Event planning and management is a big part of our Entertainment Business Management program, and it’s a busy month for those EBMers - here’s three places to be in the coming weeks.

On Saturday, May 17, there’s Where Were You in ‘92, a love letter to ’90s dance music produced by Ian McDonell, then Click & Sip on Wednesday, May 21 - that’s the handiwork of Annie Dumitrescu and Jasmyn Pozzo, with Ian DJing this celebration of amateur photography - and finally Beautiful Struggle on Thursday, May 29, a screening of the film Diamonds in the Rough which will include a performance and Q&A with Silas.

Whew! Check the sites for tickets, times, and locations!

VFS’s Acting for Film & Television program held a free event last weekend called Acting on Camera: An In-Depth Workshop on Professional Acting, and it was a hit. We invited high school acting teachers from all over British Columbia to come along with two of their promising students for a day of workshops with our instructors.

Here’s just a few of the glowing reviews we’ve gotten since the event:

“Just wanted to say thank you so much for the workshop this weekend. I felt that it was a terrific opportunity and a life-changing experience. I feel rejuvenated.”
- Coralee Clark, Carson Graham Secondary School

“Thank you to you and your staff at VFS for a great session on Saturday. Everyone in the van talked about it all the way home – it was such a wonderful time.”
- Grant Sandeman-Allen, Cedar Community Secondary School

“Thanks for all your efforts to make last Saturday’’s workshop such a success for the students and the teachers. We at Sutherland very much appreciated the excellent instruction and dedicated atmosphere of VFS. It was a great day.”
- Cynthia Bunbury, Sutherland Secondary School

Thanks to all those students and teachers who participated, and we hope to see you again soon!

The new Narnia movie, Prince Caspian, is coming out next week, and to celebrate VFS grads’ involvement in the making of the film, Disney has provided us with some advance screening tickets and swag to give away!

The first 5 VFS students to email Student Services Manager Liz McDonald at lmcdonald@vfs.com will win a Narnia t-shirt, a movie poster, and 2 tickets to the advance screening of Prince Caspian Monday night, May 12th, at 7pm. (How fast can you type?!)

A number of graduates worked on The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, including Andreas Hikel (Previsualization Artist), Christoph Schinko (Character Animator), and Jami Gigot (Senior Layout Artist/Crowd). Makeup Advisory Board Member Howard Berger was the Creature Supervisor, and his company KNB Effects worked on many Special Effects for the film.

VFS is thrilled to be co-presenting the upcoming Screenwriters Summit, June 7-8, 2008. The Summit will bring to Vancouver four legends in screenwriting theory: Syd Field, Linda Seger, Michael Hauge, and John Truby.

We’d be shocked to hear if there’s a screenwriter — newbie, or pro — that doesn’t have at least two of these speakers’ books on their shelves.

The weekend will include half-day lectures with each speaker, with very little content overlap: the speakers have worked together to build their lectures to complement one another. Major topics include: character goals and desire, character arcs, the nature of conflict, universal themes and symbols, understanding your demographic, key genre conventions, deep structure, and the 7 steps to a great premise. Each half-day will culminate in a Q & A session with the speakers.

Screenwriters Summit
Saturday June 7- Sunday June 8, 2008
8:30am - 6:00pm each day
Vancouver International Film Centre
Vancity Theatre
1181 Seymour Street

Here’s how to register. Participation is limited to 175 people, so if you know you want to go, don’t wait too long!

And here’s a little more on the speakers:

Syd Field is regarded by many Hollywood professionals to be the leading authority in the art and craft of screenwriting in the world today. His book Screenplay was one of the first books on screenwriting theory, and continues to be a kind of bible for screenwriters. When Tina Fey was asked how she wrote Mean Girls, she said “I did the thing everybody does. I read Syd Field.”

Linda Seger has given seminars for studios, networks, production companies, television series, and film commissions, and, as the author of nine bestselling books on the art and craft of screenwriting, including the seminal Making a Good Script Great. Oscar winner Ron Howard says “I’ve used your concepts [from Making a Good Script Great] on all my films starting with Apollo 13.”

Michael Hague’s book Writing Screenplays That Sell, now in its 32nd printing, is a definitive reference book for marketing screen work. Jeff Arch, writer of Sleepless in Seattle, says of Michael’s lectures: “Every time I revisit my notes, I learn something new or reinforce something that I need to remember.”

