What are your influences?

Because I work in so many different media, I draw influences from all over the place. Charlie Kaufman, Powell & Pressburger, 42 Entertainment (and all who sailed in her), Artichoke, Naomi Alderman, Six to Start, Graham Greene, Philip Pullman, Joss Whedon, Raymond Chandler, Pixar, Simon Stevens, Lee Hall, 1980’s text adventures, Punchdrunk and Kneehigh Theatre, Martin Elricsson…. If any of these names are unfamiliar, look them up. They’re all great.

What was your journey to working cross-media?

I studied English at university, made shorts and wrote poetry. Then I came to London and wrote light entertainment (anything from magic shows to musicals) for a holiday entertainment company. I worked as a copywriter, writing in many different voices for many different companies. I wrote plays. I wrote screenplays. I wrote radio plays.
And then I saw an ad in the Guardian written entirely in code. Unscrambled, it was an open call to writers, designers and creative types to work on an international murder mystery treasure hunt. It was called Perplex City. I started as an in-house writer and took on more and more production duties. For nearly two years, I worked on this huge cross-media game creating a fictional world using audio drama and live events, fictional websites, videos, puzzles, songs, maps, text messages, board games, and just about every medium you can think of. My diverse career finally came together. It felt like I’d unwittingly trained myself for this new, peculiar job.

What’s great about diversifying as much as you have?

I’m never going to get bored. Technology is creating new media to tell stories with, but more importantly, there are very few conventions in cross-media storytelling yet – there’s no formula to follow, no reason to do the same thing twice. And though my time is mostly taken up with these cross-media projects, I get to indulge in ‘single-media’ projects too. I’m working on a play for Radio 4 right now.

What’s not great about it?

Cross-media stories have a fairly limited audience at the moment. The technology is still a barrier to a lot of people, so those who play along are mainly the most tech-savvy. As a result, I don’t think the audience is large enough or diverse enough to accommodate a wide range of genres – yet. As the audience grows and matures, we’ll have the chance to tell a bigger range of stories.

Other things that aren’t great: explaining to my mother what I do for a living; struggling to find time to write and not just organize; and dealing with lawyers.

What are your directions for the future; where are you going next?

I’m producing another global game to be launched next year. I think it could get noticed by a more mainstream audience and help make cross-media entertainment truly popular. That’s the aim, anyway. I want everyone to join in.

Well to start with there’s a lot of speculation still, particularly in regards to the likes of the South Bank Show, which Stellar has heard will be fine. But from digesting as much of the news as we possible can, it seems most of the hard hits have come to the Yorkshire, Leeds, studio where a fair bit of drama is shot. It also seems likely that the Cory-nobs Manchester studio will close and production will move to the new Media City in Salford Quays – but that doesn’t open until 2011 so we shall see. The best coverage can be found on the Guardian, which also has some comment from ITV employees.

Please do let us know if you have more information you can share with fellow members. And perhaps now is a good time to get your application in to Stellar’s Pitch event

Hosted by Stella Duffy

Devoted and Disgruntled is an opportunity to meet up with artists, arts professionals, and audiences. The next three D&Ds will have a different theme and guest host. November’s D&D will be hosted by Stella Duffy, an Associate Artist of Improbable. As always the response to this theme, and the conversations we have, will be decided by you at the start of the evening.

Do gender and sexuality still matter – and if they do, what do we do with them?

Dear All
I am a woman. I am gay/queer/lesbian – and far happier with any of those terms as adjectives, than as necessarily-limiting nouns. I write, perform, direct, make theatre and other work. None of those things solely define me, nor would I want them to, yet as artists, what we do comes from ourselves, our own lives, those we meet, and the worlds – real and imagined – we inhabit. We make work by and of ourselves. How important then, are gender and sexuality to what we do?
In twenty-five years making work I have seen our women’s and gay/queer theatre companies virtually disappear. This doesn’t matter if all the issues we once thought so vital have been taken up by newer artists less concerned with drawing lines and/or with speaking from and for the ghetto. It doesn’t matter if the issues of gender and sexuality – so prevalent, for example, in the classics – are investigated in current work. Nor does it matter if we now truly do have a level playing field from which to make our work.
And yet … I still hear more women than men decrying childcare provision in our work/places. We still have many more men directors than women, and a glance at any listings magazine will show men writers in (at best) a 2:1 ratio to women. Gay men may be in the public eye in unprecedented numbers, but where is the work by young women about their sexuality? Why is it now deemed empowering for women to get their kit off in the rise of modern burlesque – and if those women are still subject to the male gaze, whose empowerment is it anyway? (And are there any straight men empowering themselves by getting naked too?)
Maybe it is all sorted. Maybe there are no women thinking there’s still a glass ceiling, no queer people believing they rarely see themselves represented on our stages, no heterosexual men hemmed in by a society forcing them into a patriarchy they would rather reject, no straight people pushed into playing boy/girl games they hoped stopped in the 1950’s …
Or maybe we can have an Open Space about it, ask if we have arrived at a stage where gender and sexuality are truly fluid, or truly irrelevant – or both. And anyway, as was mooted at the very first D&D, didn’t we all come into theatre in the first place because we thought it was sexy, because we were seventeen-year-olds hoping to get laid? (While we changed the world, obviously.)
Stella Duffy, October 2008

