Screen Africa - January 2013

BROADCAST, FILM, COMMERCIALS, NEW MEDIA & TECHNOLOGY NEWS

www.screenafrica.com

VOL 25 – January 2013 R35.00

7th Annual South African Film & Television Awards ‘Celebrating South African Talent’

March 2013

www.screenafrica.com

SABC’s IP stance still unclear A statement released by the South African Broadcasting Association (SABC) in early November declaring that its board had ‘reviewed and approved’ the SABC’s Intellectual Property (IP) policy and that it will ‘come into effect immediately’ has caused concern among members of industry umbrella body SASFED (South African Screen Federation), who say they were not consulted in the process.

South Africa’s independent production sector has been lobbying the SABC on the issue of IP since 1999. To date the SABC has retained 100% rights on all programming it has commissioned and funded, thus preventing producers from exploiting the IP of programmes they have conceived and produced.

The SABC statement reads: “Producers must be empowered

to the point where they can share more of the financial risk of production and not to be overly dependent on the SABC for funding. SABC will continue to 100% commission, co-produce and license content. In order to manage costs effectively more focus will be given to coproduction and licensing of content.”

Screen Africa requested further clarification regarding the IP policy and the SABC’s consultation process with the industry from SABC spokeperson Kaizer Kganyago. He responded: “In 2008, the SABC together with the Independent Producers Organisation (IPO) and SASFED commissioned Mkhabela Huntley Adekeye Inc. Spoor and Fisher Attorneys and Justine Limpitlaw to research international best practice, legal and commercial imperatives and procurement

models around the world in order to make recommendations regarding SABC’s Intellectual Property Framework and its procurement relationship.

“The SABC initially met with the TV Industry Emergency Coalition (TVIEC), which was later disbanded. We then continued discussions with the IPO, mainly around operational matters. Our new group chief executive officer (GCEO) Lulama Mokhobo made it her key deliverable to present the revised IP Policy and as such, on 10 July 2012, she met with the IPO and the Young Producers Forum to discuss the delay in the IP review and various other relationship matters. On 11 July 2012, the SABC’s TV and Legal department met with the IPO and SASFED to discuss broad guidelines for SABC’s IP policy review and its progress. It was – continued on next page

Positive outlook for SA film Following a year which saw several South African-produced feature films released locally with varying degrees of box office success, industry stakeholders feel that more good things are to follow in 2013, albeit with a few challenges.

For director Sara Blecher 2012 felt like a year when reality kicked in and the South African film landscape finally came into sharp focus.

“The extraordinary critical and audience reaction to my film Otelo Burning in New York made me realise that South African films can compete on a world stage.

Travelling around the international film festival circuit gave me the chance to meet some amazing people who are trying to break down barriers and explore new ways of distributing films as the whole landscape of independent film shifts across the globe.

“I think the biggest challenge for South African filmmakers in 2013 is continuing to grapple with this new landscape and to try and navigate a way through it,” says Blecher.

Producer Themba Sibeko (Verraaiers) of White Heron Pictures cc notes that South Africa experienced significant growth in

locally produced feature length film productions in 2012, mostly due to the Department of Trade and Industry (the dti) film incentive.

“This is in addition to the dti’s recent doubling of the cap and introducing the post-production rebate from R1.5m to R3m, and up to 5% of Qualifying South African Post-Production Expenditure (QSAPPE) for post-production expenditure of more than R3m.

“The recent spate of Afrikaanslanguage films has seen modest growth and profit in some cases – continued on next page

VOL 25 – January 2013 R35.00

Photo by Manielle Brits

BROADCAST, FILM, COMMERCIALS, NEW MEDIA & TECHNOLOGY NEWS

CITY LIFE: Shooting the collaborative documentary, Jeppe on a Friday.

See page 16

Digital content ‘to go’ South African company Platypus Digital has developed a digital content vending machine that allows for the distribution of free and paid for content. Known as OGLE, the digital download kiosks offer content such as music, movies, TV shows, documentaries, audio books and free educational content.

Customers can download content directly onto USB flash drives, mobile phones, tablets memory cards and any Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices.

“Because the digital content resides on the kiosk hard drives there is no data cost to download content,” explains Platypus Digital MD Stanley Edwards. “We believe OGLE is great opportunity for local producers because they don’t have to go to the expense of manufacturing DVDs, distributing these or having their content sitting on shelves waiting

to be sold.”