John Truby’s screenwriting classes have trained some of the top players in Hollywood today, including creators of Shrek and Star Wars. This past fall, Truby released his highly-anticipated, critically-acclaimed book The Anatomy of Story, which raced to the top of the bestseller list.

Just a reminder that these books can be purchased at Biz Books in Vancouver, and VFS students get a 10% discount. In case you’re feeling the need to catch up!

We mentioned last week that Film grad Paul St. Amand’s documentary Parallels was a contender for the Babelgum online film contest - and that he had a chance to win a trip to Cannes.

Parallels is now in the Top 10 in the Documentary category! If the film makes the shortlist of 3, it goes right to Spike Lee. Go rate and vote!

Filmmaker, artist, and Classical Animation instructor Marv Newland is featured in the latest major exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Opening on May 17, KRAZY! The Delirious World of Anime + Comics + Video Games + Art promises to be jam-packed with original pages and sketches from the most famous and infamous newspaper comics, underground comix, graphic novels, animated cartoons, anime, manga, computer/video games and visual art that covers a century of artists.

There’s a whole bunch of Krazy lectures planned to coincide with the show, and Marv will be one of them. Marv, you may remember, is the genius behind Bambi Meets Godzilla, a cult classic in the field of independent animation, and at 7pm on Tuesday, May 20, he’ll be at the gallery to present a history of animation in Vancouver. See you there!

Digital Design grad Bartosz Barlowski is globetrotting, and documenting it along the way.

He’s planning a series of music videos. “This project is entirely non-profit,” he says, “as I’m using music from known artists like Moby, Radiohead, or Nine Inch Nails - all with their permission!”

The first, 02:minute Japan, went up on Vimeo a couple of weeks ago. “I was visiting Japan as part of an internship I got at a Japanese company called Hadeco. I had a hands-on one-week experience on how a company like that works, and was responsible for interface design for medical equipment, and some web design too.”

“In the next one or two years, I plan to build up my portfolio with these kinds of videos, and start my own production studio in Poland.”

Our friends at Cold Hard Flash like to throw us some love every now and then, and this time they’re shining a well-deserved spotlight on very recent Classical Animation grad Pedro Eboli’s brilliant Flash short A Pug’s Life.

A “petite tragedie” indeed. Pedro animated the film in two and a half weeks, and has some nice stills over on his own blog.

“Have you seen Iron Man yet? Wasn’t it awesome?” How many times did you hear that one over the weekend?

The Belleville Intelligencer has a lengthy profile of 3D Animation & Visual Effects graduate Adam Marisett, who worked on sequences featuring Tony Stark’s proto-suit out of local VFX house The Embassy. (Adam: “We had the suit here for a little while, and we got to try a few things on, which was very nerdy and cool.”)

Not to be outdone, Sound grad Jessica Lemes da Silva is credited as a Foley artist on the blockbuster.

Float On Films is the brainchild of Michael Edmondson, a Film Production graduate who has been working hard the last few years carving out a place for himself in the industry. He’s just had his first big viral hit, thanks to a four-minute animated parody he made of Richard Dawkins, in which the venerable atheist-scientist is seen wearing a white singlet, Flavor Flav necklace clock, and rapping some hard truths about evolution. Dawkins is joined by a hip-hopping entourage of like-minds, including Christopher Hitchens (smokin’ and drinkin’), and Darwin. It was first posted anonymously, went viral, and then Michael outed himself as the Creator.

What prompted Michael to do this project? While working for Premise Media, Michael was asked to come up with a piece of animation to promote a satirical documentary they were making called Expelled, about the debate between Intelligent Design and Evolution. Bloggasm, a respected colleague in the blogosphere, interviewed Michael to get all the details: “Originally it was a six minute piece to be used within the film Expelled,” he told Bloggasm. “It told the story of the ‘rise of the Machine’ (Darwinism). When I had arrived the script was already written having passed through three sets of hands of writers directly or loosely connected to the film…In the editing room for Expelled, the production team decided the film had taken a different direction in tone than expected and that the unfinished animation no longer fit the film.” So they put the animation online.

We caught up with Michael to fill in a few more blanks.

Read the interview… Read the rest of this story »