Chew Tv Blog

Chew TV Find Your Talent Tour stops in Tower Hamlets, London

Posted: 2 hours ago

With Portsmouth and Bolton happy with their media masterpieces, Max and Dan of Chew TV headed south to London to teach the Find Your Talent Tower Hamlets Crew how to edit all of the cool footage they’ve collated for their Find Your Talent programme.

 

Max and Dan introduced Marilyn and Shamima to some basic and professional editing techniques, took a look at some similar productions made by young people and Chew TV, gave the guys some inside industry tips and sent them on their way. Here’s what Marilyn had to say about the day:

 

“We learned how too use Final Cut Pro and created a video about all the Tower Hamlets Find Your Talent activity. Our showreel really is for the youth of today and contains some exciting footage so be prepared to be amazed!”

 

The Tower Hamlets footage focuses on the huge amount of creative and cultural activity already happening right across Tower Hamlets both in and out of school and their showreel will go live in April so watch this space.

 

Next stop, Liverpool…

 

See the rest of the pics from the workshop on the facebook page.

PLURAL+ A YOUTH VIDEO FESTIVAL ON MIGRATION AND DIVERSITY

Posted: 1 day ago

Are you a young person between the ages of 9-25? Are you passionate about building a more inclusive, tolerant society? Do you think that media messages can help? If so, PLURAL + is for you!

In collaboration with the International Organization for Migration and other international partners, the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations is launching a youth video festival exploring themes related to migration, diversity and identity.

PLURAL+ invites youth to do just that by submitting short videos on their thoughts, experiences, opinions, questions and suggestions on these issues and how to promote harmonious yet diverse societies. 

Submissions will be accepted from 26 February – 30 June 2010. 

A prestigious international jury will announce the winners at an awards ceremony at New York’s Paley Center for Media on 12 November 2010.

Contact plural@unaoc.org

For more information go to: UNAOC or IOM

FURTHER READING # 1

Posted: 1 day ago

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE…

*********SPOILER ALERTS********

Shutter Island, coming out on March 12th, is based on a book written by ‘Dennis Lehane’ a writer I admire for his work on some of the best swearing in scripted conversation from ‘The Wire’. ‘Shutter Island’ is full of the same poetic profanity, where two quick witted bad-mouthed investigators, Chuck and Teddy turn what would otherwise be a straight horror into a buddy movie when the weirdness on Shutter Island, an asylum for the criminally insane, starts getting to them.
Now it’d be interesting to look at how an old master like Scorsese translates the page to the screen, but with this film I came across an adaptations issue that drove me crazy… imaginary casting.

You see the problem with characters in films, is that they are actual real people. When you read a book you get to invent that character based on the way the author describes them. This means no two experiences of reading a book will be the same, as when one person reads Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’, their version of Scrooge will be different from someone else’s.
He’ll always be oldish, he’ll always be a man and he’ll always be bitter and lonely. These features are the Scroogeness of Scrooge, Scrooge’s essence if you like. But when you go to watch ‘A Muppet Christmas Carol’, Scrooge is Micheal Kane for everyone. Whether this is a good thing or not all depends on how good your imagination is, whether the imaginary Scrooge is better for the role than Micheal Kane. If not, then you’ll have to hope you can keep Micheal Kane from creeping in on your version next time you read the book.

Recently I read Shutter Island because I knew Martin Scorsese was making a film of it and I wanted my imagined characters to have a fighting chance by allowing them to come first. However before reading it I watched an early trailer for the film and poof –a Leonardo Dicaprioesque bloke became the sidekick character Chuck. Now I can only imagine Dicaprio delivering Chuck’s dialouge and begin to see all those little nuances Dicaprio might bring to the role. In fact I think Scorsese’s a genius for casting him cause to me he IS Chuck.  Only thing is – I watch another trailer, turns out Dicaprio isn’t playing Chuck, he’s playing the lead role! He doesn’t seem suited to the main role?! He should be Chuck! And now I feel betrayed by the film. It’s like watching ‘A Muppet Christmas Carol’ with Kermit the frog as Scrooge. It just ain’t right.
Anyway, I guess that’s the problem with adaptations. They’ll never cast those actors that live in your head and even if they did every one else would disagree with it.

