backgrounds
the opportunity to get involved. The BFI aims to work with partners in the
nations of the UK to make the Film Academy UK-wide later in 2013.
Download
the application form here and complete it following the instructions
on page 1. Please note your date of birth much fall between 13th April 1993 and
18th February 1997 to be eligible to apply. Proof of age must be supplied on
acceptance of a place.
My session at the MediaMag conference this year focuses on some tips to improve your production work and encourages you to enter for the next MediaMag Video awards 2013.
Here are the three winning videos from 2012:
Music Video: Stripper
Fiction: Blitz
Creativity: The Great Escape
Here is a pdf of my presentation tips
If you're wondering what to make of the outcome of the Leveson Inquiry, you're probably not the only one. So here's a quick ten introduction with a load of useful links from recent articles where you can 'read all about it!'
1. You can download the report itself here, though it is a bit of a lengthy read at 1.4 million words and nearly 2000 pages. That is actually longer than all the Harry Potter novels combined, which come in at 1.1million. If you read it carefully and check all the sources, you may even find some mistakes. Already spotted is a bit that was obviously copied and pasted from Wikipedia (tut,tut), where Leveson wrote: 'The Independent was founded in 1986 by the journalists Andreas Whittam Smith, Stephen Glover and Brett Straub.' In fact, Straub is a made-up character whose name was added to the newspaper's Wikipedia profile by pranksters. It appears to have been cut and pasted from the web without any checking (spotted by The Daily Mail and others) 2. The report is the outcome of the Inquiry itself, which took statements from and questioned witnesses for several months. Amongst those who appeared were victims of phone hacking, including both celebrities like Hugh Grant and ordinary people like the parents of murdered girl Milly Dowler, politicians, newspaper editors and proprieters and many more. The Inquiry itself came out of the phone hacking scandal which led to the closure of the News Of The World, and was set up by Prime Minister David Cameron, to look at the whole culture of the relationships between newspapers, politicians and police and to get to the bottom of the wrongdoing that had gone on. As Leveson reported, it is the seventh such Inquiry since the end of World War II, as freedom of the press v public anxiety about the behaviour of the press has tended to be an all too frequent opposition.
A range of Leveson witnesses all looking like they are describing the size of a fish that they nearly caught. 3. How was the press regulated before Leveson? Broadcasting has OFCOM, adverts have the ASA, films have the BBFC. Newspapers have had something called the PCC (Press Complaints Commission) for nearly 20 years which looks into complaints by members of the public and has a code of conduct for journalists. Many people believe that it lacks 'teeth' because it is a voluntary body and not all newspapers even belong to it (The Express Group, for example, withdrew in early 2011). Very few complaints are upheld by it and it is seen as too cosy and largely controlled by powerful editors. The phone hacking scandal was seen as a classic example of this, with the PCC having largely dismissed it until the shocking revelations reached a point where it became obvious to anyone that they were largely true. What else do you need to know? Well, the best summary I have found of the whole thing is here from The Guardian, which outlines ten key areas from options and arguments to a history of regulation. It was published before the final report, so it is very useful for background. There is a post-report summary on this blog which is quite accessible. Also from The Guardian is this useful piece on newspaper coverage of the Inquiry and why reform is needed and here Emily Bell suggests that the growth of the internet may make most of the report largely irrelevant . An angry Steve Coogan says why he thinks David Cameron's response is wrong and Nick Davies talks about why only the right wing papers have anything to fear from change. The Daily Telegraph argues against adoption of Leveson's proposals here and former Guardian editor, Peter Preston also sees the report as flawed, but from a different perspective here. And another useful blogpost from Maire Messenger-Davies from the University of Ulster here Some papers ran adverts to scare readers about what Leveson's outcome might mean
So have a good read and keep your ears and eyes open as to what happens next! ...and finally, the forgetful editors video mashup
The third Media Magazine annual student conference takes place at Logan Hall in London on Thursday 13 December. In this post, I'm going to preview the speakers and give you a bit of background on their work.
TWITTER HASHTAG FOR THE EVENT IS #MM12- get tweeting!
