NFVF Film Student Open Day

The National Film and Video Foundation will host its 4th annual Student Open Day on Saturday 06 June 2009 at Nu Metro, Hyde Park from 11:00 until 15:30. The aim of the Student Open Day is to familiarise students with the industry, affording them the opportunity to be informed and motivated by industry professionals. Says Pretty Mthiyane, NFVF Training Coordinator:

"Education and training are instrumental to the viability, growth and sustainability of the industry. Driven by these reasons, our objective is to stimulate training and development by making it more accessible for previously disadvantaged individuals and those with financial difficulties to enter the film & television industry."

More on the event can be found here.
Now a couple of things strike me about this invaluable kind of indaba:

1. When is the bus from Durban leaving for the event on June 6th?
2. When can we expect the same kind of event to be facilitated in KZN?

In KZN, we are out of the main stream of South African film and tv production, and we have to fight to get ourselves involved - it's not going to be meekly offered. It's time to get mobilised, people......... will someone please come up with a plan to get a group of students to Joburg next weekend?

SAFTAs - Prepare for Entry

The NFVF has called for South African projects to prepare themselves for entry into the South African Film and Television Awards - the SAFTAs - which open for entry shortly.

Since its inception the SAFTAs has honoured individuals and productions in the following categories: Television including TV fiction: TV Comedy, TV drama, and TV soap as well as TV non fiction including Magazine shows, News and Actuality, Wildlife, Children, Variety and Reality programmes; Feature Film, Student Film, Short film, Documentary and Animation.



Driven by the values of Creativity, Freedom of expression, Entrepreneurship and Equitable redress, it would be great to see KZN entries in every single category..... So get planning. Last years award winners are listed here.

Twitter on Reality TV

TV, New Media and social networking: the future of communication?

Variety reports that microblogging service Twitter has partnered with production companies Reveille and Brillstein Entertainment to develop a reality TV series that will "put ordinary people on the trail of celebrities in a revolutionary competitive format."



However, less than 24 hours after the news broke, the New York Daily News reported that Twitterverse is up in arms about the deal. Protest was spurred by speculative reports - including one in particular on Examiner.com that was later amended - that the show might involve celebrity stalking.

Details about the show are scarce, but a statement from producers did say that "ordinary people" will be "put on the trail of celebrities in a competitive format."

Paperfoam Green DVD trays

Start building your green procurement plan today - here's a new alternative to the standard plastic DVD and CD tray.

The Paperfoam tray is 100% biodegradeable and can be recycled as paper or composted to biodegrade. And besides being environmentally friendly, PaperFoam comes in a range of colours and is lightweight.......



Paperfoam has already been adopted abroad by Universal Music, Sony Music, And EMi for several releases. It is acknowledged as the first successful environmentally friendly alternative to plastic.

For more information or orders please contact: Nicki Becker - nicki@paperfoam.co.za

Music Film Cross-Over

I've been saying for as long as anyone can be bothered to listen that the Music Industry stands to be the biggest unintended beneficiary of the Soccer World Cup. 2 billion people will be watching their edited highlights to an African beat - and then hopefully they'll go on line to try to find more of that South African music for themselves.

And so how can film benefit from this cross over? Very easily apparently. Check out these black cab sessions: load up a couple of musos in the back of a London cab, get them to perform live and unplugged and then post it on You Tube. It's great theatre!

Video Gaming Outperforms Movie-going

A report released by market research firm NPD Group shows that the percentage of American video game players (63%) now outnumbers those who have gone out to the movies in the past six months (53%).



According to DMW, the the survey found that one in three gamers bought a console or portable game over the past 12 months -- up 7% on the prior year, while 10% of U.S. consumers played video games on a social network, and 5% paid to download a video game from the Web -- up 2% from last year. Video games now account for one-third of the average monthly consumer spending in the U.S. for core entertainment content, including music, video, games. And while sales of physical gaming products still account for the bulk of consumer spending on video games, digital downloads and other delivery and game-play formats are also rising in popularity.

Big Fish Digital Training Course

The Big Fish School of Digital Filmmaking in Gauteng is offering a five day short course in Film & TV Production that will encompass:

• Pre, Production and Post
• Roles and responsibilities
• Legal aspects
• Script breakdown and logistics for both fiction and non-fiction
• Budgets



The course runs from Monday 29 June 2009 to Friday 3rd July 2009, the application deadline is Friday 5th June 2009.

For more information contact Connie Mosegedi on 011 482 5599 or mosegedic@bigfish.org.za.