Whether they prefer the imagined version of Edward Cullen or Robert Pattison, Eclipse, the third book in the Twilight Saga to be adapted (out June 10th), has a growing female fan basis. He’s the vampire love interest that has the power to read people’s minds; the only one he can’t read is the mortal love of his life Bella.
However in the books, it’s written in first person from Bella’s point of view, which is what makes the books interesting, as it gives you an insiders understanding to the conflict of her thoughts behind her actions. As a book it works. As a comic book it’d be over 50% thought bubbles. But cause the film isn’t full of point of view shots and loads of voices over, you just get an actress who works overtime on pulling a lot of dishonest facial expressions and awkward body language. Although it doesn’t really need to have the same effect, as the audience for the film is near entirely made up of people who have already read the book, so really the onscreen version accompanies the novel so that the experience of both the third and first person in a way that compliments the other.

This is probably why the next film in the Saga is on it’s way to eclipsing the next Harry Potter box office takings, with the first part of the film adaptation of Deathly Hallows coming out later this year.
The film already can’t better the book as in the seventh year the series breaks the books formulaic structure of the last six with each previous story going through the motions of

1) Harry endures summer holidays,
2) New mystery story arch begins
3) Harry travels to school, meets new defence against dark arts teacher
4) They all play Quidditch
5) Reveal the mystery, return to summer holidays

Now it’d of been easy to fault J.K Rowling for being predictable, until the seventh book came out without the familiar formula and shows that the routine had been set up to be broke to show the feeling of chaos after being institutionalised by education. Suddenly the structures gone and we have to go out into the real world.
One of the most universal feelings after being institutionalised is:
‘Oh right, so what do I do next then?’
A feeling anyone who has recently finished education will recognise. For a large part of the book Harry, Ron and Hermione follow dead ends, sitting in a tent pondering what to do next hoping something will come along. While these bits of the book may have been a little tedious to read, they are essential in connecting the fantasy story to reality – which I am near certain that even in a two part version of the film, the filmmakers will not dare do. It’ll be too big a risk to make it boring just for the sake of capturing a feeling that is only recognisable for those in the audience who have had a gap year.

There is an Indian film called the Apu trilogy, also based on a novel, where the director Satyajit Ray has a cinematic approach that values the worth of these relatable smaller moments.
Ray takes the time to appreciate two children watching a steam train go by for the first time in their rural village and have shots that linger on water boatmen skimming on a rivers surface. This pacing does make the film very slow, but manages to completely transport you back to that feeling of being a kid on a summer’s day.
Sadly an auteur like Satyajit Ray isn’t directing Harry Potter so the Deathly Hallows camping scenes will probably be replaced with a reinvented chase scene in a burning corn field – oh wait, no, they already did that.

However even when there is a big director onboard an adaptation, like the current posters that claim ‘Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland’, it’d be just as naïve to think that Winston Churchill won the Second World War by himself, as believing Timothy’s ownership on the advertising actually meant he was the sole responsible creative force behind the film.
However authors actually are.

Clive Staples Lewis, whose name was wisely reduced to the more enigmatic and well known C.S. Lewis, would have had that true ownership of his fantasy series, ’The Chronicles of Narnia’, a famous body of stories that expands through a world of timid fawns and magical oppressors.
Although it’s never been adapted in full, with bits made for small screen, this year the third of seven will be released in cinemas. But the question is will they finally pull off making all of them?
Like many others growing up reading an edition of the books that had a Mr. Men style spine artwork, I was misled to thinking they were bringing the films out in the wrong order to make filming easier. It came as a shock to learn that they were published in the same order the films are coming out. In fact, not reading them in the original publishing order is like watching Star Wars from Episode one to six, where all the ‘I am your father’ drama is destroyed.
C.S Lewis wrote the first one, ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ in just three months, the rest of the series followed over the next six years.
The films on the other hand began development in 2001, now 2010 and number three will be coming out this Christmas with ‘The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’.  Unlike the books their won’t be one author telling the whole story, with Andrew Adamson still finishing the last film as Micheal Apted began the next so the teenage actors don’t outgrow their roles. Apted has directed some big films, but is still most famously connected with a little but powerful documentary series called UP!, simply documenting children from the age of seven, then coming back every seven years to see where they are at. So it seems kinda ironic that the main reason Apted’s directing ‘Voyage of the Dawn Treader’ is because the actors are getting older.
The latest story is set on a boat named the ‘Dawn Treader’, summing up the story as an adventure setting sail into the unknown.
C.S. Lewis never had to leave the desk to write the story, while anyone who’s filmed at sea will know it’s never a straight forward shoot.
Coincidentally my first experience filming at sea was lighting on a short drama starring Barbara Kellerman, who played the White Witch in the BBC adaptations of ‘The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe’. The sea and weather conditions, the communication between crews on different boats, avoiding tankers on the horizon and trying to set up lights in a storm make it a slow process.

