Open air cinema screenings - London 2016

Woohoo it's time for the annual Open Air Cinema Screenings in London post. The text below actually lives in a Storify story and has been embedded here. I'll update the original Storify post so feel free to embed it into your own blog post so that more people know about open air film options in London. Think of it as creative commons.

Yesterday I screened Forbidden Planet & got a colleague to do a talk on robotics

I have been wanting to put on a film festival, or at least screen a film and have it accompanied by a research talk FOR EVER and yesterday, with the help from my friend and colleague Prof Peter McOwan of QMUL I finally made this happen! Couldn't be happier! About 20 people arrived which was a pleasant surprise (tickets were free so I was expecting people to be less invested in coming along) and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. And they didn't leave a mess. It all went like clockwork :)

Whenever I'm on bus journeys I tend to ponder film festivals I'd create / curate and there's nearly always one in there for Brendan Fraser films, also something that would showcase different types of music and sound design used in composing for film. I'd also rather like to screen an outdoor showing of Jurassic Park.

My most work-related film 'festival' idea centres on films where a colleague can link their research to some aspect of the film. I'm hoping to get my boss Prof Paul Curzon to do a talk about human factors, as it applies to medical device safety, linked to a film like The Dish or Apollo 13 which highlight the importance of human factors / ergonomics and human-computer (or device) interaction in achieving complex and risky tasks. I'm a big fan of the 'film plus science talk' or more generally 'film plus talk' genre.

Peter's talk before Forbidden Planet was lovely, he talked about Robby the Robot and how he looked like a robot while being roughly humanoid-like. We're largely indifferent to devices and robots that support human beings in industry (remember the advert with the robotic devices that repaint a line of cars?) but as they start to become more human-like, or more animal-like, we begin to imbue them with emotions and start to respond to them quite differently, with affection. We think they're cute. What we don't find cute are robots that move from being humanoid to becoming much more visibly, and almost behaviourally, like humans. Almost, but not quite. We find that a bit creepy.

Peter's research with colleagues has looked at finding ways of getting robots to be appealing and engaging without unnerving us. He gave an example of not giving a robot ears to avoid trying to explain to people that they couldn't just talk to it in normal English, or instead getting people to use iPads or other touchscreens to interact, instead of trying to communicate with a spoken language where the robot might miss nuances.

The film was also lovely and even though I've never seen it before it took me back to being a small child, enchanted by the music from The Clangers. It was a charming film, quite dated in places - Peter highlighted the damsel-in-distress trope and pointed out that the poster (see below) bears very little relation to the film!

 

I pinched the film poster from Wikipedia and added a bit of info.

Learning points
It's much easier than I thought to get a 'single title license' from FilmBank. True their website is fairly baffling but once I worked out that you first have to pretend you're screening a film to get an example license before you can register (why? why!) all went well. I registered, then booked the license. You can get a DVD sent to you, or use your own, license is the same.

I put posters up around campus (license means I can't advertise beyond it) but I think I need to make it clearer that getting a ticket is what I want people to do. My poster below probably implies that anyone on campus can just turn up (which is sort of true, but better to have an idea of numbers).

The building where I had the screening shuts at 6pm and the event started at 6.30pm. While I have card access many of the new students wouldn't, and they might not know about the main entrance which is very open and has a porter to sign them in, so memo to self is to highlight the entry point as well as the general location and the need for tickets.

I was happy with the advertising, though we didn't tell a soul about it until the Monday afternoon before the Wednesday evening event. It would be interesting to see what effect a longer advertising time has - I suspect it wouldn't make a huge difference and a few of those attending had only heard about it on the day or had been dragged along (willingly!) by a colleague.

It was initially aimed as a 'thing' to welcome new students, to highlight that we do lots of cool research where I work and that we also do outreach where we tell people about our research in interesting ways - however other work got in the way and I just told a bunch of people about it.

