For those of you who haven’t heard, unfortunately the 4Talent Networks team won’t be around in 2009.

What’s 4Talent ‘Networks’, you may cry? Well, we’re the bods who run 4Talent magazine, the 4Talent Awards and the splendid 4Talent editorial hubs in London, Birmingham, Glasgow and Belfast. Not to mention much of the on-the-ground activity you may have taken part in over the years - like Pilot, Raw Cuts, Radio HaHa and the Mobile Game Pitch.

Sad news indeed of course, but fear not: under the management of Jo Taylor and her team channel4.com/4talent will continue as your access point to all C4’s new talent commissioning strands - like 3 Minute Wonder, First Cut, Comedy Lab and Coming Up - not to mention work-related-learning schemes like Generation Next and the Work Experience Scheme.

Channel 4’s regional presence will continue through 4iP, a joint-funded initiative to encourage innovative public-service projects online.

And the outgoing team behind 4Talent Networks are busy hatching various plans to carry on the legacy with an innovative new resource, packed with insider knowledge and opportunities to get all you fiercely creative people with proven talent firmly on the radar of clients, employers and commissioners.

We’ll be knocking on your doors early in 2009. In the meantime we wish you all very Merry Christmas.

Caroline Archer is a Partner in UKType (www.uktype.com) and blogs here about this year’s Plus International Design Festival exhibition, part-sponsored by media partner 4Talent.

Plus International Design Festival

There’s not much to queue for on River Street, especially in November, but for four days last week cars were doubled parked, coaches arrived in convoy and expectant delegates lined the pavement outside the newly opened Fazeley Studios. They’d traveled to Eastside from across Europe and the Middle East, from London and around the UK and had even found their way from far-flung corners of Deritend. River Street sprang to life.
The reason for this influx was the Plus International Design Festival, which had returned to Birmingham for its third year.
This year the exhibitions were disparate and unconventional. Agencies and freelancers exhibited work that was unproven and untried. Two of my favourite pieces included Shanghai-based WOKmedia who showed Between Lines, a three dimensional, flexible typographic ‘bookshelf’; whilst type designer, Timothy Donaldson produced Plus non-Plus: a vast canvas covered in letters so large they had to be formed by the whole body with the assistance of scaffolding. Alongside established exhibitors such as Clusta and Fluid was Smile a trio of exciting young newcomers to the local design scene who are definitely ones to watch for in the future.
The lecture series is always the jewel-in-the-crown of Plus. This year an international line-up of speakers - both known and unknown - held the audience over three days during which time they delivered a series of informative and inspiring talks. In particular Jonathan Barnbrook commanded an audience that would have been the envy of the Guillemots and which roused as much passion.
However, the Festival was not simply about watching and listening - it was also about doing, and there were plenty of workshops to keep the visitors entertained, and the ever popular walking tours ran to capacity as visitors explored the typographic complexity of Birmingham’s urban environment under the able guidance of local historian, Ben Waddington.
But what was the purpose of all this activity?
Plus is not about acquiring clients or pecuniary gain: it had a more significant and richer purpose than simple commercialism. To this end, it was edifying to seeing a stone carver from Devon, chatting with the creative director from a London agency who was talking a young graduate from BCU who had engaged the attention of an eminent type designer. This, in microcosm, was what Plus is about: the great and the good mixing with the great unknown in parity.

Contributor Ian Ravenscroft blogs from the 4Talent stage at Gigbeth festival on the 8th November and would like to note he was not paid to say all the nice things he says here.

_________________________________________________________

Exchanging indie haircut bands for an eclectic line-up of unknowns is a brave move for an up-and-coming festival. I went to find out if the gamble paid off on the 4Talent stage at Birmingham’s Gigbeth festival.

Thingamagoop has a new friend.

Photo c. Pete Ashton

Following a hectic Friday night with Hot Monocles after they raucously opened Gigbeth’s unsigned bands stage, I made my way once again to the Dragon Bar at the Barfly to check out the eclectically-assembled 4Talent stage. Exciting, innovative acts were the name of the game and in the event the billing did not disappoint.

As I entered the room I was greeted by Pete Ashton’s bleeping, blooping, buzzing boxes, also known as the Film Dash-winning Thingamagoop and new addition, Thingamakit, tentatively named King Tubby. Confused? Let me explain…

Pete’s hi-tech toys are light-sensitive synthesizers, which he manipulates using the bots’ built-in light stalks, an ingenious LED glove and any source of light within reach. The result being a cacophony of piercingly ambient electronic bleeps and bloops, which visitors to the stage found equally intriguing and inexplicable, especially once given an opportunity to have a go themselves.

After all that frantic commotion, the unassuming Rich Batsford settled into his seat to sooth our bleeping brains with his emotive classical piano compositions. Playing to a crowd of incredibly-attentive leather-clad metal fans added a hint of the surreal to his set of hypnotic melodies and powerful, booming chords, but this could not distract from the calibre of his musicianship. A brave choice for a festival crowd maybe, but a worthy stage for such artistic talent.

The act that really marked out the eclectic nature of the evening however, was 4Talent award winner, Iain Woods & The Psychologist. Melding grimy hip-hop beats with soaring gospel and soul vocals and strings, Iain strutted provocatively into his first gig with the group - which included a DJ, two violinists and live painted visuals - with ease, trying in vain to disguise his sheer excitement. His stage persona may split opinions in the wider world, but his raw enthusiasm and originality will surely gain many admirers.

Dancing of the night goes to The Keyboard Choir, whose enthusiastic lead key-basher pioneered some ingenious leg-bending moves, twisting and turning to keep his Casio firmly planted through the group’s synthesised hip-hop tinged epics. At times I felt like I was peering in on a team of prog-scientists trying to crack some musical cypher as their conductor fought to maintain control of the chaotic, frenzied fingers of his team.

Finally, Einstellung took to the stage purposefully, arming themselves with weapons of guitars, bass, amps and drums. And what an assault we were in for. Starting off with an upbeat two-chord progression, the Krautrock five-piece built and built the volume and distortion to a wall of crashing noise and pounding rhythm, layering screaming slide guitar and crunching riffs to create a scorching, tumultuous soundscape. One track, two chords, and half an hour later, I felt like asking the band politely for my eardrums back, but I fear it may have been too late.

As 4Talent stage curator Catherine Bray admitted, it would have been very easy to populate this stage with safe, carbon-copy indie bands, which would have been an easier sell. But in the end, artistic innovation won a minor victory that night in the tiny Dragon Bar.

Frankie Ward blogs for 4Talent on being part of Internet Zombie Movie ‘World Wide Dead’

The project was begun four months ago by 25 year old graphic designer Bryony Matthewman, aka Paperlilies. After being bitten whilst using the London Underground she enthusiastically came up with the idea of getting the You Tube community to help her produce, write, act and direct a feature length horror film. With over 40,000 subscribers Bryony knew she had power to start something big, and big it became.

After a generous response Bryony set up a forum and was also approached by Hat Trick Productions. They wanted to make an online documentary on the project and follow it from beginning to its end; which was ambitiously scheduled for Halloween.

I first discovered the project when a ‘call to audition’ video was featured on You Tube. I submitted an audition for the female lead, then known as Maddie. There were also three more London based roles, a couple of American roles and a German pair who would be involved in a subplot, depicting how the zombie infection had quickly spread overseas.

On the forums, debates became quite heated. Controversy involving the script threatened to deteriorate the project, and with Bryony leaving for Canada over August, certain members of the forum felt that they were not being kept up to date and had to rely on the online documentary for news. Casting was also affected which meant that instead of announcing her shortlist for main roles in August, final preparations to start filming were only made in mid October.

I was told I had the part of Abbey, formerly known as Maddie, less than a week before I was due to film in London. On the 18^th October a camera crew, two directors, four actors and a handful of willing Zombies descended on Shoreditch. Fighting against darkness we moved from our original location to one outdoors and back again. Hat Trick followed us around for the majority of the day, asking to let them film me applying my makeup and recording general shooting. It felt strange being the subject, rather than behind the scenes for once! (Particularly with four cameras being pointed straight at me for parts of the day.)

Back on the Internet Zombie Movie forums, two scriptwriters wrote about how they felt the project was no longer their own and now unrecognisable. They disliked the casting and the actors themselves and despite the newly found positive attitude displayed by most of the contributors, they continued to write about their unhappiness. Had it not been for the support from the rest of the forum, I may have found this demeaning but as I was aware that nothing could be done, I was not alarmed.

