Tag Archives: funding

University Fees-ability by Josh Edwards

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Another period of A-level results has passed and thousands of students will be heading to University over the next 4 weeks.  But is a degree strictly necessary? For many it isn’t. It wasn’t for me initially, but as my career aspirations altered, a degree became the minimum requirement for my next goal.

universityfees

Three years ago, I decided to end a successful career in retail and become a student, studying Education. I became poor overnight and left behind a lifestyle of exotic holidays, new cars and weekly shopping trips to Topman. So how can university be financially possible for the majority of young people?

This is how I did it. I applied in 2011, just before the Government planned to increase tuition fees. Although the increase in fees would not have necessarily discouraged me, if I wanted to avoid paying up to nine thousand pounds a year I had to bite the bullet and submit my UCAS application.   Knowing my parents would not be able to financially support me, and aware that my maintenance loan would not be enough to live on, I had to work out how to support myself.

Josh Edwards

Luckily, my local Starbucks was recruiting so I decided to attend the day of open interviews. It went well and I was asked to start the following week. Although, somehow I had convinced people that I was a coffee lover, I wasn’t at the time. A great number of awkward coffee tastings followed, but that is another story. I soon realised that Starbucks was a revolving door for students, with many working weekends and between lectures which enabled us to earn extra cash. Throughout my three years at University, I typically worked between 16 and 25 hours a week. Without being able to work part-time, for me, University just would not have been possible.

university

For most, student loans are an inevitable part of the University experience, especially now. Only the very fortunate are able to leave University debt free. Many are put off by the huge sums of money they have to borrow, but I considered it to be a risk free investment. Only a small percentage of the loan is taken from your pay-check based on your salary, and repayment starts when you are earning twenty-one thousand pounds or more a year. If it all goes pete-tong and you never quite meet your earning potential, then you never have to pay the loan back.

I expect thousands of students will be in the same boat I was in three years ago. So if you need some extra money to help you through university, why not check out your local Starbucks, or Costa, or anywhere else that accommodates student hours. As well as helping financially, it’s good for your cv, and is fun.

I am now a graduate, with a degree under my belt, and a more than manageable level of debt. I am on the job trail, and who knows, I might get back to that sun-filled, fun-filled lifestyle, or just head towards a mortgage, or even both. Either way, I have had three years of mind stretching education, and have acquired great coffee making skills which keep me going in between interviews. Life is good.

 

 

AudaCity of Fashion launches coffee mornings offering free crowd funding advice

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Need money for your fashion business?

Then you need to book in to  “AudaCity Coffee Mornings” for a one-to-one free consultation to discuss how crowdfunding could be the solution to your funding issues

AudaCity of Fashion offers a revolutionary approach to the support of fashion creativity in London. As a reward based crowdfunding platform dedicated to fashion, AudaCity of Fashion allows designers to pre-sell their products and undertake market research. It fosters an early collaboration with the audience, who pledge and receive rewards in return of their contributions.

AudaCity of Fashion, Free fashion business advice

As this is a new concept to most young fashion brands, AudaCity of Fashion has launched a weekly coffee morning when fashion creative can pop in for a free one-to-one consultation to discuss how crowd funding could help their business. The sessions are available every Tuesday morning starting on October 1st from 10am – 1pm at Felicities Showroom, Shoreditch. To book an appointment call Josie on 0207 377 6030.

 

AudaCity of Fashion opens the door to creative funding. It allows fashion ideas, which do not fit the criteria required byconventional financiers to break through, get access to the market, and gain financial support from truly interested early supporters.

 

Open to everyone connected within the fashion industry including designers, photographers, illustrators, magazines, and bloggers, AudaCity of Fashion will engage with people to bring the energy, enthusiasm and resources to accomplish a positive change and build sustainable brands for the future.

