I am a film maker from Lancaster, which is a little historical city in the north west of England. At the moment I work as a producer/director for ITV Border in Carlisle making regional programmes for them but what I enjoy most is thinking of ideas for short films that I can film in my spare time and then making them!

I really really love making documentaries. What I love about documentaries is finding passionate and interesting people with amazing stories and putting their story and perspective on life ‘down to tape’. There are a lot of people in the world who are worth recording and in my work I hope to open up the door to these people’s lives and let viewers stand on the door mat agog! For me, it’s all about finding great people with spectacular stories, or filming the mundane in a spectacular way. Someone once said I was like the ‘Diane Arbus’ of television. I went red at that cos I really really like Diane Arbus.

I also write and play music too. I am in a band called The Lovely Eggs. We have a record out at the moment called ‘I Like Birds But I Like Other Animals Too’ on Filthy Little Angels Records, and we have played in some nice places like in Amsterdam and New York and on a steam train. I sing and play guitar and sometimes I write the music for the documentaries I make. I am going to America soon for 5 weeks and I am driving all the way down Route 66. I hope to make a film about it. I hope to makes films about lots of other things. I have too many ideas and not enough time. I am hoping my film being shown on 3MW might open a few doors for me that I might want to walk through because I am passionate about this and really want to make it as a film maker. xx

]]> http://blogs.channel4.com/fourdocs/2008/12/09/holly-ross-film-and-pop-video-button-cute/feed/ 2 http://blogs.channel4.com/fourdocs/2008/10/07/169/ http://blogs.channel4.com/fourdocs/2008/10/07/169/#comments Tue, 07 Oct 2008 11:29:26 +0000 Rebecca Frankel http://blogs.channel4.com/fourdocs/?p=169 One of my highlights at Britdoc was watching the music short docs that were commissioned for a special 3 Minute Wonder strand. Music tracks were offered up and filmmakers had to pitch the documentary the music was inspiring them to make.

The winners were some of my favourite auteur documentary filmmakers, such as James Lees (who won best short at Sundance this year for The Apology Line), Pinny Grylls (Peter and Ben) and Christopher Allen (of the Light Surgeons). He’s done some really exciting site specific film projects at art galleries music festivals.

For me all 4 are perfect examples of tightly bound films that exhibit flow and mood (like music) rather than text and information plowing across the screen.

You can watch all 4 films:

Hearing a Song, Seeing a Smile – Pinny Grylls (music by Jonny Greenwood)

Pockets – James Lees (music by Saint Etienne)

Home – Christopher Thomas Allen and Robert Rainbow (music by Michael Nyman)

King of Laughter – Nick Hillel (music by Nitin Sawhney)

Hello – I’m just back from a holiday, that should have started with an Excel flight, except they went bust the day before I left. Cue 28 hours of delays and long airport bar bills, until a substitute flight actually took off. Most annoyingly they kept delaying the fight without revealing reasons – first 7 hours, then 5 more, then the next day etc. I understand it was a logistical nightmare on a grand scale, but it’s so much better when people are straight with you about the state of play, instead of fobbing you off.

So, I would like to personally say sorry sorry sorry for the fact that FourDocs has not been reviewing and posting your films for a quite a long while, and the fact that links from the old site are not working at the moment. There are some technical complications with channel4.com, which is why you can’t watch films on the old site, and this message appears:

The good news is that we will be pulling more of the old FourDocs films on to the new site, in the watch films sections.  Also we’ll be adding them into our new YouTube channel (following a massive deal Channel 4 has done with YouTube). And, we’ll be posting the best of the new submissions here in the blog for you to enjoy.

The My Home Town competition has closed now. Everybody responded really well and closely to the brief, offering up experimental, personal films, of a very high standard. I’m going to post a dozen of the most original and exciting films here for you to watch and comment on over the next few weeks. Thanks everybody who entered – we’ll be announcing who’s been selected for the 3 Minute Wonder slot next month, and the new theme.

The new set of First Cuts started last Friday, with an investigation into what’s happened to Britney Spears and how society treat celebs, made by established producer and new director Bruce Fletcher.

I’m more excited about tonight’s installment though -Time Warp Wives.

I know people who adopt an era from the past closer to their heart than the present day, and style their lives and record collections accordingly. However, the line between their values and the perks of the modern world mesh somewhere between the comforts of digital technology and short haul holidays. Tonight’s film shows us fanatics of the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s who are entirely dedicated to the lifestyle, resources and attitudes of their chosen time.

