VET Post & Training

Check out this interview with the very inspiring Gemma Mitchell, UnderWire co-director and Wonder Woman.

If Only I'd Known: Gemma Mitchell Gemma Mitchell (above left), co-directs UnderWire, a short film festival championing female filmmakers. Gemma tells us why she wishes she'd learnt to edit sooner and spent more time reading about inspiring women...

What is your name/age/job title?

Gemma Mitchell, 28, Founder and Co-Director of UnderWire

What one thing do you wish you had knownat the start of your career that you know now?

Take your time and enjoy the process. I was in such a rush when I left uni to 'make it' and was also desperate to be a proper grownup! If I’d known what I know now I’d take more risks in that burgeoning time and be more present, rather than constantly trying to work out the next move.

If you could go back and give your younger (say 16-year-old) self any practical advice, what would it be?

Work out how to use a camera and editing software! That probably wasn’t as possible as it is now, but I spent a number of years a bit scared of getting into the nitty gritty of the kit, always thinking it was someone else’s specialism. They are really important skills to have that will open up an awful lot of doors.

If someone had told your 16-year-old self that you would be a successful festival director in your twenties, would have believed them? Or did you have other ambitions?

When I was 16, I was generally sitting in my mum’s garage wrapping wire around glass bottles, covering myself in chalk pastels and stitching layers of beads and fabric together. I was very much on the arts side of things and had fully intended to be a fine art textile artist. Oh how things change! I took one module of film and TV in my first year at art school and was completely hooked – a career where I could marry my addiction to stationery, my geeky organising as well as telling stories? There was no turning back.

Is there an embarrassing episode from your past that you wish you could edit out?

I can think of plenty, but none that I’d share professionally! Thinking about this more sensibly though, I’m not sure that there is – it relates back to what I wish I’d know at the start – I regret not going and doing something completely outlandish and ridiculous. Ask any of my closest friends and I’m sure they’d all tell you that I’ve always been a little too focussed!

Is there a single thing that you wish you’d known about when you started out? Something that has shaped the way you work today?

I wish I had spent more time looking through a lens. And I wish I had spent more time reading the biographies of amazing women. It might sound strange, but I think mentors and role models are really important and reading about the lives of great women can really give focus and confidence to what you’re doing. I've recently read works by Kate Adie, Nora Ephron and also the brilliant Shooting to Kill by Christine Vachon.

Is there a project of which you are particularly proud?

I’m extremely proud of the UnderWire Festival. Founded in 2010, we support women making short films, reflecting the collaborative nature of filmmaking by screening work from female cinematographers, composers, editors, sound designers and actors as well asdirectors, producers and writers. Women are still underrepresented across the film industry, and we wanted to create a space to show off the outstanding female talent in these areas. We’ve gone from running with a pop-up screen in pub function rooms to this year partnering with the Ritzy cinema in Brixton. We’ve also been out on tour this year with support from Creative England, meeting fantastic women creatives across the country. There’s still time for people to visit the festival, running from the 20 to 24 November. All details can be found at www.underwirefestival.com

What would you consider your ‘big break’? And how did you get it?

I had to mull this question over at length, as didn’t want to sound like a nob with an answer of I’m not sure I’ve had one! But on reflection I really think that’s true. There’s not been one moment that I can specifically go, "Yip, that’s where it all changed" – it’s been a number of small wins, medium sized losses, and an awful lot of thinking hard about what it is I want to do and achieve. I know that supporting talent is incredibly important to me, as both a film and festival producer, and that I want to live in a world with storytelling at its centre.

Hello followers, subscribers and friends! We're all very excited about the 3rd UnderWire Festival which is starting next week at the Ritzy in Brixton.

UnderWire’s founders Gabriella Apicella and Gemma Mitchell launched the festival in 2010 with the belief that women working in the UK film industry needed more encouragement and a bigger platform for their work. The fact remains that women still make up a small proportion of film creatives, and UnderWire looks to recognise the best short work made by women across a range of crafts – from director to cinematographer; screenwriter to editor. UnderWire believes that a more gender balanced industry will benefit everyone by creating a diversity of perspectives, stories and experiences for audiences.

Have you looked at the program yet? If not, why not! There are so many fantastic films being screened during the four day festival, take a look at the calender below and book your tickets.

We hope to see you all there!

http://www.underwirefestival.com/vet-are-amazing/

 Since Underwire’s inception in 2010, we have been supported by the amazing team over at VET Post Production. Like film, festival’s rely on an incredibly collaborative workforce powering away behind the scenes often doing a ridiculous amount of work with absolutely none of the glory!

The festival literately wouldn’t appear on screen without the support we have from VET and this year we wanted to tell you a little more about the epic amount of work they put in to help us. Here’s the Underwire prep journey, through the eyes of the Post Production team there:

At times, here at VET, we get phone calls asking for advice on how to manage a crisis with a pet – but we are not animal handlers! As data wranglers extraordinaire we can safely say that no animals are harmed in the process of our work. Especially with what we’ve been doing for our friends at Underwire – the festival celebrating women’s short films.

For the past month the VET Post team has been managing more than 60 films that have been entered into this year’s festival. Films were delivered on tape, as files on pen drives, data discs, via ftp server, in the post, and by hand. Each one of the films has been hand sorted, labelled, and collated for the award categories. These were prepared for the judges viewing, and finally for screening at the awards themselves.

Every film was checked for aspect ratios, frame-rates and levels to make sure that they could be viewed at their best, knowing that the final files would be shown at the Ritzy.

The films came in a variety of formats and through the encoding process we made them consistent. The files were converted for viewing online in a secure space, and for screenings. To give you an idea a film of roughly 10 minutes in length would have had around 45 minutes of individual attention.

So all in all we’ve seen the entries in their entirety! We’ve watched their waveforms, inspected their audio levels, and monitored signals from deep under the surface image. The magical and invisible technical elements that combine to make a film are deconstructed into digits and represented in our equipment. And so we make sure that the films are ready for their special night at the Underwire Festival.

James Richards, a London-based film-maker, has won the 2012 Film London Jarman Award, an honour which includes a film commission for Channel 4’s short-form arts strand Random Acts and a £10,000 prize. The announcement was made last night (nov 5) at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. Richards’ work creating audio-visual mixtapes from found and re-edited images and sculpture was selected from a shortlist of ten artists, which included Brad Butler & Karen Mirza, Nathaniel Mellors and Shezad Dawood, all of whom also received Random Acts commissions. This marks the first time Channel 4 are enabling four artist film-makers to showcase their work within the strand. The winner was selected by a jury that included Stuart Comer, chair of Tate Modern, Tabitha Jackson, commissioning editor for arts at Channel 4 and Whitechapel Gallery director Iwona Blazwick, among others. The jury said Richards’ works brings a “sculptural awareness of space to his installations and an informed, intelligent approach to video and found footage, Richards has helped to define a remarkable, intimate digital aesthetic that the jury was pleased to recognise.” The Jarman Award, which started in 2008, recognises artists working with moving images and is inspired by visionary avant-garde film-maker Derek Jarman, with funding from Arts Council England. Film London deliver the Award in partnership with Channel 4 and in association with the Whitechapel Gallery.

http://www.screendaily.com/news/james-richards-wins-2012-film-london-jarman-award/5048705.article

Extracts of all the works were shown in the Auditorium before the announcements and VET Post was up there big and bold in the end credit – a full screen!

  The Jury commended Richards' collaged video works for "bringing focus and a strong personal  resonance to otherwise fleeting and anonymous images" and praised his "impeccable sense of pacing, colour, sound and mood".