Michael Henry, Class of 2009 | Screening ‘Time and Place’ 1st Nov

Posted on October 25, 2014 by RW

One of our creative media mentors is 2009 alumnus Michael Henry at Quandary Productions who’ll be at ‘Meet the Graduates’ network event this Wednesday to share advice about indie filmmaking and opportunities. Timely because he’s just completed the final cut on his latest film ‘Time and Place‘ (2014). There will be a free public screening on 1st November in Lincoln (UK) and the film will be released with ‘Pay-What-You-Want’ On Demand. The production team said ‘it’s the best thing we’ve ever made’. Mike said he’s excited in his latest posting:

Finally, the time has come! After months of hard work ‘TIME AND PLACE’ is finalised, exported, and sent off for DVD batch production. We premiere the film in one week, crowdfunders can expect their DVDs a day or two earlier next week, and we’re very excited about the ‘Pay-What-You-Want’ release on November 1st – same date as the free screening at The Collection in Lincoln. ‘TIME AND PLACE‘ took a good nine months to write, three to shoot, seven months of editing and will no doubt be months before I consider it entirely over, once all the promotion is done and festival fates are sealed. We’re trying something a little different this time – audience members will have the choice of how much they pay to see the film. So what’s different about our On Demand release? Continue reading →

Animation Luma St. | Festival Screenings in the USA and UK

Posted on October 15, 2014 by RW

Nice! Animation student Daniel Escobar’s Luma St. with creative team Alex Kirkwood, Alexander Stokes, Samuel Brierley, Adam Horsepool and music & sound by 2014 Audio Production Graduate Nathan James Lewis has been selected for Festimation – an International Animation & New Media Arts Festival, which is on this month in Montana, USA. Festimation is an event for screening and showcasing ‘up-and-coming independent, narrative, documentary and experimental animated films.’ Luma St. is summed up as a short that “revolves around the idea of people missing the beauty in everyday life.” LSFM Senior Lecturer Sultan Efe: It’s great to see that the organisers used snapshots from Luma St. as part of their poster for the festival. Daniel has sent the film to several animation competitions and festivals and I am sure we will be hearing good news in the next 12 months.”

Luma St. will be screened at Lincoln Shorts film festival along with a hugely diverse, eclectic and entertaining mix of locally-made short films at Lincoln Drill Hall on 18th October at 7pm. Admission’s £5 and you can book tickets online! And from Lincoln (UK) to LA because Luma St. will also be screened at ‘The World Animation Celebration, International Short Film Animation Festival‘ on 1st November. Continue reading →

Royal Television Society Midlands | LSFM Student Nominations

Posted on October 6, 2014 by RW

Head of Lincoln School of Film & Media (LSFM) Dr Sarah Barrow: Great news – we have 2 nominations for the Midlands Royal TV Society awards this year in the student category. Every year for the past 12 (roughly!) we’ve been nominated and most years we’ve won at least one award; one year we also clinched a national award. The team of graduates who made these 2 films are also those who went to China this summer.

The student team were Thomas Mckie, Ashley Wilks, Luke Winter and Alexander Whitcombe (and at the time the four were Wallbreaker Productions) who have been nominated for the 2014 Royal Television Society (Midlands) Student Awards. Their films are in the student categories: ‘Comedy & Entertainment’ for Facebook Anonymous and in ‘Drama’ for The Last Fisherman – in the latter, location sound and mixing was by visiting US student Rob Paulson.

NEWS UPDATE 30 Oct: Facebook Anonymous did win an RTS regional award. Yay! The satricial film will be put forward for the national RTS Award nominations (held next Spring in London). Here’s a clip of the students at the RTS regional awards:

Continue reading →

Steve Staff, Class of 2014 | Join a Screenwriters’ Circle

Posted on October 1, 2014 by RW

If you, like me, are an aspiring screenwriter you will know that our chosen profession comes with its fair share of challenges, probably the most prominent of which is the sheer mass of people who share our common dream of seeing the words we’ve written performed on the silver screen. In fact, I would be willing to bet that, much like Kevin Bacon, each of us alive today are never any more than six connections away from a screenwriter or their lowly cousin, the humble ‘aspiring screenwriter’(throw a tennis ball in your local Cafe Nero and you’ve probably got a 1 in 5 chance of hitting at least three of these). So I thought, why not use those numbers to our advantage? Because as I’m sure you know, another common problem for people of our ilk is getting things read, friends and family loath having a screenwriter in their lives, because it means they’re bugged, prodded and cajoled constantly into reading and reviewing every single thought that passes through our heads, of course we know what we’re writing is fantastic, but what’s the point if other people aren’t enjoying it too?

