Found myself in Maverick TV’s reception on Heath Mill Lane this morning and was bowled over by their ha-yooge squashed monster of a Christmas tree. I have it on good authority (from the bloke reading magazines in reception) that Johnie Turpie turned lumberjack and chopped it down “with his big axe”, probably bringing it back in the yellow hummer. It goes down through a hole to the floor below, you know.
This evening saw the exciting launch of the 48-hour Film Dash in the Custard Factory theatre. Teams of all types are taking part, including employees of Maverick TV, Stickleback Productions, two eight year-old children and one-man team Stefan Lewandowski, who I suspect may offer us a taste of the dark side.
All teams have until Sunday evening to film, edit and submit to organiser Chris Unitt a 1-5 minute film, which must contain a reference to the named Michael Balcon film and one line of dialogue from Whisky Galore! that has been specifically assigned to them.
The films will be judged by Matthew Stanton, Balcon expert Roger Shannon and Cat Bray. The winning entry will be screened at the Michael Balcon: Into The Light event at the Odeon Cinema on New Street as part of Hello Digital. All the completed films will be shown on a loop in the atrium at Millennium Point for the period of the Hello Digital festival, which was bad news for those wanting to include non family friendly content. There was also talk of organising a special screening event of all entries and Chris is open to suggestions of suitable venues for this.
Chris was at pains to stress it was creativity and original ideas Film Dash is after, rather than great cameras or technical excellence. This was great news for Pete Ashton, Rachel Marchant and Danny Smith’s TTV team, which is using a seriously DIY device on their camera. The resulting effect is interesting.
There are plans for this to be the first of many Film Dashes. I’m determined not to miss out on the next one.
I was just going to link to this 1995 Custard Factory promotional video when Pete Ashton put it on the Custard Factory’s blog, but had to put the film on here after watching it. Pete asked if we ‘recognise anyone?’ and my rather worrying answer is ‘no’ – I do not know who any of these aspirational young
businesspeople are. What happened to them and their enterprises? Where did they go? Let’s hope it was onwards and upwards.
Film-makers Maverick must have loved the sign-painter when he said, “It provides two very basic human needs…hope and community.” Soundbitey but true, and probably what’s made the Custard Factory Birmingham’s 37th greatest thing.