 

AudaCity of Fashion which launched in July has already had two successful projects and has garnered support from key industry figures who will act as curators, catalysts and experts and be the visionary individuals willing to support the growth of inspirational fashion businesses.   Gemma Ebelis, Head of PR, British Fashion Council commented: “This exciting opportunity will enable designers to engage directly with their customers; a welcomed development in terms of communicating key messaging surrounding events or bespoke product.This successful technology is a move away from traditional funding models and has been instrumental in raising money within other industries. This September, we look forward to incorporating it into the UK’s fashion arena with activity planned for London Fashion Week”.

www.audacityoffashion.com   

 

Perry Bhandal on Interview With a Hitman | Film Interview

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What inspires you?

Music is my biggest inspiration. Sequences just appear fully formed in my head as I listen, whether it be movie soundtracks, modern classics or just rock and pop. Snippets of life experience also play a big part. For example I was in India with my family in 2003 and we were visiting this incredible temple at the top of a steep hill with a bustling marketplace below. On my way down a little girl (obviously a street child) walked alongside me with her hand stretched out all the way down to the bottom. I gave her some money, she walked off and then stopped when she saw how much I had given her and turned and gave me the most wonderful smile. That small encounter inspired the complete screenplay ‘Assassin’ which is set in 1970’s India.

I also read a great deal both fiction and non-fiction and have come to have an understanding of how the world works and the compromises that we all have to live with working in the system as is. Which is why anti-heroes or flawed heroes are of so much interest to me. It’s easy to like someone who is perfect onscreen. Or perhaps with a flaw that would lead one to empathise i.e. a drug or drink habit. That’s not enough for me, because that’s not real life. Take for example the character Viktor in Interview with a Hitman. He’s a cold blooded killer who has done the most awful things. But by the end of film, people who have watched the film, have told me they like him, when they shouldn’t and that they empathise with him. Anti Heroes do that to us. The put up and mirror to ourselves and ask – given the circumstances – would you do any different?

What is the hardest thing about making films?

Every stage in the process has its challenges.

The screenplay. It is there that you absolutely, must get it right. If the screenplay doesn’t work then the film is never going to work. It is tempting to move on from the screenplay and think that it will work itself out. But it won’t. If it doesn’t work on paper it will never work onscreen.

Then it’s the casting. The casting for Interview with a Hitman was both a pleasure and nightmare in equal proportions. It was a pleasure when an actor came in nailed the audition or gave me an interpretation that exceeded or even challenged my expectations. It was nightmare seeing actor after actor, willing each and every one to do well and for no-one to even come close. Those were the low points. A prime example was casting for the lead, Viktor. Nobody that auditioned could deliver what I wanted. It got so bad that I began to think that I had written a character that couldn’t be played. So I got our casting director to send out another request and that’s when Luke was put forward by his manager. I had seen Luke in Blade and Hellboy and knew that he could do it. So I cast him straight away.

Locations. I had the film running in a loop in my head and after the selecting the actors that will make the characters real it was on to making real the world that those characters inhabit. I had to compromise on a few locations but Newcastle is a amazing city with exactly the kind of locations I was looking for so on the whole I got the look I was after.

Then it’s a case of inspiring the great cast and crew into delivering the best film possible. I knew from my business background managing large projects with big teams that everything is driven from the top. There can be no hesitation or doubt. I was a first time director with an experienced crew and a lead actor that had done over thirty four films and worked on two huge movies with one of the biggest directors in the world Guillermo del Toro. I had to deliver an impossible 18 day schedule. Even if I felt any doubt, which I did a few times during the shoot, I could not show it. I was absolutely clear on what I wanted all the time. I had trusted my instincts up until the day of the first shoot and come to rely on them. They didn’t let me down.

And then there’s the post production. I thought the hardest part was shooting the film but the edit turned out to be a real challenge. The film cut together beautifully and the first cut was just under two hours and everyone that watched it raved about it. I was very careful to protect the creative process during that period and was able to deliver something that worked really well in a really short space of time.

Then we got into the rounds of reviews and started getting input and great feedback from the distributor. There was a lot of interest in the film and lots of opinions that wanted to be heard. There were times that I felt the film was being pushed in a direction that I didn’t want but, as a first time director, you have to listen to those that have more years in the industry. Fortunately I was able to preserve the core of the vision I had set out to deliver. Protecting the creative process is massive in this situation and I was fortunate to work with two editors that were completely bought into that and I was able to deliver a final cut that pleased everyone. Having said that the Director’s cut will be a little longer than 92 minutes. I’m pretty nifty with Final Cut now so I’ll be putting that one together myself.