DETAILS:
The evening runs using Open Space technology which gives anyone the chance to propose a starting point for discussion, then take part in one of these conversations, flit between them all, or head to the bar.
To get into Shunt for free, let them know on the door that you’re there for D&D. No need to book, just turn up on the night.
Shunt is on Joiner Street, a little alley inside London Bridge tube station. Find a map at:http://www.shunt.co.uk/map.php
For further information or to discuss access requirements get in touch with Lucy at lucy@improbable.co.uk or at the office on 0207 240 4556.
Hope to see you there.
www.improbable.co.uk

Have seen:
Alan Ayckbourn’s Norman Conquests at the Old Vic:
Not all three, but Round And Round The Garden. I’m not your traditional Ayckbourn audience and never had an urge to see an Ayckbourn before, but was interested to see the Old Vic stage in the round and thought it was about time I gave the Scarborough institution a shot. It was a very easygoing, amusing and fast moving couple of hours, and I’m sure if you saw all three, the way that the trilogy jigsaws to portray events from three locations over one evening would be a darned clever thing. But I didnt, so I can only imagine. It was brilliantly directed, but the kind of theatre that seems as if it would be just as good on TV.

Fin Kennedy’s How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found at the Southwark Playhouse:
Love the Southwark Playhouse. The tatty bar area is almost as homely and kooky as the Union’s, and their Secrets programme looks fun (yet to catch any of it). This was a great play. Perhaps ever so slightly over-written but you can tell Fin is going to be brilliant very soon. Absolutely full of imagination and pace and memorable characters. Ellie Jones directs it with a light touch and it feels very fresh. The set is genius, all twisted lines and hidden doors and clever lighting.

Will see:
Complicite’s A Disappearing Number at the Barbican. Tomorrow. Looking forward to it. Am I the only person left in London not to have seen it the first time?

Want to see:
This Child by Joel Pommerat as part of the Theatre Cafe Festival 2008. Read the script and loved it- simple collection of monologues and duologues that are truly universal.

Will want and fail to see:
In The Red and Brown Water by Tarell Alvin McCraney at the Young Vic. Looks like a good antidote to the coming cold snap- looks like heat on stage, in all senses of the word. Will fail to see it because it closes soon and Im currently jinxed at catching YV shows. Perhaps ill break the spell for the Xmas YV show. Which is always the best in town in my humble opinion.

Sam Howey Nunn

So, to give you a flavour here’s the best of the LFF commentary online. If you’ve got a film showing, have seen something great, are participating in an event or Powering up the Pixel please do let us know by commenting below.

Empire’s LFF Blogisodes.
Chris Hewitt’s amusing red carpet video blog.

Times on The Times BFI 52nd LFF
Official sponsor The Times on the festival, don’t worry they’ve kept their journalistic integrity in their reviews!

Time Out
They’re also a sponsor, but you can trust Time Out to find the hidden gems in the festival as well as some very interesting events.

The Guardian
Xan Brook’s combination of video diary, reviews and blogs. A very good read.

The Culture Show
The BBC’s take on things.

Oh and some films are coming out too:

Friday 24 October 2008

Blessed .. pick a life .. any life (U) Independent Distribution Clapham Picturehouse, Rex Berkhamsted
Bloody Aria, A ICA Films ICA Cinema & Key Cities
Chocolate (18) (D) Showbox Entertainment ICA Cinema
Ghost Town (12A) (D) Paramount Vue West End & Nationwide
Heroes (12A) Eros C’Worlds Feltham, Ilford, Shaftesbury Ave, Vue O2, Odeon G’wich & Key Cities
Incendiary (15) Optimum Releasing Nationwide (Previews 03 October)
Outlanders (15) (D) Miracle Comms Apollo West End
Quiet Chaos (D) New Wave Films Apollo West End, Curzon Mayfair, Gate, Everyman & Key Cities
Saw V (18) (D) Lionsgate UK Vue West End & Nationwide

See you next week!