Also, I genuinely had no idea how proud of myself I'd be for sorting it all out. It's not particularly difficult but there's a bit of a psychological barrier / faff in dealing with licensing, sorting out security / porters, advertising - even though I do plenty of that sort of thing for work this was for fun so felt a bit different - but everything worked well.

Next time I'd quite like to see if one of the English department might like to give a talk about men playing women in the theatre in Elizabethan times alongside Shakespeare in Love, or something like that. And Paul's talk of course.

2015 London's open air cinema screenings

Here's what I might put in an imaginary film / TV festival of weird British stuff

Edit: 22 October 2022 - I've updated the videos as most of the links had stopped working!

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When I came across the Belbury Parish magazine [now resolves to Ghost Box records - "a group of artists exploring the misremembered musical history of a parallel world"] I had a bit of an 'aha' moment and understood better all the slightly odd cultural reference points I'd grown up with. It was all a bit weird in the 70s and 80s though I'd probably not really noticed it at the time.

"There's nothing wrong with men in their forties enjoying shared tastes and nostalgic triggers, but do they have to be so po-faced about it?" The Quietus

If I was running an imaginary film festival / celebration of television programmes at the BFI here are some of the things I might put in it. Of course there'd be anti-deep-vein-thrombosis breaks every couple of hours otherwise I'd just sit watching the entire thing for a day, lost in a dwam.

I've put small versions of the YouTube videos below but just click to enlarge / watch them at YouTube.

The Clangers (1972)
Narrated by Oliver Postgate (who also narrated the marvellous 'The Alchemists of Sound', a 2003 about the history of the Radiophonic Workshop) with music by Vernon Elliott.

The Clangers - The Music of the Spheres.

The original video is no longer available but showed Tiny Clanger helping to get a flying machine to actually fly by using notes from the musical tree proving that you just need the right music to get going.

See also: Ivor the Engine


Dr Who (1974-ish)
Beyond the wonderful Tom Baker and co I remember very little about the actual storylines, it's really just the music - written by Ron Grainer and arranged by Delia Derbyshire, and tweaked by various people throughout the series' life that grabbed me.

Mark Ayres explanation, in the The Alchemists of Sound, of how it was put together with tape loops is one of my favourite bits of recorded television. It's at 15m 40s (see below). 

See also: Blake's Seven

Children of the Stones (1976)
"...widely regarded as the scariest children's television serial ever made. It's chilling theme music, eerie atmosphere sending a generation of terrified youngsters scurrying behind the sofa" - so says the continuity announcer for Stewart Lee's Radio 4 programme about the serial. I never saw it - I found it by accident while I was looking for another kids programme (not found it yet, bunch of children, something to do with an amulet, but it's not Children of the Stones).

I watched this last Christmas in full, loved it.




Sherlock Holmes (1984)
The Devil's Foot (1988)
Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke head off to Cornwall and while there investigate some mysterious deaths. It involves a rather good bit in which Holmes experiences a sort of botanical acid trip with some colourful cinematography and some strange music, at about 36 minutes in.

If there ever was a Sherlock prom I think I'd secretly quite like it if they included the theme tune from this series as well (edit: they did!).


 

Robin of Sherwood (1984)
I watched this religiously (along with Sherlock Holmes) every week when it was on, usually round at the house of family friends. We loved Michael Praed and the pagan references. And the music of course.




Box of Delights (1984)
I actually have no recollection of this at all - I discovered it last year after reading a blog talking about strange programmes from my childhood. Not sure how I can have missed it but it's a little bit magical and has a great theme tune. 




The Moondial (1988)
I was 18 when this was broadcast so probably getting a bit old for this sort of thing but I loved the opening theme music and secretly wished I was called Araminta ;)




Alchemists of Sound (2003)
The only programme I've seen since the 1980s that really captures some of my childhood, thanks to the music of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. I saw it when first broadcast and stayed up until 3 in the morning to watch the repeat. Fortunately it's now available on Daily Motion (note there are audio ads in it).

