When I first started making films I made it a habit to come home with some small item from the production as a memento. I’m sure you’ve all done it. Like a cricketer snatching a stump or a footballer taking his opponent’s shirt. Those first films were all so hard and so beautifully enjoyable that it felt vital that I clung onto some small piece of the divine wreckage. A crumpled envelope addressed to “no one, nowhere” from our film “Crowd Scene For Existentialists”, an empty milk bottle from the still almost entirely unseen “Cold”, the gorgeous, battered, tube map of the soul from “Russell Square”. As time passes these talismen lose their power and importance and I’ve parted company with pretty much everything, even the hangover from filming “If Looks Could Kill”. However one pair of props seem reluctant to leave me.

In 2006 we shot a music video for the sublime and deeply missed indie band “Special Needs”. They were newly signed, we were newly inspired to make music videos and we were all the best of friends. The result was this gorgeously silly Monkees-ish chase video. The coffin is lost in the loft of the Brixton house where my brother used to live (God knows what the current occupants think of that), the Spitfires are back in Duxford but the free-wheeling, battery-powered Dodgems are still in my garage.

Well, not for long – a need for space means I’m finally forced into selling them – http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130362281897&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT#ht_793wt_1167 – c’mon, trust me, when it comes to simple pleasures none is simpler nor more pleasurable than Off-Fairground/On-Road Dodgem racing…

Last time I saw Jacqueline Wright and Alice Lowe they promised that they were working on their very own web portal through which they could splurge their own beautiful brand of silliness. Delightfully they’ve held good to that promise and recently gave electric birth to www.jackalfilms.co.uk. You can watch all their older material here including the brilliant Straight8 film “Stiffy”, but to celebrate this new bloom on the face of the internet they’ve given us two new music videos. One features German electro femme fatal Kitty Litta and the surprisingly catchy chorus of “take a piss on me” but by far my favourite thing of the year so far is this:

Go to their site for more…

And last in my round-up of current competitive delight… the grand daddy of them all… the superb MO FILM competition which, being good members of Shooting People, is enhanced for you by the additional chance to win a Canon 5D.

All the information you need is here http://shootingpeople.org/mofilm.

International, serious names attached and offering a seriously career changing prize… if you’re entering one competition this month or next then it has to be MO FILM. Doesn’t it?

OK, so you’ve done experimental cross platform narrative filmmaking and you’ve already made more short films than your agent approves of. Where next?

Well how about cutting together a teaser for your feature debut and sending it to The Trailer Festival?

Styling itself bluntly as “an event for the entertainment industry” this has a deliciously unflirty approach to attracting your submissive dollar. (thirty if you do this before the end of the month…) Here’s the pitch:

The Trailer Festival will take place on April 29th, 2010 at the ICM Screening Room in the MGM Tower, Century City, Los Angeles. Only trailers will be screened and the audience will be exclusively entertainment professionals.

This is an opportunity to get your work seen by companies like HBO, Universal and producers who have made hits such as ‘40 Year Old Virgin’ and ‘Lost’. A complete list of attendees is on The Industry page.

You can submit your sizzle reel whether you have just the script or if you have produced your entire film. Projects will be selected on merit alone and we will not ask for this information until after the selection process.

There will be a promotional DVD of the selected trailers which will be marketed for a year.

For more information and guidelines, professionals should click on this link: http://www.thetrailerfestival.com/

Neither hipster, nor fox but happily a hedgehog? Delighted that the world is full of many different ways of retelling a story but chiefly interested in telling your story on film?

Well, in that case, why don’t you send your short films to a competition run by Aesthetica magazine?

Founded in 2002, Aesthetica Magazine is one of Britain’s leading art publications. Exploring the varied nature of the arts and recognising the dynamics of contemporary culture, Aesthetica pushes the boundaries and evokes debate around today’s most important topics. Bringing a fresh perspective to the national forum, Aesthetica is at the forefront of contemporary arts by critically engaging with visual art, film, music, literature and theatre.

