Last night I headed over to the Prince Charles cinema to catch a screening of Ivo Gormley’s new documentary, Us Now. It was a free but pre-registered event, that I had failed to sign up to in advance.

Normally I am very confident and able to talk/slip my way inside places, parties and performances that I’m not ticketed out for, and the bitingly cold air against my bare ears was further impetus. However, the whole topic of the documentary and night was people coming together via the internet to organise themselves, so it seemed crass to crash the system of entry. Whilst I waited I saw lots of people from active social activism activity, internet pioneers and documentary fans. Then I got in legitimately, and felt much more adult-like.

I did miss out on being included within the great intro, where the names and professions of the attendants who had registered where illustrated in tag clouds. Paul and Sarah were the most common names, and pictures of bloggers (social heroes!) in the audience appeared, making people turn to check out their neighbours, and transforming the cinema into a social space. read more

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Please make sure you get a line from me saying I have recieved your application.  The junk filter is being slightly strange, especially when I have tried to move a few applications from the junk folder into the pitching folder.  So, if you have already sent your idea in, and didn’t recieve a confirmation line from me, please email again to both fourdocs@channel4.com AND rebecca.frankel@magiclantern.co.uk

Thank you

P.S. I saw an absolutely amazing short experimental art documentary yesterday called Severing the Soul.  Totally inspiring – will write more about it.

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There have been a lot of questions about this Passat Pitching competition and how it works to win the £5000. So, here is the deal. You can do whatever you want, as long as you submit a visual clip up to 3 minutes (it can be shorter if you want though), which gives us an idea of the longer film you want to make. You can provide something like a taster tape, introducing a character or scene, or you can do a photomontage and explain the story, or you can animate a few key moments against a soundtrack. Just imagine that this is the only means you have available to communicate what you want to do, the kind of film you are hoping to make and what it might look like. read more

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Bridging the Gap is a brilliant scheme which funds 10 minute cinematic documentaries from people with experience, but without a broadcast credit.
They shortlist 12 projects, which are then developed over several months with a series of masterclasses and experts, this year including Marc Isaacs and Nicolas Philibertand.

Then in December everyone must pitch their film to a panel, and seven are chosen. These people each get an £8k cash budget to make their film, and lots of other in kinds support too. It’s run by the Scottish Documentary Institute, who I really rate for their passion and commitment to the art of documentary.

The theme this year is FUTURE and you can find out how to apply here.

I saw most of last year’s films on the theme of HOME at Edinburgh Film Festival this summer. The one I found most endearing was Lindsay Goodall’s Irene, a portrait of her nan, who is feisty with a fast fading memory due to Alzheimer’s. It was filmed with humour and evidently benefited from story development, which often lacks in short docs. Her mentors helped craft the observational documentary into a structured piece about the leaving of her home-is-where-the-heart-is to move into a residential home. A few from this slate have been selected to play at this year’s Sheffield Doc Fest.

If you want to watch some now, several of the older Bridging the Gap films are streamed on the newly spruced Docscene website. I just watched Alice Nelson’s A Difficult Case, a strangely lovely story about internal voices and a brain tumour, which shows how different an ‘extraordinary’ medical story film can look from the conventional television approach. Alice Nelson is one of Scotland’s leading documentary talents, and was nominated for a BAFTA for her subsequent 3MW series Losing Myself.

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As we’re drawing a close to our 3MW My Home Town competition, I’m sure you’re wondering what we’ve got up next for you. Well, we’ve teamed up with Passat, who sponsor documentaries across Channel 4, and sorted out a pretty amazing prize, and a new type of competition.

Instead of submitting a finished 3 minute film, we want you to pitch an idea for a longer documentary that you want to make, loosely based on the theme ‘beautifully engineered’. However, you need to make your pitch online! What we looking for is people who think filmically, so this is not the place to just talk us through your idea.

We want to see your style and flair, or meet your character, or understand a little of what the film might feel like. Rather than a taster tape, what we’ll be looking for is a visual mood board that will convince us that you’re a creative director with vision and a story, who needs to be let loose. Then, in November we’ll pick the best pitch, and give them £5 000 to spend on equipment to get the film made. How does that sound?

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Remember the deadline is looming, so get those entries in! You can upload them to the www.mywinnipeg.co.uk site, in the your winnipeg film competition section.

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Hello, and welcome to the new FourDocs blog! Here we’re going to discuss all things documentary related, whether it be films watched on the web, television, cinema or at festivals, inspirational directors, new talent opportunities, gossip, current affairs or philosophy. This is a space for conversations about what documentaries should, could and can be like!

Luckily, living on the web we’re not hindered by the constraints of television formats, or traditional rules governing the production of high art forms or even topical subject matters. FourDocs instead celebrates factual filmmaking in all it’s diverse forms. We want to continue discovering and fostering filmmakers who want to re-imagine the creation of perfect short documentaries. And of course, perfect is totally subjective. Here at FourDocs we love raw, pulsating personal tales just as much as well structured stories shined up in the edit. Make a short doc your own way and send us your links please – we want to be surprised!

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