Welcome to the 2nd Bulletin of the CWFN (Coventry and Warks Film Network Bulletin). News and events for filmmakers and the moving image. Released now every Friday.
Join our new online network at http://covwarksfn.ning.com/

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FREE FILMMAKING MASTERCLASS FROM GUERRILLA FILMMAKERS HANDBOOK AUTHOR CHRIS JONES

How to make a short film and get it to the OSCARS!
Date: Wed 10 Mar | Time: 6:30pm | Location: Coventry
Herbert Art Gallery, Jordan Well, CV1
by a man who did just that, CHRIS JONES is sent to Coventry's Herbert Art Gallery,
6:30pm Doors for 7pm start with drinks and networking till 10pm
FREE for everyone, please book in advance email Rachel to book your free place:
rachel.heath@coventry.gov.uk
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SHOOTING THIS WEEK- GOOD LUCK to MATT AND VINCE

Handle With Care – new 40k production!
Posted: 1 January 2010, by Matt & Vince
News Image
“Life isn’t fair, but your friends are there.” The tagline for ‘Handle With Care’, an action-packed half-hour featurette focusing on domestic abuse. In collaboration with Chatback, a group of Dudley-based foster kids and their carers, the film is a dark fairytale and heist movie rolled into one.

Written and directed in collaboration with the foster kids themselves, this film aims to shed light on issues affecting our region’s most vulnerable children in a positive, inspirational way.

The movie is to be shot over nine intense days at famous landmarks around Dudley, and the cast includes famous faces (Josie Laurence, Jay Sutherland) alongside the real kids and carers from the fostering community.

We’ll have to work pretty hard to match the creativity and charisma of the fantastic Chatback gang, so wish us luck!

NEW website checkout http://www.mattandvince.com/

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FILM TALKS AT WARWICK ARTS CENTRE
Film Talk: Sergio Leone

Once Upon A Time In Italy by Christopher Frayling

Sat 13 Feb 11am – 3.30pm

Cinema £7.50 (£5.50)

Christopher Frayling, biographer of Sergio Leone and leading authority on Italian Westerns, will explore the cultural background to the arrival of ‘Spaghettis’ in the mid-1960s, their significance, and their longer-term legacy. Also, why they are still dismissed by many as “not quite the real thing”?

With particular reference to the career of Sergio Leone, he will share his enthusiasm for these films, which were usually filmed in Italy (interiors) and southern Spain (locations), with casts that included Italians, Spaniards, Germans, Yugoslavians – and American stars either on their way up or on their way down. Were these films just a case of chilli con carnage or were they more than that…?


Film Talk: Michael Deeley
Bladerunners, Deerhunters and Blowing the Bloody Doors Off

Sat 13 Mar 11am - 3.30pm


Cinema £7.50 (£5.50)


Michael Deeley is an Oscar Winning movie producer with the Midas touch – many of his pictures have gained cult status and become the stuff of legend. He has worked with the World’s toughest moviemakers and lived to tell the tale.

Few would imagine that one man links The Deerhunter with Bladerunner, The Italian Job with Don’t Look Now or the original The Wicker Man. Deeley’s adventures in motion pictures span London in the Swinging Sixties, Hollywood in the seventies and the blockbusters of the 1980’s.

He will be talking about his career with co-author Matthew Field and there will be a complete screening of the Final Cut of Bladerunner.



Close Up – David Rose

My Journey Together
50 Years of screen fiction recalled

Cinema Admission Free

Wed 24 Feb 10.30am – 2.45pm
David Rose, the former Head of Drama at BBC Birmingham, will present extracts from half a century of television and cinema. David's showcase uses film clips and his own recollections to explain how 30 years ago he had managed to employ such people as Mike Leigh, Alan Bleasdale, Willy Russell, Neville Smith, Stephen Frears, Alan Clarke, David Rudkin and Peter Terson.

His career has taken him from being the first producer of Z Cars to initiating the brilliantly successful policy of making cinema feature films for Channel 4 in the 1980s.

The event includes a complete screening of one of David Rose’s most successful productions, My Beautiful Laundrette, directed by Stephen Frears.


Post screening Discussions

The continuing programme of Post Screening discussions is enhanced by an additional event following the screening of Food Inc on Thu 18 Feb at 6.30pm. The discussion will be lead byProfessor Elizabeth Dowler of the Department of sociology, Director of the Politics of Food and Contemporary Health Issue course.


Tickets are available from the Box Office 024 7652 4524

On line: www.warwickartscentre.co.uk


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OTHER NEWS

WARNER BROS PLANS £100 MILLION STUDIO COMPLEX FOR UK

US studio Warner Brothers wants to open a permanent UK production base at Leavesden in Hertfordshire. If it gets the necessary permissions, it will become the first Hollywood major to own a studio complex outside of the US. Warner Bros' proposed development is on the temporary studio site where a number of big budget films are made, most notably its Harry Potter franchise. A £100m development, it would involve two stages, a lot for outdoor shooting and a state-of-the-art post-production village. Although it is very early days, the hope is that the new site will bring new film work into the UK. Warners said the studio is "central to our plans to invest in the production community, to create local and industry employment opportunities, and to continue the legacy of exceptional British filmmaking at Leavesden and across the UK". Echoing developments at other major production hubs, Warner would also like to open the site to the public. Although numbers would be carefully-controlled, the plan would be to give people access to some iconic film sets. Before all that, Warners Bros needs to get planning permission from Three Rivers District Council and Watford Borough Council. Given that Pinewood-Shepperton recently had a planning application rejected, this is not a foregone conclusion. One difference, however, is that the Pinewood proposal also included a housing development

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CAMERA FOR SALE

I'm selling my trusty Sony DSR-PD150P, Before I put it on Ebay I thought I'd take this opportunity to offer to members of CTS. Details below:

Owned from new, direct from Sony.
Very good condition and boxed with all accessories as listed below.
Used almost exclusively with the highly recommended Century Optics 16:9 Anamorphic adaptor lens (for full-frame 16:9 performance).