PICK OF THE WEEK:

The Multiplex – Simon Pegg is just far too nice to be playing Toby Young! But still, its hard to resist the little ginger has a special place in the hearts of the British public. Here he is:

The Independent – Getting amazing reviews, and looking like a really tough one to watch, but one to step out and support is Import/Export.

Take a look at the website – http://www.importexportmovie.co.uk/

Friday 3 October 2008

88 Minutes (15) Warner Bros. Apollo West End & Nationwide

Brideshead Revisited(12A) (D) Walt Disney Odeon Leicester Square & Nationwide

Fall, The (D) Momentum Pictures Curzon Soho, Ritzy, P’House Greenwich & selected Key Cities

Fear(s) Of The Dark (12A) (D) Metrodome Odeon Panton St, Ritzy & selected Key Cities

Fly Me To The Moon (3D) (U) (D) Momentum Pictures Vue West End & Key Cities

Good Dick (15) The Works Odeon Panton St, Ritzy & selected Key Cities (Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow)

Heavy Load (12A) (D) Met Film/Miracle ICA Cinema (Previews 1st Oct)

How To Lose Friends And Alienate People (15) (D) Paramount Vue West End & Nationwide

Import/Export (18) (D) Trinity Filmed Entertainment ICA Cinema, Barbican Cinema & Select Key Cities

PICK OF THE WEEK:

The Multiplex –
I want to Believe…. honest I do. Can Mulder and Scully win audiences over again? Or has it just been too long….

The Independent -
Well, 5 star reviews, an award at Edinburgh, Sundance, and most recently at BRITDOC, MAN ON WIRE speaks for itself:

Friday 1 August 2008Cass (18) Optimum London & Key Cities
Director: Jon S. Baird
The incredible true story of how an orphaned Jamaican baby, adopted by an elderly white couple and brought up in an all white area of London, became one of the most feared and respected men in Britain. CASS grew up in a time before political correctness and was forced to endure racist bullying on a daily basis, until one day when the years of pent up anger came out in a violent burst. CASS found through violence the respect he never had and became addicted to the buzz of fighting. His way of life finally caught up with him when an attempted assassination on his life, saw him shot three times at point blank range. His inner strength somehow managed to keep him alive but he was left with a dilemma; whether to seek vengeance as the street had taught him, or renounce his violent past. This is the extraordinary story of his life.El Bano Del Papa (15) Soda Pictures Curzon Soho, Odeon Covent Gdn, Ritzy & Key Cities
Director: César Charlone & Enrique Fernández
A small South American village is in a flurry over the Pope’s 1988 visit

La Antena (R/I) Dogwoof Pictures ICA Cinema
Director: Esteban Sapir
An entire city has lost its voice. Mr. TV, the owner of the city’s only television channel, is carrying out a sinister, secret plan to subject all of the city’s inhabitants to his will forever more.

Love Guru, The (12A) Paramount Vue West End & Nationwide
Director: Marco Schnabel
Pitka an American raised outside of his country by gurus, returns to the States in order to break into the self-help business. His first challenge: To settle the romantic troubles and subsequent professional skid of a star hockey player whose wife left him for a rival athlete.

Man On Wire (12A) Icon Curzon Soho & Key Cities
Director: James Marsh
A look at tightrope walker Philippe Petit’s daring, but illegal, high-wire routine performed between New York City’s World Trade Center’s twin towers in 1974, what some consider, “the artistic crime of the century.”

Married Life (PG) Verve Pictures Cineworld Shaftesbury Ave & Key Cities (from 8th August)
Director: Ira Sachs
A 1940s-set drama where an adulterous man plots his wife’s death instead of putting her through the humiliation of a divorce.

Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic (15) Warner Music Ent. Apollo West End & Scotland
Director: Liam Lunch
Narrative digressions on sex, race, politics, and more from comedienne Sarah Silverman

Space Chimps (U) Entertainment Nationwide
Director:Kirk De Micco
Ham III, the grandson of the first chimp astronaut, is blasted off into space by an opportunity-seeking senator. Soon, the fun-loving chimp has to get serious about the mission at hand: Rid a far-away planet of their nefarious leader. Fortunately for Ham III, two of his simian peers are along for the ride.