Martin Barker
Martin has had a distinguished career as a media academic, working at the University of the West Of England (UWE) in Bristol for many years, then at Sussex University and Aberystwyth in Wales. He is now working at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. Martin's work has mainly been in the area of film audiences, including projects on Lord of the Rings, Crash, Judge Dredd and Straw Dogs, as well as his most recent work on Alien. His list of publications includes books on comics, notably: Comics: Ideology, Power and the Critics, Manchester University Press 1989, Action: The Story of a Violent Comic, Titan Books 1990. and A Haunt of Fears: the Strange History of the British Horror Comics Campaign, Pluto Press 1984. He was also the editor of The Video Nasties: Freedom and Censorship in the Arts, Pluto Press1984, an excellent book on the whole moral panic around horror videos in the early 80s. Martin's work has often unpicked simplistic assumptions about the relationship between media audiences and media texts and in his session he will be looking to challenge our perceptions around storytelling with a starting point that says: “Imagine if you can the most vile, horrific, awful story you can … no, no, do – come along and try your hand at doing this, and then see what the results are … and see if you want to ban it.”
Jolyon Rubinstein and Heydon Prowse: The Revolution Will be Televised
"No moguls, politicians or bankers are safe from exposure in this satirical comedy series" says the blurb at the top of the BBC3 website. Jolyon and Heydon's series was cult viewing in the summer and saw a series of characters that they have developed wreak havoc in a variety of settings.
Their young coalition MPs, James and Barnaby, are always up for winding up politicians
James and Barnaby
Here James meets Ed Milliband:
Ace reporter, Dale Maily, has his finger on the pulse of public opinion, or so he thinks.
Dale Maily
Here he is reporting on a MoD exhibition:
And here are our intrepid duo winding everyone up at Barclays HQ when they set up an impromptu casino
The programmes are not just sketch shows, however, but always have a hard-hitting political point to make.
ex-student panel
Last year we invited some former media studies A level students to come and talk about their university courses; this year, we have some students who have gone on to work in various media environments, including newspaper journalists, a film-maker and a TV production manager. They will talk about their route since A level and answer questions on what they do now, as well as giving tips for current students.
Shakuntala Banaji
After lunch, we welcome Shakuntala from the London School of Economics, who has worked as a researcher on a number of projects about young people and their understanding of the media. In her talk, she will focus on the research she has undertaken in rural India about children's media use there. As you will see, this is dramatically different from the UK experience! She has written and edited a number of publications, as shown below
Paul Lewis
I have blogged about Paul's work before, as he led the 'Reading the Riots' project for The Guardian and was one of the few reporters to get a real sense of 'what happened' during the 2011 riots, by being 'on the ground' and tweeting throughout. Paul returns to the MediaMag conference, having spoken last year.
Corin Hardy
Our final contributor is music video director and horror aficionado Corin, whose work features in one of my recent posts. We will be showing several of his videos and one or two surprise pieces not available online! Corin's work for A+/Academy Films can be viewed here.
Once again this week, I did some student events with music video director Corin Hardy, who works for
A+/Academy Films in London. His work on their site can be seen here
Corin is known for his imaginative animations, often making music videos that don’t feature the artist at all. His approach is heavily influenced by his interest in the horror genre, fuelled by viewing lots of horror films in his teenage years, when he first started experimenting with animation. His first short film, Butterfly, is available to download for £1.49 on iTunes, and is well worth the investment. He currently has a number of horror projects in pre-production, which will ultimately lead to his feature film debut!
Some of Corin's early videos were for the band Keane, including this one for Bedshaped:
In a workshop project one weekend, Corin worked with a group of beginners to produce a video response to the track Fuzzbox by Bomb the Bass featuring Jon Spencer. With no budget but complete freedom, Corin was able to get the group to formulate their ideas and pull together a bunch of props to make a highly imaginative and borderline pornographic (!) animation. ‘Fuzzbox’ referred to the guitar pedal, but the group gave it a sexual meaning and this is the result.
Corin’s video for the Prodigy’s ‘Warriors Dance’ saw him return to a technique he had used as a teenager, cutting up cigarette boxes to make figures to animate. The band were unavailable for the video, as they were on tour, which once again gave him free rein. In this case, they are like ants dancing in the bar while the humans are away.
For an earlier video for little known band The Horrors, Corin used a different animation technique; this time, the band were present- shot against a white background, having to imagine what might happen to them if they were under attack from various creatures. He then printed out every third frame of the video on paper, creating a pile 1500 sheets high, spread the paper around his living room and with large quantities of ink drew and splattered the sheets to create this amazing spectacle. Corin is proud of the success of this video- which you will note has close to 2 million hits on youtube- not bad for a little known band!