Once the picture’s locked then the music starts. This process normally starts earlier but finding the right composer took a while. I had a fantastic temporary score to work from and an amazing composer to transform that into the great electronic sound that I wanted for the film

At the same time I worked on the look of the film i.e. Grade. I wanted a de-saturated, high contrast, stripped out look to the film and we definitely got that but it took quite a few days in the grading suite!

Then it’s all down to the audience. You hope you have made something that audiences will enjoy and find accessible and also challenging.

What is your writing process?

I have been writing a long time so I’m now at the point where I spend most of my time tweaking the screenplays I’ve already written. I will need to sit down and finish the novel version of Penumbra – my next film.

As I mentioned above Music and my love of anti-heroes tend to drive my imagination down a certain path. It’s normally on a train or listening to music whilst driving that sequences starts to form in my mind. With Hitman, the characters of the young and adult Viktor and how one grew up to be the other came to mind first. I mull the idea for a few months to see if it builds any momentum. Then I start to sketch out the story in note form. I don’t start writing until I have the complete end to end story in place. Then I just sit down at write until the first draft is done. Interview with a Hitman took me four weeks from sitting down to getting the first draft out. Then a few months of script editing which resulted only in some changes to the second act. So pretty quick especially if you compare it to Penumbra which has taken some ten years to get it where it is!

How did you come up with the concept for your film?

I didn’t want to do a standard Hitman movie, where you’re usually introduced the protagonist fully formed. I wanted to get under the skin of what makes a man like Viktor. I wanted to ask questions like ‘does a man of violence like Victor deserve a second chance?’

There’s action in Interview with a Hitman but it is also a character piece. I remember after an advance screening, one of the audience who worked with abused children came up to me afterwards and said that it was a realistic description how children get changed by what happens around them and grow up to be men of violence like Viktor.

Did meeting Spencer Pollard, the CEO of the well-known distribution company, Kaleidoscope, change your life?

Kaleidoscope was actually just Spencer on his own and starting out when I met him! Amazing what he has achieved in such a short space of time. It was good meeting and getting to know him. I would like to say that my relationship had a bearing on him coming onboard as distributor but if you knew him as I do you would understand that ultimately it had no bearing. It was the compelling nature of the commercial proposition (script, cast, budget, vision) that I had put together that drove his decision to commit. Ie the opportunity to make a significant return for Kaleidoscope, which he already has, purely on international sales alone, with Interview with a Hitman. There were two other parties wanting to partner on the project, but I stayed with Spencer because of the relationship we had built up.

What advice do you have for other filmmakers?

Don’t let go of your dreams. Work on perfecting your art. Be patient. The creative industries are capricious and can be somewhat insular. Focus on what works for the mass market first. Even Spielberg had to start off by putting bums on seats with Jaws and ET before his name meant he could do the projects he wanted to do. And remember it is a business first and foremost and the greatest chance you have of breaking in is to do what any business does when entering a new industry – deliver a product that your market will want to invest in.

How hard is it to get funding?

It is inversely proportional to the commercial viability of the proposal. With Interview with a Hitman getting funding was fairly straight forward once all the elements in the package came together.

What are your plans for the film?

Interview with a Hitman has presold in every major territory worldwide going to the United States, Germany, China, France, Japan, Middle East, Thailand, Malaysia, Korea, CIS, Baltics, Benelux, India, Indonesia, Australia, Kuwait

Kaleidoscope have released it in UK Cinema’s and the DVD release is scheduled 27th August.

I am hoping the audience will like it and that it gets critical as well as commercial success.

How did you get into the industry?

I did an MA in Film and Television at Brunel in 1990. I remember I had a Eureka moment in the first film studies class. It stayed with me and didn’t diminish. As soon as the course finished I borrowed some equipment from the University and set about making a short film.

Why did it take you a while to get back into film?

