Last year during Creative Futures week we were told by Berwyn Rowlands that Ffresh was going to be held at Glyndwr this year. I found this to be an exciting piece of news as Berwyn said there would be a chance to work behind the scenes and of course the chance of putting in some of our work into the show.
Ffresh was held at the main campus between the 20th and 22nd of February 2013. Sadly due to family commitments, I was unable to attend the Wednesday. My friend Dave had managed to get a job helping out with ushering and handing out registration forms and badges.
The first thing I did on Thursday was head to the Glyndwr showcase. We had been told by our tutors that our films had been entered into the festival so I was looking forward to seeing the showcase.
I had been watching the showreel for around half an hour before I realised there was nothing of ours in it, let alone anything more recent than 2007. Steve Davies later explained what was in the showcase was everything he had been given. It was a little disappointing to be honest. Also while I was watching the showreel, many pieces had no names, and so I had no reference point. There was also three music videos by the same person which I don't think really showed the variety Glyndwr has to offer.
We ended up leaving the showcase early and breaking for lunch. Afterwards I attended the British Guide to Documentary Film Making : Jes Benstock Masterclass. After leaving college in 1990, Jes has been responsible for several documentaries including The British Guide to Showing Off, The Holocaust Tourist and Orders of Love.
He specialises in comedy documentaries but stresses it is not cheap humour he goes for. The British Guide to Showing Off follows the Alternative Miss World pageant, which truly is something you have to see to believe. One of the contestants is a self proclaimed 'gun-toting life coach with a love of horses' and was dressed head to toe in white sparkly latex. There is a short video of it here. I was delighted to learn that Billy Conolly judged the pageant in 1985.
Andrew Logan's museum in Berriew (image courtesy of Google images)
The man himself, Andrew in his museum (image courtesy of Google images)
British artist Andrew Logan is responsible for the pageant, he runs a museum of sculpture in the sleepy town of Berriew in mid Wales is the main star of the documentary. However, it isn't easy to film a documentary even if your subjects are extremely unique. Jes explains that when faced with a camera people can become entirely different. Initially they might feel as if they need to tell you everything, or show off for the camera. Documentaries work better after this period, he explains.
The random collection of people who enter the Alternative Miss World pageant are a constant source of surprise and inspiration (image courtesy of Google images)
The intricate costumes and stunning make up can take contestants a very long time to get perfect. (Image courtesy of Google images)
Another contestant, in a teacup.
Avoid bonding with the characters, unless you are filming alone. If you are part of the filming crew, make yourself invisible and become as unobtrusive as possible. People tend to lose interest in being filmed after a while, you will only get a window into their lives for a short time before you overstay your welcome. The British Guide to Showing Off spans almost 40 years and Jes had to sift through over 300 hours of footage!The editing process can change the entire feeling of the filming and waiting can be the name of the came. Even having the camera filming at what might seem like a dull moment can yield unexpected results.
Orders of Love, another of Jes' creations is a gentile comedy about suicide. It also talks about how previous generations of our family have an influence on our personality. Find more information and part of the documentary here.
Holocaust tourist is a documentary about the people who work at Auschwitz today and how they feel they've been viewed as people. Jes describes himself as Jew-ish, and feels he was obligated to make a film for the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. He was unsure of the angle he wanted to take on the documentary, but that he wanted to capture the uneasiness of the place and the visitors centre. More information here.
His latest project is called Where is the fish that never swam? Channel 4 describes it thusly
'Arnold Brown, a septuagenarian Glaswegian Jewish surrealist comedian with an overactive imagination, is forced to return to the city of his youth.
Shot in a noir style with extensive CGI, Arnold's 'Glasgow of the Mind' is a nostalgic 1950s Glasgow shot through with a 21st century sensibility.'
Find out more information here.
Jes Benstock 'minding the gap between expectation and reality'.
He finishes by saying people identify with humanity, with people, realism and people's stories. Look for and portray emotions you understand, but have respect for your characters. Remember to express yourself even if you have to justify yourself to your tutors. Very true words.
Dylan Kendle
Tomato Masterclass
Wow, I'll be honest, this was a very hard talk for me to attend. I felt Dylan really didn't want to be there and he was quite difficult to understand. Tomato's website can be found here.
From what I gathered, Tomato is a place for collaboration, they 'practice imperfect' and make things every day even if there are no clients, which isn't a bad practice in my mind.
Their most well known piece of work was the opening credits to Trainspotting. You can find a video here.
If I'm brutally honest, it was like looking through someone's awful holiday pictures, with really boring commentary. Sorry Dylan!
Ffresh Friday
Chris Auty
Producer's Masterclass
Chris came to talk to us about what a producer's role is, why be a producer? and how to become a producer. He teaches production as well as working in the industry.
Producers finance the films. It doesn't seem like a massively glamorous job to be. I can be a lonely role and some producers feel the films belong to them and that everyone else is just a hired hand. This is rare as most people on set have very big egos of their own.