Better yet it is widely distributed throughout the UK and Ireland in WH Smith, Borders, galleries, and independent newsagents… that’s a lot of intelligent beauty loving people who will hear about your film when you win their Short Film Competition about which more here…

Aesthetica is looking for filmmakers who are driving the genre of short film forward through inspirational and innovative works. Whether you are fresh out of film school or have been making films for years, we want to hear from you. Accepting films in all genres: drama, documentary, music video, satire, comedy and artists’ film.

This award offers the winner and runners-up a fantastic prize package, which will bring your films to a wider audience.

Winner – £500 first prize.
Screenings of your film at: The National Media Museum (Bradford), Rushes Soho Shorts Film Festival (London), Glasgow Film Festival, Kerry Film Festival (Ireland) and on the Aesthetica website.
12 months membership with Shooting People.
Collection of film books from Wallflower Press.
Inclusion on a DVD that will go to all Aesthetica readers (45,000 viewers).

£250 for the runner-up and all the finalists will be included on a DVD that will go to all Aesthetica readers (45,000 viewers).

The deadline for submissions is 30 April 2010. For eligibility, guidelines and entry just click on this link… http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/film_submissions.htm

Fans of Isaiah Berlin will be well aware that the creative world breaks down into foxes and hedgehogs. Those of you who bound through this world with a foxlike approach will doubtlessly adore the upcoming YARN festival, which offers us yet another chance to get multi-disciplinary.

Or to lazily assemble the rest of this post by hacking about their press release…

YARN is a brand new festival celebrating story and storytelling – showcasing film, theatre, music and literature and providing a platform for mixing them all up! It’s all about fun and exploration, devoted to letting the imagination run wild.

The first YARN festival will take place 20 – 24 Feb 2010, across The Book Club and The Queen of Hoxton venues in East London.

YARN will include Literary Death Match – The Paper Cinema – Short Film Programmes and most interestingly for YOU sat there reading this – 4 Stories High.

4 Stories High is one of the key events for YARN.

Take Homer’s Odyssey, divide the story into 12 sections; 3 x filmmakers, 3 x theatre groups, 3 x novelists/storytellers and 3 x musicians to take one section each and tell that section of the story in their medium.

Put them all back together in story order, and let a terrific evening’s viewing unfold.

What’s in it for participants?

You get to champion your medium, pitting it against other storytelling forms. You get to tell a section of one of the greatest stories ever written, but in your own voice and style.

At the end of the night the audience will be asked to vote for their favourite section. The makers of that section will walk away with the door money for the event, a guaranteed minimum of £200.

How does it work?
• We will give you a one sheet which will give you a brief synopsis of the story that we’d like you to cover; indicate the section of the original story your section will cover (so that you can bug up on the original and find any elements that you’d like to bring back into your own retelling!); and the beginning and ending that will need to be covered so that it will slot in perfectly with the sections that come before and after!
• You make your section any way you see fit! It needs to be between 30secs and 8 minutes but that’s pretty much it! You can bring more story elements to it, or keep it very simple and to the point; you can set it now or way back when; you can make it with just one person or thousands! The only thing we asked is stay focused on the story, that’s the important bit. YARN would like to keep in touch with you during the process, but the creative is your bit, not ours, so we promise not to interfere.
• Sections ready by Friday 12th February.
• Be around to see it all come together on Tuesday 23rd February at the Queen of Hoxton, and hopefully walk away with some tasty prize money!

More information here: http://www.yarnfest.com

Rolling on from my post earlier this week about people who brazenly choose to express themselves in more than one discipline, I have come across not one but two multi-disciplinary festivals that are both looking to recruit talented people like you.

Tomorrow I will turn my attention to Yarn but first in my inbox is Remix which promotes itself as, frankly, the coolest thing a hipster can do beyond actually hanging outside a brownstone and waiting for Lou Reed’s man. So if you’ve ever drawn a triangle on your wrist or actually own a tumblr then here is the Remix press release and contact details…

Are you a poet/novelist/songwriter? Maybe you’re in a band? What about a fashion designer? Are you a graphic artist? A filmmaker? A photographer?

