Rushes Soho Shorts '09 - The Winners!!

The Rushes Soho Shorts held it’s Awards Ceremony last night, and what a grand shindig it was!! Presented, as every, by Word legend Terry Christian, the snazzy show in the Curzon Soho announced the deserving winners in each of the eight catagories to a rapt audience. But enough of our guff, who won what?

RSSF LONG FORM
WINNER - Romans 12:20 Directed by The Shammasian Brothers (UK)
NOMINEE - Boy Directed by Joe Morris, Picture Palace North (UK)
NOMINEE - Danzak Directed by Gabriela Yepes , Kunay Films (Peru)

RSSF INTERNATIONAL
WINNER - Charlie Thistle Directed by Bragi Schut, Gallantyne Pictures (USA)
NOMINEE - Next Floor Directed by Denis Villeneuve, PHi Group Inc (Canada)
NOMINEE - 18 Segundos Directed by Zchariass & MacGregor (Spain)

RSSF MUSIC VIDEO
WINNER - Prodigy: Warrior Dance Directed by Corin Hardy, Academy Films (UK)
NOMINEE - Coldplay: Life in Technicolour II Directed by Dougal Wilson, Colonel Blimp (UK)
NOMINEE - No Corras Tanto (Take It Easy) Directed by Cesar Diaz (Independent) (Spain)

RSSF BROADCAST DESIGN
WINNER - BBC ‘Journey To The East’ Directed by Jamie Hewlett & Pete Candeland, Passion Pictures (UK)
NOMINEE - Audi 'Unboxed' Directed by Aaron Duffy & Russell Brooke, Passion Pictures (UK)
NOMINEE - BBC 'Medieval Mind Trip' Directed by James Price, Strange Beast (UK)

RSSF DOCUMENTARY
WINNER - Avatar Days Directed by Gavin Kelly, Piranha Bar (Ireland)
NOMINEE - The Madman and the Cathedral Directed by James Rogan, Mix UP Film/ Brit Doc (Spain/ UK)
NOMINEE - Irene Directed by Lindsay Goodall, Blindside Productions (UK)

RSSF ANIMATION
WINNER - This Way Up Directed by Smith & Foulkes, Nexus (UK)
NOMINEE - Txt Island Directed by Chris Gavin, Tandem (UK)
NOMINEE - This Is Where We Live Directed by Ben Falk & Josiah Newbolt, Asylum Films & APT (UK)

RSSF SHORT FILM
WINNER - Washdays Directed by Simon Neal, Deeply Vale Productions (UK)
NOMINEE - Post It Love Directed by Si & Ad, Academy Films (UK)
NOMINEE - Hammerhead Directed by Sam Donovan (Independent) (UK)

RSSF NEWCOMER
WINNER - Tight Jeans Directed by Destiny Ekaragha, Pollibee Pictures (UK)
NOMINEE - Quietus Directed by George Taylor, Lucky Red Ball (UK)
NOMINEE - I Stood Up Directed by Lucy Tcherniak & James Willis, Partizan (UK)

Our congratulations to the champs, and to Joe and all at Rushes for another top-notch programme celebrating all things short. If you want to know more, check out the website - www.sohoshorts.com – or wait for our fabulous Feature issue next month with everything short you could ever want … and more!!

Soho ShortsList

The entries are in, the judges are primed and the projectors are oiled (at least we think it’s that way round) – THE RUSHES SOHO SHORTS SHORTLIST IS HERE!

With entries, requests and interest from 112 countries (1,462 cities!) over 1,159 films have been received, 140 of which have been selected for competition. The 18 countries represented this year include Peru, France, Mexico, Chine, Spain, USA, Germany, Japan, The Netherlands, Iceland, Australia, Slovenia, Israel, Ireland, Canada, Luxembourg and the UK. All films had to be under 12 minutes in length without credits and fall into the following competitive categories: The International Award, The Long Form Award, The Documentary Award, The Short Film Award, The Animation Award, The Music Video Award, The Broadcast Design Award and The Newcomers Award.

In keeping with our love of all things filmic and short here at The Reel (especially the film Willow), the festival shortlist is filled with splendid mini-movies, ads and promos that we’ve either seen or are keen to see. The full list of films screening in competition, along with the directors and companies that made the work, can now be seen be seen at www.sohoshorts.com

We caught up with Festival Director Joe Bateman to quiz him on the ins and outs of the selection, and to find out what festival goers have in store from 22nd July.

How do you feel this year's submissions compare to 2008's?