My short film started opening some doors for me. But as with a lot of people, life tends to have different plans for you. I got married and so ensued job, mortgage, responsibilities etc. And there’s not a lot of room for something as self indulgent and flighty as a career as a film director.

So I had to lay that aside, but continued writing in my spare time, building up quite a number of screenplays that I would have loved to see on the big screen. Over time I built up an IT consultancy business. In the back of my mind I always thought that I would take up my passion but a more realistic and down-to-earth part of me realised that it was becoming more and more distant.

My father passed away at the beginning of 2009. He, along with my mother had come to the UK in the mid sixties and had worked hard to give me the start in life and the opportunities they had never had. I know my father had his own dreams and aspirations but he was far too much of a stoic to ever burden us with them. He had given up on his dreams and I knew he wouldn’t want the same for me. So a few months after his passing I sold my consultancy business and set up my film production company Kirlian Pictures Ltd.

My business experience had taught me a great deal and I knew that to succeed in this industry was no different from any other. I had to deliver a product to market that audiences would want to watch. It was fortunate then that, as I had built up a compelling and highly commercial body of work and was ready to go.

I immersed myself in all aspects of film making, lenses, cameras, cinematography, lighting, sound. Being very technical had served me well in my IT business and I wanted to make sure I knew how to get what was in my head onscreen.

And because I was coming at the industry from a business perspective I took a part time producers course.

The first film was going to be Penumbra, a revenge thriller that’s been described as ‘Taken’ meets ‘Max Payne’.

The size of the budget led to significant pressure from investors to hand over the directorial reigns to someone who was more of a known quantity. Is a less risky proposition. I knew there was no way I was going to let anyone else direct Penumbra so I went back to the drawing board and wrote a lower budget feature called ‘Interview with a Hitman in April 2010. I spent a few months script editing and once it was right, moved on to production packaging.

I began presenting the film to potential investors. To head off any concerns about me being an unknown quantity I went out and bought a piece of previsualisation software that the studios use to model films sequences and try stuff out. I previsualised the first five minutes of the film as I envisioned it playing out.

The budget, genre, previz (which went down a storm) and the quality of the screenplay packaged together was a compelling commercial proposition in its own right. However, Cast is the primary determinant of value in a genre feature film (horror being the exception) so I went out to cast.

I got a fantastic response and I assembled a great cast very quickly. The only problem was casting the lead, Viktor. Nobody that auditioned could deliver what I wanted. So I got our casting director to send out another request and that’s when Luke was put forward by his manager. I had seen Luke in Blade and Hellboy and knew that he could do it. So I cast him straight away.

After that the investment just rolled in. In fact we had to turn investors down because I had decided to invest in it myself via my production company. I knew I could deliver a great film so absolutely wanted to be part of its success. That was in May 2011 and we started shooting in August 2011.

What was it like working with Luke Goss?

Working, with a Luke was great. I had a very clear vision of what I wanted and he worked so hard to give me that. A director’s vision is articulated through the prism of an actor’s performance. Great actors like Luke become the characters they play and bring their own nuances and detail. That part of the process I really loved, working with him and the rest of the cast to find the truth in this fictional world I had created. And I think we succeeded. You’ll see a very different Luke Goss in this film.

What’s next?

Interview with a Hitman was a stepping-stone. The way for me to prove I could actually deliver a film that was a commercial success and hopefully one that audiences have enjoyed and will continue to enjoy watching.

So now that I’ve done that it’s back to the much bigger budget action, thriller Penumbra. Penumbra is the story of a loving family man who, when his young son is kidnapped and killed by child traffickers is left with a choice; freedom from the unbearable pain (by taking his own life) or catharsis in the form of revenge.

He chooses the latter and in doing so descends into a vile underworld and risks becoming the very thing he seeks to destroy.

Set in present day Europe. This is the story of a man’s search for absolution, his fall from this world into darkness, his salvation by an unconditional act of love and his redemption through the ultimate sacrifice.

The film will be shot mostly in Budapest with a couple of weeks in the UK. I would love for Edward Norton to play the lead Blake. We’re aiming to start shooting in April Next Year.