OGLE’s technical partner is Johannesburg-based Yeahpoint Africa. Edwards continues: “They have the necessary software that can load multiple applications onto a single kiosk. Their software management platform allows us to add new content and services quickly and remotely.”

The development of OGLE was prompted by Edwards’ desire to deliver content cheaply in today’s ‘content everywhere’ space. “In South Africa our challenges are access to broadband, speed of broadband and the prohibitively high cost of data. So the problem has always been how to access digital content as it’s a very expensive process.

“Two years ago I was looking for a solution where I could download and pay for content but without the data costs, so I went – continued on next page

From the editor

C ontents

A toast to 2013!

The onset of each new year brings with it the inevitable mix of hopes and anxieties. While we automatically hope that ‘things will be much better this year’, the inherited fraught realities of the previous year sadly do not magically disappear in a puff of smoke.

One such major source of anxiety is the depressing state of the South African public service broadcasting sector. Several years into its crisis, which has had dire consequences on the independent production sector, there are still no signs of improvement at the SABC. A case in point (as our front page reveals) is that at the end of last year the SABC board announced that it had approved the broadcaster’s IP policy, which came as a surprise to the industry stakeholders who had been lobbying the SABC for over a decade for a share of IP in commissioned programmes. Communication about the new policy from the SABC has been in vague terms only, leaving the industry in a state of uncertainty.

On the bright side, 2012 was a very positive year for the local feature film industry, with 2013 set to follow suit, according to another front page story. Predictions for the commercial production industry and the equipment supply industry, as per an in-depth story in this issue, are mixed, with both positive and negative things predicted.

A highlight of this issue of Screen Africa is audio specialist Greg Bester’s contribution to our annual audio postproduction feature. Greg’s insightful overview of the industry and his fantasy studio budgets article provide an expert perspective into this side of the industry.

With all the global hype surrounding the stereoscopic 3D format, Ian Dormer’s fascinating article on holographic television is sure to be of interest. Using simple off-the-shelf hardware, researchers at MIT have created a holographic system that updates almost as quickly as feature films and believe that holographic television could soon be possible.

In among the many other interesting articles to read in this issue is Linda Loubser’s article Capturing the Pororoca, which documents how a South African crew flew to the Amazon in Brazil to capture a champion surfer riding the annual tidal wave that invades the Araguari River.

Screen Africa wishes all its readers a happy and prosperous 2013. Here’s hoping that it’s the best year ever!

4 Stuntmen or Movie stars?

Mediatech Africa

Capturing the Pororoca

17

Journalist: Linda Loubser: news@screenafrica.com Contributors: Andy Stead, Anton Crone Ian Dormer, Martin Chemhere Greg Bester, Mpumi Phillips, Mike Aldridge

28 Audo Post-Production

SPECIAL FEATURE

INDUSTRY

MUSIC VIDEOS

AUDIO POST-PRODUCTION

What’s ahead for 2013?.............. 11

A ‘Magnetic’ breakthrough;

A sound picture...................28 / 29

Navigating the complexities of using music in film....................... 31 Budgeting for audio

Editor: Joanna Sterkowicz: editor@screenafrica.com

In search of story

screendance

A year of notable projects.......... 30

Publisher & Managing Editor: Simon Robinson: publisher@screenafrica.com

15

12

production music;

SCREENAFRICA

SAFTAS

6

New approach to

Joanna Sterkowicz

6

ADCETERA Slick treatment for a low budget;

AWARDS

A (smiling) reality check.............. 12

Celebrating African

Capturing the Pororoca.............. 13

film and TV talent........................ 27

COMMERCIALS

TRACKING TECHNOLOGY

The era of brand overload.......... 14

Supporting Oman TV’s playout;

In search of story......................... 15

Luxor on the ‘Rack’;

Subscriptions: Tina Tserere: data@sun-circle.co.za Delight Ngwenya: admin@sun-circle.co.za

post-production studios......32 / 33 Music and audio specialist..34 / 35

DOCUMENTARY

Advertisement Sales: Marianne Schafer: marianne@screenafrica.com Melaney Van den Berg: mel@screenafrica.com

Premier production music........... 35

A day in the life of Jeppestown.. 16

Finding the right note................. 36

Bringing Screendance to Africa.. 17

Accounts: Natasha Glavovic: accounts@sun-circle.co.za

Ultimate one-stop shop;