More Than Just A Game

Another Durban success story: More Than Just A Game, the inspirational film about organized football played among prisoners on Robben Island, had a screening at Britain's House Of Lords in London on May 12th, hosted by Baroness Jan Royall, the Leader of the House, and Chief Whip Lord Bassett.



Baroness Royall is a senior member of the Labour Party which strongly supported the struggle against apartheid and the sports boycott against South Africa. The screening of the film was also a tribute to the anti-apartheid movement and the many activists who made huge personal sacrifices in their fight against apartheid, especially those who were incarcerated on Robben Island.

The film, which was directed by Durbanite Junaid Ahmed, and produced by Videovision, and stars Presley Chweneyagae (Tsotsi), Wright Ngubeni (Generations), Tshepo Maseko (Isidingo) met with "thunderous applause."

New Media

The Financial Times of London has a fascinating article on attempts to monetise digital content.

For well over a decade, the prevailing orthodoxy of the internet has been that information wants to be free. Publishers, broadcasters and games developers alike are beginning to discover, however, that advertising alone is not providing the sustainable digital business model they expected for their expensively produced content...... The biggest uncertainty holding back media owners remains the worry that customers have been schooled not to pay for content online.

....A migration from free to fee has worked before, when cable operators introduced a subscription model to television. But pay-television took off because it offered a dramatic expansion of the content on offer, from Hollywood films to live sports. Consumers are now overwhelmed by choice on multiple media.

Bioskope

Also announced in Cannes: movie star Juliet Binoche and the Cannes Film Festival President Giles Jacob both wrote cheques to the value of R58,400 and handed them to the Mali filmmaker Abderrehmane Sissako for the purpose of reopening the iconic Soudan Cinema in Bamako. Binoche co-heads a group that plans to revive cinemas across the African continent. Coming to a bioskope near you?


Scene from Sissako's "Waiting for Happiness"

Green Film London

This morning I attended a presentation by Film London on their new Green Screen Programme. Green Screen identifies key action areas that are likely to have the greatest impact in dramatically decreasing the environmental impact of screen production - both on location and in the studio. Film London has shrewdly realised that going green not only saves money, it's also a huge marketing opportunity.....



As well as providing a user-friendly and practical guide to going green, The Film London site also offers productions a way to identify how much carbon and waste they produce, and where best to make reductions. Cross reference with this Guardian story about the mobile phone application that also helps you measure your carbon footprint. Cool, really......

Why this interest? Well, given that much of KZN's production comes because of its natural locations - and wildlife - I've included a strong environmental thrust in the Strategic Plan.

One step forward, One step backwards

One of the biggest challenges when trying to build a film-friendly environment is when departments or agencies come up with unilateral decisions or declarations that prevent access to valuable locations. This is usually done without any consultation with the sector, or any consideration of possible management plans we might come up with.

Transnet Freight Rail is the latest. It has confirmed that it has placed restrictions on all filming on its railway tracks due to "safety reasons." The filming of trains will only be allowed if they do not adversely interfere with the company’s day to day operations. These restrictions apply countrywide.

It's ridiculously backward-thinking - as if the industry itself has not considered safety as a major priority!! Furthermore, it flies in the face of every incentive, rebate or support that the government has come up with to promote the industry. Frankly, we all need to be vigilant of this kind of nonsense.



Transnet Freight Rail is not responsible for train stations as the company does not operate passenger services. Such requests have to be forwarded to the relevant passenger operating services.

No One Knows About Persian Cats

Just in case you ever think that the South African government is unfriendly to filmmakers, remember Bahman Ghobadi - the Iranian whose movie "No One Knows About Persian Cats" screen at the Cannes Film Festival yesterday. 

Shot covertly in Tehran just 17 days, without permission from the authorities, "Cats" looks at the risk of censorship - including prison terms - faced by Iranian musicians and artists. Scouting was done using two or three motorbikes and the scenes had to be shot at high speed, so the police couldn't spot them. The crew was arrested twice during the shoot. The co-writer - his fiancee American Iranian Roxana Saberi (below)  - has famously been incarcerated (though just released) in Iran for spying.

Ghobadi's films are available only as bootleg DVDs in Iran, and he began "Cats" after the government refused him permission to start a long-planned project. The film also was partly inspired by the arrest of more than 200 music fans at a rock concert near Tehran in 2007. A local prosecutor at the time described the music as "satanic." 

Despite his growing international acclaim, Ghobadi says, "I'm 100 percent sure this film won't be released in Iran."

Avalon hits 70

This year, KZN's very own Avalon Group celebrates its seventieth anniversary - and also marks several other major milestones, including a ten-year relationship with the National Film and Video Foundation of South Africa, a thirty-year association with the Durban International Film Festival and fifteen years of democracy in South Africa.