The London screening will feature Video blogs from a worldwide You Tube community, some fearing the zombies, and others believing the outbreak to be pure rumours. Then we’ll see the segment shot early this month. 12 hours of work, which will probably yield less than five minutes screen time, but that’s showbiz, as they say!

The project will hopefully be completed after the screening depending on interest from outside parties. As a no budget movie however, I believe the results so far will be hugely impressive to all.

The judges have spent many hours deliberating over the shortlists, but we can now announce the 20 winners of the 4Talent Awards 2008.  The competition has been really strong, congratulations to all those involved.

Short Documentary
Maria Andrade

Long Documentary
Lorne Kramer

Dramatic Writing
Ali Muriel

Dramatic Performance
Emma Rigby

Directing
Robert Glassford & Timo Langer

Comedy Writing
Rose Heiney

Comedy Performance
Greg McHugh

Presenting
Ben Chancellor

On-Air Radio
Veena V

Off-Air Radio
Andy Ward

Music
Iain Woods

Production Music
Richard Mead

Music Video
James Knott & James Curran

Innovation
Phil Mundy

Multi-platform
Dan Hon & Adrian Hon

Animation
Karen Penman & Liam Brazier

Journalism
Natalie Whelan

Photography
Hal Sear

Multi-talented
Oliver Lansley

Wildcard
Johanna Basford

The winners will be presented at the awards ceremony on 4th December at Channel 4.  You can read all about them in 4Talent magazine, due out at the end of November.

Film Dash took place over 48 hours in Birmingham, with teams putting together films of less than five minutes in length, in a competition organised by Created In Birmingham’s Chris Unitt, honouring the memory of Birmingham-born Ealing comedies producer Michael Balcon. 4Talent Commissioning Editor Catherine Bray was one of three judges.

I’ve seen short films that people have spent thousands of pounds and months or even years of their time on. Some of those shorts have fallen below standards set by some of the inaugural 48 hour Film Dash shorts.

If there was an award for Best Facial expression, Mars Elkins in Love On The Rocks would be taking home the gong for her five second cameo, and while I’m mentioning Mars, I’d like to thank her for putting together so much of the Hello Digital festival of which Film Dash was just one part.

Fans of atmospheric, fascinatingly shot shorts won’t be disappointed by Stef Lewandowski’s enigmatic entry Xela - ‘Ut Nos Vivicaret’. I’ve asked Stef for permission to screen his film at 4Talent’s Gigbeth stage on the 8th, as it fits perfectly with the request made by one of the bands for carefully crafted experimental films of total artistic integrity to play during their set. Falling into a similar category, The Ascension intrigues and baffles in equal measure.

At the more conventional end of the spectrum, gangster-style film Black Widow, from Stickleback Productions, features the largest, and in my opinion, most skilled cast. The Bid, also filmed in a naturalistic style, should strike a witty note of mockumentary realism for those familiar with the language of development strategies in corporate Birmingham.

The Landlord offers the broadest characterisation of the competition in the larger than life grotesquerie of its eponymous character - you can read about the process of putting together that film on the 4Talent blog. One of my favourite on-page concepts was that of Mobile, where a character follows texted instructions on a randomly discovered mobile phone - at least as worthy of being made into a film as Phone Booth starring Colin Farrell.

I’d like to thank all those involved, both those I’ve mentioned by name and those where there hasn’t been time, and huge thanks to Chris Unitt for bringing it all together.

But there can, of course, be only one winner. My favourite short brings together an at times experimental ethos with quirky, humourous narrative. It’s also one of the shorts that most utilises the underused film location that is Birmingham, from the commercialism of the Bullring and its environs to the graffitied underpasses and abandoned wastelands.

That short was Pete Ashton, Rachael Marchant and Danny Smith’s Dunkirk, in which light-responsive synthesiser Thingamagoop goes on a journey around Birmingham, encountering cityscapes, street art and a failed hope of love that is oddly touching when you consider that you’re empathising with a piece of bleepy noisemaking hardware on an entirely human level. This short is both amusing and experimental, two things associated with Michael Balcon’s work, so in the spirit of Michael Balcon that informed Film Dash, Dunkirk ultimately seemed to be the short that most deserved to win.

It was a difficult call however, with more than one serious contender - perhaps because as a new competition, the ethos has yet to become set in stone. It’s been an exploration for filmmaker and judge alike, and one that I very much hope will be repeated. Only next time, I’ll hopefully be making a film and not judging them.

With the second annual 4Talent Mobile Games Pitch due to kick off this morning, here’s a quick run-down of the 9 contenders, who we whittled down from several hundred entries.

For those not familiar, in a nutshell this is a pitching competition in partnership with EA Mobile, Nokia and the Golden Joystick Awards, as part of the London Games Festival.

We asked 4Talent readers to throw us ideas for innovative, experimental games for mobile phones - and based on judges’ scores for originality, innovation, commercial appeal and technical feasibility, and in no particular order, here are the finalists:

Miles Boylan (22, from Preston)
Miles’ idea Snapshot pinpoints a player’s location with GPS, and then sets area-specific photographic tasks that can then be uploaded and rated by other users online.

Tobias Rowe (22, from Colchester)
In Tobias’ idea Finders Keepers, you’re an elusive cat burglar who must steal antiques from local museums and other players’ vaults via Bluetooth, while defending your own using bespoke puzzles and mini-games.

Nicola Depuis (28, from London)
Nicola’s idea I-Queu allows players to compare their IQ against an international playing community by setting each other questions, and working together to jump the virtual queue.

Steven Fraser (from Edinburgh)
Steven’s idea Street Art sees graffiti turf wars springing up across the world, with players manipulating photos into works of art on their phones, rating them online and challenging each other to claim the streets one by one.

Trevor Conway (49, from Belfast)
Trevor’s concept Alter-Ego places the player in a parallel existence affected by genuine real-world events and breaking news stories, making choices from the perspectives of those involved.

Matt Watkins (37, from Nottingham)
Matt’s idea Running Rings is a game of physical exertion using GPS, in which players literally run circles around each other to score points, annex space and reach a new level of networked global domination.

Dominic Brancaleone (25, from Bournemouth)
Dominic’s idea Treasure Hunt allows players to hunt for genuine loot by responding to text, photo and video clues, and can be personalised to create your own trail.

Robin Clarke (28, from London)
Robin’s idea Way of the Dodo is an adventure/puzzle game designed to encourage thinking about the natural world, in which players guide the last known colony of helpless birds to safety whilst sharing real-world info about conservation.

Hamad Hussain (27, from London)
In Hamad’s idea The Contract, players choose to be either a government agent or a sleeper, are given a unique key code and must then locate, identify, recruit or entrap the opposition, obtaining their code by whatever means possible.

Good luck to all the finalists: we’ll announce the winner on the blog soon!

Just wanted to let you all know about a quite cool opportunity arising out of a potentially diasppointing situation. There was to have been a Q&A panel following the Electric Cinema’s screening of 28 Days Later tonight, but that’s sadly now not happening. Boo hiss.

However, the cool thing about this is what we’re doing instead, which has a wider reach and is not so time or place specific. We’ll be putting together 4Talent’s first collaborative interview, with questions from 4Talent users to Chris Gill, editor of 28 Days Later. It’s journalism democracy in action…

You can send your questions for Chris to catherine@4talentmagazine.com by 31st October - they can be about everything from editing, to working on 28 Days Later specifically, to digital film, to working with Danny Boyle, and whatever weird and wonderful queries you may have as filmmakers, editors, filmwatchers, journalists - who and whatever you are.

You can read all about Chris and his fantastic acheievements on DNA films website (scroll down) for Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, on which he also worked, or you can check him out on IMDB here - it’s a CV spanning 20 years that includes Brideshead Revisited, 28 Weeks Later and the forthcoming Ricky Gervais directed comedy glitterati-studded This Side Of The Truth. So send in those questions and be fully credited in a 4Talent interview…

Currently halfway through the Online Communities 4Talent Inspiration Sessions (part of the inaugural Hello Digital festival). Online Communities consultant Ed Mitchell just showed us a tag cloud for his blog created using Wordle, so I’ve created one for this blog:

4Talent blog's visual tagcloud, 26/10/08

You can make your own at Wordle, it’s completely simple.

This has been the last session of the weekend - check the website for rough cut audio of what we’ve been talking about in the four different sessions, or drop by later in the week for fully integrated podcasts. We’ve been Tweeting over the weekend, so for a microblog of what’s been going on, check our Twitter feed.

