New Season

There is a back to school feeling in the air and it’s getting colder, but then again unless you have been away somewhere lovely this hasn’t been much of a summer. However September marks the beginning of a new year, at least an academic one for those at school or collage, and fresh starts and learning something new is always good.

This will also be the last year before tuition fees shoot up. This is likely to be more of a concern to those thinking about taking creative and art subjects where well-paid jobs are few. We hope people will keep creative and do what they love. If that is filmmaking there are lots of short courses out there to learn the basics or perfect a skill.

Here at Signals we are looking forward to some new and exciting media courses in the autumn. One of the first is a course run by Will Wright, a local filmmaker and tutor. Will is excited as has just had his short horror film 'The Ritual' accepted at the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival in LA and his film will be judged by international director Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth). ‘The Ritual’ was shot in Colchester back in 2008 and has taken a couple of years to finish due the addition of a CGI creature. So it sounds like it will be worth looking out for.

New course -

Filmmaking Next Steps – a six session modular course for adults interesting in developing filmmaking skills; from script idea to edit you can choose as many sessions as you like or do them all for a complete filmmaking course. £50 per session. Begins Saturday 10^th September.

More: For more information on these courses and all our others please visit our website www.signals.org.uk or keep an eye out for our course brochure with listings of all our courses and workshops over the next few months.

Booking: You can now book places through http://www.eventbrite.com/org/1306873523 or save the booking fee and book direct with Signals, call 01206 560255 or email lisa@signals.org.uk

We hope you will find a course that would be of interest, but if there is something you would like to know more about, that we haven’t covered, please let us know.

Cineskates

Our Education Co-ordinator, Lisa Wright, jetted off to China in Feb 2011 with the task of creating a documentary film about Colchester and Ipswich Museum Service's 'Changing Lives' project. 'Changing Lives' is part of the national Stories of the World cultural olympiad project and saw ten students from the Gilberd School in Colchester take part in a host of cultural activities linking their school to the Jiangsu province in Eastern China. As part of the project, the young people each had to choose a precious artefact from the Nanjing Museum to come back to Colchester Castle in 2012 for a special exhibition. You can read more about the project and the film here.

Anyway, whilst Lisa was out there, carrying our Canon 5D Mark II kit up and down the Great Wall of China, she had an idea about how useful it would be to have a tripod that could have detachable wheels on the ends. She wasn't sure if such a thing existed, but since returning, we've found this wonderful product that we'd like to add to our wish list and maybe you'd like to add to yours too...

Cineskates

We think they'd be great fun to use with our Canon 5D Mark II and the best thing would be helping to get Justin Jensen's unique product out into the market. What do you think?

Oh, and in case you were wondering, you can watch Lisa's documentary here.

We like the pretty night time shots best :)

Turning destruction into creation

Whether your local high street has been ransacked, your neighbour's car has been torched or your sat at home watching the news in leafy suburbia, it has been hard to escape the riots in England these past few days. Cityscape's now look like war zones and social media sites have erupted in a frenzy of activity. The destruction is deplorable, disgusting and down right stupid. But out of the ashes of adversity, rises creativity. Here is a collection of some of the best creative work to come out of all the destuction.

More of these photoshop manipulated images can be found at http://photoshoplooter.tumblr.com/

One creative piece that has gone viral on Twitter is a cartoon strip that pretty much sums up the events. Due to the odd naughty word, you can't see it displayed here but the link to illustrator Jamie Smart's work is here

Whilst the cartoon portrays the lunacy of the riots, this shocking image shows how good photography can really depict the severity and reality of a situation. The image found its way on to the front page of numerous newspapers and will remain synonymous with the incidents for years to come.

Whilst some some photographers captured the destruction, others along with their journalist counterparts were attacked and mugged. As anyone interested in photography will know, a camera is an expensive bit of kit, especially when it is your livelihood. Although I'm sure a broken or stolen camera was the least of their worries.

For some creative industries, the riots have added fuel to their fire, allowing artists, photographers and film makers to illustrate the nations disbelief at what is going on. Although the situation for one advertiser has meant they've had to prevent their creative work from going on television. Levi's Jean were just about to embark on a campaign that depicted riots in the spirit of their 'rebellious' jeans but decided to withdraw

the adverts. Read more here

However the most creative work has to be awarded to those who have started a movement, utilised through social media, to gather and reclaim the streets with clean up operations. Digital Media is so powerful in 2011 that "The revolution will not be televised...it will be tweeted".

Keep Aaron Cutting was developed by 3 interns at advertising agency BBH London. Barbershop owner Aaron arrived at his shop on Sunday morning to find the shop he had built up over 40 years smashed up. The campaign aims to keep Aaron in business using donations.

This is London is a website created by Digital Agency Dare. It contains images of people pulling together to clean up, like the one above. It restores a little bit of faith in humanity.

If only the riots were inspired by a particular Banksy piece...

6 minutes of Inspirational stuff

If you've stumbled upon this blog whilst bored and had a little look through what's going on at Signals, then here are some videos to help you onwards on your journey into procrastination. However, these videos should ignite something within to get up and go achieve. They are all, in their individual way, inspiring. Two of them are the result of Signal's work with young filmmakers and the last is a piece that inspires us to continue being creative. The only downside is that the videos cannot be embedded and so only the links are provided.

Three short films on the Olympic athlete that Doctors said Asthma would beat, a team of disabled swimmers proving it's not disability, it is ability and one man's trip to 11 countries in 44 days in 1 seamless minute of film.

Click on the quotes to view the videos.

"Don't let anyone deter you from trying to achieve your dreams"

Sarah Claxton, British Athlete in 100 Metre Hurdles

"Focus on what you can do rather than what you can't do"

Phoenix Colchester Swimming Team

"A trip of a lifetime"

Rick Mereki

Now you're creatively inspired, get motivated to go out and achieve something this weekend.

A picture paints a thousand words

Your plane has just touched down. You've still got you're shorts, shades and sandals on. But you're no longer on holiday. You're in England.

Not to worry though. The memories of the family holiday are still fresh. The tan will stick around for a week or so and then there's all those pictures you took on your digital camera...which will remain on your camera, only to be seen again just before you decide to delete it to make space for new photos on your camera, which will also never be seen again. Perhaps you might be proactive enough to upload the contents of your SD card to a folder on your computer or laptop. Some of you will share photos with 'friends' on Facebook.

But how many of you will do it the old school way and get them printed or developed?

Photo albums have taken a new form in the last few years. They have become digital, which has resulted in the magic of the memories found in frames and albums being lost. Yearlyleaf.com has tried to resolve this, allowing Facebook users to put a years worth of status updates, photos and comments into a luxury bound biographical book, giving customers a hard copy of all their social network activity. But who wants the happy moments captured on a camera spoiled with LOL's, OMG's and WTF!'s?

Left: Literally your Facebook in your hands.

We don't want people to lose memories captured on camera. The Signals Media Art Centre introduces the Family Photography workshop on September 2nd. A fun day out with great results, taking photos of each other and the surroundings. Hopefully after having discovered a new perspective on photography, you'll take pride in your work and have them in frames and albums, or even stuck on the fridge! After this workshop you'll be taking fantastic shots on your next holiday and the memories will no longer live just inside your SD card. So you can look forward to looking back in years to come.