Yes? Pull up a chair. Let’s talk.

REMIX is fascinated with the idea of adaptation: in how content transfers but also how forms and skills translate. Why do we, as practitioners, choose the mediums we do to tell the stories we tell?

REMIX is looking to bring together a creative team of exciting emerging practitioners who have asserted themselves as innovators in film, theatre, fashion, music and the digital arts but who have never created a piece of theatre before. We’ll collaborate and communicate, creating a live performance with an ensemble of actors. It doesn’t stop there. Each creative will be tasked with adapting the play into a bespoke adaptation for their own specialism. The REMIXes – the play in its five incarnations – will be launched at a live event on 29 and 30 April 2010 – alchemizing the theatre, visual art, virtual media, fashion, music and literary industries.

REMIX will steal all the best bits of all the mediums whilst leaving behind the constraints/rules. Where do you sign up?

If you want to play your part in creating 21st century multi-disciplinary performance for the iPod-listening, Vogue-reading, blog-writing, YouTube-watching generation then email Natalie Ibu : Artistic Director at natalieremix@googlemail.com

In your email, detail
• Who you are and what you do.
• What you’ve done and what you want to do.
• What and who you like.
• Attach an up to date CV and portfolio.
• Include details of where and when we can see you doing your thing – whatever it may be.

… And we’ll take it from there.

STALK US here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=202734921019 and here: http://www.ideastap.com/groupdetail.aspx?groupid=504. Don’t forget here: www.myspace.com/remixication and here: www.remixication.wordpress.com Oh and here: www.twitter.com/remixproject

January seems to be submission time. Clever competition and event organisers must have twigged we’re all waking up from our festive slumbers and starting to panic about where the hell our lives are going… making us vulnerable to submissaphilia.

I’ve been a victim of this cruel complex myself in the past, it drives the weary artist to reach out at any deadline they see advertised in the hopes that if they enter everything then they will at least get something. I am here to counsel you against this. Like taking pointless, creatively barren unpaid jobs, entering film competitions or multi-media showcase events which do not actually suit your style or workable ideas is a fruitless and thankless task.

However the myriad beauty of existence hinges on precisely the fact that what for one person is a pointless, desperate, self-indulgent waste of a stamp is, to another, the opening of a doorway to a paradise of excitement, fulfilment and delight. Consequently over the next few days I’m going to bring to your attention some of the cool sounding competitions that I’ve heard about recently. Don’t try and enter them all – but perhaps do try and enter some of them.

More in a moment…

(just in case the Carry On stamp wasn’t geeky enough for you…)

The magnificent seventh London Short Film Festival drew to a close last night with an event called Filmmakers In Bands in which… ok, I’m going to talk up to you and just expect you to work out what happened.

I’ve played this night before at previous LSFFs and it was a joy to do so again with my current musical squeeze, the Glue Ensemble (of whom there is more here http://www.myspace.com/theglueensemble).

In order to keep life simple you tend to introduce yourself as one thing or another. There are times when even saying I’m a writer/director feels like I’m giving the impression of being horribly unfocused. The truth is that, with my brother, I write, direct, edit and where necessary he’ll also shoot, grade and even handle all the tricky encoding and uploading that comes with most modern filmmaking. That’s a horrible bundle of ideas to throw at someone so we generally say that we’re filmmakers. It feels like somewhat of a treat then to be allowed to out myself as a filmmaker who also plays instruments and writes songs…

Likewise my friend and cohort the filmmaker Lee Kern has recently outed himself as filmmaker who is also a stand-up comedian.

For proof of this come with me to a gig Lee’s playing this Tuesday at the Green Man, Riding House Street, Fitzrovia. He’s sharing the bill with the brilliant Robin Ince, Nick Helm and Richard Sandling and, just in case you’re reading this and thinking “but Ben, I have no life outside of filmmaking, unlike you and Lee I’m totally dedicated to the one true craft”, well, to you I point out that all the comedy will be themed around films and the film industry.

It’s £6 to get in and the show starts at 8 and doors open at 7.30 so get there early to get a seat.