His video for Paolo Nutini takes some inspiration from the 1987 video for Jackie Wilson's 'reet petite' (which the sound echoes in some ways). this time he has made a complex mixture of live action and animation and as with his Horrors and Prodigy animations, it ends with the creation being destroyed. This witty play with Nutini's song and even with the image of the artist is another indication of why Corin can be seen as a really creative talent.
here is 'reet petite':
To make animations like these is a very lengthy process and on a low budget, which most of these videos are, that means the work is not that well paid!
A more recent music promo for Biffy Clyro is live action, but draws upon his interest in horror, with reference to films like 'Deliverance' and 'The Wicker Man' as well as the Mexican festival of the dead.
If you are making a music video for your A level (or another media course) it is well worth considering the option of animation which might allow you to take it into really different and unusual areas; but beware, it is an immensely time consuming process- even if the performers don't answer back!
Here is his Olly Murs video for 'Busy'- rather a change of image for Olly!
His most recent video for Devlin's interpretation of 'All Along The Watchtower' is here. It is pretty amazing!
Finally, Corin has done some little 'viral' horror projects. This one is pretty gruesome and had some people thinking it was real snuff...
Probably the most popular task over the last 20 years in the second year of A level courses has been making a music video. Changes in technology have meant that what students can produce has changed dramatically in that time; from the early days of crash editing between two VHS machines, when you had to do every shot pretty much in sequence to today's digital editing, where you can set up multiple timelines, the possibilities for music video on no budget have been transformed.
In this post, I will set out what I think are the key steps that you need to go through in making a music video and illustrate with examples made by professional directors and by students.
First of all, though, I think it is important to determine what a music video actually is; it would be too simple to say well, its a video and it's got music, so it must be a music video, because those criteria could apply to all manner of short films. I would see six key elements which would be there in almost every music video:
The video lasts at least as long as the track (can be longer if you have an intro or outro or both)
The video features the artist/band quite prominently
The video features some element of performance- singing and playing instruments (usually miming) and often dancing or acting too
The video has some kind of concept along with the track
The video does not feature a complete narrative but the concept may involve fragments of narrative
Different genres of music produce slightly different visual conventions in music videos
These criteria are an important starting point, as often student music videos seem to disregard them, which is a mistake. If you don't show some element of performance by the artist you are entering the realm of a small minority of music videos, which are maybe so strong conceptually that the artist doesn't matter or from very particular sub-genres of dance music. I would beware of this. If you are Chris Cunningham dealing with Aphex twin, it's fine, but at a level it is likely to end up looking like it isn't a music video...
My ten step guide starts with some activities to build skills that you will need later on...
Step 0: limbering up
This involves doing some exercises, just like you would if you were a sportsperson getting ready for the race or game. If you try shooting a karaoke-style multi-angle version of a track for fun, you will have the chance to make lots of mistakes and to get some inhibitions out of your system if you are going to be the performers in your own video. See an example:
Totally improvised (!) but shot from three or four setups, this exercise gives confidence and builds skills with synching up performance and soundtrack.
A second exercise which works really well as a whole class and gets everyone to pay very close attention to how the video is constructed is a frame by frame re-make of part of an existing video. By storyboarding this and then filming shot by shot to stay faithful to the original, it helps give you more sense of how cutting works in real music videos. Student ones are often too slow paced, so that when you look at real ones you might see as much as three times as many shots on average being used than in a student one. Again here is an example, along with the 'original'
Step 1: Choosing your track
for your final production, it can be a mistake to go for something too well known as the image of the original will always be hanging over you, particularly the image of the artist. There is plenty of material available from relatively unknown bands which you could use from MySpace or elsewhere; you can create an image from scratch with your own performers adopting the role of the band.
The other things are to choose a track which stimulates some visuals and which isn't too long. Three minutes for a music video is enough of a challenge, so don't go for some five minute epic- you'll struggle to sustain it for the viewer.
Step 2: Write a treatment
A treatment is your pitch for the track, with a suggestion of what your 'concept' might be. It needs to be clear, workable and realistic in what you aim to do. If your idea is too elaborate, more can go wrong and you'll only be disappointed!
get feedback on this from teachers and fellow students and then review it in the light of their comments.