Sony DSR-PD150P Camcorder (Serial No. ****013)
ECM-NV1 Microphone and Windshield
NP-F330 InfoLithium Li-ion battery
Mains Charger & Adapter
Lens Hood and Cap
Shoulder Strap
Optional Eyecup (large)
RMT-811 Remote control and 2x original Sony AA batteries
4MB Memorystick and containing original overlay graphics
Memory Stick Reader/Writer and Software
RCA Phono AV connecting cable
PictureGear Lite vers 4.1 Application Software for logo generation
Operating Intructions Manual
Original Box and packaging
Hours Meter Readings:
Operation 175 x 10H
Drum run 89 x 10H
Tape run 72 x 10H
Threading 291 x10

Serviced at:
11th May 2007
Few hours added since then.

Additional Items:
Century Optics 16:9 Anamorphic adaptor lens
Fitted "Antarctic" weather jacket - similar to the Portabrace version
Long arm microphone mounting for use with longer rifle mics, such as Rode NTG-3 or Sennheisser ME-66 or MK-416 etc.)
Sony NP-F960 High capacity InfoLithium Li-ion battery
Hanhel HL-MF981 (Sony NP-F960 copy) 5550mAh High capacity Li-ion battery
0.42x Fish Eye and Macro lens

Email me at dcjinks@fridgeproductions.co.uk if you're interested.



Any news/events/crew/opps please email Rich at: info@calltheshots.org.uk

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FILMMAKING NETWORKS
Date: Tues 16 Feb | Time: 7:00 PM | Location: Coventry
CALL THE SHOTS Film group meets every 3rd Tuesday of the month at the ICE Building,
FREE for the first 3 visits.
For a years membership
£20 full member waged £10 for associate and unwaged

CTS NEWS: SCRIPTS WANTED FOR 4 x 10 mins shorts. FREE equipment support and post production by Herbert Media
MUST JOIN AS A MEMBER OF CTS first. Scripts no longer than 10 pages for any genre, but will be judge on shoot-ability on a low to no budget basis.
NEW WEBSITE WILL BE LAUNCHED SOON

More details email: info@calltheshots.org.uk

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SCREENINGS / FESTIVALS

ROOTS to SHOOTS short film nights, screening student to pro level shorts all in one night. £5 Adults and £3,50 students. Screening every month at these venues in Cov and Warks:

Date: Thurs 26 Feb | Time: 7:00 PM | Location: Coventry
Roots to Shoots Coventry
Taylor Johns House
Canal Basin
CV1 4LN

Date: Thurs 04 Mar | Time: 7:00 PM | Location: Leamington Spa
Roots to Shoots Leam Spa
Royal Cinema
Spa Centre
Leam Spa
CV32 4HN

To submit your shorts a DVD screener is required in a 4x3 or 16x9 ratio
email: info@rootstoshoots.org for details
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6. BUY ME PLUG OF THE MONTH

Here's the CWFN amazon BUY ME PLUG of the month:
Chris Jones Everything you need to know about filmmaking, the Guerilla Film Makers Handbook.

We all want to make a feature film, I know I do and yet the money is out there (but not at the moment). So what kind of a budget are we talking about. After attending the Jason Connery masterclass talk at the Royal Cinema Spa Centre, I learnt a little more about the other side of film making. Making a sale with a distributor, you can get a straight to DVD feature made for under £5 million and get it sold in most western markets with a named cast. The horror zombie genre has been selling well. Also I learnt that France will pay you £300k if it has Jean Claude Van Damme on the cover! HHmmm.

The normal route is you make a short / or a pitching trailer (check out The Impossible Escape), the cost for that was a few K's and a grant from SWM for script development. So its still in development.
Ok so you have no money and Screen West Mids will pay you 25% of the total budget, which leaves you 75% of fund raising. Private investors don't know you from Adam and you have borrowed before, so take a leaf out of Chris Jones or closer to the West Mids Simon Cox.

Simon Cox is a film maker who has been raising his own budget for his next feature Kaleidoscope Man.

Read his blog and ways that he is raising money for the feature. Not sure how much the budget is thou.

So If your embarking on your feature get in touch with me and let me know and I can help spread the word..

Happy New Years and if your making a film good luck in 2010!

How to make it big as a Director in Hollywood and get your hands on a multi million pound Blockbuster. First things first is to make a bloody great big hit on both sides of the channel. Prove your worth to the investors in the USA or go the other way to Bollywood and make a song and dance feature (as long as you have 6 catchy dance songs and a heard of cows...!), I have actually just come back from India and have to say there's a healthy array of Indie Indian features that are not Bollywood.

So, Chris Jones is one man who has a dream of Directing a multi million pound feature, so how is he going to do it?
Well lets go back to the past about a year ago, Chris posted this interesting blog here and laid out his plans.

And now after about 200 people invested £50 (or more) to make 'Gone Fishing', a short film shot on 16mm and is heading towards the OSCARS!!!. So I'd like to wish Chris good luck with the short. Its winning awards at International Film Festivals around the globe and won at the Rhode Island Film festival , a forerunner for the Oscars short list.

So I guess by being shortlisted for the Oscars is one way of gaining attention to yourself. If you make a film then get it out there, look at building an raport with your audience too. Other great examples of this is Four Eyed Monsters crew. That I'll chat about another time but you can check em out for yourself, click here.
Ciao

Woody,

P.s 8 mins till xmas eve woo hoo