Showing posts with label Film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Film. Show all posts

Sunday, 23 October 2022

The 2022 Scottish Short Film Festival

On the weekend of 24/25 September 2022 the 10th anniversary Scottish Short Film Festival (SSFF) was held at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in John Knox House on the Royal Mile. The red carpet was out, the banners were up and the stage was glittering with awards from Judges’ 1st Prize to Golden Raptor.

One of the growing list of independent film festivals that has sprung up in the past decade to showcase and encourage film in and about Scotland, the SSFF has continued to shine a light on home-grown talent, providing a stage for those interested in pursuing careers, dreams and passion in the film industry.

This year the festival received a record-breaking 122 entries, or around 22 hours’ run-time, all with a relation to Scotland. These films were then carefully scrutinized by seven experienced and qualified judges, and reviewed and rated across many criteria, from editing to sound. Those film-makers whose films were unable to be shown were given advice and feedback on their craft for perhaps getting their films shown at festivals in the future.

Me and my Wallace & Grommit tie

The festival has been held in many venues over the years, including the Grosvenor Cinema in Glasgow when their inaugural festival was hosted by celebrated actor David Anderson in 2012, Howden Park Centre in Livingston, The Bathgate Regal, The Glasgow Art School and even the Crowne Plaza Hotel on the banks of the River Clyde.

Returning festival director Chris Young said, “Every year we are consistently surprised and delighted by the creativity, ingenuity, style, talent, skill and humour that exist in the film-making community in Scotland, and those around the world with an interest in Scotland.

“It was wonderful to host the event right in the centre of the capital this year,” says Chris. “surrounded by so much historic Scottish culture, and in the Scottish Storytelling Centre no less, because isn’t that really what film is all about?”

The SSFF not only awarded 19 prizes this year, but most came with nominations, giving even more accolades for people in the industry to add to their résumés.

Asked if there are ever any challenges to be overcome, Chris said, “There are always hiccups and surprises along the way. One year I was prevented from getting into Glasgow for a radio interview because it was so hot the rails were melting and signal boxes malfunctioning. Sometimes technical equipment that was working fine one moment just refuses to the next.”

The red carpet

But the last straw for Chris was getting his I-phone stolen halfway through an event in Glasgow in 2019. “I’d either stupidly or naively left it on the sound desk during the intermission. It was a sell out crowd thanks to the amazing efforts of Gina Vereker, and things were going great. I was using the phone to message host William Samson notes about each film backstage. But when I came back from the bar it was gone.” Panic ensued. The technician went away to check CCTV footage, leaving Chris in the booth with a sea of incomprehensible buttons and lights before him, and the mics didn’t come on for a Q&A, rendering the host and film guests on stage speechless, literally. “But we got through it. The worst part was trying to learn how to read train timetables again in order to get home.”

From that night Chris vowed it was his last film festival. But fortunately Gina Vereker was there to carry the torch over the next two years, expertly navigating the pandemic and lockdowns, taking everything smoothly online and into the 21st century.

Awards!

“This way were able to go worldwide and reach a much bigger, international audience with the films. We hosted the 2020 awards ceremony live-streaming while adhering to social distancing guidelines, windows open and cats everywhere, using a green screen in Gina’s kitchen. On camera it actually looked great.”

The 2021 awards ceremony was live-streamed from the Glasgow studio of one of their long-standing sponsors Acting Coach Scotland, hosted by Olivia Millar-Ross. “Olivia and the Acting Coach Scotland team were a real pleasure to work with. Professional, experienced and charming.”

The 1815 team

With Gina at the helm and Chris as advisor and technical assistant, running the festival online presented its own challenges. “It was like building a plane in the air,” says Chris. “We had no idea what to do – we just had to do it using what we knew and what we had available.”

