2011 GCAC Media Fellowship Program

The Columbus Film Council is pleased to announce that they have been chosen to administer the 2011 GCAC Media Fellowships. This program strengthens and enhances the support of local media artists in Franklin County. The call for applicants will commence in July of 2011, with final adjudication to be held in November 2011. The fellowship recipients will receive their fellowships at the Chris Awards Ceremony for the 59th Columbus International Film + Video Festival on November 19, 2011 at the Canzani Center at the Columbus College of Art & Design. The Columbus Film Council produces the Columbus International Film + Video Festival, the longest running film festival in the United States.

Digital Storytelling Workshop (in three parts)

Film Council Offices, upstairs
1021 E. Broad St (carriage house in the back)
Columbus, OH

Digital Storytelling Workshop Series

Do you have a personal story to tell? Or are you a non profit that does important work and want to spread the word? Learn how to create a short (3 minute or less) video. This 3 part series will teach you how to script, storyboard, shoot, create, and edit a short digital story.

May 28 1pm-5pm Session 1:
Preproduction-
Learn how to write and storyboard a short digital story. Decide what images to use and how to obtain/create them.

June 4 1pm-5pm Session 2:
Production-
Learn how to shoot video, scan still photos, record audio v/o for the digital story.

June 11 1pm-5pm Session 3:
Postproduction-
Learn how to use imovie to create and finish your digital stories.

This workshop meets on 3 successive Saturday afternoons. The finished works will be screened at ComFest in the Solar tent and posted on youtube. Participants must attend all three sessions. The total cost for all three sessions is $50. Scholarship spots are available to low income/unemployed folks sponsored by a Comfest grant (send requests to info@chrisawards.org ).

Please send a one or two paragraph “story” to info@chrisawards.org that you wish to tell as your workshop project when registering for this workshop series. A maximum of 10 people will be accepted for this series. Also bring any still photos, digital video, or other images that you might want to use on the first workshop day.

Parking is free in the Red Cross parking lot.

To register:
http://www.chrisawards.org/films/digital-storytelling-workshop-in-three-parts-052811-film-council-office-columbus-oh/

2nd Early Bird Deadline is May 1st

The 59th Columbus International Film + Video Festival, aka The Chris Awards 2nd early bird deadline is May 1st for its 2011 Festival. Enter now and save $5 per entry. Entry form and instructions are available here.

WIN A PRIZE JUST FOR ENTERING!
This year, thanks to Showbiz Software, everyone who enters the CIF+VF wins a prize! All of our film entrants will receive a free digital copy of The Showbiz Labor Guide. This reference guide to union contracts, pay rates and wage-and-hour rules is used on some of the most critically acclaimed productions today. And the digital edition now includes an eBook compatible with iPad and iPhone readers. Join the hundreds of independent and corporate producers who enter their productions in the Columbus International Film+Video Festival, a.k.a. the Chris Awards. This most distinguished competition, with its coveted Chris Statuette, has been awarding quality productions since 1952! We are the longest running Film Festival in the USA.

A special panel chooses the best of the Silver Chris winners for the President’s Award. In addition, the Best Of Festival winner will also receive Showbiz Software’s Filmmaker Toolbox. The toolbox is worth $1,000 and includes a copy of Showbiz Budgeting, Showbiz Scheduling, Showbiz Producer and The Showbiz Labor Guide Digital.

More prizes to be announced at a later date.

Questions? Email us at info@chrisawards.org or go to http://www.chrisawards.org

Kroger And The Columbus International Film + Video Festival

To those of you who have been kind enough to have signed up for the Film Council of Greater Columbus in the Kroger community rewards program, it is time to reup. I know it’s goofy but Kroger requires you to go back to their web site and choose us again (#80209). If you don’t remember how OR if you have never signed up go to http://www.chrisawards.org/kroger/
and do it!

It’s free and then Kroger gives us (the CIFVF aka FC) monies every time you shop! How cool is that?
Thanks.

Another Screening of GASLAND

Just in case you missed the first one, the CIFVF and the Sierra Club are bringing GASLAND to Studio 35 on April 19 at 7pm.

Fracking is coming to Ohio, learn all about it.