Step 3: Do lots of research
You should be looking at real music videos from the same genre of music as your own, not to copy them slavishly but to get a sense of what the conventions are. look closely at them and break them down to see how they work. How do they use verse and chorus? how do they use the beat and rhythm? how do they showcase the star? How much do the visuals relate to the lyrics? what's the concept?
You should also look at student videos to identify strengths you can draw upon and weaknesses you can avoid. here are a couple- what works and what doesn't?
It might be tempting not to bother with storyboards but it is a mistake if you do so. You need a visual plan for your work as it won't just happen when you have a camera in your hand! I would recommend using post-its for constructing a storyboard, as you can move the frames around and change the order easily. Once you have done the storyboard, the next step is to turn it into an animatic, which quite literally involves taking a photo of each frame (on your phones or a webcam, nothing fancy) and then dropping the frames onto the timeline of your digital editing program. You can then cut them to length, in time with your music on the audio line and then export the whole thing as an animatic- a moving storyboard. Here's one of the first thirty seconds of a video...
The other crucial aspect of planning is logistics. This involves production management skills, thinking ahead to everything that could possibly go wrong on your shoot and to every little detail of what you will need. Nothing should be left to chance- costumes, props, locations, camera equipment and people all need orgnaising. Don't have your actors just wearing any old clothes- plan what they will wear; don't rely on someone else remembering particular props, have a list of who is bringing what. For a music video, the instruments are props, so don't forget them! Don't assume everyone will simply turn up- make sure everyone has all the phone numbers and everyone knows exactly where they should be and when.
You really will need suitable places for the performances and you will need to think about variety for these. You should also aim to shoot the whole thing well in advance of deadlines, as you may end up having to shoot some of it again!
Above all else, make sure your performers have rehearsed and know the words and that they are willing to throw themselves into it. If they don't look enthusiastic and don't look as if they mean it, the video won't work!
Step 5: set up a blog
This should be the place for all your evidence, showing the journey of your project. You can use it to link to ideas and inspiration, to examples of your research into music video, the genre and your particular artist, to post recce shots and ideas for hair and costume, for your storyboards, your animatic, screengrabs of work in progress and for feedback from others.
Step 6: know your equipment
Make sure you have practised with the equipment and that you know how to set it up and how to get the best from it. Cameras, lights and the edit program are all going to be important to how your video looks, but an easy one to forget is the music- have the track, (preferably with some 'beeps' at the start so it will be easy to synch video material with the master track at the edit stage) and have it on something where it is audible. It is no use just having your singer with headphones on so the camera can't hear the music- it needs to be played out loud!
Step 7: the Shoot
Shoot the performance at least ten times with different set-ups. You may think this is excessive, but if you are going to have something to cut together with coverage of every second of the track, you need lots of material. Make sure you have plenty of cutaways as well, for interesting shots that will retain the viewer's interest. Experiment with extra angles and lighting changes and don’t forget: lots of close-ups, which is the dominant mode of music video !
Step 8: capturing
Label everything you capture and organise it so its easy to find;don’t capture stuff you don’t need, but do capture full takes of the song, as if you stack them on top of each other in the timelines, you can strip away what you don't need easily thereafter. By the way, multi-track timelines like Premiere and Final Cut are ideal for editing music video- iMovie and MovieMaker are much harder to use for lipsynch material.
Step 9: the edit
Synch up performances first and get the whole picture rather than tiny detail
Cut and cut again, aiming for a dynamic piece of work. Do any effects work last.
Upload a rough cut to your blog and get feedback, then act upon this to finesse your final version.
In many ways this story follows the pattern
of the classic moral panic:
"A term popularized by Stanley Cohen to describe a media-inspired overreaction to a certain group or type of behaviour that is taken as symptomatic of general social disorder." (Anthony Giddens)
The scandal(s) bring together a number of themes which have been in circulation for a while. The first is of course celebrity; Jimmy Savile was an extremely well known personality from TV and Radio, as a DJ, Top of the Pops presenter and as the host of a highly popular Saturday night peaktime programme which bore his name, Jim'll fix it. He was also famous for his eccentric appearance and personality and for his charity fundraising. He had the ear of politicians and royalty and when he died crowds lined the streets for his funeral procession in a way that I can only ever recall previously seeing for Princess Diana and George Best. As the story has progressed and more and more people have come forward with stories of abuse by Savile, others have started to voice their disquiet about what they 'suspected' while he was still alive and very quickly media coverage of Savile has shifted from seeing him as a saintly figure to seeing him as a devil.