Ooh my head. Bloody Mary’s followed by Guinness is oddly similar to eating a steak with a peppery tomato salsa. Plus a great deal of alcohol.

Never the less last night at the London Short Film Festival screening of the Vauxhall Branchage 48hr Challenge films at the Roxy Bar and Screen, I was in the mood for celebrating. Not because the film Chris and I made, “Truth In The Valley” was the ultimate winner of the generous £1,000 prize, because it wasn’t. We were soundly beaten into second place by the magnificent Gaelle Denis and her film “Morning Mist”. However to be back amongst such a beautiful crowd of passionate, creative people was reason enough to feel like I’d won whatever happened.

To see each other, and each others films once more was a joy. A 48hr Challenge is always a risk and this was made more of one by the fact that most of the participants had to first get themselves to Jersey. These films were quick to make but they were not cheap – by taking part all of us were risking not only our reputation but also our own hard cash. This is one thing for the directors but quite another for cast and crew who don’t have any real sense of what they’re buying into until it’s far too late to back out. No script to read over, no synopsis, not even a vague idea of what will happen until long after the flights are booked. The same is very much true of the sponsors, of which more later.

I raise this point because of the huge and angry debate that is once again crashing over the Shooting People bulletins about working in film for less than the National Minimum Wage. Of course I would expect a commercial project with a budget to strike a fair payment rate in line with accepted industry standards but events like the 48hr Challenge are proof positive that a creative industry needs leeway for the creative aspect to flourish.

We all had a great time in Jersey but for a great many of the participants the event has turned into a personal marker. The freedom of the event gave us all a chance to try something we wouldn’t normally try. It has given people an insight into a new way of working, a different aspect of their performing ability that they hadn’t previously been able to express or just a sharp wake-up call that you can never rest on your laurels. I don’t think we quite changed anyone’s life completely but we certainly all ended up spinning off in new and exciting directions and with a large number of new and exciting potential creative collaborators.

Thanks for this are in no small part due to Vauxhall. As an industry we all tend to be hugely cynical about commercial companies sponsoring our work. As soon as Vauxhall got involved with the 48hr Challenge I think, in some part of our minds, we all expected that we’d need to draw their branding into our films in someway. Perhaps not as crass as having a character turn to camera and shout “C’mon!” but we all expected that in some sense they would want to shape our work in return for the money they were giving the competition.

However, for the second time on this blog a filmmaker called Ben is writing about how beautifully hands-off Vauxhall are once they are committed to an idea. If you’ve not yet read my interview with Ben River’s about his Vauxhall funded film “I Know Where I’m Going” then scroll down the page and have a look because it’s fascinating. It’s also surprising that such a difficult piece of filmmaking was given such full blooded support by a company with no reason to have anything but a purely commercial interest in investing in it.

I’m not just singing the praises of an organisation which has indirectly sponsored my work. Vauxhall have no creative agenda, they exist purely with the commercial aim of selling cars (that, as it goes, I can neither afford nor drive because, I can’t drive). They see a commercial gain in putting money into films that in no way trumpet, discuss or even briefly feature their cars in anyway. This is obviously just a tiny aspect of their business model, a small part of their advertising budget, but clearly it works for them to be associated with helping creative people to create.

I’m not saying that actors should never get paid. I’m certainly not saying that directors should fund their own work and I’m sick of how as a I writer this whole edifice is almost entirely constructed upon the months and years of necessarily unpaid effort that I put into a script before it’s ready to be sold or even read. However I am saying that sometimes working for free on a project that enables you do something different, sometimes sinking a small amount of your cash into a ticket to Jersey so that you can grasp a unique creative challenge, sometimes this financial risk is better business than a stubborn insistence on your legal rights.

To vote in Shooting People’s poll on the National Minimum Wage please click here:
http://shootingpeople.org/poll/minimumwage/

To argue with me in person about this please either come to my talk this afternoon at 4pm at the Curzon or come to Branchage Surgery at the Hospital Club in Covent Garden tomorrow night from six thirty.