Digital Documenters: DISABILITY SWIMMING video put forward for First Light Award 2011!

The Digital Documenters Project is reaching its grande finale next month at First Lights exciting and celebrity fuelled awards! All of the Digital Documenters teams have had one of their finished videos put forward by a panel of judges to a public vote for the grand prize!

Our DISABILITY SWIMMING video was chosen by the panel to represent our team, and we need YOUR votes!  Follow the link below to vote for us, your friendly neighbourhood team of film makers!


                               >>> http://tinyurl.com/64bqg4y <<<

Animated Exeter 2011

Remember all you young Nick Park's out there, remember to head on down to the last week of Animated Exeter for some fantastic workshops, screenings and events!

Me, Luke and Jordan are all currently involved in a couple of projects for the festival and there's a lot of good stuff going on.

BFI Future Film Festival 2011

Posted By Sam Cook

We all had a fantastic time at the BFI Future Film Festival 2011! On the Saturday I was helping out First Light and BAFTA with their event which promoted the latest short films and animations which had been nominated for BAFTA awards this year.

It gave me an opportunity as well as other Digital Documenters, to meet the film makers behind the nominated shorts and take part in some extensive Q&A’s.

On the second day I travelled back up to ‘the Big Smoke’ with Jordan Cunliffe and friends, to attend the Future Film Fiction Screening.

First off were the three short films in the 15-18 category, which were all very different in content and style. There was some great comedy in “How to be a bad man” and “Boy meets Girl”, as well as some snazzy special effects in “Infinity Floor”.

We then had the screening of the 19-25 films which again were all very different. We didn’t walk home with the award in the end but we were invited to show Bonejangles at the No Limits Film Festival in Sheffield on April 2^nd as well as receiving some great feedback.

We also found out that the Bonejangles managed to make it to the top 3 out of over 250 entries so we’re more than happy with the fantastic result!

Now to see if we can scrounge the train fare to Sheffield...

Bonejangles to be screened at the BFI Future Film Festival 2011

Posted by Sam Cook

Bonejangles has been selected to be shown as part of the BFI Future Film Festival line up on Febuary 13^th in London.

The Future Film Festival is a weekend packed with film and TV events for 15 – 25 year olds. Bonejangles will be shown alongside the other two shortlisted films on the Sunday as part of the Fiction screenings. 

Bonejangles is also in the running to win the 2011 Future Film award for best Fiction Short Film in the 19 -25 category so wish us luck!

If you are interested in finding out more about the event then click HERE.

You can book tickets , see the programme and maybe get involved in some of the great events that they’ll be running up in London over the course of the weekend.

Oh and it’s a brand new version of Bonejangles that hasn’t been posted online and hasn’t been seen by anyone yet. A Brand new cleaner cut, improved sound design and entirely new original soundtrack by George Cooper. 

About:

The BFI Future Film Fiction Awards
Watch the best fiction films entered into this year's festival by some of the UK's hottest young filmmakers. The screening will be followed by a Q+A with film industry experts. Sponsored by the European Cultural Foundation

Surfers Against Sewage

Posted by Sam Cook

On Saturday we travelled down to Cornwall to film footage for our final mygames (powered by V) Documentary.

 Surfers against sewage were holding a beach clean up event and we were there to capture it on camera. 

All of our documentaries will be up soon! 

http://www.sas.org.uk/

Digital Documenters: Swimming Bristol

Posted by Sam Cook

So the New Year starts and we headed to Bristol as part of the Mygames (Powered by V) Digital Documenters project to start filming.

We were attending a national Swimming gala for the Paralympics where young athletes were competing in heats  and striving for the best time.

On hand at the event were a few young and older volunteers who were helping out the swimmers, helping record times and assist in making the event run smoothly.

Being there on belhalf of First Light and Digital Documenters, we were there to capture the day and see what these volunteers got up to and find out why they volunteer.

We'll be filming again this coming Saturday in New-quay for Surfers Against Sewage.

Exeter Phoenix Christmas E-Card 2010

Posted by Sam Cook

Here's the Christmas E-card that we created for Exeter Phoenix Centre!

Below is a comment from Julie Bladon from Exeter Phoenix who produced the video.