A unique perspective.................. 37

It’s a dog’s life............................. 26

FILM

NEWS

Director Speak – Linda Korsten.. 18

Switching on to Jessie J.............. 38 Introducing new innovations from Sony.................................... 39 Modular multi-viewer; Stylish new AVCCAM camera recorder; Prompting control accessories.... 40

SABC IP policy still unclear;

New comedy is in the pink......... 19

Sun Circle Publishers (Pty) Ltd Tel: 011 025-3180

Digital content ‘to go’;

Serbian films come to SA............ 20

AFRICA

Remembering Robert Russell;

TELEVISION

Improving African

Design: Trevor Ou Tim: design@sun-circle.co.za

Physical address: First Floor, Process House Epsom Downs Office Park 13 Sloane Street Bryanston, Johannesburg South Africa

Website & Production Updates: Berkia Banda: online@sun-circle.co.za

Postal address: PO Box 559, Fourways North, 2086

Sub-Editor: Tina Heron Ratings: Enid Venter enid@ihjohannesburg.co.za

Positive outlook for SA film.... 1 / 3 International release for SA film; Stuntmen or movie stars?............. 4 Prepping for the SAFTAS; Mediatech Africa gains momentum.................................... 6 Easy access to footage; Kodak assures industry............................. 8

Educating through television...... 21 Is it an illusion?............................ 23

BROADCAST Full digital delivery on the horizon............................. 24

POLICY Informing the public to make choices......................................... 25

www.screenafrica.com

TV technical standards................ 42 Inspiring Africans to do more; On a short film roll...................... 43

REGULARS Audience Ratings........................ 41 Production Updates.............. 44 / 45 / 46 / 47 Social........................................... 48

SABC’s IP stance still unclear

CONCERNED: Marc Schwinges

explained that the SABC is governed and regulated by various policies and frameworks, and one such is its Delegation of Authority Framework, which requires the business to get approval from the SABC board through the SABC group executive committee on any substantial policy reviews before it is issued out for consultation.

“The statement from the GCEO confirms that our governance processes has been followed. Through its TV division the SABC is now drafting the stakeholder and regional presentation.”

As to the potential benefits for producers of the revised IP policy, Kganyago said: “The SABC’s revised policy seeks to introduce relaxations particularly around exploitation of commissioned work. We will continue to commission within the

Copyright Act of 1978 but will work with the independent producing sector to create an environment where producers are able to utilise various business models and risk share to unlock economic value.”

According to SASFED co-chair Marc Schwinges, the Spoor & Fisher report was never interrogated or work-shopped with SASFED. “There were certainly some things in the report that we were not happy with at the time and we expected to negotiate with SABC. The Terms of Reference for the report were agreed to by SABC, SASFED and the IPO (at the time the IPO was not a SASFED member but subsequently joined the organisation).

“Another issue of concern is that the SABC board has announced the revised IP strategy before they consulted on it, yet alone published it. They say it is effective ‘immediately’ yet nobody knows or can tell us what is effective,” said Schwinges.

Producer and SASFED member David Forbes believes SASFED should reject the policy. “It is wholly inadequate and vague and they never consulted us. They have also misrepresented their consultations with us.”

SASFED’s Harriet Meier adds: “I suspect that nothing will change as far as IP is concerned. The only relaxation in policy they have actually made is to concentrate more on co-productions and licensing, ie. less investment from their side and more risk on the outside, for which they will share the relevant equity.

“There is no indication how they will allow producers to exploit their work any further, nor is there any mention of how the writer, who is the creator of the work and initial IP holder, will benefit in the long term.”

Positive outlook for SA film

PREDICTING GROWTH: Themba Sibeko at the local box office. Furthermore, recent critical and commercial success of such local films like Material and Semi-Soet show that if the story can be appealing to a diverse local audience, it can bring a relatively healthy return for its investors. Lastly, the establishment of a world class sound stage such as Cape Town Film Studios has made us globally competitive in the film service sector, coupled with a weak rand,” explains Sibeko.

He believes the local industry needs to focus on the development of more scriptwriters who can give producers

commercially developed innovative content that is both appealing to local audiences and can travel beyond South African shores.