As a judge of Film Dash, I was hugely excited to watch the films that resulted from the 48 hour film challenge. Perhaps as interesting as the finished product is the journey that the filmmakers themselves went on as they made their films. Here’s just one of those stories, from filmmaker Ian Ravenscroft, who with only a few no-budget sketches under his belt, set out with Dice Productions to tell their story.

With no camera, sound equipment or lighting, and our only actor delayed on his way back from Cheltenham, I sat awaiting the brief for Film Dash: Digital Galore!, Birmingham’s latest 48-hour film competition, wondering what I’d let myself in for.

My cohort Louis arrived after a brisk run through Birmingham just as organiser Chris Unitt was kicking off proceedings. Soon, each team had a line of dialogue to include in their 5min film and a film title to reference in any way we could. Before we knew it we were outside, walking on auto-pilot, brain-storming as we went.

“I don’t believe the world has been in such a terrible mess since the flood,” I said, repeated our line in hope of some inspiration. “The Cruel Sea,” Louis chanted, hoping the same. It was at this point I realised how much of a challenge we had taken on.

Despite the stuttering start, we were soon cooking on gas. With a last-minute favour of a camera from @Warblefly productions and our actor and writing partner Tom back in the picture, we collected our thoughts and picked an idea off the crammed whiteboard.

“A young couple move into a flat only to meet their crazed and sexually-confused landlord” someone suggested. “Why not?” we thought, “we’ll get the line in, no problem.” By 9:30pm we had the whole thing written on two sides of a big sheet of paper, possibly our biggest achievement of the weekend.

Having set up our limited gear, typed up the script, recruited a much-needed female to the cast and planned each scene, we set out on Saturday morning for the shoot. Tom seemed to relish the job of playing such an odd character and everything seemed to go pretty smoothly and everyone was having fun, so by 3pm we had the first batch of editing to do. Then we shot the night scenes and retired to the pub to unwind after a hectic day.

On arriving back to base we found, as expected, that there was way too much footage. The only option was an all-night editing session to cut back the cinematic undergrowth. Louis and I broke the back of the editing overnight, checking our plot progression and using every shortcut we knew. After three hours sleep, a re-shoot of the final scene and some hasty sound editing we were finished in every sense.

Although there were bits we could have fine-tuned with more time and expertise, we were happy with our ambitious effort (for us, in the time) and could overlook the odd bad cut for how it had come together.

We felt we covered the brief well, and with a few nods to Hitchcock we felt we had forged links with the screening of ‘Into the Light’, a celebration of Birmingham born film producer, Sir Michael Balcon, which the winning film would be shown before the following Sunday.

Not that winning should be on any of the teams’ minds. Film Dash was a great laugh to take part in and taught us a lot about our own abilities. If it was intended to inspire new filmmakers like ourselves it certainly worked, we’re already planning more film projects and eagerly awaiting the next Dash!

The winner of Film Dash will be announced Sunday 26th October.

It’s taken us 2 solid weeks, but we can now proudly announce the shortlists for the 4Talent Awards 2008 - 5 in each of the 20 categories.

We’ve quite simply been blown away by the quality across the board, and it’s been a real struggle getting down to that fortunate 100, who will be sent off to our illustrious judging panels over the next few weeks to select our final 20.

So here they are: massive congratulations if you’re amongst them, and please, don’t be disheartened if you’re not - stay across future opportunities with 4Talent and there’s always next year! Winners will be notified by 31 October.

Short Documentary
Pinny Grylls, 29, London
David O’Hara, 25, Scunthorpe
Poppie Skold, 26, London
Maria Andrade, 26, London
Laura Martin-Robinson, 28, London

Long Documentary
Fred Burns, 24, Sussex
Katja Roberts, 29 & Magnus Dennison, Newcastle
Tom Evans, 28, Oxford
Lorne Kramer, 25, Bristol
Stuart Kershaw, 28, Liverpool

Dramatic Writing
Ali Muriel, 28, London
Cosmo Wallace, 29, Glasgow
Carla Grauls, 29, London
Tim Price, 28, London
Stella Papamichael, 30, London

Dramatic Performance
Sarah Kempton, 22, London
Elizabeth Rainbow, 28, London
Emma Rigby, 19, Liverpool
Sagar Radia, 22, Middlesex
Helen Clapp, 25, London

Directing
Tom Marshall, 22, Middlesbrough
Adam Randall, 28, London
Dominic Leclerc, 29, Bradford
Robert Glassford, 29 & Timo Langer, West Lothian
Rob Sorrenti, 28, London

Comedy Writing
Felicity Carpenter, 27, London
Chris Grady, 29, Glasgow
Rose Heiney, 24, London
Christopher Wallace, 29, & Philip Hodgson,Tyne & Wear
Daniel Flay, 24 & Alastair Craig, Huntingdon

Comedy Performance
Anna Whelan, 23 & David Tynan, Wigan / Sheffield
Greg McHugh, 28, Glasgow
Vikki Stone, 25, London
Napoleon Ryan, 30, Kent
Eddie Kadi, 25, London

Presenting
Carly Lindon-Forrester, 23, Liverpool
Laura Marks, 22, Glasgow
Amelia Gildea, 23, Wiltshire
Ben Chancellor, 30, London
James Sherwood, 25, Kent

On-Air Radio
Alex Baker, 25, Birmingham
Adam Edworthy, 22, Coventry
Alex James Atkinson, 27, Manchester
Veena Virahsammy, 21, Barking
Steve Folland, 29, Hertfordshire

Off-Air Radio
Andy Ward, 23, Sussex
Simon Buschenfeld, 30, Bristol
Philip Dyer, 29, London
Matt Horne, 26 & Colin Greaves, Gateshead
Ann Scantlebury, 23, London

Music
Toby Trueman, 26 - The Icarus, Edinburgh
Oliver Harrison, 21 - Fossil Club, Bristol
Camille Davila, 29, Cambridgeshire
Louis Standard, 19 - Pinstripe, Avon
Iain Woods, 22, Brighton

Production Music
Ella Spira, 20, London
Blair Mowat, 22, Edinburgh
Chris Hanson, 26, London
Richard Mead, 29, Maidstone
Richard Bradley, 28, Sheffield

Music Video
Ian Smith, 26, Oxford
James Cook, 22, Durham
James Knott & James Curran, 26, Derby
Steven Quinn, 27, Belfast
James Willis, 23, Humberside

Innovation
Becki Burrows, 27, London
Jack Lenox, 21, Surrey
Kay Vasey, 29 & Jonny Emmanuel, London
Mike Young, 23, Hertfordshire
Phil Mundy, 27, Huddersfield

Multi-platform
Chi-chi Ekweozor, 29, Manchester
Dan Hon, 29, London
Steve Ellis, 26, Birmingham
Mike Cunsolo, 28, Sheffield
Claire-Frances Lennon, 25, Glasgow

Animation
Ian Wharton, 23 & Edward Shires, Preston
Mark Nute, 29, Gateshead
Jessica Cope, 24, North Yorkshire
Karen Penman, 28 & Liam Brazier, Essex
Cassiano Prado, 30, London

Journalism
Rob Sharp, 28, London
Hassan Ghani, 23, Slough
Natalie Whelan, 22, London
Lauren Carter, 23, Hertfordshire
Lee Coan, 29, Hertfordshire

Photography
Lucinda Chua, 23, Nottingham
Ellie Harvey, 22, London
Hal Sear, 24, Watford
Eleanor Hardwick, 15, Reading
Loubie-Lou photography, 30, Leicester

Multi-talented
Rob Madin, 22, Chesterfield
Oliver Lansley, 27, Surrey
James Roberts, 23, London
Allyn Lawson, 22, Warwickshire
Jamie Stone, 23, Edinburgh

Wildcard
Chris O’Shea, 27, London
Johanna Basford, 25, Dundee
David Procter, 25, London
Amy Winters, 24 & Kseniya Zagorodnyuk, London
Tanya Richam-Odoi, 27, Leeds

To hear Frankie’s pre-Bestival podcast with Rob Da Bank, click here.

Award-winning filmmaker James Lees guest-blogs from the Sarajevo Film Festival.

Attending Sarajevo Film Festival was a bit of a last minute decision for me. I have always thought it would be a great festival to check out but there are so many out there. As it was, a filmmaker I know, Chris Bates was already over there filming some footage for a documentary he was working on. Chris and I had actually discussed his documentary on numerous occasions since he had come to speak to me after a Screen WM film event I was talking at. He had some great ideas for films set in Bosnia but needed some help pinning down the best story to tell and finding funding. Chris asked me to come out and help him shoot some footage and meet his contacts at the film festival - how could I say no?