X-Files: I want to Believe (15) 20th Century Fox Empire West End & Nationwide
Director: Chris Carter
When a group of women are abducted in the wintry hills of West Virginia, the only clues to their disappearance are the grotesque human remains that begin to turn up in snow banks along the highway. With officials desperate for any lead, a disgraced priest’s questionable visions send local police on a wild goose chase and straight to a bizarre secret medical experiment that may or may not be connected to the women’s disappearance. It’s a case right out of The X-Files. But the FBI closed down its investigations into the paranormal years ago. And the best team for the job is ex-agents Fox Mulder and Dr. Dana Scully, who have no desire to revisit their dark past. Still, the truth of these horrific crimes is out there somewhere…and it will take Mulder and Scully to find it!

Don’t forget folks, the opening weekend makes or breaks a film, so get your wallets to a cinema!

MOVIE ONE CODE!!!!!!!!!

FRIDAY 25 JULY 2008Angus, Thongs And Perfect Snogging (12A) Paramount, Nationwide
Director: Gurinder Chadha
Georgia Nicolson is fourteen, lives with nosey parents who don’t understand her, an annoying three year old sister and has to wear a beret to school. She would, however, rather be blonde, have a smaller nose and a boyfriend. Revolving around her hilarious journal entries, prepare to be engulfed in the world of the soaring joys and bottomless angst of being a teenager.

Baby Mama (12A)Universal, Nationwide
Director: Michael McCullers
Successful and single businesswoman Kate Holbrook has long put her career ahead of a personal life. Now 37, she’s finally determined to have a kid on her own. But her plan is thrown a curve ball after she discovers she has only a million-to-one chance of getting pregnant, due to her “T-shaped uterus.” Undaunted, the driven Kate allows South Philly working girl Angie Ostrowiski to become her unlikely surrogate. Simple enough … After learning from the steely head of their surrogacy center that Angie is pregnant, Kate goes into precision nesting mode: reading childcare books, baby-proofing the apartment and researching top pre-schools. But the executive’s well-organized strategy is turned upside down when her Baby Mama shows up at her doorstep with no place to live. An unstoppable force meets an immovable object as structured Kate tries to turn vibrant Angie into the perfect expectant mom. However, Angie’s husband shows up while Kate is not there and thrreatens with the truth: the baby is from his sperm, not from one of Kate’s eggs. Soon Angie’s husband reveals the truth. The two women go to court over the case. Meanwhile, Kate has been seeing a man and sleeping with him, but she has no problem–she has a T-shaped uterus, right? The results of the paternity test reveal in court that the baby is Angie’s, not Kate’s. Angie and Kate refuse to speak to each other, until Angie’s baby arrives. On that day, Kate dicovers that she, too, is pregnant. Angie and Kate have two happy lives after that, and Kate’s child is always nine months younger than Angie’s.

Before The Rains (12A)Metrodome, C’World S’bury Ave, City Screen G’Wich, Curzon Mayfair & Key Cities
Director: Santosh Sivan
A British spice grower in Kerala, India becomes involved with a married woman from a local village, and becomes the center of tribal customs and laws.

Buddha Collapsed Out Of Shame (PG)Slingshot Studios, ICA Cinema and selected Key
Director: Hana Makhmalbaf
Amidst the wreckage beneath the ruined statue of the Buddha, thousands of families struggle to survive. Baktay, a six-year-old Afghan girl is challenged to go to school by her neighbour’s son who reads in front of their cave. Having found the money to buy a precious notebook, and taking her mother’s lipstick for a pencil, Baktay sets out. On her way, she is harassed by boys playing games that mimic the terrible violence they have witnessed, that has always surrounded them. The boys want to stone the little girl, to blow her up as the Taliban blew up the Buddha, to shoot her like Americans. Will Baktay be able to escape these violent war games and reach the school?

Dark Knight The, (12A)Warner Bros, Nationwide (Previews 24th July)
Director: Christopher Nolan
Come on…. Do I need to put a synopsis? Really? BATMAN = Christian Bale, JOKER = Heath Ledger.

Lou Reed’s Berlin (12A)Artificial Eye, Curzon Soho, Renoir & Key Cities
Director: Julian Schnabel
Lou Reed’s 2006 live concert performance of his 1973 concept album “Berlin”, filmed over five nights at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, New York.

Paris (15)Optimum Releasing, Barbican, C’Worlds Chelsea & Haymarket, Odeon Covent Gdn & Key Cities
Director: Cedric Klapisch
Pierre, a professional dancer, suffers from a serious heart disease. While he is waiting for a transplant which may (or may not) save his life, he has nothing better to do than look at the people around him, from the balcony of his Paris apartment. When Elise, his sister with three kids and no husband, moves in to his place to care for him, Pierre does not change his new habits. And instead of dancing himself, it is Paris and the Parisians who dance before his eyes.