Entries open in Wisconsin Youth Media Festival

The Wisconsin Youth Media Festival gives Wisconsin students in grades 3-12 a chance to create, design, and experiment with digital media in a meaningful way, with advice and critique from professionals in the field. Express your creativity and talent and compete for great prizes!

Formally known as Soundwaves, this year the Wisconsin Youth Media Festival is expanding to include video categories.  Get students started today on creative audio and video projects in time to enter the competition by January 31^st 2010.

For more info, visit their Web site here.

Vince Colombo acts on his movie dreams

Vincent Colombo, a computer guy by day, and one of our first and most loyal students, is acting on his dreams to make movies. Shortly after participating in the making of "Hits," the "mustard movie," Vince shot a terrific short, "Just Buried," as part of an application to an LA film school.
Now he reports on his Facebook page that he's moving to Chicago, a city where film is more than a sometimes thing.
We'll miss you Vince. Thanks for helping us jump-start Madison's film-making community. We'll look for your name in lights soon.

Tales from Planet Earth This weekend in Madison

Some great FREE films are being screened in Madison this weekend as UW's Center for Culture, History and Environment (CHE) presents its an environmental film and community festival. There are more than 40 films, ranging from shorts to documentaries to sci-fi features.
The schedule is here.
I particularly want to recommend three films from Alex Rivera (right(, a New York filmmaker whose work I have seen.
Here is a writeup and schedule of Alex's work.

Saturday, Nov. 7, 1 p.m. Discussing The Sixth Section and Papapapá, Saturday, Memorial Union Lounge

 

Saturday Nov. 7, 9 p.m. Discussing Sleep Dealer, Wisconsin Union Theater
 

Sunday Nov. 8, 2 p.m. Animating Science Panel, MMoCA

Alex Rivera is a New York based digital media artist and filmmaker. His first feature film, Sleep Dealer, premiered at Sundance 2008, and won two awards, including the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. Rivera is a Sundance Fellow and a Rockefeller Fellow. His work, which addresses concerns of the Latino community through a language of humor, satire, and metaphor, has also been screened at The Berlin International Film Festival, New Directors/New Films, The Guggenheim Museum, PBS, Telluride, and other international venues.

WYOU fighting for survival -- your voice is needed -- now or never

WYOU is asking your help to keep the station open. After losing a committee vote Oct. 26, there is one last body that can restore half the stations' budget, and keep it alive in 2010. The Common Council.


Here's a note from the station. Calling and writing is OK, but showing up AND TESTIFYING may be WYOU's only hope for survival.

The Time is Now!

WYOU is about to lose $70,000 of funding from the city of Madison, unless we get the City Council to restore it.  

The most immediate step you can take is to write a paragraph or two to the Madison newspapers expressing your support of WYOU.  We need to build a groundswell of support for the station over the next week before the public hearing start.

You also should as many of the following as you can:

Contact your alder to ask that funding be restored. 
You can find your alder at: http://www.cityofmadison.com/Council/findAddress.cfm

Come to the Madison City Council meeting Tuesday, November 3rd at 6:30 PM.
Come to the Madison City Council meeting Tuesday, November 10th at 5:30 PM.

Attend to register your support in favor of maintaining WYOU’s funding at the current level. 

You can simply appear in the audience and sign your support, or you can speak for a few minutes directly to the City Council to share why you feel Public Access TV should be preserved.  

Please wear a WYOU T-shirt if you have one.

Directions for speaking and registering support for an issue before the council are explained at: http://www.cityofmadison.com/Council/Register.cfm

This is an “all hands on deck” moment, and we hope to see you there.

The funding cut proposed by the Mayor was determined before the current WYOU leadership was in place, and over this past year, the new station leadership has improved station operations on many levels, and increased the fundraising amount by over 1,000%.  We have tremendous momentum right now and it would be a shame to have the plug pulled just as we are hitting our stride, which the Mayor’s budget cut would do.

Thank you for your support.

WYOU Key Messages

WYOU strengthens our democracy.  Literally anyone can walk in and get expert training on professional video cameras, editing systems and live broadcast equipment.  Hundreds of people, from young children to retired people, from virtually every nationality around the globe, and from every income bracket, are taught by the WYOU staff and given the opportunity to tell their stories to the world.  Is there any place else in Madison that comes anywhere close to providing this same service?