Some commentators have blamed the behaviour of Savile and others on 'the 60s' as an over-permissive period, on pop music and on the 'culture at the BBC'; this celebrity theme has been underlined as other living DJs and comedians and dead actors have been named by individuals as having abused or harrassed them in the period from the 1950s to the 1980s. Some have had a tenuous connection with Savile, while others have been the subject of rumour in the past. Of course, it has been very easy for newspapers in particular to publish names of the dead and accuse them; interestingly, some of these papers were offered the same stories in the past when those accused were still alive, but showed no interest in running them.
The second key theme is that of anxieties around childhood; periodically this surfaces with a lot of press coverage, usually as a result of a court case or a child abduction and often spirals off into other areas which are only vaguely connected. At the moment, almost every day sees a new headline about child abuse- there have been several involving historical cases against priests and bishops, in addition to Savile-related stories recently. The re-opened investigation into the abuse at the North Wales Children's home, with the suggestion of a paedophile ring amongst politicians played further on this theme. This week, the report into some children in Doncaster torturing and sexually abusing some other children was released and made front page news and today a Barnado's report came out which gave statistics both for the number of children sexually abused by gangs and the number 'at risk' of being so. As many commentators have suggested, quite quickly the victims get forgotten as the stories move to focus on the particular obsession of those reporting on them. Thus the Newsnight stories became more about 'the culture of the BBC' and arguments in favour of its overhaul and the aftermath of the allegations against the Conservative peer about the 'dangers of twitter'. Today, the gang stories have been used as an excuse to accuse the report writers of inverted racism (supposedly under-reporting the role of Pakistani gangs) and several times I have heard mention of internet porn and the 'sexualisation of children' as major contributory factors to what has gone on. It seems that the child abuse stories can be used to back up whatever world view the writer wants to convey.
The third theme, alluded to above, has been the role of the news media themselves. The inadequacies of the Newsnight story were used from the outset as an excuse by newspapers to bash the BBC, which they see as having been one of their sternest critics during the Leveson inquiry. The Daily Mail led this attack from the moment of the ITV Exposure programme, rubbing its hands with glee over the departure of the Director General. Rupert Murdoch in particular has returned to the theme of abolishing the licence fee, suggesting the BBC has 'lost the trust' of the people, a theme from which his company would stand to benefit, as it would put the BBC in a weaker position against Sky much more if it had to raise its funds commercially. The rather foolish behaviour of Philip Schofield in handing the Prime Minister the card full of names he had found online has also been the object of newspaper scorn, with speculation that he would lose his job and also that ITV might have to pay substantial damages. As well as this opposition to the BBC, the press has been quick to complain about the role of the internet, where several thousand tweeters are believed to have named the accused Tory Peer. When the mistaken identity was revealed, there was a large element of glee from the press, with accusatory fingers pointed at prominent tweeters who had named him, such as Speaker's wife Sally Bercow and Guardian blogger George Monbiot. A number of people pointed out that less than two years ago, several of the papers themselves were guilty of false accusations, when they ran front page stories about landlord and ex-teacher Chris Jeffries, accusing him of the murder of Joanna Yeates.
Finally, conspiracy theories online have abounded since the Savile story broke. The feeling that politicians are untrustworthy has been around for some time and was particularly prominent during the expenses scandal; people were very quick to believe that they could be a whole lot worse than that as rumours flew around online. A quick search on twitter for the trending word 'Tory' broke it down into 'Tory paedo', 'Tory abuser' and others. Lots of links were posted, mostly to blogs hosted abroad; one that I found with accusations hidden within the site's html code, alleged the whole scandal was bound up with the involvement of security forces in cover-ups of the murders of a TV personality, an MP and a footballer. It was very easy to get carried away with the stories, particularly at a time when a number of historical cover-ups, such as Hillsborough, were in the news. Conspiracy theorists such as David Icke, whose allegations are surely a lot worse than people just mentioning the Tory peer's name on twitter, has been expounding his theories at length for some years.
So this is a complex story, which could perhaps be seen to allow people to project upon it all their own concerns and anxieties and for some of those in power to use it to attack other institutions. For the ordinary twitter user, it perhaps provides a salutary lesson- don't tweet rumours as you could get done for libel, or at least be threatened by lawyers that if you don't pay up, you will be sued.
