25 September 2012

Shoormal: A Documentary Public Launch


Produced by
  • Maddrim Media Production Team
Featuring
  • Daniel Aquilina
  • Antony Cox
  • Symone Duddy

The second part of Shoormal is a short documentary featuring three of the original researchers involved in the "Poverty is Bad - Let's Fix It!!" peer research group.

11 September 2012

Shoormal Public Launch


Produced by
  • Maddrim Media Production Team
Script
  • Old Lady - Roseanne Watt
  • Young Boy - John Haswell
Starring
  • Daniel Aquilina
  • Ouanie Bain
  • Lexi Watt

Maddrim Media are delighted to announce the public launch of Shoormal, a film made in partnership with the Poverty Is Bad - Let's Fix It!! peer research project into poverty, social exclusion and inequality in Shetland.

20 April 2012

Minutes 16/04/12

Present: Lorcan, Joe, Chris, Cara, Willem, Kathy, Peter, Michael, Katya

Aaaaand we're steering ourselves back...already.
  1. Apologies: MJ, for being in Unst. Also Craig...we suspect that he’s sneaking off with his GIRLFRIEND. And Ceidiog had work.
  2. Kathy Hubbard extravaganza: Been approached by Dr something-I’ve-forgotten-his-name. He’s organising a project that follows the Olympic torch around Scotland, filming and reporting. But, they can’t afford to go to Shetland. Would we be interesting in picking it up at the Shetland end? Apparently, we sound PERFECT. Haha. Cara will speak to him to see exactly what it’ll be (going back to the whole “Collaboration or Commission” question, meaning we need more info about it). It sounds like a live thing. TRICASTER! *swoons* Hansel: It had a really good launch, then tailed off. 75 films have been uploaded, but they need 2x that. “East Anglia has disappeared into a black hole.” Oooh dear. Kathy’s hoping to see new ones from usssss! We can watch the uploaded films the website. (Recommendations: Zombie Asophalics?  This is it collective. Don’t hug me I’m scared. Bad things that might happen.) Runners include a wooden car shape of boat! And an actual runner (who would be crazy enough to do that?!) CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG IS A RUNNER TOOO!!! Screenplay: Hansel short films will be shown in the following groups: “Best of Hansel”, chosen through public vote and “To Hot to Hansel”, the films that were too explicit and “24 hour film”.Thomas the tank engine, Norwegian and chug boats!
  3. Loose ends – what are they and when will they be finished (Macbook situation) 
  • Shoormal – press pack. The Shoormal people will meet at 6.30 next week to sort out all the last minute things.
  • Cover and leaflet: We will have to choose an image for the sleeve, and two more to cover each of the DVD disks. Our plan thus far is to have screen shots from the films on the DVDs, and a wave-and-shoormal related picture for the front.The possibility of a photoshoot was also mentioned, with people from the cast. And now for an excellently un-PC quote from Chris: “Throw some dirt on them to make them look poor!” The best thing about all my minutes’ quotes is that they are never shown in context. Ever. 
  • Docu and drama final edits – DEADLINE: We need to have the sound done by the end of this week. Things that need re-recorded are: Symone’s impact lines, Daniel’s “what the fuck” line changed to “out of luck” and Daniel’s impact. All of the editing needs to be done by next Friday.
  • Take 5: MJ was gonna edit this, but we didn’t have the Macbook, oh dear. S’ok, she was waay ahead of us and booked herself and Claire time to get editing done.
  • Ninja: The situation as it stands is: 4 shorts filmed, but none edited. Cara can help with editing from 4pm and on, and because they’re short it should be enough time to get one done before 5 in a day. We decided it was crazy to try to film more just now, so we’ll leave it till later and just edit edit edit! Joe delegated Katya in charge of the ninja films...Officially. Oh yeah. Cara and Chris can do the THEME MUSIC. “ninjaaaaaas! nah nah nah nah nah nah!!”
  1. Now I know what it feels like to be a frustrated old lady that so technophobic even bullet points are too challenging: I can't get them to work properly with the new blog layout! Aa dis new-fangled gadgets ir joost a lock o' dirt. 
  2. Anyway - Entering into festivals:We all have a task for the week: everyone has to look up one festival each that we don’t have to spend too much money to enter into, with deadline April/May. You can choose one UK and one international and then we shall DECIDE as a group. Lorcan: “Imagine if someone told me they had aids and then that song came up “everyone had aids duh duh duh duh duuuuh!” Cara: “Joe’s too hipster to eat open scones....over it.”
  3. Future radio shows with Andy: Email Andy cause we are interested. But we should get some ideas going for the actual shows – any suggestions?
  4. Sports Week: Maddrim received an email from James Johnson wondering if we were interested in filming something for Sports Week later in summertime. Cara has a list of things to consider before we definitely say YES. In particular, the Documentary group might like this project because it’ll likely be more documentary styled. Lorcan gave a good point: it would be good to give people similar job to before to build up confidence.
  5. Serious new film ideas vs. ideas which are far too silly (even for us)/will be shelved for future reference: Hansel films we would like to include so far are: Documentary Film, Drama Film, Take 5, Ninja (x3), Hallowe’en, Osteoporosis Alternative Universe film, Spinster at 17.
  6. Any updates on that trip idea we had once? Who wants to go, can we get money or do people have to pay themselves. Where funding?? Basically, we need to put more thought into this. Funding would be tricky to get for a trip – things like using your own personal boat vouchers are a better idea to reduce costs. PK kids go doon sooth all the time. Maybe we shouldn’t make a trip a Maddrim official thing so that Cara can volunteer at the festival and just organise within ourselves...
  7. Funding applications – meeting! Next Monday the Committee will have a meeting after school to sort out funding, then have a Shoormal meeting, to finish in time for normal Maddrim! Meeting spreeee.
  8. AOB: Mini-series: This will be a collaboration with Joe as leader. An idea we liked was to set roles for each episode and switch them for the next one (eg. director, writer....)
  9. Youth achievement awards! GET GOING!!! Those of us completing them had totally forgotten. Oopsies.
Lots and lots and lots. If any single one of you has read all this I’ll be surprised. Maybe I should make a competition where whoever’s read the most minutes gets a cookie. But chances are you haven’t read about that possibility either...
Katya
x

16 April 2012

Minutes 10.04.12


Present: MJ, JANE!, Chris, Peter, Willem, Katya, Cara

AAAAAAAAAAAALL THE CRABSTICKS!

