Hi Everyone,

To be nominated for Best Short Film at BAFTA is a massive accolade, previous winners include Shooting People Patron Andrea Arnold for her amazing film Wasp. Four Lions Director, Chris Morris won back in 2002 with a film which stars Paddy Considine along side a talking dog.

This year a few of the nominee’s are Shooters, so congratulations to:

Martina Amati and James Bolton for their film CHALK

Rungano Nyoni for MWANSA THE GREAT

ONLY SOUND REMAINS by Anshu Poddar

And, John Maclean for PITCH BLACK HEIST

Also in the Best Short Animation Category the surreal BOBBY YEAH! by Robert Morgan

Best of luck to everyone!!

I mentioned this ambition to my friend the filmmaker Lousia Mayman and she obligingly signed off a text message by describing our arrangement to meet up as “major”. Flattered though I was, I wanted to let her know that I am aware of the utter futility of my quest and was going to reply that I felt confident the expression would be in the script of Skins by the year 2030 but I found I couldn’t actually write this.

I suddenly realised that I had no workable concept of 2030. Written down it doesn’t even look like a date. If I told you something was going to happen in 2030 you’d expect it at half past eight tonight. Held transfixed on the edge of my train carriage, the high pitched door alarm squealing in my ears, I was suddenly aware that my mental image of the future extends no further than the year 2020. Anything beyond this date is utterly meaningless, cotton wool in my mind.

"Will Newt Gingrich's dream of a moon base by 2020 come true?"

I have always had a pretty clear mental map of the future. I suppose there is the exception of a brief period in my childhood when I was convinced that due to a quirk in our numbering the 90′s were never going to happen. I’m not sure where this came from, possibly from the French and their still dazzlingly bonkers refutation of logical progression once their numbers hit 80. Whatever the cause it took me until quite someway into the year 1990 before I was certain that the sequence wasn’t 1989, 1990, 2000 and that we would have to sit out the whole the decade before the millennium fell.

This episode aside I’ve always felt like I knew where I was in time. True I’ve never thought much beyond the year 2020, but until trying to send that text message I’d never felt I needed to. 2020 has been, for sometime, the limit of the near future. Of course science fiction is written about any date, often those picked at random, but generally speaking I’ve always felt a divide between people imagining the safe impossible space of the future like the year 3288 and those wishing to comment on contemporary culture by projecting forwards into the tangible nearly-now the early 2nd Millennium.

Imagine that! By 2020 all cars will look like mobility scooters! WOW!

Perhaps it is purely a result of paying less and less attention to bad science-fiction the older I get but my own sense of the distant present is fixed at a point which is rapidly because the actual present. With a mere 8 years until 2020 is the actual real date of the date and no longer the outer reach of our present culture I am struck by the realisation that I have no idea what 2021 might be like. I am also struck by the sliding doors of a train at Harringay station.

Lightly bruised in the freezing cold of the platform I watch the lights of the train pull away into the deep unknown future. Life is major, I think to myself, rubbing my arms.

Nah. It’ll never catch on.

The course kicked off with LOCO’s founders Denise Hicks and Jonathan Wakeham explaining the ethos of the festival: to not only champion the craft of filmed comedy, but also to foster the next generation of British comedy talent. With Locollege events set to continue all year round, it is this grass roots approach that marks LOCO as a festival to watch, understanding as it does the need to create a space for filmmakers to not only exhibit their work, but to come together to learn, to share and to experiment. Whilst the subjectivity of what exactly makes good comedy is a potential minefield for those looking to teach it, Locollege wisely concentrated on sharing practical experiences from a wide range of professionals, whilst offering all important networking opportunities.

Straight away the Locollege students were confronted with the comedy powers that be – the TV commissioners – with a panel made up of Shane Allen (Channel 4), Lucy Lumsden (Sky) and Simon London (BBC), and chaired by Paul Jackson (Eyeworks UK). As the experts shared examples of how recent comedy successes like The Inbetweenersand Peep Show were radically changed from their very humble beginnings, they also related a few horror stories of how difficult the transition between live stand up acts to sitcom series can sometimes be. It quickly became clear that there is no single definitive route to being commissioned but budding comedy writers should make sure they have a vision of the sustainability of their material.

Other topics covered included crafting comedy characters, with insights from Emma Frost (Shameless) and writer/producer Adrian Mackinder, and the advantages of working in different formats such as short film, TV, online and feature films, featuring panelists director/writer Ben Blaine and collaborators Abi Blackmore and Cavan Clerkin whose short film Blind Date was an hysterical and successful result of ‘just doing it’ thinking. An afternoon session presented by Domino Publishing revealed the intricacies of adding music to comedy with a focus on soundtracking Marc Wootton’s La La Land and an example of live scoring by David Lowe. The next day saw a minor set back with the unavailability of a guest panelist, but the LOCO team deftly improvised a pitching session with a few selected course attendees relating their projects to a panel of experts in under 3 minutes. What could have been an unfortunate cancellation was turned into an inspirational event that gave informative tips on how best to present comedic endeavours.

The rest of the second day covered developing comedy features with insights from actor/writer Alice Lowe (Garth Merenghi’s Darkplace) on her upcoming film Sightseers. That film’s director Ben Wheatley (Down Terrace, Kill List) took part in the next panel, which focused on directing actors, and offered the greatest laughs of the course. Through the anecdotes, attendees gained fascinating insights about handling corpsing actors, the advantages of improvisation and how to hone their material. As Mark Gill talked about his current comedy short, The Voorman Problem, his ingenuity and ability to gain the talents of Martin Freeman and Tom Hollander solely through the quality of its script was truly inspirational. The final part of Locollege examined the look of comedy by talking to experienced production designers, art directors and editors, revealing how they all help transform a script to an actual piece of filmed entertainment.

