Four nights of Whirlygig Cinema at the 10th London Short Film Festival!

Posted by Katie on Saturday 29th December 2012

The 10th London Short Film Festival (4-13 January) is nearly upon us and we are busy getting ready for our biggest ever takeover of the festival! Join us for four nights as we explore the ins and outs of short film in its many different forms. From 8-10 January we will bring you the filmmakers behind the nine films to win Best Film at LSFF so far at Spotlights and on 12 January we will present a foley-inspired night of live scores with Making Tracks.

The original Berberian Sound Studio - short film by Peter Strickland to screen at Making Tracks

Posted by Katie on Monday 17th December 2012

The next Making Tracks, which will form part of the London Short Film Festival, is only a few weeks away and we are just in the process of firming up the programme. This event will give a very special insight into the world of foley, with an abundance of sound effects being created live on stage to give extra dimension to the films on the screen.

To coincide with this theme, we are very excited to be screening a short film by British director Peter Strickland. The film in question (pictured) is the short version of this year's successful cinema release Berberian Sound Studio, which tells the story of a sound engineer who is sent to Italy to work on the audio track for a 1970s horror movie. The film recently picked up four awards at the British International Film Awards so we are thrilled to be showing its lesser known predecessor.

The film will be screened with its original soundtrack as an introduction to foley and will tie in with the London Short Film Festival's masterclass with Peter Strickland on 11th January.

Filmmakers announced for Spotlights at the 10th London Short Film Festival

Posted by Katie on Friday 14th December 2012

The programme for the 10th London Short Film Festival in January was announced this week, and we are very excited to be a part of it.

As well as running a special foley-themed Making Tracks on 12th January, we will also host a 3-night-long Spotlights at Trangallan. Every year at London Short Film Festival there is a sought-after prize for best film, and we are proud to introduce nine filmmakers to represent each of the films to have won the festival so far. Meet directors, cinematographers and producers, see how their work has develop since their success at the festival and ask them questions in a Q&A.

Over the course of the three days, from 8th to 10th January, we will welcome an array of incredible talent. This includes Scott Graham, whose feature Shell was in competition at the London Film Festival this year, Jes Benstock who had a UK cinema release in 2011 with his feature The British Guide to Showing Off and Chris Allen from multi-media collective The Light Surgeons.

Tickets are £4 per night, or just £10 for all three. Discover the full line-up and pick your date!

Read about our recent Spotlights event this week in this blog post by Culture and Anarchy.

Whirlygig and The Cabinet of Living Cinema introduce teenagers to the art of film scoring!

Posted by Katie on Monday 3rd December 2012

We are currently engaging young people aged 13-19 in a series of film-scoring workshops funded by Arts Council England and taught by musicians from the The Cabinet of Living Cinema.

Musicians Catherine Ring and Andrew Gorman are leading three two-hour sessions from November 2012 to January 2013. Teenagers from the weekly CM Music Space project funded by London Borough of Tower Hamlet's ‘A’ Team Arts at the council's Brady Arts Centre are being introduced to various scoring and composition techniques, as well as foley and creating live sound effects.

This outreach activity is in association with Making Tracks and the workshop participants will work together to develop new scores for short films, which they will then perform live at Making Tracks in January.

Whirlygig Cinema at the 10th London Short Film Festival

Posted by Katie on Monday 19th November 2012

We are excited to announce that we are going to be collaborating with the London Short Film Festival in January for the third year running, but in a bigger way than ever! As well as hosting an exclusive foley-themed Making Tracks on 12th January (submit your film here), we will be taking over Trangallan for three nights running on 8th, 9th and 10th January with a special extended version of Spotlights. During this time we will welcome filmmakers who worked on the nine films that have won the festival over the course of its decade-long history; directors, cinematographers and other film creatives will showcase these films within the context of their own portfolio and talk about what they have done since.

More information about these events coming soon!

Submissions open for Making Tracks January 2013 - a foley special!

Posted by Katie on Thursday 1st November 2012

Would you like to see your short film with a live soundtrack? Submissions are now open for the next Making Tracks event at Rich Mix on 12th January 2012.

This particular event will form part of the 10th London Short Film Festival and have a special focus on the art of foley - the live reproduction of sound effects for film. Based on this we are seeking films that contain plenty of prompts for potential sound effects and rely on atmospheric sound with no dialogue. We welcome all genres and styles but particularly animations (stop-frame is an instant winner!) and films with a comic or surreal undertone.

To submit, please fill in a submissions form by midnight on Friday 14th December. Find out more about what it takes for your film to qualify for this event.