“Government funded interventions that can support organisations such as the Writers’ Guild of South Africa (WGSA), which was recently internationally recognised by its sister bodies in Europe and elsewhere, will help build capacity through strategic interventions with existing cultural agencies and film commissions. It’s also important to include Nguni language content to broaden audiences in South Africa,” says Sibeko.

He hopes that the local film industry will not be adversely affected by the volatility in the European and American economies in 2013 and can see a slight growth in the number of South African films made and distributed.

“I also think more co-productions with treaty and non-treaty countries are on the table in 2013, as local producers start to extend their reach for financing beyond our borders,” continues Sibeko. “There also seems to be a move towards made-fortelevision movies and mini-series. This can be seen through such activity through the pay-TV Mzansi Magic channel.”

2012 signaled a big growth in the number of films made - both fiction and non-fiction says director John Barker (31

| Continued from page 1 Digital content ‘to go’ to a visit company in Shanghai owned by an American businessman who owns mobile retail stories. He has developed a kiosk solution in his shops and signed on content providers to offer full length movies for download on mobile for the same price as pirated movies. This company, Duoguo, also has a system for kiosks in malls run by entrepreneurs as a ‘business in a box’ operation. The key factor in such a venture is to secure digital distribution rights from content owners.”

Platypus Digital is working with a US company called Red Touch Media which has digital distribution rights to large amounts of content.

“In the OGLE strategy we also looked at education, where we could aggregate content from providers like Mindset and SABC Education and offer it for free. There are a lot of people who want to give away educational content but it’s too pricey for them to distribute. OGLE kiosks solve this problem. All of our kiosks are connected to a central server at Yeahpoint Africa’s offices in Fourways, Johannesburg and we update and populate every kiosk on site. Each kiosk will be different in terms of content.”

He notes that the challenge on the educational side is to find funding for the kiosks. Therefore the OGLE business plan includes a corporate social investment aspect to find donors for this purpose.

Kiosks with educational content will be placed at schools. These kiosks will also offer entertainment content for purchase as well as retail and payment services.

Revenue is used to pay the kiosk off and once paid off, the initial investment is recycled to purchase kiosks for other schools and future revenue will go to the schools.

In September 2012 Edwards was invited to present OGLE at the Mobiles for Education Symposium in Washington.

“There is a huge drive to use technology for education and download material onto mobile phones, tablets and readers. We are talking to a company in Washington called Yazmi that is building a tablet with an inbuilt satellite receiver so content can download directly to that. Yazmi is targeting Africa in

particular,” comments Edwards.

Platypus Digital is working with an educational NGO in Cape Town called Edunova to roll out OGLE kiosks in 25 schools in the Western Cape in the first quarter of 2013.

In terms of the ‘business in a box’ model, entrepreneurs purchase a kiosk in the same way they would a franchise. “We would assist entrepreneurs to find funding,” stresses Edwards. “Kiosks could be operated as a store within a store or as standalone ventures in townships. Because the kiosk is digital you can do anything with it, so customers will be able to buy airtime and pay their electricity and telephone bills as well.”

Regarding the OGLE payment system Edwards is working with EEC Worldwide, a local company that has developed a NFC payment solution and a mobile wallet linked to a cashback rewards incentive and loyalty programme.

Edwards notes that Platypus Digital has always been at the forefront of technology; it was the second company in Africa to do DVD authoring and the first to do augmented reality (for a Grant’s Whisky commercial).

Million Reasons, Bunny Chow).

Barker continues: “However, one of the issues our film industry faces is that the local broadcasters are not supporting local film.

International broadcasters have entire channels supporting, creating and nurturing their local talent. Our broadcasters do not allow the filmmakers to own their material.

We need more film initiatives created through our broadcasters. TV is where our South African audiences watch film. The industry must look at ways of building a film community to share ideas and support one another.”

Zaheer Goodman-Bhyat (Master Harold and the Boys, Confessions of a Gambler) adds: “2012 saw some great local films, including Semi-Soet, Material, Die Wonderwerker and Skeem. In addition the service side of the industry also seems to have been going well too, so all in all a good year.

“I’ve said this before but the greatest obstruction to the development of talent across the board in South Africa is the dire state of the television industry. Without an active television production sector there is no breeding ground for film talent and no career path for those that do develop well.

Ultimately this means we will lose the talent to more lucrative industries or markets.

“In 2013 the currency will continue to weaken and that will be good for our service sector and economy in general. As more local films travel we may see an increase in foreign investment in local films and (in the context of declining dollar based budgets) that should also be good news.”