My own film The Apology Line was actually being screened at the festival as part of the European Film Academy Prix UIP Award Winners Programme and the EFA asked me if I would give a Q&A after the screening. I have been working with the EFA since the film won the Prix UIP Best European Short at Cork International Film Festival (a great festival to attend by the way and coming up again October 12 to 19th) which meant it was also nominated in the Short Film Category of the European Film Awards, this year being held in Copenhagen.

I landed in Sarajevo and Chris picked me up and drove me to his family’s place in town. I was immediately struck with the contrast between the shiny, glossy modern architectural experiments in office design and the bullet and grenade-pocked walls of concrete communist block apartment blocks. Here was a city clearly in transition, but a long way from shaking off its dark and violent history.

After a quick tour I got straight to the festival and settled myself down in front of a few films. First up was My Winnipeg, and the second was Divorce Albanian Style, a film about three Albanian couples pulled apart by the strict regime of Enver Hoxha, two films that couldn’t be more different in tone. My Winnipeg was truly original and charming which can rarely be said but it did feel like Guy Maddin could have taken the ideas and approach further. Divorce Albanian Style was very formulaic and straight in its approach but with such a devastating human story to tell this was perhaps unavoidable.

Next up: the post-screening Q&A - the director’s perspective.

Following on from our finalist announcement for Radio HaHa, here are some short biogs of the chosen 9. Many thanks to all those who took the time to submit their moments of comic genius.

Daniel Jamieson
Daniel is a 17-year-old film student from Edinburgh. His submission, AJ and Finnegan, is a spoof American cop show following partners AJ, a young hot-shot rookie, and Finnegan, a gritty old-hand maverick as they fight back threats to national security while constantly arguing about it. It was created in his college’s recording studio, and Daniel directs, storylines, edits and adds sounds to each episode, while allowing actors to improvise some real comedy gold.

Jenni Armstrong
Jenni is a stand-up comedian who writes sitcoms for radio and television, and makes comedy shorts. She uses a DIY aesthetic to enhance the surreal comedy of her work, and has filmed a mini-series called Jenni Shows and Tells which can be viewed on YouTube. In May, Jenni did a comedy review in the style of this show for 4Laughs. Jenni’s submissions for Radio HaHa include Lebacuppacoffee, a mock promo for a Lebanese coffee shop, and the surreal skit The Adventures of Gok Wan.

Lauren O’Reilly
Lauren is a 22-year-old postgraduate student in scriptwriting and drama school graduate who aims to write scripts for radio. Her idea for Radio HaHa, The Race, is an inner space-style comedy skit following sperm as they compete to fertilise an egg following a drunken encounter. Lauren’s inspiration for the piece struck following a night out where Lauren found herself watching a group of drunken men dance terribly and asked herself, “You were the one that reached the egg first?”

Madeleine Brettingham
Madeleine is a radio and television comedy writer whose work has featured on several Radio 4 programmes, including Recorded for Training Purposes, Fordham and Lipson and The News Quiz. She’s interested in comedy that provides a new take on the world, and her submission, Goth Town, poses questions such as ‘What’s it like having to exude satanic majesty while you’re buying bogroll from CostCutter, or visiting your nan?’ Goth Town follows the story of a misfit brother and sister who live in a grimy townhouse near Morrisons, and their struggle to stand out in a grey world.

Richard Cray
Richard is a former radio commercial producer who, in his words, “Left the industry to get a proper job.” He’s been a regular on the London comedy circuit, produces podcasts for Comedy 365 and is co-producing a show at the Edinburgh Fringe. Richard’s submission is a compilation of spoof radio ads and promos: The Dogs Must Be Carried, Top 50, and Liar News.

Nicola Depuis
After studying Radio & Theatre Production, Nicola worked as a journalist for seven years, during which time she hosted a weekly radio show. A finalist in the Galway Film Fleadh pitching competition this year, her first screenplay was recently optioned and she’s currently working on a studio assignment. Tubescent is a radio sitcom that gives a comic insight into the lives, worries and conversations of teenage friends aimlessly riding the public transport systems of their city.

Richard Kelly
Richard is a former teacher who is now focusing on a writing career. His sit-com, The Good Defenders, is a comical take on the traditional superhero story following a team of B-list heroes that protect Earth from rogue celebrities, with some hilarious consequences.

Andy Ward
A recent Keele University graduate, Andy Ward presented, produced and wrote several popular university radio shows while studying there and has recently been trying his hand at stand-up comedy. His submission, Spooky Times, is a surreal ghost story that follows a man who encounters particularly bad problems whilst attempting to prepare a barbecue, juxtaposing the presentation style and atmosphere of a serious ghost story with a comic writing style.

Stephen Yorke & Ben Harris
Stephen and Ben are a duo who write TV radio and press ads at separate advertising agencies in London. The pair recently decided to collaborate on their own comedy pieces. and came up with the idea of creating podcasts to bring their comedy to the world. Their programme, Funpot, is recorded at home on their computer and comprises 5-minute slots of the pair ‘trying to make each other laugh’ by creating comic situations and playing off one another.

As you may have noticed, over the last few months we’ve been calling for up-and-coming comics to fling their funny bits in our direction for a unique competition with E4 Radio, called Radio HaHa. The response was incredible: we had literally thousands of audio clips and scripts snippets piling into our inbox.

It took us a little while, but we have our 9 finalists. They’ll be wending their wily ways to the Edinburgh Comedy Festival next week for a day of intensive workshops, followed by a nerve-racking pitch to a panel of E4 Radio commissioners, who have pledged to match at least one of them with an independent production company to take the idea to broadcast.

So here they are:

Daniel Jamieson for his shrewd spoof of US police drama
Jenni Armstrong for her delightfully surreal Gok Wan adventures
Lauren O’Reilly for her sticky sperm sketch The Race
Nicola Depuis for teen-public-transport-com Tubescent
Madeleine Brettingham for Goth Town’s dark humour
Richard Kelly for his off-the-wall take on the superhero genre
Stephen Yorke for some witty on-air banter
Andy Ward for his dryly hilarious Spooky Times
Richard Cray for taking off local radio cliches with tongue firmly in cheek

You can also read more detailed biogs of all of the above.

More to come from the finalists: watch this space. We’ll be following the ideas through the development process in the next issue of 4Talent magazine, and they’ll even be featuring in a special episode of The Fix podcast, which launched with the first episode yesterday.

After pitching a behind-the-scenes film about the workings of Channel 4 to a panel of big wigs, Summer School placement Catherine Madden reflects on how it felt.

So you’ve worked on an idea that you feel passionate about. You know it has potential, and the thought of anyone ripping it to shreds and making you feel stupid is terrifying. But realistically, how many commissioners ever say, “Wonderful, I love everything about that idea, here’s £10k to develop it?” I went into the boardroom knowing that it wouldn’t be perfect, but prepared to learn something so that next time, I’d be better.

Each of the four ideas we were pitching was very different, but hopefully shared the following characteristics: challenging, insightful, funny, visual, intimate, and the list goes on. You’d almost think I really knew what I was talking about.

I felt confident that we’d come up with great ideas, but that’s what everyone thinks before going into a pitch. But more than anything else, this experience taught me that while there’s no such thing as the perfect idea, presenting your pitch perfectly is a good start.

I was given several tips, all of which are simple to follow. Make things as visual as possible when you describe them: a commissioner wants to visualise the story. But definitely don’t hand out paper before you start: they’ll spend their time reading that rather than paying attention to you. And to introduce your pitch, sum up your idea in one line.

But the best bit of advice was to be yourself. Commissioners are only human; they’re not waiting for you to slip up. If you’re not quite sure about a certain aspect, ask for advice. Don’t try to sound like you know what you’re talking about when you don’t: they’ll see right through you. But providing you’re passionate about the idea and you prepare well, all you can do is learn - even if you don’t get the commission.

Watch this space for updates on how the Summer School placements get on.

We’ve taken our sweet time, but we can now proudly announce our top-level judges for this year’s 4Talent Awards - our showcase of the UK’s hottest young creative talent.

Our latest scoop is legendary trance DJ Paul Oakenfold, co-creator of that notoriously infectious Big Brother theme, for the Production Music category.

Victoria Pile, creator of Green Wing and Smack the Pony, is on hand to judge your Comedy Writing skills.

Charlie Pattinson, who exec-produces multi-award-winning hit series Skins and Shameless at Company Pictures, will be casting his eye over the hotly-contested Dramatic Performance category.