Studio 35 Theater
3055 Indianola Avenue
Columbus, OH

Followed by a discussion panel including Matt Trokan from the Sierra Club and other fracking experts.

Admission is only $5 (proceeds to Sierra Club and the CIFVF)

Gasland

By ColumbusReel

This is perhaps one of the most shocking and disturbing films I’ve seen and the fact that it’s all real is even more terrifying. The film follows Josh Fox who has been offered a vast amount of money by those who wish to drill on his land for natural gas. Concerned about the after effect he goes in search of some details.
What he finds is so utterly disturbing and sad and that being huge amounts of people whose health and welfare have been effected by natural gas drilling in their back yard. The industry is enormous and the amount of gas sites are in the hundreds of thousands some are even on ‘public land’. People across much of the central USA have them in their back yards, tanks, drills, containers and various other pieces of industry, small to some comparison but still a blot on the landscape. But aesthetics are far from the worse of concerns.
The drilling for gas creates water contamination with a huge cocktail of chemicals seeping into drinking wells, streams and lakes. What was for years safe, whole areas are so full of chemical concoctions that in some instances if you hold a lit flame to a water source it erupts into flames. People have become sick due to the high quantities of dangerous and hazardous chemicals, pets and farm animals lose their hair and yet the companies involved do tests and say the water is safe to drink.
Watching these people is distressing, living on the land, with generations of history they are now powerless to do anything as the companies refuse to acknowledge the issue. They would also unlikely to sell up as no-one would buy a property with a great big well in the back yard, let alone if they knew the issues that come with it. That the US government, thanks to Dick Cheney, signed a law that made the companies exempt from the Clean Water Bill among others is shocking, had it been otherwise, this may not be happening.
There is some powerful stuff in this: the list of trucks it takes to actually make a natural gas well or the list of long complex chemical compounds used and found. There is the third generations farmer who is at a loss of what to do seeing the land around him change in the worse way possible. It is relentless, with person after person speaking about the effects, illness’s, chemical clouds, explosions in the middles of the night and more that they now suffer. Independent tests show that water samples are so full of chemicals or that air samples are so dangerously over the recommended levels it’s hard to imagine the ongoing consequences.
The film does at last show a glimmer of hope that being a small selection of activists and politicians making a stand and trying to stop what has happened in many parts of the US happening in those untouched. Near the end we see a congressional hearing in which some of the big companies spokespeople are brought down in a few simple questions, their denial that there is a risk, blatant lies which are not received well.

Screening at the Gateway Film Center at 7 pm on March 28. Admission is $5 and will benefit the Central Ohio Sierra Club and the CIFVF.

This Land is Your Land

Tuesday, March 22 · 7:30pm – 9:00pm
Location
Drexel Theatre
2254 E. Main St.
Bexley, OH

“You’ll never be the same after watching the mind-opening film This Land is Your Land because you will see the diverse wealth — the commonwealth — that you own with other Americans, how it has been seized, despoiled and corporatized. But you all still own these immense public assets and you can regain control of them for now and for posterity. David Bollier has outdone himself once again!” ~ Ralph Nader

For more than three decades, transnational corporations have been busy buying up what used to be known as the commons — everything from our forests and our oceans to our broadcast airwaves and our most important intellectual and cultural works. In This Land is Our Land, acclaimed author David Bollier, a leading figure in the global movement to reclaim the commons, bucks the rising tide of anti-government extremism and free market ideology to show how commercial interests are undermining our collective interests. Placing the commons squarely within the American tradition of community engagement and the free exchange of ideas and information, Bollier shows how a bold new international movement steeped in democratic principles is trying to reclaim our common wealth by modeling practical alternatives to the restrictive monopoly powers of corporate elites. Co-sponsored by DSCO, The Free Press (CICJ) and Central Ohio Green Education Fund.

Admission is free.

Pinned – Blood. Sweat. Bears.