More excitingly, the documentary is made by Sally Hewitt, who directed the 3 Minute Wonder series Little Worlds, one of the best to make use of the idea of 4 people’s stories with the same visual rock. Each episode is about a different dolls house owner, and as you hear them talk about what and who they see within, you’re transported towards into their imagined other world. Every character is confronting some issue through their play – an anorexics self image, an immigrants sense of upper class Britishness, a shoddily housed woman’s sense of communal life and a retired mans sense of worth. Collected within the miniature buildings are larger than life aspirations. Hopefully Time Warp Wives will similarly show how that what people do is an indicator of how they want the world to be.

Time Warp Wives, Channel 4 tonight, 7:30pm

It’s about his memories and dreams and experiences growing up in a small boring town. How did where you come from help shape who you are today? You don’t need to physically put yourself in front of the camera, but you must stamp your own personality firmly onto your film. And in homage to Guy’s experimental nature, we want to ask you to really push the boundaries of what documentaries can and should be like.

One way to create something for this is to write commentary to lay down with moving images of your home town, perhaps reflecting on how it’s changed, or why you love/hate/am so totally indifferent to it.

Perhaps you could use archive in an interesting way, or like Guy use your siblings to reenact key moments from your childhood. Is there something strange happening in your hometown that outsiders would never guess goes on? Or an interesting character to investigate, someone who everyone recognise, but few know much about? Perhaps this could be a chance to try out basic animation techniques or a new self interviewing technique. We want to build up a collection of intimate insights into places around the UK, and the people who live there, that visually look completely different.

As well as 4 films being played on Channel 4 (and receiving £1500 each) Guy is going to pick one film to go the DVD of My Winnipeg as an extra feature. And that person will also win a holiday to Canada! The distribution company Soda Pictures have a built a site for you upload your films to directly, and read more about the competition. You need to get films up on-line and send us the link by the end of August, so get thinking and creating now. And feel free to post any questions about style and techniques here, and I’ll do my best to answer them.

The other judges in this category were Tanya Seghatchian, who heads the UK Film Council’s development fund, Sarfaz Manzoor, a journalist and ex-documentary commissioner, and Alex James from a band called Blur, as he informed us, who also brought along his heavily pregnant wife Claire to share his vote. We discussed the 5 films on the Friday, and without a doubt Eva Weber’s Solitary Life of Cranes had all our hands. Initially a set a 3 Minute Wonders about crane drives and solitude, Eva fell in love with her subject and this hidden world looming over all heads. She continued filming, and after 2 years the fanatic perfectionist almost has a cut she’s pleased with.

The beauty of this utterly crafted film is how it so wholly transports you to a different physical and psychological space, which is normally inhabited by men directly above your own head. The sound is spectacular. The way vibrations travel through the metal arches is immediately evident, and detail in matching sounds spied from above is only a minor aspect of how the sound scape works so well.

A very complimentary article about the film appeared in The Observer if you want to read more, and I’m going to get my hands on one of the original short crane films to put up on site soon. Big congrats Eva Weber, and enjoy your prize. (Passat sponsor docs at Channel 4, and were especially keen to help a new talent in a practical way. So, after a little chat they decided to present the winner of the short film comp with a camera, and having asked about I found people were wanting the new new HD Panasonic camera, so that is what was got. If you want to win some equipment, we’re soon to be launching another competition with Passat, where there is £5k of equipment on offer.)

Famously FourDocs has direct links with broadcast slots through our relationship with 3 Minute Wonder. 2008 will see us screening 15 films on Channel 4 at prime time and commissioner Kate Vogel will be writing on this blog regularly about what rocks her boat and works for television TX’s. FourDocs has fantastical relationships with the two biggest documentary festivals in the country – BritDoc and Sheffield Doc Fest. Ex-editor of FourDocs (and sorely missed) Charlie Phillips is now in charge of the Market Place at Sheffield Doc Fest, where he courts all the international funders. He’ll pass on his wealth of knowledge about life, and pitching and getting longer documentaries films funded too, here in the blog.

Our exec-producer Patrick Uden will still be be reviewing film as harshly and honestly and helpfully as before, here in the blog. And, his friends at the Grierson Trust have decided to award a brand new prestigious annual prize to the best observational FourDoc (more on that later). And, as the new editor of FourDocs I’ll be on the look out for films on the web and in the wider world, and will be blogging about what i find that inspires and films we want to stream.