The Sundance Festival comes to London

The Sundance Festival comes to London "Storytellers broaden our minds: engage, provoke, inspire and ultimately, connect us." Robert Redford, President and founder.

The Sundance Festival came to London for the first time in its history. This non profit organisation, which was founded by the eminent actor and producer Robert Redford aged 74, got its name from the mountains in Utah called Sundance. It states its mission to "discover and develop independent artists and audiences around the globe."

I first heard about it coming to London on the radio. I listened to Robert Redford talking on the Simon Mayo show on Radio 5 Live. He said there was a push for cut backs in the arts in the USA. It ran from the 26th - 29th April at the O2 Arena. Although not championing British film, our economy in the arts could also do with a boost. The festival showed current American independent films to the UK market. Check out the four day festival at

www.sundance-london.co.uk
www.sundance.org

The Event!

I met up with Nathan and Sean to produce the slide show montage edit. This took about an hour from getting the photos to producing the rough edit. Small technical problems were encountered such as final cut dropping out and the rendering/exporting stage taking over fifteen minutes. On the whole the transition of photos and final edit was smooth.

When showing the piece the guests laughed and seemed to enjoy the way it was cut with the music and photos. We decided to only use a small part of the song as a whole 5 minute slide show montage would have been repetitive to watch.

Although I only managed to catch the last few minutes of the guest speaker, I really respected his down to earth attitude, inspirational work and overall enthusiasm for media. I think this rubbed off on our guests and made a profound positive frame of mind for them to leave with.

The Preparation!

In preparation for the event I and Sean met up with Nathan who would be taking the photos. We decided it to be a good idea to create a mock up edit using some of Nathan's shots so that we could run through exactly what would be happening on the day. We would need this mock edit on the day to drag and drop the correct photos onto mostly saving us time and limiting confusion on the event day.

Looking for songs was our first objective. We both thought of choosing a track that was well known, melodic and summery. After sifting through various YouTube videos we settled upon a track by the strokes.

Track Below

The idea!

The brief was simple, get some secondary school students in and create a media event that will excite and stimulate them to contemplate their career paths and to get a sense of what it would be like in the media industry.

A green screen was suggested to show the students. The class agreed this would be a great idea as it is interactive, practical and fun. At some times the group conversation flowed and at others disagreements and squabbles arose which I thought was unpleasant but we worked through it and have come up with some good ideas.

For the event I and Sean were set the task to find music, organise an edit on the day of the event and also show it at the end of the event day. For this we both referred to our hard drives, musical tastes and of course, YouTube. YouTube for me is a excellent way to find tracks and also find ones that relate to one another musically.