“We are extremely pleased with the finished film for our 2010 Christmas Card. It’s been a joy working with Sam, Luke and Jordan.  They were professional, organised and delivered exactly to our brief.  Their project management skills in advance of filming and on the day of the shoot were great and they were sensitive to the dance artist’s needs on the day.  Thank you.”

Julie Bladon, Marketing & Development Manager

Was fantastic  working with Exeter Phoenix and we hope to create more videos with them in the future!

Credits:

Produced by Exeter Phoenix
http://www.exeterphoenix.org.uk/

Directed by: Sam Cook

Camera Operators: Luke Rowe and Jordan Cunliffe

Break Dancer: Matt Macklin
http://www.exeterphoenix.org.uk/

Music: Isobel Anderson - 'Pots and Pans'
http://isobelanderson.com/

Exeter Phoenix's Christmas E-card 2010 produced by Poorly Drawn Productions. The brief was to create a break dancing video that had the break dancer surrounded and creating light graffiti.

All of the light effects in the video are real and were created using glow sticks, a low shutter speed and a blacked out room. The black was then keyed out in post and the light was over laid over the dancing footage.

Channel 4 Inspiration Day

Posted by Sam Cook

Yesterday It snowed down in Exeter and at 6:30 am I dragged myself through the snow and Ice to make it to Channel 4's Inspiration Day in Bridgwater.

The day was a chance to listen to some thoughts and advice from industry proffesional's from companies such as Oakwood Design Consultants and calling the shots, as well as take part in two short workshops hosted at The Engine Room ( A community media centre)

In the first workshop (I was in Team A) we had to go out with a normal digital camera that could shoot video and quickly film and edit a 20 second short about something that had happened to us that morning. I chose to make my short about a bacon bap I had bought that morning from a kind of seedy 'diner'.

So instead of buying it from a diner, I buy it in a back alley from a "Bacon Dealer". The videos below.

The second workshop involved coming up with a website that we could display these videos on and so we all split up and did different jobs as we frantically came up with a website name, format and design. 

Was a great day and I can only say thanks to all who were involved in putting the day together, including The Engine Room in Bridgwater, Channel 4, Oakwood Design Consultants, calling the shots and Wonky Films.

Bonejangles Special Edition

Posted By Sam Cook

George Cooper putting together the new soundtrack for the new cut of Bonejangles. 

                                                                                         

Eden Project

Posted By Jordan Cunliffe

A week ago I went up the Eden project with the rest of the Digital Documenters to film a minute long documentary about volunteers. After I waited two hours for everybody we arrived we had a look round and went ice skating.

Once night had fallen we started filming our documentary. The concept we used was that all volunteers would wear a fake moustache which at first people where sceptical about but towards the end people were approaching us and asking us for if they were able to wear one.

The moustaches were worn so that at the end of the documentary we could have the phrase "everyone who has a moustache in this film was giving up their time for free".

Pictures from DocFest!

Posted by Sam Cook

Here we are a week or so after DocFest and I finally have some pictures to put up! The weekend was fantastic and I cant really thank First Light enough for the opportunity and the fact that they paid for everything!

The weekend started with a long train ride and a night in the Copthorne Hotel before moving a couple of meters to our second hotel the next morning.

We got up at 9 30 , checked out at 10 and had to wait until 2 to check into the Jury Inn and so used the opportunity to first find and secondly register for DocFest.




After searching around most of Sheffield and getting
to know the area, we finally found the main hub for
all of the events where we received our delegate passes and a free goody bag which included a memory stick, a music CD and a really nicely presented festival guide book.





We left the main registration area, after securing our tickets for Banksy's Exit through the gift shop, and headed over to the HUB rooms. These rooms had a variety of different things going on inside, including BBC Academy workshops, networking sessions and the chance for big shots to fund peoples documentaries that were being pitched.




We hung around the HUBS for a while as we waited to attend the BBC Academy 3D Camera workshop which was being held in HUB B.

The workshop was really interesting and informative as we got the chance to see consumer and professional 3D set ups as well as see previews of some of the projects and tests that BBC are doing with 3D.

                                                                                    
We saw a nature show in 3D, a cooking show in 3D, JLS in 3D and a short documentary about peregrine falcons in 3D.

Some of these things worked better than others as you can imagine. A cooking show in 3D....