For more info you can go to:

www.perrybhandal.com

Production company www.kirlianpictures.com

On twitter @perrybhandal

The film review is here

Nuno Bernardo Interview; On Collider

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Nuno Bernardo describes Collider as “Lost meets Terminator”. At Frost Magazine we are super excited about this multi-media story. Nuno is very inspirational and, according to BBC, “Nuno Bernardo is a leading world expert in New Media”.We also have the web series exclusively before anyone else does, so keep an eye out for it and check out our interview with the creator.

Catherine Balavage: How did the idea for the project come about?

It came about more than two years ago. We had been doing lots of projects, and the thing that connects all of our projects is that they are multi platform, in digital and online media. They start on the web and they move to television shows, etc. We had made Sofia’s Diary that also used this format of the multi platform We decided we wanted to make a new journal, but [do] something that we hadn’t done before. So we came up with a story that was about six characters that wake up in the future. They never met, they have nothing to connect them, and they need to learn to work together and to overcome the challenges of being in a place that is a possible colloquial world.

We started with hiring some writers from different backgrounds. We had a script writer, we had a comic book writer and we developed a story further. Changes changed and the characters changed, and the universe around the story was evolving . One year ago we were comfortable with the world we were creating and then we moved ahead. Then we started developing the comic book, developed a feature film , started developing some games and then the story started to get in shape.

Do you think in the future all films will become multi-platform? Is it possible for a film to just be a film?

I think it is. If you had asked anybody three or four years ago if a black and white movie [The Artist] could be done commercially everyone would have said no. I think there is always space for nicely told stories. A good, nice story in just one medium. You can also do the same in different mediums. The advantage if you do something in multi-platform is it works for marketing. You get different opportunities and different windows for your story but also at the same time different ways to connect with your audience. No everybody watched or reads the same story in the same way. The multi-platform allow you to create different experience. If someone wants to go and watch the film at the cinema they can just go and buy a ticket and watch the movie. If they want to play a game on a more interactive level, or they can read a novel or a comic book. We don’t want to exclude any medium. It is not saying that any medium doesn’t work alone. We are trying to create experience that are more in-line [with the fact] not everyone reads the same story or watches the same story in the same way.

Was it hard working with all of the different writers?

Yes. Because what was more important for us in the first year of developing the story was trying to get different writers who knew the story well, trying to write for a format, bringing roles of this world, bringing characters, bringing ideas and at this point everyone was working as a stand alone. It was like a big brain storm if you want because what we were looking for was more and more ideas, and some if them would contradict each other, but others were more complementary. After this first year of a chaotic process we somehow said; “okay this makes sense, this can interact, and connect with the other part of the story”. So then we start collaborating and after that moment everyone starts working together based on the same story and the same skeleton.

Have you taken anything from real life and put that into the story to create this fantasy world?

We kept with this, we based our concept, the starting point was the real Hadron collider experiments. and the fact that man, mankind are trying to replicate god or replicate the beginning of the universe. We picked [up] that experiment where they try and replicate the black hole and replicate the actual big bang event. What if all of these experiments are not just experiments and they are putting the world out of balance? Based on this theory we then developed our own story.

What happened in the process was around the same time last year, we were working full time on the project and we hired a film director to start working on the feature film. One or two weeks after we hired him he emailed us and said; ‘You guys are genius”. And on his email he put a link to an article that was published on CNN, and was all around the world, and on news agencies, about this guy that went to CERN and started to protest because he said he was from the future and all of the Hadron collider experiments were very dangerous. The director thought it was marketing genius to create these news stories to create a buzz about the project, but, no, it was just a coincidence that someone went there and protested. There is someone in the world with the opinion that these experiments at CERN may be creating some chaos and some problems to the planet.

Have you cast? Did you cast first or write first?

No. The casting is still ongoing. We cast the web series which will be out at the end of next week. And we cast one of the characters, which is the part of the scientist, Peter, who discovers this big problem, and we cast Ian Robertson the Scottish-English actor to perform the role. We are now at the process…we had a casting session last week in London, we are casting the other five characters of the story and we hope to have the cast finalised by the end of June.

What kind of inspiration have you taken from other Sci-Fi and time travel projects. Did you give the writer any reference points?