After the success of two online events, Gina was ready to move on, and asked Chris if he would take the annually recurring event back on again. “Gina and I both love film events, but making films and organising events are two separate skillsets, one more stressful while the other more creative,” says Chris. “And I’m getting to an age where my body doesn’t always agree enthusiastically with what my mind tells it to do.”

But despite all the niggling worries and concerns, Chris agreed to take the festival back on again. “If I can keep a work-life balance and be more zen-like about the whole thing, maybe it’ll be okay.” And this year, with plenty of exercise, pre-planning, healthy eating and drinking, and a smaller, more inclusive venue, it worked.

A key pressure-reducer was the kind provision of accommodation in the centre of Edinburgh by another sponsor: Private House Stays. “One of the worst parts of the situation is trying to get home after a screening when you’re buzzing and exhausted and have mind-fog. So I called up Private House Stays hoping to get a discount and share some mutual publicity and they offered me a free stay, not just for one night, for two!”

So was it a success this year? “I think it was. My job at the end of the day was to turn up, make sure the films played, and hand out a few awards. As long as those things went smoothly, I was happy, and they did. We had a great team. The staff at the SSC were fantastic, our volunteers Ben McBain and Ryan Vallo were invaluable, the film-makers seemed happy with the way their films were played, and the audience were satisfied with the amazing selection of films this year. We also couldn’t have achieved what we did without our sponsors, including Wexpresif in Livingston, who helped fund a live captioner to transcribe anything said on stage into captions on the big screen, and Solar Bear who provided a sign language interpreter for any members in the audience who were deaf, making the Saturday screening much more inclusive.”

Eric Romero & Rachel Flynn (Terminal Happiness)

The winners:
1815, written & directed by Neil Boyle, won : Best Actor (Iain MacRae), Best Sound (Scott Walker), Best Cinematography (Kasparas Vidūnas), Best Script, Acting Coach Rising Star Award (Kayla Caldwell), Saturday Audience Choice and Judges’ 1st Prize.
Terminal Happiness, directed by Eric Romero, won : Best Costume / Make Up (Kerttu Reinmaa & Elise Sepp), Best Music (Margaryta Kulichova), Best Director and Sunday Audience Choice. 
Whale Heart, written and directed by Phillip Edge, won : Judges’ 2nd Prize and Private House Stays Most Creative/Original.
Snapshot, written by Steve Johnson and Carrie Dodds, directed by Steve Johnson, won Best Actress (Kirsty Strain).
Shooting Animals, written and directed by Libby Penman, won Best Documentary.
Professor Henry Bowfax’s Fantastic Journey Through Time! written and directed by Robert Howat, won The Golden Raptor Award.
Neolith, written and directed by Garry & Ross Ferrier, won Best Editing.
The Longest Line, directed by Ellie & Matt Green, won the Thomas Haywood Best Use Of Scottish Landscape Award.
Love Letter To Glasgow, by Myria Chrystophini won Best Animation.
So will you run it again next year? Chris says, “Don’t know yet. It was a great weekend with so many outstanding films and heart-warming to see so many smiles and meet new people, but I need a rest. Ask me again in a month or so.”




Find out more about the film festival by visiting www.scottishshortfilmfestival.com
Facebook - www.facebook.com/ScottishShortFilmFestival
Twitter - @ScottishShorts
Instagram - Scottishshortfilmfestival


Saturday, 12 February 2022

Burning the Candle

It's been a good week.

Last night, after a ten-day abstention from alcohol, I thought I'd treat myself to a couple of Stellas and a film. So I sat down and searched through Amazon Prime Movies, rated 15 or 18, four stars or above, and scrolled down to 'End Of Watch' (2012) with Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) and that Mexican chap who's really good (Michael Peña, actually American), an LAPD drugs cartel cop thriller. I think the phrase 'From the writer of Training Day' may also have swayed me (David Ayer).