By covering a wide range of subjects, Locollege could have exhausted its attendees, but instead, it became clear that each facet of comedy writing is a potential tool when writing a script or pitching a project. Offering a stimulating opportunity to budding comedy writers to engage with experts, Locollege also allowed its participants room to discuss their own ideas with like-minded individuals, gaining confidence in their material. With an emphasis on collaboration, the festival organisers hope to inspire attendees to work together, establishing a LOCO Pro membership scheme and with the goal of Locollege students returning next year to present their own films in the festival. Watch this space: the next comedy genius might well be raised by LOCO.

LoCo will be running more comedy courses throughout the year http://locofilmfestival.com/locollege/

Eastman Kodak Co. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in New York early Thursday morning, after the struggling photography icon ran short on cash needed to fund a long-sputtering turnaround.

The storied former blue chip said it had secured $950 million in financing from Citigroup Inc. to help keep it afloat during bankruptcy proceedings. The company also named Dominic Di Napoli, a vice chairman at FTI Consulting Inc., as its chief restructuring officer to help steer the company through bankruptcy court.

via Kodak Files for Bankruptcy Protection – WSJ.com.

Whatever Fellowes’ may have hoped to achieve by proclaiming that public money needed to be spent on “more mainstream” projects, the report that he contributed to is decidedly closer in outlook to Ken Loache’s response that what we need is diversity or as the report has it “the broadest and richest range of British films”. So whilst Fellowes may well be Lord Golden of Globe, he clearly didn’t get much of a say in the final text of the report. Which is probably why its conclusions are not a bag of contrived gibberish couched in bizarrely melodramatic tones and lacking in any form of realism or historical accuracy.

The Smith Report is certainly not escapist Sunday evening fiction. There are no misty eyed plans to create a rain sodden British Hollywood, a Brolly-Wood set out to solve all our problems with the glamourous hammer of production. Rather, the main thrust of the document is clear from the title – “A Future For British Film: It begins with the audience.” The stance is clear, we tried “Built It And They Will Come” but they didn’t come because they couldn’t get there, so rather than the field of dreams let’s think about widening the road that leads up to it and perhaps maybe a bypass.

As a result we have a report which is unshowy, quietly pragmatic and broadly in line with the thoughts of everyone I’ve ever spoken both inside and outside the industry. For the most part it is dry and managerial which is no bad thing for a government report. It would, if implemented in full, be a massive boon to everyone making films in this country, and to everyone who loves cinema.

So there we go, Lord Smith gets my approval whether he wants it or not. There are things missing but at least what’s there is sensible, practical and would broadly achieve what it sets out to. The biggest omission from the text was any recommendation for the tax system. This is strange since the report does stress how essential the current tax break is in securing funding. Indeed here’s the report’s own chart which lists the tax credit as the third highest source of funding for British Film (in 2009).

It is great that finally voices that carry authority are calling for the action needed to grow the UK audience and strengthen the reach to our domestic market. I agree that if it is possible to shake the general public from their narrow convictions about what British film is then we will effectively be cleaning the green house windows and letting in the sunlight. But what of the seeds currently in the soil?

Once this process of audience building has taken hold the financing of film will get smoother as it becomes easier to demonstrate how a film would make a mid-term rather than long term profit. As an aside I also admire the report’s calls for stronger links between producers and distributors, an attempt to end the war of attrition which sees both sides finding ways to guard their income stream rather than necessarily maximising the film’s. Similarly I applaud the suggested changes that would enable producers to keep more of the revenue brought by a successful film and the gentle pushing back of the BFI’s need to reclaim it’s Lottery Fund. This would mark an easing of the need for the Lottery distributor to act both as an instrument of state intervention and as a hard nosed market beast – a schizophrenia which the UKFC struggled to cope with for many years.

However there’s still an obvious dip in this positive cycle where audiences are enticed towards British films yet producers are left with little hard evidence to calm their investor’s nerves. Unless this happened to coincide with a general economic uplift then we run the risk of ruining all the hard work done. Improving the tax credit available, even as an explicitly short term measure, would have been a good step to avoid this.

Herein lies my second doubt about the document. There is a lot of talk of film clubs and communities sharing our amazing cinematic heritage. A prospective “British Film Week” is sketched out with that whiff of bunting and street parties that all politicians love to invoke. There is nothing wrong with these proposals and everything right about trumpeting the brilliant films already exist, films that certainly inspired me to enter the industry. However it is very easy to create a “A Future For British Film” which hinges around the cakey nostalgia of old films. It is too easy to do this. If a mission to “connect the widest possible range of audiences throughout the UK with the broadest and richest range of British films” and the “developing and launching [of] a British film ‘brand’” turns into little more than an annual screening of both Kes and The Lady Killers, then we will simultaneously delight our audience, who always enjoy what they already know they like, and cripple our future.

This is not a stick with which to beat Lord Smith or his well tempered report. However the real caveat I have about Monday’s celebrations is that this is only a report. The good sense contained within it has no legislative weight. Indeed a lot of the time it seems to actively wish not to, usually preferring to “call upon” or “urge” the key participants and only really putting on the tough talk when it comes to piracy. Ed Vaizey our Culture Minister says he looks “forward to examining what the report recommends…” which is a timely if gentle reminder that this is 111 pages of advice. In one crucial sense the “Future Of British Film” doesn’t begin with the audience… it begins with Ed.

“Brain Pickings is a human-powered discovery engine for interestingness, culling and curating cross-disciplinary curiosity-quenchers, and separating the signal from the noise to bring you things you didn’t know you were interested in until you are.”

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