NewsReel 01/08/08

As always, please send any news and press releases to sam@thereel.net and we'll do our best to include it here.

The UK MVA's are coming
The deadline for entries to the UK Music Video Awards is fast approaching. All entries need to be received by the 12th August for the awards show that is due to take place on October 14th at the Odeon in Leicester Square. The team behind the event, who also run the BFI South Bank’s highly successful BUG strand, has also announced a People’s Choice Award and a separate award for the best video produced for under £2,000. For more information go to www.ukmva.com.

Shark attack

The closing date for this year’s Kinsale Sharks Awards is only a week away. There will be no extensions for any entries this year due to a significant increase in the volume of entries that need to be processed, so go to www.kinsalesharks.com to join the last minute scramble to enter work.

Short and Sweet
Next week’s Short and Sweet (London’s only weekly short film evening) will be held at the usual time and place:

MONDAY: Cafe 1001, 91 Brick Lane
TUESDAY: AKA Bar, 18 west central street

Films start at 7.30pm both nights and entry is FREE.

This time featuring some great work from the following directors:

Steph Green
Nick Alhmark
Toko Plastic
Karen Kelly
John Williams
Annette Habel
Tomek Ducki

A new wave
Wave Recording Studios has announced its opening of a new office in Amsterdam. Wave Amsterdam’s plush new office is on the Herengracht; a street at the heart of the city’s buzzing media centre. Facing the canal on one side and a central courtyard on the other, Wave is on the 2nd floor of a newly refurbished building and boasts over 600 square metres of floor space.

The ambitious venture for the company that was founded in 1999 comprises of three studios and will service Dutch, Pan-European and UK markets. Warren Hamilton, co-owner and creative director at Wave said of the relationship between the new and original office, ‘The only difference between Wave London and Wave Amsterdam is 500-miles; the two offices will offer the exactly the same service and personality.’

The Amsterdam studios will be helmed by a hi-profile new signing: Alex Nicholls-Lee, who previously worked at Scramble for over a decade, and is both an experienced sound designer and used to working with Dutch clients. He’s worked on Adidas’ ‘Last Man Standing’ and the D&AD winning Pepsi ‘Gladiator’ spots. Joe Mount will also be joining the Amsterdam studio, crossing the North Sea from the company’s London office. He recently won a Conch sound design award for his work on Skoda’s ‘Giggle’.

A call for more smalls
Following on from their recent Paramount and Comedy Central sponsored Comedy Shorts competition, The Smalls has opened their call for entry for their 2008 Showcase and Awards in association with Creative Review and devilfish. The competition and event celebrates small films for small screens – celebrating the opportunities bought about by the internet and mobile phone screens.

A selection of entries will be screened at the London Design Festival on September 17 – 18th and the best entry, as judged by a panel of leading industry figures, will win The Smalls Awards 2008.

The deadline for entries should be up to five-minutes long and submitted by 5th September. For more information go to www.thesmalls.com

NewsReel 21/02/08

On the Radar
Music video champions Radar recently ran a competition for filmmakers to submit music videos for various well known bands and artists. One of the bands was The Maps, and winner Joe Brener made a promo for their track ‘To The Sky’. Joe’s prize was £1,000 cold hard cash, mentoring from Draw Pictures, a space on the YouTube global front page, and...he’s just got married. You can’t win them all!




The winners from the Radar and Coke Music competition have also been making waves.
Radar collaborated with Coke Music to create videos for their four top rated bands, inviting film-makers to pitch for the honour of having their creative associated with one of the foursome from the fizzy drink’s new music site. The winning videos can be viewed here.


Short and Sweet
As ever, Short and Sweet was east and west this week, with work from Vanessa Caswill, Steve May, Daniel Mulloy, Robert Chiu, Dom Bridges, Eric Toubel, Thomas Castellani, Yves D’incau and Clement Renaudin, and Philip Van. There was also a special performance from poet and comic Richard Tyrone Jones.

MONDAY: Cafe 1001, 91 Brick Lane

TUESDAY: AKA Bar, 18 west central street

Films START: 7pm both nights!

Additional dates for the diary are 3,4 and 10,11 March for special Short and Sweet nights featuring the nominations from this year's Short Film and Short Animation BAFTA categories.

The Whitehouse moves
No, George W Bush hasn’t decided to re-locate the US Presidential home; the London branch of premier editing house with the same name has upped sticks to 21-23 Meard Street, London, UK W1F 0EY – so update those Christmas card lists!

AICP Show second entry deadline
Over the Atlantic, the second entry deadline for the 2008 AICP Show, The Art & Technique of the American Commercial is February 29th, 2008, for work airing February 4, 2008 – February 24, 2008. This is the first time since the Show's inception in 1992 that there has been a second eligibility period.

