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Concept Film Night, March 10^th 2010

 The first Concept Film Night of 2010 was a great success.   We invited local film-maker Tom Marshall to be our host for the evening and were proud to show a wide selection of work from talent from the Northeast.  The standard of the films submitted were excellent, making the selection process difficult.   We were able to show a varied range of films  on the evening including animations, documentary and music videos.  For films screened: 

• Chad Banger, Reassurance by James Harris & Gus Hughes

Chad Banger is a series of 4 short animations commissioned by 4mations.  They feature a friendly sausage-headed barman who reassures his customers about the worries of the day.   Subjects such as global warming and swine flu are addressed in these humorous animations, guaranteed to make you laugh.

• Repercussions, Lost Weekend Films by Andrew Leckonby & John Raine:  (contains strong language and scenes of a violent nature)

When disaffected loner, Daniel Maitland, comes under the spell of self styled ‘citizen journalist’, seedy voyeur, Louis Jones, and decides to take on their local yob ferals, events quickly spiral out of control into violence, horror and slaughter.

Do you know where you children are? They do… http://www.lostweekendfilms.com/repercussions.htm

•  No honour, no choice,  Barnado’s SECOS (Sexually Exploited Children Outreach Services), Wendy Shepherd

This film came about after discussions with young people in the ethnic community with whom the SECOS project was working.  It was written by producer, director and scriptwriter Garry Moore and was loosely based on the real story of a young Asian man.  In the film, the main role becomes that of a young girl, played by former EastEnders and Bend It like Beckham actress Pooja Shah.  This film came about after discussions with young people in the ethnic community with whom the SECOS project was working. 

• Remember my face, Tom Marshall

This music video shot in the Phoenix Building on Teesside University Campus was made to fit a brief for a competition run by reed.co.uk.  They wanted films based around the theme of ‘workplace’ and under 3 minutes in length.  Tom had wanted to write and record a comedy song and shoot a video for some time so this provided a great opportunity.  Tom is a huge fan of ‘Flight of the Concords’ which was part of his inspiration.  You can vote for the video at www.reed.co.uk

• My Friend Michael Sniff, Tom Marshall

A film about a boy with an imaginary friend, an imaginary friend who he hates and wishes would just disappear!  However the boy will soon learn the true value of his imaginary friendship when a very real train comes into the picture.   Shot in Middlesbrough and made for a competition being run by the ‘City of London Festival’ the film went on to win ‘Best in show’ play for a week at the Barbican Cinema in London and will be broadcast on Channel 4 later this year.

Congratulations to Tom who has just secured a large commission from Digital Nation to work on a 20 minute film which he’ll be making this year.  Look out for further details of this.

• Old habits Die Hard, Lars Ellingbo, Leif Einar Eide, Ben Klimmek

A short story about two old ladies who are trying to listen to the radio when a biker pulls up disturbing them. Irritated by the noisy biker the old ladies decides to do something about him.
The main goal when making the animation was to get a tight story with a funny and maybe surprising ending.  

 Old Habits Die Hard won RTS Regional Student Award, Animation at the recent awards ceremony and can be viewed here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1GU9soY0ro

• Music videos by St Mary’s College, A2 students

Benjamin Moore, tutor at St Mary’s College approached me and asked if he could bring along two groups of his A2 students to show their recent work on the music videos they’d been asked to produce.  The students were looking for honest feedback from film-makers to help with future progression in their studies and work.  The students got a lot from the event and were very pleased with the constructive feedback they received .  Thanks to everyone who contributed to this session.