Double Bafta-winning This is England producer Mark Herbert at Warp Films will rate the Directing entries, while T4’s exec producer Richard Cook at Eyeworks is hungry for new Presenting talent.

Exciting animators: get your painstakingly-crafted work on the desk of Helen Brunsdon at Aardman. And for innovative cross-platform producers: who better to see if you have what it takes than digital marketing guru James Kirkham at Holler, the agency behind the groundbreaking Skins campaign.

Not to mention senior Channel 4 commissioners across the board: Comedy, Documentary, Drama, Film4, Radio, T4, Music, New Media, 4Creative and Current Affairs.

For those in the know, these include Shane Allen, Caroline Leddy, Sarah Mulvey, Kate Vogel, Liza Marshall, Peter Carlton, Sam Steele, Debbie David, Cath Lovesey, Neil McCallum, Matt Locke, Adam Gee, Alice Tonge and Dorothy Byrne. Oh yes: we’ve been busy.

So if you’re under 30 and hungry to get your finest work under the noses of some of the best in the business, you have until 5pm on 29th August 2008.

The first masterclass of the day was on interview technique. It was hosted by BBC’s Kate Adie with a panel including a police interrogator, a forensic investigator and a QC: the subject in discussion was how to get the ‘real truth’ out of someone, an invaluable technique for the would-be documentarian.

Rapport and mutuality are both very important. make it absolutely clear who you are and what you are doing because if there is any confusion, then you won’t be able to get open or honest answers from them.

It’s kind of an obvious one, but background research is also essential. That way if you do know they are lying then you can have something up the sleeve to get the truth out of them. If dealing with a hostile or defensive contributor, lack of research will often lead to them outsmarting you, after which you lose the upper hand.

A nifty trick from the QC: when approaching the killer question with a defensive individual: rock out the negative to catch them out, i.e. instead of asking, ‘did you push her off the balcony?’ ask, ‘are you saying you didn’t push her off the balcony?’ Sneaky stuff.

After that I attended the screening of Heavy Load, a film about a punk band of the same name, made up of people with learning difficulties and their support workers. Director Jerry Rothwell followed them for two years, and the film depicts a portrait of their double lives: rehearsals, gigs and local fame on one side; group cooking, day-centres and lack of freedom on the other. I strongly urge you to see it when it’s released in October. It was a real Horlicks-for-the-soul experience, which had the audience screaming and laughing all the way through.

Following in the comedy vein was the final session of the festival, ‘Larry Charles in Conversation’. Larry has in the past produced and directed films and series including Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Borat. He certainly knows how to bring the funny. A packed house was treated to clips from his new documentary Religulous, starring Bill Maher, due for release this autumn. It’s incredible that people can now dismiss all religion as a silly, groundless pursuit and do it so succinctly, logically and thoroughly. You want controversial? Go and see this film.

“We are the last gasp of monotheism”, says Charles. This coming from a man who at one point wanted to be a Rabbi, so he’s obviously given it a lot of thought.

At the awards ceremony later, Heavy Load wins the Audience Prize, and to round the whole thing off the band play to a packed Keble College bar. Their rendition of I See You Baby, Shaking that Arsehole was simply top notch. I’ve learned a veritable shedload at this, my first Britdoc. I have a lot to be getting busy with, and fully intend to return next year, hopefully several completed films better off.

Fellow documentary-maker? Commissioner? Write to Chris at: chrisgbates@gmail.com

Film-maker Chris Bates blogs about his second day at Britdoc festival, pitching his film to commissioners.

A big day today. My first time pitching face-to-face to an actual commissioner.

Current TV is a great platform for first time filmmakers, and if I can get a few pieces on their channel, then that could provide some serious opportunities further on down the line. We met at 10, and informal as it may have been – sat on the grass outside the café – I was nervous. Had I prepared enough for this? It was a simple idea, but had I fully thought it through?

My fears were confirmed when I ran out of things to say. Current TV liked the concept – it was modern, linked to youth culture and urban social conflict – but it needed more development. Obviously being a documentary we do not know exactly what will happen during filming, but it is essential to have some knowledge of the film’s structure beyond the original concept, and this was my stumbling point. ‘Go away, think about it and come up with some structural ideas, then get back to us.’ Ok, let’s chalk that one down to experience.

So I had lost my pitching cherry, and it was all over rather quickly. But hey, it’s never that good first time round anyway, right?

Before arriving at Britdoc, I had arranged through the online delegate messaging system to meet with Brian Woods – 3-time BAFTA and 7-time Emmy award-winning documentary director and producer. He had been involved with films in Eastern Europe before, and if I could get his interest with my Bosnia project, then possibly he would act as my mentor, maybe even come in as executive producer.

Brian was fantastically helpful, but unfortunately here was more of the same: my story needed more character-based development: conversations, arguments, convincing, desperation to achieve the goal; and specific knowledge of how this was to be filmed.

Brian also said that the reason the pitch and proposal are so important to get right (which seemed obvious once he’d explained it), was that these things were all the commissioners had to make the decision whether to fund the film or not. If some details of the pitch end up different in the film, or even if the main character changes for example, that is generally fine, but you need the pitch to be good enough for the funders to agree in the first place, otherwise there’s no film.

I watched several screenings after this, all excellent documentaries. But for the most part I was distracted, thinking about what my next steps were for my Bosnia project. New pitch, proposal and trailer; character struggle, secondary narratives, arguments, build-up to a final event… I really have my work cut out.

Film-maker Chris Bates writes a blog from Britdoc documentary film festival.

Billed as ‘the most productive 3 days of the year’ for UK documentary, Britdoc festival in Oxford was an event that as a freelance film-maker I just had to visit.

I have several doco projects of my own that I am trying to take to the next level, and it seemed the hours of masterclasses, screenings, pitching sessions, debates and surgeries that were organised and hosted by the industry’s finest, would be invaluable to me.

The beautiful quads and sharply-mown lawns of Keble College, Oxford provided the location where over 900 doco-heads were to congregate for Britdoc’s third year. I had an agenda to keep - pitch my documentary ideas to as many potential funders as I could, and set up meetings with as many relevant people as possible to get advice on where to go next with my documentary set in Bosnia. I was looking for a mentor, who could possibly even become an exec-producer.

So with my game face on and clutching my newly-printed business cards, I arrived at Keble 9am sharp on Wednesday morning. First up was a masterclass with US-based Documentary Doctor Fernanda Rossi: how to make a Killer Trailer.

In recent years, as distribution of film funds has become ever tighter, the need for a trailer as a principal fund-raising tool has become paramount.

The ideal pitch comprises three ‘tools of persuasion’ - the Holy Trinity, as Fernanda put it, which are trailer, proposal, and pitch. These are the audio-visual form of the pitch, the written form, and the verbal form respectively, and they must work together seamlessly.

The trailer should be five to ten minutes long, and needs to have full scenes to show the story, how things will unfold, and to identify with the main character. It should answer questions in the commissioner’s head.

It should say something about you, too. What’s the style of the film? Is there a voice-over or not? And who are you to be telling this story?

Essentially, the trailer should be like a short without an ending. If it has an ending, the commissioner will probably congratulate you on a lovely short film and walk out the door. Having a hook makes them want to know what happens next.

Oh dear. So my trailer for a film about Bosnia which was shot before the project developed into a character doc, and thus contains none of him whatsoever, will probably be re-evaluated… One lesson learned, two days of the festival still to go.

Another week, another festival microblog. The weekend just gone saw 4Talent head to Birmingham’s Custard Factory to bring you Twitter updates from the small but noisily formed Supersonic, featuring a dream line-up of sludgey, grungey, kraut-rocking noise for those who like their music uncompromisingly large of sound and eclectic of source. For those who couldn’t make it, we’ll be rolling out our interviews with teen screamers Rolo Tomassi, local lads Einstellung and the ever popular Fuck Buttons on 4Talent Central over the coming week.

But forget Supersonic for a moment and cast your mind back all of three weeks to grande dame of festivals Glastonbury, where amidst the excitement of secret gigs from Franz Ferdinand, being roped in at the last minute to interview James Blunt for Oxfam, and doing our bit for the planet by taking tea to Oxfam volunteers in a battered jeep, we just about found the time to run a live Twitter competition from the festival site.

We’re now pleased to be able to announce the winner of said competition, who with the best answer to our Oxfam-sponsored question “What gets your knickers in a twist?” will be joining us at sold-out Bestival in September to interview an artist for a 4Talent podcast. The winner, 19 year old Frankie Ward, persuaded us with an answer we couldn’t agree with more. So what, exactly, gets Frankie’s knickers in a twist? That would be: “Interviewers asking bands who they’re doing, not what they’re doing.”