Which brings me round to my point, if you saw my previous post (re: my recent internship at Knight Hall Agency) you may have seen mention of a University of Lincoln (UoL) grad/student ‘screenwriters’ circle’ that I am going to be setting up; Continue reading →

Emily Cowlishaw, Class of 2014 | I’m starting my Master’s degree!

Posted on September 24, 2014 by emily

It’s not rejection it’s motivation! The most unrealistic thing I thought would ever happen to me is about to begin… I am starting my Master’s Degree! Three years ago I was worrying if I had even made the grades to get into University (see my previous blog post for this journey!) and now I am sitting here with a First Class Honours degree and a scholarship to study for my Master’s. [P.S Graduation was absolutely beautiful… as you can imagine! Here’s a selfie of my in utter shock I actually got through it all.]

What?! When did this all happen? This story genuinely begins back in Level One Media Production where I applied to be a part of the Moorhead Exchange programme the University has with America at MSUM. I worked full time prior to University alongside my A Levels to fund this potential trip (I like to plan ahead!). I went into the interview as a shy and lazy fresher. I came out upset and angry at the prospect that I had not done enough, as there were limited spaces and a high number of applicants. And I was absolutely correct. That trip was not to be. Continue reading →

Steve Staff, Class of 2014 | My Internship at Knight Hall Agency

Posted on September 22, 2014 by RW

To the left you will see a picture of some books. More specifically a picture of some books on the elongated book case that makes up one wall of the Knight Hall Agency office space, each of which earned their place by having their screen adaptation rights picked up by the agency. All great reads I’m sure, but the reason I just spent the last month interning there was to get a glimpse of what happens behind those books, in the very cool hidden meeting rooms that lie beyond. Here is where Knight Hall’s four agents entertain noteworthy figures from all over the British (and occasionally American, French, Scandinavian) TV and film industry, as well as their impressive roster of accomplished screenwriters and playwrights.

Some of Knight Hall’s more recognisable names include award winning writers such as Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty, Slum Dog Millionaire, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire), Martin McDonagh (In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths, A Behanding in Spokane) and Jeremy Brock (The Last King of Scotland, The Eagle, How I Live Now) I could go on but after seeing just one of these names I was quickly into my Yahoo account and firing off an email begging for an internship. A response came almost immediately (not a brag, they just happened to be checking through internship emails at the precise moment mine hit their screens) and after a quick interview I was offered a place. I spent the next couple months working in a shoe shop to save up (London is expensive, who knew?) and in mid-August I set off. Continue reading →

Lincoln Shorts | Film Festival | Submissions by 3rd October 2014

Posted on September 15, 2014 by RW

Hi I’m Will King – a 2007 grad from this School and I’m involved in organising the Lincoln Shorts 2014 film festival. It’s a relaxed, yearly showing of short films (5mins or less) that are connected to the city in some way, whether they were produced here or made by people who live or study in Lincoln. The content ranges hugely from thought-provoking documentaries to CGI snowball fights, so everything is welcome!

Anybody in Lincolnshire with anything worth watching is encouraged to submit what they have – it doesn’t matter whether it’s amateur or professional, filmed on a phone or DSLR – if others might enjoy seeing it, send it in. This co-production was from 2013, which was the first collaboration between Ormeson Films and Short Cut Films.