Then to also add to the mix any CGI work, the fact Disney pulled their funding and picking Mexico as a location just before swine flu broke out and your looking at a shoot that’ll need a small army to pull it off – and they’ve still got four more to go before actors get too old.
So to answer the question, will they manage to film them all?
Probably not, but it’d be amazing if they do.

So, I guess to summarise, my point to all of this is an obvious one, but making films is harder than writing books, which is why it’s best to see whether ambitious stories if they are successful on the page before even attempting the cinema.
In the next article I’ll be focusing on why there’s some good books that may never get made– looking at how Trainspotting’s cast fell out, Willy Wonka spaced out, James Bond got forgotten about and Forest Gump’s author publicly sold out…

Written by Josh Randall, Content Crew Member.


Chew TV Find Your Talent Tour stops in Bolton

Posted: 1 day ago

We’re well underway on the editing part of the tour now, teaching the film crews that we‘ve setup in the 10 differing Pathfinder regions how to edit all of the cool footage they’ve collated for the Find Your Talent programme.

After a creative afternoon with the “epically awesome” PUSH team in Portsmouth, we headed up north meet the Bolton boys and girls and were warmly welcomed by the team at the Spectrum Arts Centre.

We taught Tom, Kyle, Laura and Ariana the basics as well as some professional editing techniques needed to create their showreel for Find Your talent Bolton. Influenced by some productions we’ve worked on with young people in the past the crew knuckled down to business…

Here’s what Kyle had to say about the day:

“Thanks for today lads, it was a well good experience and we learnt a lot about editing.”

But the pleasure was all ours and Chew TV has gained a few new awesome applicants for the ever-growing Content Crew, nice one guys!

The activities that Find Your Talent Bolton have been up to span from architecture, dance, film, galleries, music, theatre, urban arts and new technology, and the crew got enough good footage to make what they reckon is going to be the best promo film for the Find your Talent project. We will just have to wait and see when the results of the project go live in April.

Thanks for the hospitality Bolton, next stop, London…

See the rest of the pics on the facebook group.

Chew TV Find Your Talent Tour stops in Portsmouth

Posted: 3 days ago

So we’re halfway through the tour and onto the editing workshops now. What this means is that we’re teaching the film crews that we‘ve setup in the 10 differing Pathfinder regions how to edit all of the cool footage they’ve collated for the Find Your Talent programme.

We set off up the coastal roads of South West England on Thursday 4th March and arrived at Brune Park Community College where we were greeted by the PUSH team, Megan, Lauren and Addison.

After an introduction to some basic and professional editing techniques, we took a look at some similar productions made by young people and Chew TV, gave the guys some inside industry tips and sent them on their way…

The focus of the PUSH footage is very music and dance orientated which should prove to be a very visually enthusing short promotional film for their region and the crew were all adamant that they will be putting Portsmouth on the map for cultural and creative activity throughout the UK (whilst adding to the legacy of all of the amazing work the Find Your Talent campaign encourages of course)

Chew TV has also gained some new awesome applicants for the ever-growing Content Crew, who essentially run our company!

Here’s what Megan had to say about the day:

“We got taught the basic skills needed to create a cool showreel out of loads of footage using storyboarding and final cut pro. We also learnt how important music is when creating a film so pick some awesome tunes! Watch out for the Find Your Talent PUSH video, we are epically awesome!”

We’re going to be getting involved with all sorts of cool activities as part of find Your Talent over the next month, so if you’re in Bolton, Liverpool, South Hampshire, Telford, Shepway, Tower Hamlets, Customs House, North Somerset or Leeds, look out for us and watch this space for the results (if we make it back in one piece)…