Currently on a work experience placement with BBC Kent, Frankie is an aspiring journalist whose festival experiences this summer have already included standing in for teen folk sensation Laura Marling (pictured below) on stage with the Mystery Jets at Lounge on the Farm. Watch this space for her 4Talent Bestival podcast in September…

Laura Marling at Glastonbury getting her knickers in a twist.

Six young directing talents journeyed up to the Edinburgh International Film Festival as part of 4Talent and Film4’s Directors’ Lab. We asked a couple of them to give us a potted glimpse at what they’re up to.

“We started off the day with Mia Bays, the independent producer and Microwave head don,” begins Charles-Henri Belleville. “Mia talked passionately and insightfully for 90 minutes on exactly how the food chain in the film industry works. Very revealing.”

“We then had an interactive session with JJ Lousberg (UKFC), Danny Perkins from Optimum Releasing and Sam Horley, a sales agent. This was superb - we split into teams, each were given a distribution company and their budgets. We had to purchase two films from Sam that made the most money, with Danny supporting us. Sam is tough and Danny is a great negotiator. Very educational, but also had everyone in the room in stitches as us directors pitched our hearts out!”

“Amy and I rocked,” adds Hope Dickson Leach [Day 1]. “We got This Is England and Ratcatcher - I like to think it was because of the photo-shoots we had planned for Shane Meadows in ID magazine…”

“We had an amazing meal at Howies - great fun meeting producers over the best soup I have ever had. Honey and parsnip: sensational,” Charlie continues. “Our fireside chat was with Caroline Cooper-Charles from Warp X and Donkey Punch director Olly Blackburn. It’s clear Warp X has something very special going on, and Olly is destined for great things - he really inspired us all with his humility. If you ever meet him, ask to hear his story about Wild Turkey at sunset…”

Charles-Henri has directed promos for Ashley Walters, MTV and Pathé. His first micro budget feature The Inheritance (2007) was nominated for Best British Feature at Raindance Film Festival 2007 and subsequently won the inaugural Raindance Award at the British Independent Film Awards 2007. Charles-Henri was nominated for Best New Director at the BAFTA Scotland New Talent Awards 2008 and for the 4Talent Awards 2007. He is currently in post-production on his next feature Midnight Madness, a basketball documentary.

Six young directing talents journeyed up to the Edinburgh International Film Festival as part of 4Talent and Film4’s Directors’ Lab. We asked a couple of them to give us a potted glimpse at what they’re up to.

“Day one and we’re off with a bang,” begins Hope Dickson Leach. “We began the day meeting all those people it would take months to see you in their office, and it was great to hear them talk. I’m not going to tell you what they said, as that’s classified and I’d have to find you and kill you all, but believe me, I wasn’t the only one taking notes and raising my hand to ask the questions.”

“We’re all here with a mission, and that mission is to make movies. Despite the fact everyone is doing their best to convince us that making a first feature is impossible, we all know it happens, so why can’t it be us?”

“All six of us are writer-directors and we were lucky enough to meet talented and busy screenwriter David Nicholls (Starter for Ten, And When Did You Last See Your Father?) who filled us with inspiration about how receptive the industry is becoming to involving writers in more than just the opening stages of the film-making process.”

“And then off to the beautiful castle-side apartment for a ‘fireside chat’ with Isabelle Coixet (Elegy) who told us, like your favourite pair of trainers that just keeps on giving, to just do it. With that in mind we were off to the premiere of the Warp X produced (debut film) Donkey Punch, and then their kick-ass party. Which leaves me feeling quite warped myself as I dash off to today’s fantastic lineup. More from us tomorrow.”

Hope made her short film The Dawn Chorus (2006) as part of her MFA program at Columbia University. Her film was selected for Sundance Film Festival 2007, Edinburgh International Film Festival 2006, London International Film Festival 2006, and won Best Narrative Student Short at Austin Film Festival 2006. In 2007 Hope was named as a Star of Tomorrow by Screen International and as one of the 25 New Faces of Independent Film by Filmmaker magazine. She is currently developing her first feature film English Rose, about a teenage girl who hates Princess Diana, which was featured in the Berlinale Project Talent Market 2008.

Update: 9 finalists revealed

We’ve just launched our fantastic new competition with E4 Radio: Radio HaHa. Submit short audio clips or comic scribblings: the best 9 will go through intensive workshops at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival, then pitch to get their idea developed into a fully-fledged radio show on the new station when it launches.

But what’s E4 Radio actually about? No doubt any radio producers among you will be drooling with anticipation at the thought of a new door being chiselled in the rock-face of British radio, so we asked the team to pitch it to us in 300 words. So from the horse’s mouth:

“E4 Radio will be a new kind of station. One that’s up for a bit of fun and mischief and for doing things differently. Like the TV channel and its website, E4 Radio will provide mainstream entertainment targeted at 16-34s. The schedule will focus on the E4 staples of great music, comedy and entertainment and will pride itself on being the first to bring its audience new stuff and new talent from these worlds.

We’re going to give the audience more access to the airwaves than ever before, providing new levels of interactivity and an active role in shaping the sound of the station, from music to the news agenda. We’re making a radio station for an audience that likes to listen to radio content when they want to, on-demand as well as live, and we’ll be commissioning different programmes tailored to these listening modes.

In terms of comedy, our door is open to every kind of comedy there is - we want our schedule to be flexible enough to accommodate to accommodate bite-sized short programmes, more traditional built blocks, and we hope to pioneer new comedy formats that don’t even exist yet. We think there’s tonnes of scope to innovate with format and we want to trial lots of things. As with all our output we want to create programming from a much more diverse set of voices, stimulate new areas of independent production and create new cross platform collaborations.”

This post is the last in a series. Read the first installment.

Words: Pete Ashton
Illustration: Raymond Weekes

Okay, I’ve rambled and covered a hell of a lot of ground. To be honest it’s hard to give a proper masterclass or How To for blogging because the beauty of the form is there are no rules. I know what works for me but it’s unlikely to work for you and some of the best blogs I’ve seen have been approaching the medium in ways I hadn’t ever considered before. You should use blogging (and other similar web services like Flickr and Last.FM) in the same way you use other forms of communication like the telephone or your local pub - in ways that work for you and the community you’re part of.

And while this might be scary be assured that underlying it all is the magic that makes the internet work, the reason that you can find stuff on Google, how an American became a fan of you band on MySpace or how you got that commission because someone blogged a photo of your work with a link to your site.

Blogging might be as easy as writing an email but its the structured metadata that takes your message and makes available to the right people across the world. And the beauty of it all is you don’t have to think about it, unless you want to (and it’s not that hard really - hell, I can’t write programming code and I get it). You just need to go to wordpress.com (4talentmagazine.com is built with Wordpress), blogger.com, typepad.com or some other blogging service and get posting and linking. The internet looks after the rest.

< Week 7: plugging into the system

< Read the series from the start

Next on 4 is Channel 4’s vision for the future. Fresh talent, fresh perspectives, youth, diversity and innovation in all its forms will lead and shape the channel’s content in the years to come. So with our readers in mind, we asked those at the commissioning coalface what’s pushing their buttons in 2008.

Who we spoke to:

Liam Humphreys, Commissioning Editor, Features | Walter Iuzzolino, Deputy Head, Features | Dominique Walker, Commissioning Editor, Factual Entertainment | Alistair Pegg, Editor, Factual Entertainment | Ruby Kuraishe, Editor, Factual Entertainment, E4 | Simon Dickson, Deputy Head, Documentaries | Meredith Chambers, Commissioning Editor, Documentaries | Kate Vogel, Editor, 3 Minute Wonder | Jan Younghusband, Commissioning Editor, Arts & Performance | Shane Allen, Commissioning Editor, Comedy | Andy Auerbach, Commissioning Editor, Entertainment | Matt Locke, Commissioning Editor, Education | Jo Roach, Commissioning Editor, Education | Kevin Sutcliffe, Deputy Head, News & Current Affairs | Camilla Campbell, Commissioning Editor, Drama | Adam Gee, Commissioning Editor, New Media Factual | Aaquil Ahmed, Commissioning Editor, Religion | David Glover, Commissioning Editor, Science | Katherine Butler, Head of Development, Film4 | Ade Rawcliffe, Diversity & Talent Manager | Alison Walsh, Editorial Manager, Disability.