The structure was introduced this year to allow work created for, and airing, during the Oscars telecast to be considered for the 2008 Show. Work can be entered at www.aicp.com.

The Association of Independent Commercial Producers Show is on June 3rd at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. Robert Fernandez, CEO/Partner at Moxie Pictures, is the Show Chairman. Honoured work becomes a part of the permanent archive of the Department of Film at MoMA, which is good but not as good as being featured on The Reel, folks!

Nifty website
If you hate boring retail websites and crave something a little different, take a look at this. We like so we share.

http://producten.hema.nl/

NewsReel 07/02/08

Be Kind Rewind

Last night The Curzon Mayfair played host to an advance screening of Michel Gondry’s new film ‘Be Kind Rewind’ hosted by the lovely people at Partizan. As is sometimes the case (it could always be more. Wink-wink-nudge-nudge), a small delegation from The Reel was invited along to see what delights have spilled from the furtive imagination of one of our all-time favourite directors. The film itself is a great improvement on the rather confused last offering from Gondry that was ‘The Science of Sleep’ and features flawless performances from Jack Black and Mos Def. The feel-good factor is sky-high without being patronising and, as you would expect from Gondry, the film re-makes – or ‘swedes’ - contain moments of absolute genius. There’s also a great website that features trailers for the ‘sweded’ films.

Nick's Gorgeous
Arch baiter of public and authoritarian figures Nick Broomfield recently moved away from his idiosyncratic documentary style into drama with his Channel 4 film ‘Ghosts’ and, more recently, Iraq War dramatisation ‘Bridge for Haditha’. He is now turning his hand to commercials for the first time since a brief foray for VW and DDB in 1999 (Kyoto, Dead Sea, and Plastic) and will be represented by Gorgeous.

All aboard for Station Films
LA, New York and London have themselves a new production company with Hungry Man co-founder Stephen Orent launching Station Film. Directors Owen Harris, Harold Einstein, Vance Malone, David Gray and Brendan Gibbons are already on the roster with more promised. Watch this space for the first work to come out of this new collection of talented people.


Short and Sweet
This week Short and Sweet showcased some great shorts from directors including Dale Heslip, Justin Stokes, Simon Taylor, E-Flat, Mitch Stratten, Darren Young, Luce & Lex
Cathal O’Brien & Rumia Bloch. Next week, as always, London’s only weekly short film festival will be at the following place at the following time:

MONDAY:
Venue: Cafe 1001, 91 Brick Lane
Time: Films start at 19h00

TUESDAY:
Venue: AKA Bar, 18 west central street
Time: Films start at 19h00

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.

NewsReel 29/10/07

The NewsReel is the new way for you to tell us your news and for us to tell everyone. Please send any adland news you may have at your disposal to Sam@thereel.net and we'll do our best to make sure it appears here.

New Parisian production company

Paris based producer and director James Hagger and his motley crew of young directorial talent are looking for trouble. Troublemakers.tv has launched with a roster of nine directors including Hagger, editor turned director Christophe Williams and ex Flame artist Jean-Paul Frenay. They aim to ‘find the next generation of creative talents, to nurture them and take them to the next level’ and their collective talents have already produced a fine body of work, of which a selection can be viewed at http://www.troublemakers.tv/.

For more information on Troublemaker and their directors contact:

22 rue de la roquette, 75011 Paris.

Paris +33 (0)6 79 06 53 10 - London +44 (0)777 459 2110

info@troublemakers.tv

Weekly short film festival

Short and Sweet, the only weekly short film festival in London, has been going from strength to strength since its launch nearly a year and a half ago. In July it expanded into the West End and now runs on Mondays on Brick Lane and Tuesdays at AKA WC1. Founder Julia Stephenson and her small team work tirelessly to deliver the best in short films, music videos and animation from around the globe, with the intention to inspire, unearth some of the best new talent around and provide a great and FREE place to network.

EVERY MONDAY:

Venue: Cafe 1001, 91 Brick Lane

Time: Films START at 19h30

EVERY TUESDAY:

Venue: AKA Bar, 18 west central street

Time: Films START at 19h00

http://www.shortandsweet.tv/

For more info contact:

mailto:ben@shortandweet.tv

julia@shortandsweet.tv

Meribel entries closing

The clocks have just gone back and the nights are closing in; Christmas and the end to another bumper year of creativity are fast approaching. But first, over 900 delegates are set to dust down their ski jackets and descend on the French resort of Meribel for the year's final round of awards and back-slapping. The submissions deadline is fast approaching (Friday 2^nd November!) so visit the submission site to get them in. See you on the slopes!