Goodman-Bhyat believes that slowing growth and the possibility of a recession combined with a turbulent political environment will hamper consumer spending and that will likely hurt the box office overall.

KIOSK SOLUTION: Stanley Edwards

January 2013 | SCREENAFRICA | 3

News

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Remembering Robert Russell Highly respected South African film industry professional Robert Russell of Panacam Africa passed away on 5 October at the age of 58.

Tink Minster of Camera Platform writes: Robert started in our industry in 1976 when he took over from me at Samuelson Genop.

We became close friends in the early 1980s, when Neville Reid, Rob and I worked for ourselves under the same roof and also for Mandalay Progear.

Eventually around 1985, the three of us formed Logical Designs where we worked

together until 2000 when we sold the company to Sasani.

Rob was always a ‘debater’ (for want of a better word) and often, especially after his tipple of Bacardi and Coke, would argue anything even when it was obvious that he was wrong.

If you were his friend he was the best kind to have. Rob never asked questions or interfered, but was there for you 24/7.

Once, one of my very clever assistants decided to pay everybody because she was going on leave, leaving me with no cash

flow for the stop orders that were imminent at the end of the month on a Sunday. On Saturday night at about 10:30 pm I popped

down to Rob’s house and asked if he could deposit R10 000 into my account. He didn’t ask a single question, he just got out his laptop and did it – that was the kind of guy he was.

Rob leaves behind his wife Alison of some 33 years and two great children, Julie and Warren.

He will be sorely missed by his many film friends worldwide especially within the ‘Panavision family’.

In the words of one of the many emails I received: “A lovely man… great fun and remembered very fondly”.

Photo Courtesy Indigenous Film Distribution

Stuntmen or movie stars?

GLOBAL APPEAL: Director FC Hamman

International release for SA film South African feature film Angus Buchan’s Ordinary People will be released in at least nine countries around the world this month, distributed and marketed by Sony Pictures Worldwide.

It is a biopic of South African evangelist Angus Buchan – who appears as himself in the film – and three stories of people directly affected by his ministry.

The film was produced by FC Hamman Films International and Spotlight Entertainment.

Director FC Hamman believes the film has international appeal because people can relate to it anywhere in the world. “The film has a reality feel about it but the stories are human and universal and quite inspirational. It also has a feel good element and many people who saw the movie told me that it moved them out of their comfort zones,” explains Hamman.

He adds that they always knew the film would depend on DVD sales and international release to make a profit. “Box office was approximately R3m, but DVD

4 | SCREENAFRICA | January 2013

sales are still going strong. We have sold more than 50 000 units so far in South Africa alone, and it was a number one seller for quite a while. Over the Christmas period units were still selling at R169, which shows that there is a need in the market for this genre.”

International release was made possible when Ster-Kinekor Entertainment CEO Mario dos Santos took a trailer and other elements of the film with him to Sony Pictures in Los Angeles.

Says Hamman: “This opened the door for me to talk to Rich Peluso of Sony International Acquisitions, who requested a screener of the film. Sony immediately liked the film and offered us a worldwide deal. I also had to fly to the US to meet with the guys from Sony to finalise the finer details.”

The film will receive both theatrical and DVD release internationally, and will be distributed in countries including the US, Canada, Brazil, UK, the Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg), Australia and New Zealand.

“However, the list is growing by the day and this is very exciting for a South African production, it definitely opens the door for other productions to follow.”

According to Hamman this highlights the importance of telling local stories. “I think we have amazing opportunities as South African producers to sell our movies internationally but we need to find our own style and tell African stories. We should not copy the typical American storylines.”

LAUGH TILL IT HURTS: Eugene Koekemoer, Jonathan Pienaar and Danie Barnard

Due for release in South Africa by Nu Metro in February 2013, Bustin Chops is a comedy loosely based on the exploits of real-life local stuntman Eugene Koekemoer (who plays himself in the film) and other well-known stuntmen.

Director and producer Danie Barnard of Bake Media explains: “The fiIm starts five years after Eugene and his crew leave AF and Mullet, their popular television stunt shows on DStv, to start working regular 9 to 5 jobs. Everybody seems to be doing well except Eugene, so he devises a way to get his whole crew back to follow him one more time on the road to fame. Eugene’s plan is to make a stunt movie and show it to Steven Spielberg when he visits South Africa.”