Browse all the responses >

Image by Tom Gaul

This post forms part of a series. Read the first installment.

Words: Pete Ashton
Illustration: Raymond Weekes

Now let’s say that you’re actually really boring. There’s a market for what you do but to be honest the mechanisms of how you do it aren’t really of interest to anyone. Or let’s say you just don’t want to communicate all this fluffy personal nonsense. Blogging as I’ve described it here just doesn’t interest you in the slightest. Allowing for the fact that you probably haven’t read this far (which, if you’ll forgive me, demonstrates a limitation of the magazine form - online this “post” would stand alone and those for whom it might be relevant would find it through Google regardless of what came before or after it on the blog itself) the blogging form still has value to you.

You’ve probably heard the term Web 2.0. If you’ve investigated it a bit you might think it has to do with something called User Generated Content and heralds a revolution whereby professionals are overthrown in favour of the amateur masses, or somesuch nonsense. While this is a side-effect of the blogging revolution it’s not what’s really important about it. What’s really interesting is that the internet is starting to be populated by data that is structured and interchangeable according to established standards.

To illustrate what this means think of a library full of books. Every book is different with unique content but there are aspects of the books that fit into categories. The title, author, publisher, Dewy Decimal categories, dimensions, ISBN, and so on. This information can be indexed by the library to not only identify what shelf the book is held on but how it relates to other books in the collection, very handy for books that cover a number of different subjects.

Most blogging services, along with services like Flickr and YouTube, structure the information you put into them in a similar way. So a blog post has at the very least a title, date, category, and the content itself. And because this is based on accepted standards all this information is interchangeable. Which means anyone can take your content and stick it into a giant database automatically. And then people can ask this database questions and find relevant and accurate information which may well include your content.

You might hear people talking about arcane and mysterious arts like Search Engine Optimisation but this is pretty much all there is to it. Put your stuff online in a manner in which Google can understand it and you’ll appear in the relevant search results. If you have photos on Flickr that are accurately tagged in relation to their subject then they’ll appear in the searches for those subjects.

You don’t have to run a “blog” in the accepted sense of the word in order to get into this game. It’s just that blogs automatically structure themselves in this way and since they’re very easy to use it makes sense to take advantage of this. This YouTube video called Web 2.0 Machine explains this rather well. And when you’re doing this, have a think about how that little search query works for a piece of video. It’s all about the metadata, a piece of jargon which simply means “data about data”. Give you stuff metadata and people will find it. If you don’t have properly structured metadata your website will just sit there with nobody finding it, no matter how lovely it looks.

< Week 6: first impressions

Next in the series: in conclusion >

This post forms part of a series. Read the first installment.

Words: Pete Ashton
Illustration: Raymond Weekes

So here you are, trying to turn your creative skills into a business that pays your bills and here I am telling you not to worry about the polish of what you’re putting on the internet. Isn’t that a bit like meeting your bank manager dressed in torn jeans, and chewing gum? Sure, it might be you but is it wise? That’s ultimately a decision you’re going to have to make for yourself, but be aware that blogging doesn’t dictate a particular style. You can be as formal and polished as you want.

In fact, taking a bit of care over your words and presentation can be rather refreshing and make you stand out from the crowd. And you don’t have to completely be yourself. This is the Internet so feel free to invent aspects of your character and play with them. You could even pretend your business is a corporation with offices around the world rather than based in your kitchen and push this spoof to absurd limits. Maybe your ‘factory’ is staffed by sentient robots or something. The possibilities are endless, really.

But above all remember that the blog doesn’t replace other more traditional forms of marketing. You’re probably still going to need some kind of brochure that looks all slick and some kind of formal business statement stuff. An analogy I like to use is a high street shop.

The window display is slick and probably dictated by the bods in head office. People glance at it and know immediately what they’re getting. It’s beautifully designed and communicates the message well. So the potential customer comes into the shop and starts chatting to the guy behind the counter. He’s a little hungover and stressed but very passionate about the products on sale and has the sort of knowledge that comes from being immersed in an industry. As it happens they don’t have what the customer wants so he sends them to a similar shop down the road but the customer is impressed with the service and likes this guy on a personal level so they make a point of coming back.

Assuming you’re a sole trader your best marketing tool is yourself. If you’re running a stall at a craft market or pitching your film to funders your personality is going to go a long way to clinching the deal. The same goes for online. You need to complement the lovely photos of your work with a bit about yourself. And, in my experience, the simplest way to do that is to tell your story in a blog.

< Week 5: what about me?

Next in the series: plugging into the system >

Across 20 categories the 4Talent Awards tip exciting individuals with the potential to make a difference, as judged both by commissioners and the producers who supply them.

All the info on how to apply for the 4Talent Awards is here.

We now have over half of the 40 (yes, 40) judges on side:

Kate Vogel, Editor, 3 Minute Wonder (C4)
Sarah Mulvey, Commissioning Editor, Documentaries (C4)
Robert Wulff-Cochrane, Senior Development Editor, Drama (C4)
Caroline Leddy, Commissioning Editor, Comedy (C4)
Victoria Pile, Writer, Green Wing, Smack the Pony
Shane Allen, Commissioning Editor, Comedy (C4)
Ben Caudell, Creative Director @ Zeppotron
Liza Marshall, Head of Drama (C4)
Charlie Pattinson, Exec Producer @ Company (Shameless)
Cath Lovesey, Editor, Music (C4)
Lana Webb, Head of Music @ Remedy
Debbie David, Commissioning Editor, T4 (C4)
Richard Cook, Exec Producer @ Eyeworks (T4, Popworld)
Matt Locke, Commissioning Editor, Education (C4)
James Kirkham, Manager Director @ Holler
Dorothy Byrne, Head of News & Current Affairs (C4)
Alice Tonge, Art Director, 4Creative (C4)
Ewen Spencer, Freelance photographer (shot for Skins)
Ruth Fielding, Managing Director @ Lupus Films
Adam Gee, Commissioning Editor, New Media Factual (C4)
James Estill, Senior Producer, 4Talent (C4)

Further updates on the way soon.

This post forms part of a series. Read the first installment.

Words: Pete Ashton
Illustration: Raymond Weekes

Now, reading all this you might be saying, “This is all well and good but, frankly, I can’t write,” and that’s a fair comment. After all, you’ve chosen the medium of film or clay or needlepoint rather than wordsmithing for a reason. How do you join this global conversation if you sort of write like a 10-year-old? Here’s a few ideas for a few sorts of creatives:

Cartoonist: Diary comics are a no brainer really. Don’t worry if your life is boring, just think of it as a daily drawing exercise.
Pottery: Video the creation of your pots, especially if you use a wheel.
Animator: As you’re working on a piece post up stills and trial clips.
Photographer: Go play on Flickr for a while and feed your work (and others’) into your blog.
Textiles: Photos of works in progress. Model clothes yourself.

You can probably adapt those ideas to all manner of things and no doubt think of many better ones.

But the big thing here is not to worry about creating something worthy of a Pulitzer on your blog. Use it to record what you’re up to. If you’re selling at a market take photos. If you’re giving a talk, record it and make the audio / video available. If you’ve been thinking about issues related to your craft, jot down some notes and ideas. Treat it as a scrapbook for your journey as a whatever-you-are.

And here’s the thing. No matter how mundane it might seem to you it’ll be fascinating to those who can’t do what you do, especially if they’re interested in the stuff you do, and they’re the sort of people you want to be interested in you.

< Week 4: getting personal

Next in the series: first impressions >

This post forms part of a series. Read the first installment.

Words: Pete Ashton
Illustration: Raymond Weekes

Blimey, I went off on one there. Sorry about that. You just want to know how you can use a blog to increase the audience and customer base for your creative endeavor and here I am wittering on about causality and intertwingularity and stuff. So let’s bring this down to earth with some real world examples.

Say you’re a photographer looking to develop your business in the area of portraiture and wedding photography. You’ve got a lovely website that shows off your best work and maybe even a section where clients and their friends and family can order prints online. Now, part of your appeal is your skill with the camera but another important part is your personality. You’re not just selling your art, you’re selling yourself.

Now you could have a page on your site with a biography but that’ll probably come all all contrived. What you want to do is talk to the potential clients in your own voice, telling them your story. A good example would be stevegerrarddiary.com where the titular photographer Steve Gerrard writes about the work he’s been doing. The hook is his jobs tend to veer between beautiful wedding shoots and dirty rock photography so each post will usually have a selection of shots from a couple’s happiest day juxtaposed with some hairy monster screaming on stage.