I'll be honest, the opening scenes kind of put me off a bit, but I stuck with it as I had a feeling this could be part of the character arc in the story, as the cops seemed to be really blasé and shallow, and I feared a repeat Jarhead performance. (To be fair to Jake Gyllenhaal I think I watched that on a plane) But as things began to unfold I realised 'shit was going to get heavy' pretty soon.

The camera shots were very shaky at times, presumably to express the chaos of the situation, and added to the tension, not knowing which was up. You just knew everything was going to go badly wrong. And even when things went right, you still knew things were going to go ... badly wrong, just from a greater height.

But some of my favourite themes running through Training Day appeared here as well, especially 'honour among police' as well as 'honour among thieves'. Ayer really cuts to the heart with this one, and the finalé (coupled with the alcohol) left me a broken and weeping man.

But damn, that was good. 9/10.

Michael Peña was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male for his performance in this film.

What else have I been up to?

Decided to start a new script for West Lothian Film since 'What The Maid Sawed' had run its natural course. So on Thursday I got another idea for what seemed to be at first sight an amusing and potentially leg-having cross-genre story. But I can't tell you the title because that would give the whole thing away and you might run off with it yourself, write an award-winning script and film and produce it and win several oscars in the time it takes me to finish it myself.

Suffice it to say I rattled out the first scene yesterday, we read it at the group and it got a couple of laughs. So I'm satisfied.


I also finally completed the edit of a 30 minute documentary about my visit back to St Andrews last summer, which has been on my to-do list for six months. 30 minute seems a bit long now and I doubt many will watch it to the end, but I don't know how to cut it down further. Ideally I suppose, it should be under twenty minutes. I might have another stab at it. Unfortunately in parts the sound is affected by the wind, but do I want to try to re-record everything and do a redub? Will it look and sound natural? I guess all I can do is try. Won't make it any worse eh?

That's all I can think of at the moment. Trying to get back up to 100% attendance at my writing desk to finish off 'The Luminari', but there is a constant battle between my desire to stay up late and my desire to get up early. In order to get up at 6:15am I need to physically climb into my bed at 10pm, read for a bit, and lights out at 10:15pm. Who does that? Eight hours. Sounds easy, doesn't it? But it ain't. I need to sacrifice one for the other. I have to give my finger to the night. (Sounds like a Chris de Burgh song).

Anyway, I shall keep you posted.

Saturday, 3 October 2020

The Karate Kid

Last night my son and I watched The Karate Kid on Amazon and I'm not ashamed to say that I wept. 

Why? Because I only just realised how much Noriyuki “Pat” Morita and Ralph Macchio (now 58) moulded my childhood, even though I never learned Karate or was bullied by a group of high school seniors in skeleton costumes. 

It was their relationship, their spirit, their philosophy and defiance against the odds to overcome and finally prevail, which possibly inspired me to be such the non-conformist pain in the ass that I am today. Only now in my later years do I note that it was probably more thanks to the writer Robert Mark Kamen, who Wikipedia now informs me wrote the screenplay combining elements of his real life with those of a newspaper article optioned by producer Jerry Weintraub.

Sadly Pat Morita (who tested five times for the role of Mr Miyagi before producer Weintraub agreed to cast him, not originally wanting a comic actor to play the role) passed away in 2005, but Mr Kamen is still alive and well at 72 and growing grapes in California.

I just want to thank Mr Kamen for writing the screenplay, Mr Weintraub for producing the film, John G Avildsen for directing, and Mr Macchio and Mr Morita for pouring their heart and souls into such an iconic film providing staple viewing for kids growing up in the 80s, and answering the question "whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them."

Sunday, 13 September 2020

The 2020 SSFF Awards Ceremony

Which ancient philosopher said, "It's times like these we need film more than ever"? Plato? Confucius? Probably neither, if like me you believe the first film ever made was 'Le Voyage Dans La Lune' by Georges Méliès in 1902.

   But there were many points when the Scottish Short Film Festival 2020 might not have happened at all.