In our marketing pitch materials we call this Lost meets Terminator. In the first place dropping six character in an abandoned island, in this case it is not an abandoned island. It is in the future in a place that isn’t known and in a time that isn’t known with no way to control the environment that surrounds them. There are all of these challenges and interactions from a story point of view, and from the other point of view, what six people will do together to overcome their difficulties. So that is the part that you can pick that story and adapt it to other type of movies. We want to adapt six people in an unknown and challenging environment to the sci-fi framework.

Watch Collider Preview here.

How do all of the parts link together?

We have a time line. Our story start in September 2012 and the narrative goes to 2018. So what we have is these two narratives where, through this period through six years, lots of stories, sub-plots and characters will have lives in present times and in the future. What we did was to divide this time in small chunks of story so we have the web series. The web series is an initiative, which starts the story is when Peter is fired from CERN and he tries to alert the world of what is going on and then when nobody listens to him he tries to sabotage the Hadron collider and without knowing it, it creates a time machine that makes him and five other characters jump to the future.

So it is this moment of present time, when all began. and then we have each comic book which tells the background story of each of the characters. Because in the feature film the characters have already been featured but they have a past or a present and things happen to them that have an impact in the future. So this next story where things happen in 2012, 2013 in the comic books so the audience can know a little more about the characters.

Then we have a game. The game is the stuff the characters have to do in the feature film so ahead of the feature film you can get familiar with the character’s , the location, the setting and the mission of the characters and you can do it yourself by playing this game.

Each piece of content tells a little bit more and the big story line which we created over the six years, and all the elements are part of this timeline. Of course you have to be very careful of each element so if you just want to watch the web series you will be able to watch the web series and enjoy it as a stand alone, if you just want the comic series you can read about the beginning, middle and end, and if you just want to watch the movie you can just go to the theatre and buy your ticket. You can watch the movie and you will understand the story. But of course if you pursue all of these pieces of content you will have a better grasp of the story and know the characters much better, and you will be more engaged with the universe that we are creating.

Whereabouts are you filming?

We start shooting mid September and we are shooting the movie in Dublin, Ireland.

Tell me a bit about you

Yes, I started to be active ten years ago and my previous experience was first in the advertising world so I was doing producing ads and then I worked for interact television company where we worked in the late 90’s, early 2000’s. We were trying to do the first interactive television. It was when the internet bubble just exploded so most of these interactive [projects] weren’t done. We see them coming back nowadays with the television being connected with the internet, When this interactive television project ended I based my experience in advertising and because some of our clients at the time started to worry about the internet, and that viewers where not watching the ads on TV anymore they started feeling that the world was changing and just putting ads in traditional media was not enough anymore.

Communities and sub communities were developing. Cable TV was exploding and expanding throughout Europe, so in 2002 we put these two expertise together to create a company that specialised in entertainment that was multi-platform and that was focused in telling stories on different platforms, and benefited from the tools and the relationships that audiences had with different platforms to tell a better story.

How did you get funding?

Initially we had some venture capital when we started the company and, with our success and the fact that some of our multi-platform shows are being sold around the world, in TV and publishing, and mobile and licensing in different platform that we distributed our content, recently we managed to secure additional funding from Jill Banks in Portugal that allows us to fund and self-fund from the development and the early parts of this project.

So it is web series, comic, games in that order? What is the scheduled time-line?

First release of the projects is the web series, the comic and the game will all be released by June 4th and we have a second game planned in the Fall. We also are shooting a film in September for a 2013 release. We are also working on a follow up to the comic books. So between now and to the end of 2013 we have a schedule, a planning of releasing the different content, sub-plots and characters. So this time-line which is our universe between 2012 and 2018 we are working on a novel so different products will come out based on this project about one character and then two characters or one moment in this journey.

Are the people from CERN involved?

They are not involved but if the story gets popular then they will probably not be very supportive of the story [laughs] It doesn’t portray them in a a bad way but it creates a story which says that what they are doing will probably create problems with the planet. So if I was them I would probably not be happy with the story. So we are not working with them.

Thank you Nuno