I feel more conscious of the breadth of entries this year. There’s, maybe, slightly less UK driven content (but not hugely so) and we’ve definitely increased our international attention. The standard seems higher and there seems to be more confidence in the narrative. If we had the facility we could have doubled the amount of content we wanted to showcase. It’s a painful experience choosing the final line up.

Why have you chosen to introduce the two new categories?

Every year we look at the volume of work and quietly wish we had more room to show more work. It was clear early on in the entry period that we were receiving more than our usual quota of international entries so we committed to creating a programme for them. At first this was going to be a guest programme, along with our other 12, but then it became clear that with a little extra effort we could deliver the programme in-competition, it was a forgone conclusion. Creating the category meant we could also showcase the strong UK contenders. It’ll also mean that we can provide unique UK Showcases to foreign events, something that we’re currently working on. The Long Form category came about because with the added interest from abroad I was getting a few emails stating “If you were a proper international film festival you’d have a longer running time for your films and except my 20 minute film”, may be that’s a slight generalisation but close enough. I was paranoid enough to think that they had a point, it also meant that any films that may have, dubiously, been hitting the stipulated 12 minute running time now had a legitimate category to compete in.

Can you give us a sneaky heads-up on what events we can expect to see in the festival week, and which ones you're most looking forward to?

Mmm. The opening night premiere feature film will be great, the stand-up comedy should be good too, the ‘all day’ events at BAFTA and London Film Academy will certainly be fun and I’m looking forward to our networking night at The Movieum. We’ve kept a similar set up (to previous years) with the lunchtime seminars and afternoon panel discussions which are always enlightening. We’re also hosting the Advertising Producers Association presenting the CPFE/Shots Young Directors Programme once again and of course the amazing straight 8 programmes. Our two exhibitions, suitably titled DNA and TURD BRAINS, will be fantastic and they’ll be backed up with experimental and very artistic screening programmes. But I think the biggest event for me, and what I always look forward to, is the grand finale, The Rushes Awards Ceremony and the after party! Someone please make sure I get a BIG pint of beer!

Is the legendary Terry Christian hosting the awards show again?

How could he not!

So there we go, shorts, events and turd brains a go-go PLUS Mr Terry Christian! We’ll be there, front row centre, and urge the rest of ya to get involved. The Festival runs over 10 days; Wednesday 22nd July to Friday 31st July, and all the information you could ever wish for can be found on the website - www.sohoshorts.com.

NewsReel 25.07.08

Rushes Soho Shorts get tender

The 10th Rushes Soho Shorts Festival kicked off at South Bank’s County Hall on Wednesday and it looks to be an exciting couple of weeks of short film action. You can view the full programme here.

As well as being a featured venue for screenings, the Tenderpixel Gallery are to present a week-long series of events entitled Tenderpix. Starting this Saturday 26th July, there will be a plethora of shorts, gallery installations and performance work on show. For more information go to www.tenderpixel.com.

The end of an era at Red Bee
Pam Masters, CEO Red Bee Media, has announced that she will be stepping down from the role on the 31 December 2008. She will take on the newly created role of Vice Chairman on the Board of Red Bee Media in January 2009. Pam has been in the broadcasting industry for over forty years and is recognised as an expert in this field. She was responsible for the smooth transition of Red Bee to an independent production company from a division of the BBC, and has overseen an exciting period of international growth for the company. It was also her vision that saw the completion of the BBC Broadcast Centre in 2003 to become one of the most technically advanced facilities in Europe.

She says of her decision to step down as CEO, ‘Since returning to the BBC from Channel 4 twenty years ago it has been a fascinating and challenging journey taking this business from a two channel in house BBC operation with 100 people, to a multi client successful commercial company of 1300 staff with offices in six countries. It has been my passion to see the vision I had for this organisation become reality…Now the time is right for me to step aside from the continually demanding role of being the full time CEO. I’m very pleased Michael has asked me to stay involved and to remain on the Board as Vice Chairman.’

Red Bee Media has already launched a search for the new CEO and intends to appoint before the end of the year.

We've found a Pulse

Executive Producer Roz Houchin has joined Pulse Films to head up their advertising division. She joins from Home Corp where she was joint EP with owner Emily Bliss. Houchin’s role will be to manage a talented directorial roster that includes Justin Kerrigan, Jake Wynne and JT. She will be focussed on the UK market and had this to say of her new role, ‘Pulse feels fresh in attitude and extremely vibrant. I’m confident about upping their profile with the London agencies – creatively I think the directors have a lot to offer and we are focused on growing the roster with leading talent.’