   The first was just after SSFF2019 at the Glasgow Art School when then festival director (me) had his I-phone stolen and was almost stranded in Glasgow City Centre at 11:30pm on a Saturday night. Stressed, dehydrated, suffering from a lingering back pain and not quite turning a profit (even from a sold out event on the Saturday) and after seven years, I turned to festival manager at the time Gina Vereker said, "I'm sorry, that was the last one for me. If you want to carry the torch as festival director, it's yours."

   Gina, who is a freelance events manager, took a while to think it over, and thankfully said yes.

   What followed was a total revamp of the format, website, and entries re-opened for another year in November 2019. Gina deftly breathed new passion into the project and carried things forward, building momentum and anticipation throughout the whole marketing process, and despite being unable to secure funding from sponsors, plowed onwards undeterred.

Gina Vereker & William Samson. Photo by me on Gina's phone

   Then, around March 2020, the Covid-19 coronavirus reared its ugly head and decided to ruin everything for everyone, everywhere. The venue Gina had been pursuing at the CCA Glasgow, due to government's guidelines, had to shut its doors to events, and Gina and I were forced to sit down and rethink the festival. With patience and understanding from the filmmakers, we considered moving the whole thing online, only then realising the huge opportunities this opened up:

   1: We could show more films over the course of a week, as people would have time to spread things out and watch them in a relaxed manner.

   2: We could show films to people overseas, possibly putting names and faces in front of important people in Hollywood.

   Thus encouraged, we looked into various ways of doing this, considering pay-per-view or something similar, but decided in the end on embedding password-protected films on the website.

   Meanwhile we had received an amazing 64-strong submission total via Film Freeway, for which we were extremely grateful. The films, as ever, exhibited a huge amount of energy, creativity and imagination and were a joy to watch. However, it wasn't all a case of sitting back and letting the films wash over us; each judge was tasked with assigning a score to each film over the following 12 categories : Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Editing, Best Costume/Make Up, Best Music, Best Sound, Best Director, Best Script, Best Documentary, Best Cinematography, Most Creative/Original and finally all round Best Film. We also strived (strove?) to give back encouraging and helpful advice to each and every entry received.

   As this was going on, progress was being made towards presentation of the chosen films. Thought was also being put into the Awards Ceremony and how that would work, while keeping everyone safe and staying in compliance with government guidelines. I figured we could at least conduct it from my office using the green screen and suggested selling tickets to a large scale Zoom event. Gina on the other hand was tempted by the opportunities offered by a public Facebook live-stream, which would increase publicity for the film-makers, actors, and everyone else nominated for an award.

   I, who had adorned the tech hat for this year's Awards ceremony, wasn't exactly sure how that would work, but decided to rise to the challenge and find out. 

Gina and me. Photo by William

   A judges' meeting was held on Zoom to thrash out the shortlist, the nominations and winners. What came next was a gathering of Q&A videos, because one of the highlights of any film festival, we're sure you'll agree, is the connection with the filmmakers - the glimpse behind the magic curtain to find out how the film came about and what challenges were overcome. Again, I suggested password-protecting the Q&As as they were golden content and should add value to, and therefor move, more tickets, but Gina opted to keep them public so the filmmakers could use them to promote themselves.

   Everything was coming together. The humorous and dependable William Samson was re-recruited as host. All that was left was how to do the live-stream Awards ceremony.

   First of all, armed with the list of nominations and winners, 12 nomination videos ('Nom Vids') in a kind of Oscars style were put together. These were automatic and William had to familiarise himself  to get the timing right, as there would be no pausing or going back. Hence the 5 second countdown in each corner.

   From previous experience I knew we needed an encoder, so with limited budget I downloaded the free OBS for Mac. This was sometimes temperamental but had a lot of great features and resembled VLC Player in terms of playlists. You could use chroma key with images in the background, fade to video clips, and have intro and outro credit sequences queued up ready to go. The most useful was the 'Your Livestream Will Start Soon' video loop, which a) gives you those ever precious seconds to get yourself together, and b) adds anticipation.