The script was written by Barnard and Koekemoer and they also produced the film. All in all six stuntmen star in the film, including new editions to the team, Don Cobra and Paul de Beer.

“Eugene and actor Jonathan Pienaar (Blood Diamond) did a great job leading the cast. The other actors / stuntmen did not have many ‘acting scenes’ but I must say overall they did a great job,” reveals Barnard.

Bustin Chops had a budget of R2.5m and was funded by Barnard and Koekemoer

together with some investors and sponsors.

“To be honest we’ve only just found out that the Department of Trade & Industry assists local filmmakers…bummer!” states Barnard.

He notes that he and Koekemoer ‘used their charm’ to secure a theatrical release with Nu Metro. “After they saw the movie they were blown away and could not resist getting involved. I think Nu Metro saw a huge opportunity and potential for this movie in the current market. They are very active in all genres of local films,” he says.

The film literally took years to make as the crew could only shoot on weekends as everyone had day jobs. Shooting commenced in 2010 and was completed in mid-2012.

Locations included Pretoria (or ‘Snor City’ as Barnard calls it), Johannesburg, Ballito, Hartbeespoort and ‘some random game farms’.

Barnard chose to film on Canon 5D and Go-Pro cameras as his research showed that shooting 2K is ideal for cinema.

When asked how the shoot went, Barnard responds: “Mostly great; we did have a couple of trips to the hospital but we had the time of our lives making the film.”

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Prepping for the SAFTAS

attending the exhibition. There were 120 stands representing in excess of 600 brands. Without a shadow of a doubt we had the most international media at the

2011 show than ever before.

“There was also a good turnout of management from the manufacturers represented by local distributors, giving visitors the opportunity to interact directly with manufacturing executives. This is very important considering the increased cost of travel overseas which has resulted in less South Africans being able to attend IBC in Amsterdam and NAB in Las Vegas. “ Robinson is hoping that the 2013 show will attract a larger number of African delegates than ever before and has invested in a direct marketing campaign to target broadcasters and producers from the continent.

“By increasing our side events around the exhibition, comprising training and conference sessions, we hope to give African delegates greater value for their money,” he states.

Mediatech Africa 2013 will feature a presentation area on the exhibition floor for workshops and live demonstrations. The exhibition area at the Coca-Cola Dome grosses in excess of 10 000 square metres.

Screen Africa will once again host the one-day conference that runs in association with Mediatech Africa, with a focus on the latest production and technology trends.

Photo by Trevor Ou Tim

the two awards ceremonies at this stage is that they will be exciting, energetic and compelling television.”

Combined Vibe 2000 Entertainment and Vertical Limit Production have worked on 145 live events, staged throughout 27 African countries, including major awards ceremonies, international music tours, stadium concerts, arts and music festivals and fashion weeks, among others.

Meanwhile, the judging process for the 7th annual SAFTAS is well underway. Nodi Murphy, co-founder of two of South Africa’s biggest film festivals – Encounters and Out in Africa – has been appointed the overall chairperson of the judging panels.

Says Murphy: “I’m very happy to be involved in the SAFTAS as overall judging chairperson. The SAFTAS are important for

the industry as they acknowledge talent and good work, as judged by our peers.

“There are 120 judges in total so the process involves a lot of people. My job is to gather the judges together and administer the process. This means ensuring that the due process is followed. I am wholly independent in that I don’t do any judging myself, I’m just there to sort out any issues, should they arise within the various judging panels.”

For the first time, the second round of judging, which follows the filtration process, will take place in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. Previously all out of town judges were flown to Johannesburg.

Nominations will be announced in late February.

A record 354 entries qualified to proceed to the filtration phase of the 2013 SAFTAS. “We are very content with the response the SAFTAS received this year,” says Zama Mkosi NFVF CEO and SAFTAS Chairperson.

“Our continued efforts in encouraging all local productions to support the awards have paid off, as we received 120 more entries compared to last year.

“This year all the role players in the industry fully support the SAFTAS. We are also in discussions regarding the SAFTAS Academy that was announced at the previous SAFTAS ceremony to administer the awards.”

At the time of going to press the SAFTAS committee was in negotiations regarding the broadcast rights for the awards ceremonies across all South African channels.

