It was an absolute thrill to go to the BFI this month with the team from the Institute of Physics to collect an award for our Career films.
Apparently - ‘The judges liked STEM career clips for it’s objective (to encourage studying and careers in science). They also felt that the resource addresses its target age-group well – the content was lively and interesting to 14-16 year olds. The fact that fundamental science principles were linked to work issues was also praised by the jury. This was voted to win unanimously by the jury’
Take a look for yourself:
We think these films work because they are fast paced and fun, teach you a bit about physics and give you plenty of questions to ask a teacher. We also like that over 90,000 people watched the film about Natural Motion on Vimeo. They were great to make and were inspired by an initial idea by Dr. Saher Ahmed, and supported by Taj Bhutta and James McNish of the IOP who were an absolute pleasure to collaborate with and never seemed to tire of my endless questions. Many thanks to the small Picnic team that worked on the films, to James for finding the contributors and Kim for making the pictures move, and of course thanks to the BUFVC for organising the awards evening.
End of Oscar acceptance speech!
In conclusion the BUFVC judges said this about our film – “the jury agreed that the winner stood out for its educational value and ability to meet the needs of its target audience head-on by linking the application of science with important world issues.”
We are delighted to have been nominated for the Learning on Screen award run by the BUFVC and are really excited to be going to the party in April to see who the winner is!
The films that have been nominated are the career films we made to support the IOP in their mission to persuade more people to take physics to A-level.
January has been a busy month for Picnic, editing our Newton Science content. But we wanted to enter the Jessops competition ‘The Shot’ to produce a 10 minute film around the theme of ‘The Shot’. I’ve wanted to make a film about a landscape photographer for about a year now, and we were fortunate to find Sławek locally in Sussex. He’s an extremely talented photographer, taking breathtaking shots of the Sussex coastline and countryside. As it turns out we were the only documentary entry, and so far we’ve had 4499 views (in two days!).
We were very inspired by Philip Bloom’s wonderful film ‘Booth’s and Bodies‘ all shot on the Sony Nex-5N, a beautiful little camera we got back in October and have started using more and more. We wanted to make something as visual as the artistry that was taking place on screen and something philosophical. In Sławek we had the perfect candidate.
We woke at 5am on Monday 23rd January (not easy after a weekend walking in the New Forest!) and picked Sławek up, parked up (in near darkness) to begin the 20 minute walk to the Seven Sisters in Sussex. A truly beautiful location for a dawn shoot. We shot for a few hours as the sun swiftly rose, we were the only people for miles and it was incredibly peaceful. It was a beautiful morning, the waves were crashing by the cliffs as we ventured round one, then two of the bases of the impressive chalk cliffs following Sławek as he looked for ‘the shot’ that he had never got before at Seven Sisters. As he talked about the illusive images that he goes looking for, each one more extraordinary and unique than the last, we were reminded of our own pursuit for perfection, our own drive to get better shots than ever before. Ultimately Sławek reminded us that the pursuit of the shot is just as important as actually taking ‘the shot’, and the mere act of filming / photography is an enlightening and enriching experience regardless of the results. No trip is ever fruitless, and for us this film most certainly was very fruitful indeed.
You can watch the full film below, shot by Nell and myself on the Sony Nex 5-N and the Canon 550D.
We had a busy December and were asked to make a series of films for the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement or NCCPE for short. They wanted us to make films about how different Universities engage with the public, as well as some tutorial videos for tips for people thinking of doing public engagement work. We visited both Cambridge University and Bristol University and met some really interesting researchers who shared their experiences of public engagement with us. We also made the tutorial videos with Malcolm Love and Piero Vitelli, two experts in teaching tips and skills.
We were really pleased with how the films came out, and think they’ll be an excellent and interesting resource when they are made available later in the year. The films are in their final stages of edit now and we’ll upload a couple as soon as they are ready.
We started Lucy & James in February 2011. The idea was to make some comedy about our situation we found ourselves in back in 2010 (both out of work on the same day). We had a couple of great actors and went for it with no budget and a crew of 2 and amazingly produced three 15 minute episodes.
We wrote each episode in a couple of days, filmed in a couple of days (using our flat as a location) and editing took a lot longer! We planned to make 6 but ran out of steam and time as we all had to go back to work! We set out to make a realistic comedy, with believable characters and a believable (yet incredible!) situation. I think we succeeded on all those counts! What do you think?
We’ve had great feedback from a lot of people, many favourable comparisons to other series out there. Everything from Spaced to Him and Her. And some people even saying it was funnier than the latter!
Episdoe 1 – Bloody Mondays is about a particularly bad start to the week, a bad journey to work, followed by a crap job and ending in no beer and being forced to watch Titanic, AGAIN!
Episode 2 – The Hangover. After having the worst Monday ever, Lucy & James decide that getting drunk will make everything better. It doesn’t.
Episode 3 – SKINT! The third and (currently) final episode of our sitcom mini series sees Lucy and James realise after 2 days of unemployment that they are utterly skint. The startling revalations of their appalling spending come to light when they have a visit from a less than friendly man carrying out a lifestyle survey.
Lucy & James was shot, written and directed by me Ewan Thomas. Starring James Alper and Lucy Leigh as the titular couple, and produced by Nell Garfath-Cox.
Our filming in Newcastle began with a trip to the Sembcorp Biomass Powerstation. Managed by Jane Atkinson, the powerstation is an enormous and awe-inspiring site. In case you don’t know (and I didn’t initially) biomass is anything renewable that can be burned to produce electricity. In the case of the Wilton Biomass Powerstation that is wood. Lots of wood. Tens of thousands of tonnes of it a year.
We took the Sony FS-100 with us on this trip for its 60fps slow motion function (at 1080) and used it extensively to capture the wonderfully visual industrial smörgåsbord on offer. Massive JCBS, massive HGVS, huge logs of wood, massive piles of wood chip. And it was a bright and sunny day (albeit cold!) to match. Read on »
Picnic have been commissioned by Newton.tv to produce 4 hours of content for their North-East science news service. We’ll be focussing on making films about big science industries in the North-East including, a film about a wood-burning power plant on the Wilton International site.
Blade Runner?
The Wilton International site is a sprawling industrial compound, the air filled with steam, and the roads surrounded by huge metal pipes. Locals believe that the inspiration for the aesthetic of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner can be found here. We’ll also be seeing how electric car batteries work, and how SCM-pharma are developing novel and dangerous drugs in the North-East.
Following on from their successful pitch video, Axon asked us to film a rather unusual corporate event in Waterloo. The brief was simple, produce a 3 minute video showing a corporate team building exercise. Graffitti! A group of Axon’s employees were given the opportunity to take part in an evening team-building exercise where they were given a wall (specifically designated for graffitti) and the excellent guidance of Andy Seize to spray paint their companies key values onto the wall. It was great to film something so visual, although we had our work cut out for us as they went at it at 100 miles an hour! Read on »
Picnic was commissioned to make a pitch video for Axon to help them explain to their future clients the approach they’d take to working with them. Sorry we can’t show you the film but here is one picture to give you an idea!
P.S. Axon won the new contract, congrats to Miranda Dini and her team