We then left the workshop and found ourselves checking in at the Jury Inn and briefly meeting the London Digital Documenters team , before heading off to the Exit Through The Gift Shop screening.

It was a busy but great screening which had the editor and producer on hand afterwards for a brief Q+A session.

I thoroughly enjoyed the film and found the ending incredibly un expected.

In the next few days we got to see a few more docs including, After the Apocalypse, But film is my mistress and the other shorter docs that played before every feature.

One thing we did find is that because there was so much going on that we ended up missing things.

Either way, we had a fantastic time and thouroughly enjoyed the experience and would recommend going in the future!

Sheffield DocFest 2010

Posted by Sam Cook

Last weekend me and Luke Rowe attended Sheffield Docfest on behalf of First Light and Digital Documenters. It was a great weekend and we were able to watch some fantastic documentaries and attend some interesting workshops. 

Each feature length documentary played after a short 5 -10 minute documentary. The short documentaries we saw included:

Get Luda, Don't give up your guns and The Barbarians

And the features were:

Exit through the gift shop, After the Apocalypse, But film is my mistress,

All three features were great. They all had a different style and incredibly different content, but were all incredibly engaging.

We have some pictures of our trip up as well as a video blog which will be uploaded soon along with opinions on the documentaries and workshops. 

BBC Training open day Bristol

Posted by Sam Cook

Me and Luke took a trip to Bristol yesterday for a talk up at UWE. Really interesting day, had a talk from south west screen and from a managing editor at BBC Bristol, few group activities and met some great people.

There wasn't really much of a chance to take many pictures but we got two of things in town that were interesting...One being the station...

Filming for the E-Card

Posted by Sam Cook

The filming for Phoenix Digitals E-card went really well. Seen the footage and with the light graffiti it's all looking cool. Here's a few pictures of us at work:

We'll be able to put the video up on-line once Phoenix have released it.

Experimenting with lighting

Posted by Sam Cook

Today we did a few tests with lighting in the Phoenix Auditorium
for their Christmas E-Card.

Shooting the final product tomorrow!

( left: Luke with lighting control panel) 

Two Short Nights Film Festival

Posted by Sam Cook

At Exeter Phoenix Centre last night for their annual Two Short Nights film festival. The event has the groups who were awarded bursary funding show their final product and Devon County Council get to see if their money was well spent.

Well they can rest easy because there was some great stuff shown.

The night kicked off with the screening of Jerri Hart's One Last Hit and carried on with a selection of other great shorts.

If you get a chance to go next year I'd recommend it.

Now to start the final edit of One Last Hit.

Marketing training at Livity UK

Posted by Sam Cook

Had a great day in London yesterday at Livity UK. As part of the First Light mygames (powered by V) project, me and Luke attended a special training day in London where we received talks from professionals about different aspects of marketing such as branding, ways of communicating and viral campaigning.



                                                                              

One Last Still

Posted by Sam Cook

Thanks to Jerri Hart we've got the first still from his film One Last Hit that we've been editing. The shot below shows our main character Gregor (played by Jez Jameson) square up to his Boss (played by Michael Barrymore)

One Last Hit will be shown at Exeter Phoenix centre as part of the Two Short Nights Film Festival on the November 22nd 

Jerri Harts Website: http://www.jerrihart.com/

Light Graffiti

Posted by Sam Cook and Luke Rowe

We've spent a day in the studio experimenting with light Graffiti for the E-card project. Been interesting trying it out for the first time. Have made some progress. Earlier we didn't know how to do light graffiti. Now we do.

Heres some of the stills we took:

 Smile!

Attempt at the logo....it took a lot of times and this is the best we could do...







Next week we start filming the "real deal" and will have the break dancer to film with so keep a look out for the E-Card.

Plymouth Visit

Posted by Sam Cook and Luke Rowe

We had a day free so decided to go visit a couple of friend's in Plymouth and get a change of scenery from Exeter City Centre. Whilst down there we saw some interesting things such as:

 A massive sundial that pointed you to loads of capitals across the world. It's also got a fountain type thing.













This is the outside of Drakes circus shopping centre.
Pretty cool.

This is our new HD TV we bought from Curry's Digital. It's the biggest one we could afford and isn't 3D.