But that’s not why it works. What really comes home to me is how Steve’s character is brought out through the blog as he talks about his strange life. You feel like you know him and his family. Not too much, mind. He’s careful to keep the private private. But just enough that you’d feel comfortable asking him to record your wedding. At least I know I would.

Another great example is theblackapple.typepad.com, brought to my attention by Antonio Gould in is fifth New Media 4Cast for 4Talent. Here Emily Martin blogs about the stuff she sells on her etsy.com site. Etsy is sort of like eBay without the auctions and only for handmade items but while it’s great that you’re in a curated space (rather like, say, Camden market) it can be hard to rise above the crowds. You need to add more that just the details the site will let you enter. You need to add yourself. Emily does this brilliantly with her blog talking about the new products in her store, the motivations for creating them, and dropping in little nuggets about her own life. Again, nothing too detailed but enough that her readers can identify with her as an individual. And judging by the number of comments each post gets she’s developed a pretty dedicated community.

But there’s one very important thing that both Steve and Emily do that I haven’t mentioned. They both link to “the competition”, in Steve’s case other photographers he knows and likes, in Emily’s case other Etsy shops she buys stuff from. In a small way they’re setting themselves up as resources for their communities, partly because it makes sense to support your peers to build a sustainable environment but also because they’re human and that’s what humans do. And as other bloggers in their communities do the same the effect is quite dramatic as a network emerges that is structured and easily navigable yet always changing and evolving as people come and go. Nobody ever has a complete handle on what’s going on and no-one is in charge but it works.

< Week 3: everything is intertwingled

Next in the series: what about me? >

This post forms part of a series. Read the first installment.

Words: Pete Ashton
Illustration: Raymond Weekes

When you stick something on the Internet it becomes part of the network. If your something is a fancy looking website that has pictures of the stuff you do and not much else then sure, it’ll be on the grid but only in the sense that the Isle of Feltar is part of the United Kingdom. It’s there but it’s not exactly engaging with the bustling hubs of the country. Which is fine, if that’s what you want, but you might want a little more from your something on the Internet. You might want it to actually engage.

If you want to connect with the rest of the Internet a blog is probably the best way to do it. Part of this is the conversational tone I mentioned before but a huge chunk of it comes down to the humble link.

You’re no doubt familiar with Wikipedia - the online encyclopedia that might not be accurate but by God it’s useful. And you’ve probably had that experience where you look up something, say the Island of Fetlar (and, by the way, doesn’t that sound just a little rude to you?), and within four clicks find yourself reading about Genoa Cathedral. Or hermit crabs. Or melodic death metal. Or kittens. And it might seem incredibly random and at times absurd that these things are somehow connected. But they are.

Just as the multiplex nature of causality gives the illusion of free will so the complexity of the inter-linked Internet gives the illusion of random chaos to such a degree that it can be hard to see how you might engage with this. But it can be done. Once you understand, in the words of Ted Nelson, that everything is deeply intertwingled, then you’re on the road to getting it right.

< Week 2: the social internet

Next in the series: getting personal >

This post forms part of a series. Read the first installment.

Words: Pete Ashton
Illustration: Raymond Weekes

Last week I alluded to how writing for blogs is different to writing for print, but don’t think that means it’s inferior. Professional writers who trade on the value of their words often find it incredibly hard to adapt to the medium. They’re locked into a particular style that serves their purpose, be it journalism’s Inverted Pyramid and short paragraphs or the structure of an academic essay.

What I think defines a typical blog post is how conversational it is. The tone will be closer to a letter and quite often it won’t be reporting all the facts or making a coherent argument, but raising a topic or continuing a discussion. In itself a blog post can seem lightweight and frivolous, obsessed with some minutiae and addressing a niche audience, which is possibly why professional writers can sometimes be a little dismissive. And rightly so. Blogging, as I’m defining it, is quite terrible at the sort of things academics and journalists do. But it’s also quite wonderful at things they don’t do.

Blogging is part of what’s become known as The Social Internet, which essentially boils down to people talking about stuff. Stuff is a very powerful currency online and takes all sorts of shapes. Facebook is a good model of how this works. A blogger once described Facebook as a really fancy bookshelf where you put things – books you’ve read, movies you like, photos you’ve taken, diary entries you’ve written, events you’re attending and links to cool stuff so you can show them off to visitors.

And then magic happens as Facebook takes your stuff and throws it into your network of friends. Suddenly these things are no longer dumb objects, but the foundations on which social interaction can take place. More critically this stuff generates more stuff. A photo from a party will spawn a conversation about the party, which in turn encourages others to post photos of the party. During these conversations the next party is planned, which spawns more photos and more conversations.

And that’s just a simple linear example. If you’re using Facebook have a look at how you use it. Look at how it maps the connections between people based on the things they do on there. Now apply this to the whole Internet and you’ll start to get an idea of where I’m coming from.

< Week 1: blogging vs. print

Next in the series: everything is intertwingled >

We have a date lined up with the enigmatic Holy Moly as part of our new radio series… and are looking for opinionated bloggers, tabloid journos with a thirst for gossip, or anyone with the style and attitude to get the conversation flowing with one of the media’s most elusive figures.

More info on the Head to Head page.

The 4Talent Awards 2008 are now open: across 20 categories, get your work judged by Channel 4 commissioners and the producers who supply them.

Categories are short doc, long doc, dramatic writing, dramatic performance, directing, comedy writing, comedy performance, presenting, on-air radio, off-air radio, music, music for production, music video, innovation, multi-platform, animation, journalism, photography, multi-talented and the mysterious wildcard award.

channel4.com/4talentawards

Words: Pete Ashton
Illustration: Raymond Weekes

Hi, I’m Pete Ashton and I’ve been messing about with weblogs for years now. After The Guardian went and gave one of my blogs a fancy media award Nick at 4Talent magazine asked if I’d write this masterclass on running a weblog. Since the blog in question was Created in Birmingham (now run by Chris Unitt), linking up Birmingham’s creative and cultural communities, and that I do a fair bit of consulting and evangelising about the wonderful world of blogging, it seemed like a no-brainer really. So here goes.

The thing is I write for blogs, not those strange magazine things. How do you link to other stuff in a magazine? Where do the comments go? I’m sure it’s a perfectly valid form of communication but I’m really not at home there. I’m more comfortable on a blog: you wouldn’t ask a filmmaker to communicate through the medium of interpretive dance, would you?

Next in the series: the social internet >

Last year we ran a competition to design us a sting.

The winner is Conor Breen, a 3D animator with a day job in commercial effects, and a surreal sense of dark humour in his personal work. His original entry depicted a vinyl Klu Klux Klan toy wobbling across a kitchen workshop towards what appears to be a flaming cross - later revealed to be a neon 4Talent logo, shimmering in the light of the gas hob. Tails of its robes flashing red as if on fire, it trundles against a coffee cup and meekly tips over.

Working with 4Talent and 4Creative to develop a fresh idea, in line with our new marketing campaign - in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king - he came up with this.

Enjoy.

Most of the 50 entrants hailed from the UK, but others from as far afield as Finland, Portugal and the US. It was a rich and broad range of experience levels and approaches, from hand-drawn animation to fully-rendered 3D; from students to small design agencies, freelance animators and individuals working within larger effects or animation companies.

A panel from 4Talent, 4Creative, MPC and 3D World and Computer Arts whittled a shortlist down to 5… the other four runners up comprised:

YIW Design: A glowing 4-shaped meteor crashes to earth and bursts into life as a vibrant illustrated tree, which then sprouts mini-TVs that smash into people’s living rooms

Dariusz Sebastian Burdon: Stamped with the 4Talent logo, the tube becomes a rollercoaster that rides around London’s landmarks

Rosa Maria Tell Velez: A young designer works on a project, and drops of dye fall from his hand to the paper. He examines his palm in surprise and creative ‘life lines’ burst forth, inking out the 4Talent logo

Richard DeDominici: A man walks down the street dressed as a ‘4′ made from cardboard boxes

Pretty eclectic, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Congratulations to the lucky competition winners from TEN4 issue 8:

First Cut Software & Training Course
Jamie Hooper

Pure Animation
Sarah Dickie

Peep Show DVDs
Liz Biggs
Yuri Melo
Janie Lake
Sandi Rai

Watch out for more competitions coming soon.

Welcome to the 4Talent blog. We’ll be using this to keep you up-to-date on the latest news about our projects, plus the inside track on Channel 4. Anything you’d like to see here, just let us know. www.channel4.com/4talent