Pinned – Blood. Sweat. Bears.
BY COLUMBUSREEL – FEBRUARY 25, 2011

How much do you really think you know about high school wrestling? Could you begin to imagine how much work goes into being not only a good wrestler, but a state champion? Pat and Mike Norman set out to bring the reality of high school wrestling to center stage in their film, “Pinned.”
Pinned is the story of two wrestlers. First, you have Lance Palmer. Lance is a Senior at St. Edwards High School, one of the top wrestling schools in the nation. He is already a 3-time state champion and wrestles 600lb bears in his free time. Your second wrestler is Matt Curley. Matt is a sophomore and has not been as fortunate to have all of the world-class experience that Lance has. Curley pushes himself to starvation and to his body’s physical tipping point to become his school’s first state champion in half a century.

Lance has been working on his 4-time state title his entire life. Since the age of 9 he has been touring the world, wrestling and competing against the nation’s best wrestlers. This was not Lance’s decision. Lance’s father postpones Christmas morning so that Lance and his younger brother, who is following in Lance footsteps, can be the best that they can be. Lance’s father has felt that it was in both of his son’s best interest to have them repeat 8th grade in order to be better prepared for high school wrestling.

Matt Curley attends an average high school where wrestling is not the main focus. He lives with his single mom and is without the resources that St. Edwards and Lance have had all season. Matt is aware of his disadvantages and decides to keep on pushing himself, until he is a state champion.
Pinned examines how much is too much. How far will someone go to be state champion? In the world of high school wrestling, 2 things are clear. There is only one champion and wrestlers will do whatever they have to do to be the champion.

Pinned does an amazing job of building the story and staying on the road to the state championship with these two spectacular athletes. Hats off to Pat and Mike Norman for an exceptional outlook on what barriers, opportunities and circumstances are in the path to becoming state champion.

On March 5th, The Columbus International Film Festival will host a screening of Pinned at the Gateway Film Center.

The event will be held the same weekend as the Ohio State Wrestling tournament so I urge anyone who is attending the tournament, to attend the screening.

The screening begins at 2pm and tickets are just $5 and can be purchased online or at the door.

WordPress Workshop for Advanced Users

Saturday, January 22, 2011
2:00pm – All Ages

Film Council Office
1021 E Broad St, Carriage House in rear
Columbus, OH, USA 43205
Parking is free in the Red Cross parking lot.

This advanced workshop will teach you how to customize CSS and HTML for your WordPress site, how to install and customize plugins, adjust templates, widgets and other features. Users should have basic knowledge of CSS and HTML.

Instructor Bio:
Nathan Rosson has been a multimedia designer at Formation Studio for over 2 years. He is experienced in WordPress, HTML, CSS, and jQuery. When Nathan isn’t working on websites, enjoys creating motion graphics and rooting for the Columbus Blue Jackets.

The WordPress Workshop for Beginners is suggested but not required for this workshop.

The Workshop fee is $25 per person. The first 10 people to sign up may use the Film Council Lab Imac desktops. After these machines are taken participants should bring their own laptops. Free WiFi is available on site. Please let us know in the notes on your Paypal submission whether you will need our computers or that you will bring your own laptop. The workshop will be approximately 1.5 hours.
To register:

http://www.chrisawards.org/films/wordpress-workshop-for-advanced-users-012211-film-council-office-columbus-oh/

WordPress Workshop for Beginners

Saturday, January 15 · 2:00pm – 5:00pm
Film Council Offices (upstairs)
1021 E. Broad St (carriage house in rear)
Columbus, OH

This introduction to blogging will teach you WordPress basics: how to install wordpress, understanding the WordPress Admin Panels, how to write and manage posts, and how to update the appearance of your site.

This class in the first in a 2 part series. These classes may be taken separately or as a 2 part series. Each workshop in $25 per person. The first 10 people who sign up may use the Film Council Lab Imac desktops. After these machines are taken participants should bring their own laptops. Free WiFi is available on site. Please let us know in the notes on your Paypal submission whether you will need our computers or that you will bring your own laptop. The workshop is approximately 1.5 hours.

The second workshop will be held on January 22, same time and place.

Free parking is free in the Red Cross parking lot.

To register:
http://www.chrisawards.org/films/wordpress-workshop-for-beginners-011511-film-council-office-columbus-oh/

Instructor Bio:
Nathan Rosson has been a multimedia designer at Formation Studio for over 2 years. He is experienced in WordPress, HTML, CSS, and jQuery. When Nathan isn’t working on websites, enjoys creating motion graphics and rooting for the Columbus Blue Jackets.