Director of BAFTA wining animation The Eagleman Stag to take the mic at Spotlights next week

Posted by Katie on Friday 28th September 2012

Our fourth Spotlights event on Tuesday 9th October is set to be very special indeed as we welcome Mr Mikey Please, the director of The Eagleman Stag - the mind-blowing stop-motion animation that won the BAFTA for Best Short Film in 2011. Mikey will be there in person to present a thirty-minute long whistle-stop tour of his film career, with short film screenings and the chance for you to ask questions and meet the man himself.

Spotlights is our bi-monthly short film night at Trangallán in Newington Green showcasing emerging film talent in a relaxed and intimate environment. Each event provides a platform for three up-and-coming filmmakers who are invited to take the stage and talk audiences through a retrospective of their work to date, in no more than thirty minutes. [more info]

Mikey will be joined on the night by animator Peter Bunzl and experimental filmmaker Rebecca Marshall. This is a real hot ticket, offering you the chance to get up close and personal with some outstanding film talent, so grab yours while you can!

In The Woods: taking short films to magical places

Posted by Katie on Thursday 6th September 2012

Last Saturday we went to a magical place. We packed up our DVDs and sleeping bags and heading on a train out of London to a secret woodland location for a tiny festival known almost too appropriately as In The Woods. Akin to a music-filled Narnia, this place is other worldly and dream-like; with its non commercial ethos, mysterious art installations, friendly atmosphere and amazingly good cider, In The Woods floats somewhere on the edge of reality. So it was an absolute pleasure to be able to contribute the magic of cinema to their already awesome programme of music and arts.

We set up home in a beautiful yurt, aka The Nomadic Picturehouse which provided the perfect setting to the weird and wonderful films we had lined up. To make things even more surreal, the sound system had to be silent, so we kitted everyone out with a fashionable pair of headphones as they came in.

Between 4pm and 2.30am we screened over 100 films spread across guest programmes and our very own Au Naturel showcase, featuring short films inspired by nature in some obscure way or another. David Attenborough eat your heart out! We invited our friends at Rushes Soho Shorts, Radar Music Videos and Straight 8 to donate guest programmes and also hosted live scores by The Cabinet of Living Cinema.

Anyone found peeking shyly into the tent was immediately given a warm welcome and invited to indulge in a short film, or ten. The beauty of showing short films at a one-day music festival is that revellers need make no commitments. We understand that there are plenty of other delights taking place around the festival and we want people to fit in cinema-time as and when it suits them. They can watch as many or as few films as they want at any one time and come back any time they like without compromising a plot.

After midnight the field we were in, on the cusp of the woods, really came into its own with the lighting of the bonfire, the silent disco and of course our late night programme of films. The Cabinet of Living Cinema performed to a packed-out yurt, with everyone (including the band) wearing the headphones!

We had a wonderful time at In The Woods and it was a really joy to introduce such incredible film talent to our lovely festival audience, which remained healthy and steady throughout the day. We hope everyone else enjoyed the programme as much as we loved putting it together!

Photos from In The Woods

Taking new film talent to a music festival in the woods!

Posted by Katie on Thursday 16th August 2012

In a couple of weeks time we will be heading down to the wonderful In The Woods music festival, which is a very special one-day event in an enchanted secret woodland location in South East England. Curated by the band Laurel Collective, the festival has fast become a watershed show for new talent, including music, art and now film.

We are honoured to be hosting the festival’s film programme and will present an eclectic and captivating showcase of short films, offering festival goers an insight into the vast and exciting world of filmmaking.

Alongside our own nature-themed presentation Au Naturel, woodland folk will be able to indulge in guest programmes from the likes of Rushes Soho Shorts, Radar Music Videos, Straight 8 and live score connoisseurs The Cabinet of Living Cinema.

The festival itself is sold out but if you are lucky enough to have a ticket, drop into our film yurt between 4pm and 3am to see cutting-edge film programmed by some of the UK’s most innovative film groups.

Full programme details coming soon!

Making Tracks Open Mic returns to Shambala - have a go at scoring a film!

Posted by Katie on Monday 30th July 2012

Fancy yourself as a foley artist or film composer? Got a ticket to Shambala Festival this year? We are offering you the chance to create your own score to a short film and perform it live at Making Tracks Open Mic in the lovely Lost Picture Show at the festival. Pick from a selection of amazing short films by up-and-coming filmmakers and bring your own sonic interpretation to the visuals.

It doesn’t matter if you are a professional or aspiring musician, interpretive sound artist or just someone who wants to try out creating some live sound effects, we are open to ideas! Contact us to register your interest and get a link to the films.

See a clip of musicians performing at last year’s Making Tracks Open Mic and find out about the original Making Tracks night in London