We had a recap of Grain Media happenings. I’m not going through it again. End of.

We speculated about What If Disney phoned (e.g. what should we do when we get into proper collaborations as opposed to getting someone do to something for our film)
Cara: “...well, I would be like DISNEY!!” But really, the answer is ask sensible questions like “Who has rights to what?”and be careful...

Next topic was distribution of Grain Media films. Yeeah, I know, I thought it was all over too. Oh well! First, we have fine-tuning – teeeeeeensie likle bits of editing to polish it off. Then 150 DVDs will need to be made. Cara will do it, or give it to someone Chris mentioned to do. We’re not releasing it online yet. The sleeve for the DVD also needs to be done. Plus a leaflet, with a paragraph on the initial research, one on Maddrim, one on the drama group and one on the documentary group + the sleeve. We also have a screening: on 19th. See fb for details.

Then there was Human Sealz...HAHAHAHAA. This was suggested as a Hansel of Film film. HAHAHAHAHA. If you don’t know about Human Sealz, look it up online, then all will be revealed (it’s basically a made-in-a-day short that was done last year when the Kermode children were up, but, yeah, you should watch it.)

After that we considered the Island Idea that cropped up sometime when I was away. In speaking about this, we discovered Chris’ phobia: “And also I’m scared of birds. MANY BIRDS. MANY BIRDS. I got trapped by a sea of birds and I thought I was going to die.” You really shouldn’t be living on Shetland then Chris, or trying to get to an island WITH BIRDS for a film idea.

Marjolein is determined to cut Take 5 to 5 mins for Hansel of Film too. Finally – a “New Maddrim” entry (as opposed to “Old Maddrim”. Mwahaha. )

Willem had the idea of making sock puppet music videos to take the mickey of real ones done by Lady GaGa etc. I really like this idea, but I feel that someone got carried away when they suggested that we dress up in sleeping bags as giant sock puppets, and somehow acquire giant googly eyes to do the job. This could be done without too much hassle, I think, and so we’d hopefully get it done quickly. Hopefully we’ll discuss it better rather than letting it get sucked into to black-hole of film ideas like some of our other ideas.

There’s also the Voar Redd Up film. Again, my notes direct me to fb.

We also came up with an idea that revolved around Chris’ wolf-face jumper. The plot:
A new clothes shop opens, and it only sells clothing with animal motifs.
Someone buys the wolf jumper
They gradually start taking on wolfish characteristics: “Cup of tea?” “Naooooooo!”
Ends with the owner of the shop going on a hunting spree after all his “animals”...

As for special member Jane. We’re not getting her balls. Not one out of the 400. Do not worry if you don’t get the reference. No biggie.

These minutes are all deadly serious (-_-)

Theeen we talked about Joe’s mini-series. He still manages to “steer it back” even when he’s not at meetings – he phoned and through loudspeaker told us to stop getting distracted. Anyway, this idea will probably be for after Hansel.

Aaand back to the Island film. We mentioned the dangers of taking a camera to a different place to shoot the film, where there’s a bog “It just gets into the peat and goes down and down and down....”(Chris: clap clap clap!) “and there’s two geese that life there.”(Chris: SAD FACE of DISTRESS)

I want blood and dancing. I can’t remember who said this, but meh. It sounds like a Lord Of The Flies musical. EUUUUGH. No ta.

After the meeting, I realised that we forgot to speak about lots of important things – like Andy’s radio show, and the Alternative universe ideas. We did awesome for Grain Media, so fingers crossed we raise our game.

Katya
x

2 April 2012

Maddrim: An Update


I know. It’s been a while.

That’s not to say nothing’s been happening – we’ve been busy bees over the past few weeks. But, instead of writing up my many pages of notes into screeds of blog that you’ll definitely get bored of, I’ve decided not to do that. You can get bored with this instead.

Last time I posted, we were midway through possibly Maddrim’s biggest project; I refer to the Grain Media films. Both the Drama and Documentary groups finished their filming, sound recording, editing etc. in time for the premier “rehearsal” on the 22nd March. Nike came up for another weekend of workshops, which I’ve been told were good (though I was away at the time), shuffled around some of our shots and fine-tuned everything to make our films look even snazzier.

The premier was on the 25th, and afterwards a Q&A panel was open for questions. On the panel were me, Peter, Cara, Joe, Lauren, Martha and Anthony Cox. We got some interesting questions from the audience, including from Chris and Roseanne’s mam! The films were very well-received and have now been shown in a few different places – schools and at the MV awards ceremony a couple of days ago. In short: WELL DONE GUYS!

Poverty is Bad; we’re fixing it.

Maddrim resumed “normality” the Monday after – our first Grain-Media free meeting for a while. Again, I wasn’t able to go because of LOTF rehearsing (sorreh!), but I’ve heard snippets about the next wave of Maddrim brainstorming...something about a desert island filled with an assortment of characters...including a clown...
I’m sure all will become clear.