   Warning : Deep Tech Ahead! Feel free to skip the next few paragraphs.

   Problem: How to connect the Zoom audio into the OBS livestream? Ordinarily I might have tried to connect an audio jack from the speaker output to the mic input of my MacBook with a Y splitter cable connected to my headphones. But new MacBook pros don't have mic input jacks.

   Solution: Download and install a free virtual cable called VB. Tell Zoom to output to this, and tell OBS this is where you want the Zoom input to come from.

Gina, William and me sticking to the two metre rule. Photo by Richard Vereker

   What transpired next was a fortnight-long experimental foray into the unfamiliar territory of live-streaming with green screens, video clips and Zoom call integration. It began with William and I messing about live on the Raptor Newz facebook page, progressed to a half decent but laggy Raptor Newz episode, took another step up with the Judges' Discussion livestream, and culminated in the Awards Ceremony. 

   The hardest part was the Zoom calls. Why? Should be easy, right? Wrong.

   a) There was echo as the voice of the person on the other end would come through the mac's speakers and go into the mic. Hence the use of headsets. We looked into such things as Apple earbuds, but the prices were too prohibitive.

   b) The audio and video were out of synch by 160ms, or four frames at 25 fps. This was because the captured Zoom video took 160 ms longer to reach the live stream than the audio. To fix this, you have to add an offset of 160 ms to the headset mic and the ZOOM audio input (via the VB cable) to slow them down slightly, so they arrive at the livestream at the same time as the video.

   c) There was an occasional nasty flicker. This was alleviated by ensuring Zoom and OBS were operating at the same frame rate (25 fps).

   So far so good, then. Famous last words etc.

   On the morning of Friday 11th September, the day before the Awards Ceremony, while I was walking a group of neighbourhood kids to the local school, one of them, while listening to music on his phone, decided just to walk out into the middle of a busy road at a green light. Every morning up to this incident I'd kept telling the child, "Put away your phone, don't walk while using your phone." Fortunately no cars were coming and the kid was fine, but following this I experienced chest pains making it difficult to breathe. No cough, fever or loss of sense of taste or smell, just chest pains, which I'd experienced at times before of high pressure. I went to bed hoping to sleep it off, missing concerned phone calls from both William and Gina.

  The next day and feeling much improved, I got to work on the intro and credits video clips, as well as the Audience Choice Award video, which had been decided by vote the night before. Everything was moving towards completion and the day flew by.

   Due to a desire for staff safety and adherence to government guidelines of using hand sanitiser, masks, open windows and a minimum interpersonal space of two metres, it was decided that we use Gina's kitchen, which was bigger than my office, despite the slower internet connection. A zoom chat with 'Ghillie' film-makers Mike Marriage and Jamie Cooper was tentatively arranged. The most important part was delivery of the awards, but if possible I wanted to pick up the gauntlet of having some kind of live interaction with filmmakers within the livestream.

   We met at Gina's at 6pm in the pouring rain, with plenty of time (or so we thought) before the 8pm kick off. Set up the green screen and lights, hooked up the Mac to a second monitor and using a wireless keyboard and mouse, I was able to run the tech while William and Gina were able to present the show with the open MacBook screen to guide them and record them using the 720p FaceTime camera. 

   We were all good to go, doing a couple of rehearsals, when another problem presented itself: I needed my headset to monitor everything. William could do the nominations 'deaf' as it were, but he needed a headset to talk to Mike and Jamie. Gina's husband Richard had a spare headset. Much time was wasted trying to get the MacBook to play continuously through two headsets before I realised I could just wipe down my headset before giving it to William. I'd be 'deaf' to the Zoom call, which made me nervous, but during our set up check at 7:30 with Mike and Jamie the levels seemed to look okay. Mike and Jamie popped out of the Zoom Room with a view to popping back nearer the time.