Berberian Sound Studio (2012)
Peter Strickland's evocative film about sound effects / Foley. It's wonderful and spooky, set in a 1970s Italian studio while making a film about witchcraft with a lot of women screaming, the on-screen violence is never shown, only through sound effects - it's also very funny. Soundtrack is by Broadcast, the Quietus quote above comes from the article (they like the soundtrack, just complaining about the term 'hauntology'). Toby Jones plays an English sound engineer who goes to the studio to help them with their sound effects, he doesn't have a very lovely time there.

The Shuffle Festival is back at St Clements on Mile End Road

This summer I went to the Shuffle Festival in the grounds of the former St Clement's psychiatric hospital in Mile End. I'd been going past it on the bus or on foot and always thought it looked pretty interesting so I was really pleased to discover there was to be an event there and a film festival, curated by Danny Boyle.


They're now doing a Winter Shuffle and here are the films and events listed so far. The festival runs from Thursday 5 to Sunday 15 December 2013. All the links below should take you to the ticket buying options for that event and the info was pinched from this page: http://www.tickettailor.com/all-tickets/2749/eb4c/

The Shuffle Festival's website is at http://www.shufflefestival.com/ and they're on Twitter at @ShuffleFestival

This is a review, from a Benedict Cumberbatch fansite, of an event at the Summer Shuffle - Danny Boyle and a couple of people from the band Underworld were doing a Q&A alongside a showing of Danny's Frankenstein (filmed from the theatrical production). I saw this (not at Shuffle) and it was incredible. The blog post has a few pictures and videos of the Shuffle site.










Although he's not curating this festival Danny Boyle's doing a couple of Q+As in the list below. Science communicators might be interested in Dr Aarathi Prasad's Q+A about 'virgin birth' (here's a link to a show she did on the Little Atoms podcast) and anyone who likes Jarvis Cocker and Nic Roeg will be delighted at the Saturday 14 Dec evening event.

For timings visit the Shuffle Festival page and click on "Programme" from the links at the top.

There will also be theatre events but I don't think the programme's available for that yet.

• Thu 5 Dec Opening Night: REQUIEM FOR DETROIT + Julien Temple Q&A
  
• Fri 6 Dec GROUNDHOG DAY (PG)
  
• Sat 7 Dec Kids Christmas Matinee: THE MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL (U)
  
• Sat 7 Dec Kids Christmas Matinee: MILLIONS (12) + Danny Boyle Q&A
  
• Sat 7 Dec CHILDREN OF MEN (15) + Dr Aarathi Prasad Q&A
  
• Sun 8 Dec THE GREAT WHITE SILENCE (U) introduced by BFI Archive Curator Jan Faull
  
• Sun 8 Dec THE EPIC OF EVEREST (U) introduced by BFI Archive Curator Jan Faull
  
• Sun 8 Dec OF GODS AND MEN (15)
  
• Mon 9 Dec SWADES - WE, THE PEOPLE (U)
  
• Tue 10 Dec IN BRUGES (18) + Martin McDonagh Q&A
  
• Wed 11 Dec BAD SANTA (15) Buy tickets
  
• Thu 12 Dec Antarctic Double Bill: ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD (U)
  
• Thu 12 Dec Antarctic Double Bill: THE THING (18)
  
• Fri 13 Dec GREMLINS (15)
  
• Sat 14 Dec Family Christmas Matinee: THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS (PG)
  
• Sat 14 Dec Family Christmas Matinee: IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (U)
  
• Sat 14 Dec THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (18) + Nicholas Roeg in conversation with Jarvis Cocker
  
• Sun 15 Dec Family Christmas Matinee: HOME ALONE (PG)
  
• Sun 15 Dec Family Christmas Matinee: SCROOGED (PG)
  
• Sun 15 Dec Closing Night: SUNSHINE (15) + DANNY BOYLE Q&A