Congratulations to a truly local success story - and best wishes for another 70 years.

For more information on this story visit www.nfvf.co.za

NFVF at Cannes

This year, as well as the first rate SA Pavilion, the NFVF will commemorate the 10th Anniversary of its attendance at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival with a conference themed "South Africa, your co-production partner of choice, and content on offer". To be held at the Eden Hotel in Cannes on Monday 18 May, the conference will include the NFVF and its partners the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Department of Arts and Culture (DAC), and Durban's own Avalon Group, as well as international buyers, industry colleagues and producers from other filmmaking countries.

"One of our objectives in hosting this event is to present some of South Africa's best projects to the international market," said Eddie Mbalo, NFVF CEO. Projects that will be presented at the conference include 31 Million Reasons, Izulu Lami (My Secret Sky), In the Shadow of a Saint, Otello Burning, Skin (pictured), Khumba and The Consequence.

The Cannes Film Festival is scheduled to take place from Wednesday 13 until Sunday 24 May 2009.

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

Following on from my earlier post on viral marketing, the BBC has an apparently unrelated story that is both fun and really quite fascinating. It notes that for decades, scientists have tried to prove that the world is made up of social networks that are ultimately interconnected. The theory that there were "six degrees of separation" between everyone - with each degree being a person they knew - entered the mainstream with a play, a Will Smith film, and a party game called Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.



Now however, scientists for instance, used data from the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game to see if there was actually a mathematical basis for this complex set of relationships. They discovered a formula for the invisible links that make the big world small. Other scientists examined the importance of hubs in how these kinds of networks evolved. A new discipline - network science - was established and other scientists gladly applied these universal laws to other kinds of networks, such as the world-wide web, the growth of cities, global travel, sexual relations between people, wealth and property distribution, and protein molecules in cells.

What's my point? Well, I'm really reporting this because a) it's kind of fun and b) if everyone in the world is just six handshakes away, what opportunities might that mean for marketing and promoting African films in a new digital age?

No to Product Placement?

Again the challenge of how to retain control and monetise digital media: YouTube is apparently reminding the producers of some of its most populat videos that, according to the YouTube terms and conditions, product placement is not allowed.

"We have a policy, and if we discover they are embedding stuff we will definitely let them know," Tom Pickett, YouTube's director of online sales and operations, told Mediaweek.

Google (which owns YouTube) itself sells advertising against the videos uploaded to YouTube, and therefore views Product Placement - or "user-secured form of advertising" as competition......

Canadian Talent leading the way?

Canadian actors and independent producers have unveiled a new multiyear labour deal to send Hollywood a signal of industry stability.

The Independent Production Agreement, which covers a three-year period that kicks off December 31, is between ACTRA and the Canadian Film and Television Production Association (CFTPA), which represents independent producers, and its Quebec counterpart, l'Association des producteurs de films et de television du Quebec. The new IPA differs little from the current deal beyond giving performers a 2 percent rate increase in each of the three years as well as offering a rate increase for new-media residuals. And like the current agreement, the 2010-12 IPA will permit both sides to reopen the new-media provisions one year before the next IPA's expiry on December 31, 2012.

The new deal is designed to bring stability to an industry keen to draw Hollywood producers to Canada for location shoots.Both sides also said they looked at the bigger picture -- a Canadian film and TV production sector beset by a recession and a steep drop in U.S. location shooting -- before they reached a new deal.

Kandyse McClure

Did you know that the radiant Kandyse McClure - Anastasia Dualla in iconic sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica fame - is a Durbanite?



I wonder if she'd consider being a brand ambassador for the Durban/KZN film industry??

TV Commercials Can Be Fun

Who said that there's no creativity in TV commercials??

In the following tv commercial for Honda, there are no computer graphics or digital tricks; everything that you see happens in real time. Your eyes are not deceiving you. The recording required 606 takes and the production team took three months to get it just right. It cost 6 million dollars to make.



More importantly for Honda, it's viral marketing at its finest. I received it via the email, from a friend, at no additional cost to Honda. I'm also posting it here, again for free.

Making the Movie

Making an independent film is a lot like having a kid. The sexy part is coming up with the idea and the money. Actually making the film is a lot like giving birth – both exciting and painful. Then you have your bouncing baby movie - and you have to raise the little bastard.

I love coming across blog sites by filmmakers who have actually made films. The information is usually practical, helpful and refreshingly candid. Making the Movie offers filmmaking tips, resources, reviews of Film Production books (useful!), news and links.

Here's some good stuff on the kinds of "special features" to add to your dvd.......