GRAND AFFAIR: SAFTAS 2012

Mediatech Africa gains momentum Confirmed exhibitors for the 2013 edition of Mediatech Africa, the biennial media and entertainment technology trade exhibition that takes place at Johannesburg’s Coca-Cola Dome from 17 to 19 July, include Concilium Technologies, Inala Broadcast, GenCom, Macro Vidoe, Touchvision and Jaycor.

According to Mediatech Africa director Simon Robinson, visitors to the show will be exposed to latest technological developments such as tapeless production chains, digital single reflex cameras (DSLRs), stereoscopic 3D rigs and camcorders, 4K workflows, cutting edge high speed cameras, Thunderbolt and Solid State Device (SSD) technologies, and the latest advancements in Light Emitting Diode (LED) displays.

6 | SCREENAFRICA | January 2013

the tender to stage the SAFTAS – it’s a huge honour and a challenge to be involved in such a big national event that will also be on television. Vibe 2000 and Vertical Limit have collaborated on several other projects and together we deliver added value to clients. The two companies have different skills sets and so we complement each other perfectly.”

September notes that the essence of their pitch to the SAFTAS committee was to include the technical side and the behind the scenes side of film and television. “So, while we will focus on the glamorous people in front of the camera, we also want audiences to know that there is a gaffer and a best boy and showcase the broader picture of what goes into a film and television production. All I can reveal about

Photo by Kobus Loubser

Two Johannesburg-based event companies – Vibe 2000 and Vertical Limit Production – have been appointed to stage the 2013 South African Film & Television Awards (SAFTAS), which will take place over two evenings in early March at a venue to be confirmed.

Vibe 2000 and Vertical Limit Production presented a joint pitch in response to the tender issued by SAFTAS custodian, the National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF). Proposals were adjudicated in terms of the Supply Chain Management policy of the NFVF, Treasury Regulations and the Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act (PPPFA) 2000 (Act No 5 of 2000).

Says Vibe 2000 MD Sam September: “We are obviously very excited to have won

LOOKING BACK: Mediatech Africa 2011 Says Robinson: “The 2013 edition of Mediatech Africa builds on the 2011 show, which was the best yet, with 6 800 visitors and over 1 500 exhibiting personnel

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News

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Easy access to footage Encodi, a secure video sharing system for the media industry operated and supported in South Africa by Inverse Films (Pty) Ltd, was recently used on five feature films, including the BBC movie Reckless and the local screen adaptation of Nelson Mandela’s biography Long Walk to Freedom.

As post-production specialist Barry Strick of Inverse Films explains, Encodi was specifically designed for the film industry and for rushes in particular, as it provides easy access to cuts, dailies and other video content.

“It offers increased security for the client as each user has a unique login name and password. Encodi is able to track access with its ‘statistics’ function, which provides the name, date and time that each video is viewed and the computer it was viewed on.

“The system has a facility to upload ALE (log) files with rushes, putting in markers for every slate and take, making it easy to find a particular shot. Uploads are accomplished with Aspera technology built into Encodi,

8 | SCREENAFRICA | January 2013

DESIGNED FOR THE FILM INDUSTRY: Encodi in action on multiple platforms which makes uploads four to 10 times faster. An upload confirmation email is sent

by Encodi for each file to confirm that the rushes are online,” says Strick.

Encodi was developed by Online | Apps | Co in the UK. The owner of the company, Jon Marsh, was previously head of IT for a leading UK broadcast media group.

Strick notes that the system was designed from the ground up and tailored to the requirements of film industry users

by IT experts with industry knowledge and experience.

“Encodi is reliable and easy to use with intuitive menus,” he continues. “At Inverse Films we take care of all user administration from access rights management to dealing with user interface training and support to handling any FAQs.”

Projects can include stills (locations, etc), casting videos and offline edits for viewing and approval.

Inverse Film’s Encodi system is locally operated, so expenditure can be included as part of the ‘qualifying South African spend’ if accessing the South African Department of Trade & Industry rebate.

“Finally and most importantly for local users, Encodi is one of the few systems that streams reliably to South Africa on computers and iPads. The system is well suited to the local market, as it offers an affordable, local and international online viewing and collaboration solution,” concludes Strick.

Kodak assures industry In the face of the rapidly declining use of motion picture film stock, Kodak has assured customers in South Africa that it will continue to manufacture and distribute its line of motion picture film products.

