As I’m researching an essay on Self-Help Genre on Screen, I find a Yahoo 7! clip I was involved in with He’s Just Not That Into You author Liz Tuccillo about the single scene in Sydney.
Catch my brief cameo at 0:23!
(Thankfully, I have not had to visit The Establishment since.)
Scorching success
Scorched producers Marcus Gillezeau & Ellenor Cox and Lean Forward’s Jennifer Wilson
As online viewing habits overtake that of broadcast TV, Firelight’s Emmy nominated Marcus Gillezeau and Ellenor Cox talk about their award-winning, all-platform series and the way it signals a shift towards generating original content in each of the channels. Convergent media expert Jennifer Wilson expands upon the big picture opportunities for filmmakers in the digital space.
Venue: AFTRS Theatrette, Entertainment Quarter, Moore Park
Date: Friday, March 13
Time: 5-6pm
Entry: Free (2-hr free parking)
Friday On My Mind is AFTRS‘ weekly event bringing you face to face with the industry’s brightest thinkers.
Filing from the Broadcasting Summit in Sydney this morning…
NBC Universal’s VP of Technology, Standard & Policy, Sheau Ng acknowledged to the summit that, in order to build a platform beyond television, the individual features and capabilities of new platforms needed to be put to good use.
This is a considerable evolution from the launch two years ago of NBC’s “TV360” – advertising packages that encompassed TV, internet and mobile – in which the emphasis was still on distributing the same content across a diverse set of platforms.
“In the future, the specific benefits of each technology will increasingly influence the content itself,” Ng said.
This was mirrored in a later session in which Foxtel’s Executive Director of Sales and Product, Patrick Delaney conceded that mobile hadn’t been perceived by the cable network as snack content in its own right to date but that this will change.
Filing from the Broadcasting Summit in Sydney this morning…
Australia was identified by BBC Worldwide CFO Neil Chugani as “one of the most important territories for BBC Worldwide across all seven of its business areas”.
The reasons for this cited by Chugani were
– English language
– cultural affinity with British product; and
– economic conditions (comparative to elsewhere)
Examples used were Top Gear, success through the localisation of TV show with SBS, the magazine in 50/50 joint venture with ACP, and the Jeremy Clarkson event at Acer Arena; and Lonely Planet, a home-grown Australian brand which has been relaunched online, integration with BBC content in a magazine and released as a Lonely Planet block on UK television.
A key focus across BBC Worldwide’s 23 global offices will be the localisation of brand product.
“Eight out of ten of our best performing shows are local versions,” Chugani said.
My story for Screen Hub today:
Branded Entertainment: Call for cross-platform savvy contracts
A forum exploring the future of branded entertainment held by the Screen Producers Association of Australia (SPAA) on February 24 has revealed an urgent need for industrial policies to get up to speed with the changing nature and requirements of branded entertainment…
To read in full (and subscription-free!), click here.
These are some fly-on-the-wall snaps of a first date between four 11-year-olds. A movie followed by Max Brenner. The boys sat on one side, the girls on the other. No kisses were stolen but the odd slurp of chocolate was.
Shooting Abroad
Culture shock and Cinematographer
Back from shooting her first feature film – in Iran, no less – Bonnie Elliott talks about filming handheld, in a hijab and in the height of summer (My Tehran For Sale). Meanwhile Simon Chapman tells how he survived TVCs in Vietnam/India and overcame language barriers, cultural difference and cold on a 2002 internship in China with Christopher Doyle (Hero), and Denson Baker talks about wrangling Indian Customs agents (The Waiting City).
Venue: AFTRS Theatrette, Entertainment Quarter, Moore Park
Date: Friday, March 6
Time: 5-6pm
Entry: Free (2-hr free parking)
Friday On My Mind is AFTRS‘ weekly event bringing you face to face with the industry’s brightest thinkers.
My story for Screen Hub today:
Despite a contraction of global marketing spends, there was an overwhelming optimism amongst speakers at Tuesday’s Screen Producers Association of Australia (SPAA) forum on ‘Branded Entertainment’ in terms of the opportunities for cross-platform projects and the potential for it to be a financially workable model (or models)…
To read in full, click here
Drama King
The role of the dramaturg
With both philosophical discussion and practical demonstration from ill-fated Justice League to The Bourne Ultimatum, Kennedy Miller Mitchell’s Nico Lathouris talks about how dramaturgy works between director and actor (or non-actor) to enhance dramatic truth of a project.
Venue: AFTRS Theatrette, Entertainment Quarter, Moore Park
Date: Friday, February 27
Time: 5-6pm
Entry: Free (2-hr free parking)
Friday On My Mind is AFTRS‘ weekly event bringing you face to face with the industry’s brightest thinkers.
Writer: Warwick Thornton
Director: Warwick Thornton
Producer: Kath Shelper
[In Australian cinemas April 30 (NSW May 7) through Footprint Films]
Exile, struggle and salvation are all central themes of Warwick Thornton’s first feature Samson and Delilah. But this is no simple allegory. And it is completely unpretentious. In fact, the conceit of this film’s title works precisely because the plight of its protagonists seems of so little consequence to everyone else around them.
Unlike similar angst-ridden couples – from Bonnie and Clyde to Neil Armfield’s Candy to new Mexican director Gerardo Naranjo’s volatile Voy a Explotar (I’m Gonna Explode) – Thornton’s Samson and Delilah elicit a mute protest and quiet pathos.
Thornton’s signature characters are here: the Green Bush radio station and Nana (Mitjili Napanangka Gibson) that made his award winning 2005 and 2007 short films by the same name world celebrated (the former won Best Short in the Panorama section of Berlin and the latter a Crystal Bear). Both bring humour to this otherwise largely bleak landscape. But what I like most about Thornton’s direction in Samson and Delilah is that he never allows the journey to be romanticised. Whilst his stunning cinematography could easily have elicited a nostalgic glow, the Samson and Delilah he creates in long, slow shots and intimate close-ups are all too real.
This narrative runs to its own rhythm and pace. There is no clearly delineated line of cause and effect; action and consequence. There are repetitions, echoes even, but no clear tracks. This will make it a difficult commercial sell but should play well at international festivals. It is Thornton’s homage to a culture (and one that he knows well) in which change does not come quickly or easily and in which the greatest danger is the subtle erosion of hope itself.
