Durban Wild Talk Africa Film Festival

Tomorrow is the early bird deadline for Wild Talk Africa, the international film festival and conference for the global wildlife, travel and cultural filmmaking industry. The 2009 Festival will run from 19 – 23 April 2009, at the ICC Durban in South Africa and offers a forum for networking, debating and negotiating with commissioning editors, distributors and producers.

With the support of the global wildlife, travel and cultural community, the second Durban Wild Talk Africa Festival, held in August 2007, attracted 480 delegates over the 4 day Festival with representation from 22 countries.



Full registration is normally R3000, but click here until 28th February to catch the discounted early bird rate.

Elance

As research for this blog, and for this project, I've been looking at the IT and Music (and other) sectors to try and identify a whole range of programmes that could be adapted for the KZN Film Sector.


Here's one that caught my eye that might work for us - it's called E-lance...... (like freelance, geddit?) As the blurb says:

Elance is an online workplace where businesses hire and work with qualified professionals to get work done. Elance facilitates the entire work process from hiring to collaboration to payment.

Businesses and hiring managers use Elance to find, hire and work with qualified professionals with specialized skills. Service professionals ("providers") use Elance to meet customers, produce quality work and get paid for doing what they do best.

In other words, not only could KZN producers crew up for their productions using local crew who've posted their resumes on the site, it also offers the potential for clients could seek proposals from local producers via the site......

The Vertigo Effect

Another top-ranking blog with great information for filmmakers is The Vertigo Effect.

Designed as much as a discussion forum as a straight-forward "This is how you..." blog, The Vertigo Effect nevertheless contains a broad range of useful information, tips, ideas and comment. How about this suggestion for a Filmmaking Mastermind Group? KZN Collectives anyone?

PS - The Vertigo Effect is a camera move made famous by Alfred Hitchcock, but also known as a Dolly Zoom wherein the camera simultaneously zooms in/out and dollies out/in. What the audience sees is a perspective change while the main subject remains the same size on screen. The technique can be used to heighten suspense and more recently for comedic effect.

Looking Back

A 1981 report on the possibility that one day we might read our newspapers (gasp!) on our computers.



I'm loving the tag line "It takes two hours to download the paper....."

Americans now watch more than 151 hours of TV a month -- an all-time high -- while those who watch video online consume another 3 hours of video per month, and those who use mobile video watch nearly 4 additional hours per month on mobile phones and other devices, according to a report from Nielsen.

The study also noted that men continue to watch video on mobile phones more than women, and women continue to watch video on the Internet and television more than men.....

Time of the Writer Festival

The 12th Edition of the Time of the Writer has announced its programme and the key participants for the Durban-based Festival next month.

With a line-up of approximately 20 new and established writers, predominantly from South Africa and elsewhere on the African continent, the Time of the Writer festival provides a stimulating platform for dialogue and exchange between writers. It's therefore an opportunity for aspiring filmmakers to gain insight into different kinds of creative processes and perspectives that writers undertake - which may in turn, assist in the creation of even better Durban stories.



Tickets are R25 for the evening sessions, R10 for students, and can be purchased through Computicket or at the door one hour before the event. Workshops and seminars are free. Contact the University of KwaZulu-Natal 's Centre for Creative Arts for more information on 031 260 2506/1816 or e-mail cca@ukzn.ac.za

Filmmaker IQ

Filmmaker IQ is one of the most thorough blogs I've come across when it comes to online tutorials for Filmmakers. Not only does it provide the kinds of information you can use to build your skills and expand your range of techniques, it backs it up with a ton of useful links to other pages, You Tube sites etc. about the same really good stuff. Take this page on Final Cut Pro, for instance. Gobsmacking amounts of information that there's now really no excuse for you NOT to know. Remarkable.