A hugely diverse, eclectic and entertaining mix of locally-made short films will be on the big screen at Lincoln Drill Hall on October 18th 2014. Everyone is welcome to submit their footage NOW! Continue reading →

Class of 2014 | Graduation Day Photos

Posted on September 11, 2014 by RW

Captured! Our Class of 2014’s Graduation Day pics at Lincoln Cathedral courtesy of LSFM’s Alumni team and the School’s Senior Lecturers Chris Hainstock & Zara Healy. The photo (left) is by alumnus George Bass and it was the University of Lincoln’s picture of the week. He said: “honoured to share my Graduation day with legendary singer Barbara Dickson who was awarded a Doctorate of the Arts!”

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The video of our 2.30pm Graduation Ceremony can be viewed here. We wish our alumni all the very best. Please do keep us posted – let us know about your journeys and experiences. Remember to share with us on this blog …

Congrats to our Class of 2014

Posted on September 9, 2014 by RW

Congratulations Class of 2014. Today our graduation ceremony will be at Lincoln Cathedral from 2.30pm. This year’s graduands are already making their mark in the world. Here is a small snapshot of some of them. Rachel Hagreen is working at VideoJug; Gemma Benefer has a reporter’s job at KCFM; Natalie Dobson is a Junior Producer at Gems TV; Sasha Tucker has an internship at Vodafone, which he secured after being part of the student team who won the national 24-hour challenge with its e-cigarette concept; Faye Wood had an online media internship at the College of Arts, University of Lincoln and said she has now been “hired as the web and multimedia officer” here; Steve Staff is an intern with Knight Hall Agency for a month and will update us here when he’s finished, along with an idea about a script network he’ll be setting up; Luke Werra was chosen for the BBC Talent Pool; Danielle Crooks created the soundtrack for an animation project, Lullaby, which was led by Lucy Clay and Amy Fairclough. It’s been nominated for the Student Competition section at Animasyros 7.0 International Animation Festival and will be screened there in October; Dean Dobbs will make his debut guest presenting on 15 Sept (along with 2013 grad Jack Howard as Jack and Dean) on Radio 1 with Dan and Phil – part of the show’s vloggers take-over on Mondays 9pm-10pm. [Last night’s was ‘TomSka‘, 2011 alumnus Thomas Ridgewell]; Sophy Taylor is working in Ibiza as a photographer, also an executive videographer for IBZ.TV and she’s been accepted at the New York Film Academy to do a postgraduate course; freelancers Andrew West and Emily Cowlishaw (our blogger) have decided to undertake their MA course at LSFM; a short film My conversations with Katie by Matt Dean was given an honourable mention in the Santa Monica Independent Film Festival; student team (at Wallbreaker Productions) Ash Wilks, Luke Winter, Alex Whitcombe and Tom Mckie’s The Last Fisherman film has been selected to be screened next month at the well established 14th International Student Film Festival Pisek 2014.

Tom’s camera work on The Last Fisherman has been shortlisted in the top six films for the Bill Vinten GTC University Awards. He said: things seem to be going well at the moment and along with graduating, trying to earn enough to pay and all this it’s a bit mad. But it’s great to be nominated for these awards. Continue reading →

Sophy Taylor, Class of 2014 | Executive Videographer

Posted on September 8, 2014 by RW

Sophy Taylor can’t be at our Graduation Day in Lincoln (UK) tomorrow because she is working – in Ibiza. Later this month she’ll be heading off to LA to undertake a postgraduate course. Sophy said: I hope this update isn’t mistaken as a boast but more of a recognition of the lessons LSM (now LSFM) has taught me!

My application for the New York Film Academy in Los Angeles has been officially accepted, and all that is pending now is my visa! If all goes to plan, I will be moving to L.A. (my campus is based there) a week before my start date of 1st October. I will be there until the following September provided everything goes well!

Unfortunately however I won’t be attending Graduation (9 September) for two reasons; one is that my parents are away and I don’t want to attend without them but the main reason is that I will still be working out here in Ibiza! I moved out here at the start of June with just my camera and have been working my socks off and networking with every Tom, Dick and Harry and am very proud to say I am the first Executive Videographer for a new company called IBZ.TV. You can check out my work on YouTube. I am also a photographer on the Pukka Up boat parties which I do three times a week and its absolutely amazing. Continue reading →

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