Many WYOU alumni have gone on to start media production companies in Dane County , thereby creating jobs for the community.  All from training received at WYOU.

With continued consolidation of commercial broadcast media and rapidly diminishing print media, public access to the national conversation is diminishing.  Our mission is to stimulate and facilitate community use of the public access station for the development of local television programming, and give an opportunity for anyone to contribute to our national discourse.

Starting at the end of 2008, WYOU has had new leadership, and during this last year, station operations have been improved on many levels.  New community outreach efforts have taken place with the business and nonprofit communities, all with great success in a short time span.  New fundraising initiatives have generated over 1,000% increase over the previous year’s fundraising, which is phenomenal given the current economic environment.

During 2009, WYOU partnered with several leading Madison businesses to begin reliably streaming WYOU programming 24/7.  This allows call-in shows to take calls and develop viewership from all over the world, thereby giving Madison a platform to promote itself worldwide.

WYOU is not funded by “taxpayer money.”  WYOU is funded through memberships, teaching fees, fundraising (which has been increased over 1,000% since the new leadership has been in place in 2009), and PEG fees, which stands for Public, Education, and Government.  PEG funding amounts to approximately 63 cents on each cable subscribers bill, and WYOU receives a very small fraction of that 63 cents. 

Since the Mayor has changed the use of PEG funding from the original intent, we’re asking the City Alders to change it back to the original intent.  The budget cut “agreement” was made before the current WYOU leadership was in place.

There is legislation proposed on the state and national levels to main PEG funding as it has traditionally been.  If the WYOU funding cut that Mayor is proposing happens, the station is unlikely to survive, and will cease providing the education and opportunities that WYOU gives to anyone in the Madison area.

Cinematographer needed for Wisconsin locale

Do you have your own film equipment and want to gain valuable experience in the film industry? DocMiami International Film Festival and Brick by Brick, Tanzania Inc., (both non-profit organizations) are currently collaborating on a project which begins this November 8th right in Slinger, Wisconsin!

If you are selected as our cinematographer, DocMiami International Film Festival will provide you with VIP tickets to our May 2010, film festival and concerts!

For more information contact:

John Kenworthy: 262.573.9032

or

Monica Rosales: 786-493-8308

Submit your films to Wisconsin's own festival - December deadline

The 2010 Wisconsin Film Festival is open for film submissions. The festival welcomes narrative, documentary, experimental, and animated films or videos of any length.

Fees range from US$10 to US$30, and there is a single deadline date for each of the three submission categories.

Although these guidelines refer frequently to Wisconsin filmmakers, the Festival is open to films from around the world. The largest number of films are submitted in the Open Reel category.

There are three categories:

• Open Reel (general submissions of any length, open worldwide)
  deadline: Tuesday, December 1, 2009
• Wisconsin’s Own (films of any length from filmmakers with “Wisconsin ties”)
  deadline: Tuesday, December 1, 2009
• Wisconsin’s Own Student Shorts (films under 60 minutes by Wisconsin college students or Wisconsin residents attending college in another state)
  deadline: Thursday, December 31, 2009

For details, click here.

So THAT'S how they do it...

We got a look behind the scenes this week at Howy and Amy Waddell's production of 2021 Devolution, an independent sci-fi thriller they are shooting in their Albion sword factory in New Glarus. Howy, the director, below, discusses a battle scene with producer Amy.

As I described earlier, the film involves Howy's vision of what will happen  after Dec. 21, 2012, when the Earth’s solar system is in alignment with the core of the galaxy for the first time in 25,000 years. In Waddell’s script, a beam of dark energy starts to de-evolve humanity, into something more “animal than man.”
We watched as Drew Maxwell of  Lightning Rod Studios in Milwaukee shoot a gruesome fight scene
 
involving swords through the gut, cut off hands and general mayhem. But nobody died! How come?
First, they made a special sword, held here by lead actor Lars Hansen of Monticello

Then Albion swordmaker Joe Waites "stuck" it through Jeremiah Backhaus of West Bend...

....until it looked like a death thrust (Jeremiah has what you might call a lead groaning part-- "I've played a Troll before," he said. "It's not that different.")

The production team had the help of a professional hand wrangler

who made sure the hand was safe until...

Production should be finished by the end of October.