Blake DUCKs and covers

Los Angeles-based DUCK, formerly Duck Soup Studios, has welcomed veteran multi-disciplined director Simon Blake to their growing roster. Over the past several years, Blake has directed under the aegis of Chelsea Pictures, Sandwick Films and Brick. Simon is best known for his conceptual mixed-media approach that seamlessly blends classic and cutting edge film and animation techniques to create magical, thought-evoking worlds.

Partner/Executive Producer Mark Medernach has long been a fan of Blake’s work, commenting ‘I've been following Simon's work for years. I first became aware of him through our west coast rep, Andrew Halpern, and after getting to know Simon a bit more, I realised that his personal charm manifests itself in his work, which is both elegant and warm.’


Twenty120 x 2
The 2nd-annual Twenty120 collection has gone live on www.twenty120.com. The site includes a renowned set of directors from Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, London, and Germany spanning commercial directors, television creatives, designers, art directors, and fine artists utilising a range of skills including live-action, illustration, stop-motion, animation, graffiti, and more.

The concept for Twenty120 was conceived in 2007 under a simple premise: 20 films, each 120 seconds with a theme of Truth vs. Deception. The idea was to pull together a diverse group of directors free of any creative constraints to create using any medium. The directors are all invited on the premise that they create for themselves, and not for any commercial purposes. All work is under complete ownership of the directors.

Welcome to the Neighbourhood
Manchester based collective ‘The Neighbourhood’ have been signed to Bermuda Shorts for representation for advertising and music video work.

NewsReel 23/01/08

Remember to keep sending in all your adland news - even if it is just shameless self promotion - and we'll do our best to feature it here. Please send all press releases or anything that could fall under the banner of news to sam@thereel.net.


VES-tival

The Visual Effects Society have announced the nominations for the 6th annual VES Awards to be held in the austere surroundings of the Kodak Grand Ballroom in Hollywood on Sunday February 10th – thankfully a Hollywood awards ceremony that shouldn’t be effected by the writer’s strike that’s crippling the town.

Australian-based visual effects company FUEL VFX have been nominated for the VES Award for 'Outstanding Visual Effects in a Commercial' for BMW 'Hydrogen'. FUEL are finalists alongside some of the world's best known VFX houses: Digital Domain, MPC, Method Studios and Framestore.

VFX Supervisor Simon Maddison comments that ‘although the work is technically challenging we believed the final result should belie this and appear simple and elegant. The director wanted a stylised treatment to the CG water - the concept was not so much about the physics of liquids but about using the beauty of liquid motion to describe the BMW technology in a creative and artistic way.’

The 25-seconds of CG animation, at HD resolution, was completed at Fuel in just 3 weeks. The result illustrates the breakthrough technology of the BMW 'Hydrogen 7' - it's a car that produces water emissions instead of CO2.

The full list of nominees in the category are:

BACARDI - Bacardi Sun
Vittorio Giannini, Franck Lambertz, Robin Carlisle, Nico Cotta

ZUNE - The Ballad of Tina Pink
Luisa Murray, Laurent Ledru, Katrina Salicrup, Miles Essmiller

BMW - Hydrogen
Simon Maddison, Dave Kelly, Mike Bain, Sam Cole

BMW - Road
Chris Fieldhouse, Jay Barton, Ron Herbst, Dave Stern

SMIRNOFF - Sea
William Bartlett, Scott Griffin, Dan Seddon, David Mellor

Check out the excellent ‘Hydrogen’ spot below.

Stranger than Passion

Passion Pictures has launched a new company called Strange Beast which will represent an international roster of emerging new talent including Encyclopedia Pictura, Amautalab, Lorenzo Fonda, The Blackheart Gang, Takeo, and James Price. The company is committed to developing creative opportunities for these artists across all media platforms including commercials, web based media, music videos, short films and art exhibitions.

For more information about Strange Beast and the directors visit the website www.strangebeast.tv

Short & Sweet

This week Short & Sweet teamed up with Straight 8 to screen two different straight 8 selections on Monday and Tuesday evening, along with the usual great work from established and new directorial talent. Entry is, as always, free.

Next week's Short & Sweet will be at the usual time and place:

Monday: Cafe 1001, 91 Brick Lane. Films start at 7pm.

Tuesday: AKA Bar, 18 west central street. Films start at 7pm.


Rushes Soho Shorts Festival

Rushes Soho Shorts Festival has renamed its ‘Title Sequence & Idents’ category as ‘Broadcast Design’, opening up the category to work including brand-related short films.
The 10th festival will start in the far away and heady days of Summer, on July 23rd, and will run for ten days. Festival organisers will be accepting entries up until Friday April 25th. Check the newsreel closer to the time for more information on one of the best industry events of the Summer.