If you get it right, being a producer can make you a lot of money. A producer is infact a partner to the directed, they aught to be aligned, sharing fees with the director, working alongside each other. If you both have the same vision it can be fun and less lonely.
How to become a producer.
As with many instances, there's no simple answer. Chris explains he started as a film critic, and says it wasn't the most ideal route. You can go to film school, it helps if you have lots of money (not really what I want to hear!) and to read scripts, find one you life then enquire to get the ball rolling. Head to parties to meet distributes, actors and camera people. This seems a little unlikely to me though? You could also buy a cinema.....
It seems it is a case of 'it's not what you know.....' to me.
A producer can face a lot of adversity, actors playing up and face many financial issues. You've got to show a lot of passion for what you do, and Cannes film festival is the most exciting place in the world to be if you are a film maker.
So why become a producer?
It gives you a sense of achievement, particularly if a film does very well. It offers pride at creative because it is so hard and mentally challenging at times. It isn't for everyone. Working as a film producer can often lead to producing for TV too, the two industries are often envious of each other. More and more people are doing both.
It's a fantastic job. If you have the money apparently! Again, it was a good talk, but it seemed a little presumptuous to assume all students are sitting on a mountain of cash. I know if I was I'd be out producing and directing my own films.....
Steve Davies
The Insiders : How to get ahead in TV
Laura Cotton (script and development editor, Becoming Human), Eryl Phillips (Producer, Rondo Media) & Nick Goding (Producer, Shameless, Trolliled) came to join us for a question and answer session lead by Steve Davies.
TV is moving fast these days, most people want it there and then, and so On Demand and web services are becoming more and more important. With places like YouTube and Vimeo the goal posts have well and truly moved. Because of this, keeping track of finances and broadcasting is becoming harder and harder. People uploading content onto the net have a lot to do with this.
YouTube is useful for uploading your showreel to. Most people will use a more professional platform like Vimeo, this will give you more platforms than just sending on your CV. There is still a massive emphasis put on social media to get your name known.
Several of the questions came from students in the performing arts department. Reality TV seems to be doing actors out of work, Britain's Got Talent, X-Factor, Big Brother being some of the examples. But this is what the public is demanding (apparently....I know I'm not!).
The BBC has a big responsibility to examine all social aspects, whereas the other channels are commercial companies. There is a possibility that Amazon may be launching their own TV channel
Once again it was stressed after a student asked for the best way into TV acting that there is no obvious route into TV. Showing limitless enthusiasm, working really hard, luck, being at the right place at the right time, networking, and doing work for free were all things suggested.
University is a good place to be if you are a creative, as it allows you to fail in a safe environment. Unfortunately all the questions were taken up by performing arts students and so we didn't get to ask much about the practical side of TV, camera, behind the scenes jobs etc, but it was a very useful session.
Terror in 20 seconds
Entrants for this section of the festival had 20 seconds to pitch the scariest horror film to a panel of judges. The jury included Jason Davitt (Artist, Screenwriter, Director, Editor, Fitness instructor, professional Psychic and Witch), Gareth Bailey (founder and director of Abertoir Horror Festival), and Nia Edwards-Behi (assistant director of the Abertoir Horror Festival & a contributing writer to Brutal as Hell).
The winner was to recieve £500 towards the making of their film. Those shown were of the 5 finalists. The winner was Laura Vanstone and Karl Rees with their film 'Hollow', their can be found at the bottom on this page. The other finalists videos can be seen here.
For me the only really scary clip was Nathan Moore's Talent Show 58 which was very jumpy! I enjoyed watching them, but would have preferred to see some of the entrants who didn't make it to the final also.
Nick Henderson
Alternative ways to finance your film through stills
Printers Inc
I very quickly learned that this was little more than a sales pitch for Printers Inc who help artists sell their work online. The concept isn't too dissimilar to eBay or Etsy but offers better copyright protection.
They started life in 2009 as the Button Factory, they had a printing house and shop in Manchester printing dissertations, essays, canvasses and binding documents.
Opening a shop with Printers Inc only takes a couple of minutes, they offer printing up to A0 and you can post straight to Facebook as soon as you've uploaded an image. Your shop can also be embedded straight into Facebook, making it look like a FB page. You can also analyse your sales figures, set your prices and put your images forward as image of the week. Printers Inc take a set cut from any works you sell.
It is a good idea on the whole, as the cross over between artist and business is often weak. But personally I think I'll stick with selling them myself, after the copyright issues that have cropped up in the news lately I like to know exactly where my images are at all times.
It's My Shout screening
We got the chance to see this years short films, made by It's My Shout and young people who write the scripts and direct, film & produce the 6 shorts every year. It is currently in it's 10th year. More info here and here. I didn't take notes from the shorts as they were all equally mesmerising.
Overall I very much enjoyed the Ffresh festival, I was sad to find out we had missed our chance to submit our own work into the festival, but fingers crossed for next years!
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