   Ideally we would have had twenty minutes here to stand around outside, chilling and having a smoke in the cool evening air (had we been smokers) gathering our thoughts in preparation. But no, it was one final visit to the loo and then on with the show!

   Shortly after 8pm we went live. 

William and me warming up

   "Okay, I'll switch on the mics now!" said I, only to state loudly a few minutes later, "After this is the short intro." But luckily I don't think I was heard over the trailer audio.

   We had about a ten second lag, but everything seemed to be going fine. People could see us, people could hear us. All good.

   William and Gina did an admirable job and the first half went swimmingly. So much so that I made the fatal error of thinking, "This is going to be a breeze."

   Then for some reason OBS chose that moment to play up. Remember I said it was temperamental? The Best Sound clip had vanished from the Scene List. 

   Blackness. Dead air. 

   I took a breath and told myself not to panic. Instead I gestured to William to keep talking while I tried to figure out the problem, of which he did an excellent job.

   Skipping ahead to Best Editing seemed the best option, but that didn't work either. I gestured again to William and he in turn gestured to Gina to come on stage and continue the stall tactics. How they both managed to stay cool, calm and collected in front of the camera was beyond me, but they did great, in fact their improv was highly entertaining. So much so, I kept it in the edit.

   I realised I had to re-import the clips afresh. This seemed to work. In fact to be on the safe side I re-imported everything one step ahead of the segment William was at. Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Film, Audience Choice Award. This meant each one started with a burst of loud volume I had to turn down as quickly as possible.

   Anyway, we'd refound our stride, and again I made the mistake of thinking, "We've done it! Just the credits to go! I've reimported them haven't I?" I saw the scene labeled RN Credits at the very bottom of the scene list. "Ah yes, this must be it." I queued it up, Gina and William signed off and I faded it in and sat back with a huge sigh of relief.

   But wait. Gina was saying something. Her lips were moving but I couldn't hear her. I'd gone temporarily deaf for real. Something about "Wrong credits." 

   I was like, "No, this is totally fine, look, white words on black screen going up, it's credits all right!" That's when I noticed the name 'Phil Hole.'

   It was the Raptor Newz Credits. 'Donuts by Phil Hole. Sound by Mike St And. Wardrobe by Ikea. All rights reserved and some left.'

   I knew I should have deleted all the extraneous scenes from the Scene List but hadn't had time to do it.

   I faded in the right credits hoping against hope I wouldn't have to re-import them and they played fine.

   And that was it. Made sure all the mics were off. Disconnected the livestream. Scanned the comments for something about the wrong credits, saw nothing and finally relaxed.

   William, Gina, Richard and I spent the next half hour decompressing and laughing with relief. It hadn't been perfect, but we'd given it our best shot and people seemed happy. Awards were delivered, and the Zoom livestream was perfect. 160 ms, baby!

From top left going clockwise: Mike Marriage (director), William Samson, Jamie Cooper (Producer)

   Looking back over the video to edit it for Vimeo and re-share I found there wasn't much to do, except trimming, cutting out a few moments of dead air and the wrong credits. In retrospect I should have realised the MacBook mic would not be good enough for two people standing apart and perhaps should have tried to connect my H2 recorder via USB. But again, with all that was going on, I'm just glad we got something out there. It might have taken another day to convince the MacBook to recognise yet another audio input.

   A day later and the livestream had a reach of 1,623, with 594 engagements, 128 comments, 5 shares and 765 views, which is none too shabby for an event.

   The 2020 SSFF wasn't without its challenges, but on the whole, if people look at the creativity, imagination and skill of the modern day film-force of and about Scotland that we were able to deliver and recognise, we hope you'll agree it is a worthwhile cause. In fact personally I would count the whole experience as by far my favourite distraction of 2020.

   With Gina at the helm the good ship SSFF has successfully completed another voyage, and long may she continue on her travels!