To this end Kodak has announced its new 35mm KODAK Color Asset Protection Film 2332, and will be adding to the portfolio a new KODAK VISION3 black-and-white digital separation film for film recording.

The introduction of the new stocks ensure that customers will be able to successfully archive and retrieve their valuable content for the foreseeable future.

Kodak claims that film is the only proven standard for archiving and the only format able to preserve images for more than 100 years.

“The key message is to show our customers and the film industry our dedication and commitment to our products and services,” says Klaus-Georg Hafner, manager, Marketing Communications, Kodak Entertainment Imaging EMEA. “This is illustrated by the launch of the two new products and by the fact that several outstanding films were recently shot on 35mm KODAK VISION3 Color Negative Film. These include Les Miserables, The Invisible Woman, Fast and Furious 6, The Great Beauty and Grace of Monaco.”

Hafner points out that two movies shot in South Africa, Long Walk To Freedom directed by Justin Chadwick with cinematographer Chris Menges, and the British TV series Strike Back used 35mm Kodak film, as did several television commercials.

DEDICATION AND COMMITMENT: Klaus-Georg Hafner “With the new 35mm Kodak Color Asset Protection Film 2332, we offer content owners an affordable option for protecting their creative assets,” says Kai Langner, regional sales director and vice president of Kodak Entertainment Imaging EMEA. “The Digital Dilemma and The Digital Dilemma 2 reports published by the Academy’s Science & Technology Council were clear on the superior qualities of film in an archiving pipeline.

“Again, our plan for the future has a sharper focus now, and as part of that plan, our market-leading motion picture products will continue to provide the innovation and creative choices that production and post-production need. And the important message is that Kodak continues to manufacture motion picture film.”

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| Industry

What’s ahead for 2013?

As we embark on the new year key industry players in the South African commercial production and equipment supply sectors summarise 2012 and give their predictions for 2013. * 2012 was an unpredictable, bumpy year for many in the commercial production industry according to Peter Carr, executive producer at Velocity, South Africa’s most awarded commercial production company.

“I think the industry is presently taking strain, judging by word on the street among producers, crew and suppliers. A lot of producers are complaining about the lack of work and low budgets, while costs are going up. One major production house closed down in 2012.”

He notes that last year the industry resolved many issues including the Cape Town location problems. “We now need to resolve the newly drafted work permit / visa legislations, which will impact on foreign clients coming into South Africa. Clients are not all paying on time and I expect this to become a bigger issue this year. Agencies and production houses will need to become firmer about their contracts.

“We also need to improve communication with suppliers to help them find alternative, cost effective means of producing the work. I think that the government should do more in terms of marketing South Africa as a film destination.”

Carr believes that 2013 may see local directors being used more and more on foreign commercials shot in South Africa.

“Locally, I expect the market to remain much the same as 2012 with a lot of ups and downs. There is a lot work coming out of the African continent with much of it being awarded to local agencies so I expect this area will grow and generate more work for us,” he says.

John Dixon, group chief executive officer of agency Draftfcb South Africa believes that 2012 was a pretty tough year for the industry.

“While many of the top companies in South Africa are

reporting good results, there is a general lack of confidence in the macroeconomic environment, driven in part by the sovereign debt crisis in Europe. Clients appear to be less willing to commit up front to projects and we have seen a swing back to variable compensation as opposed to fixed fees. The process for getting work approved appears to be getting longer and longer.

“There appears to be a decline in skill levels across both agencies and clients which affects both margins and the quality of the final work. On positive side, the demand for truly integrated campaigns is increasing and digital communication generally has finally come of age in this market,” says Dixon.

He believes that TV will still dominate ad spend in 2013, whereas digital will continue to experience the fastest growth.

“Expect to see greater integration of TV and digital to take advantage of the ‘two screens phenomenon’. Radio will continue to be the best opportunity to speak to South Africans in their own language,” comments Dixon.

Equipment supply 2012 was a difficult year in terms of broadcast equipment sales says Sony SA’s Jess Goedhals.

“We were fortunate in that we delivered a brand new 26-camera high definition (HD) outside broadcast (OB) unit to SuperSport in April and a five-camera HD mobile production unit in October, with another one due early in February 2013.

“I believe that 2013 will continue like 2012, with little excitement in the broadcast sales market. There is movement on the media archiving front with some new products that

should create opportunities in 2013, but the remainder of the industry will be quiet, primarily due to lack of momentum normally provided by the national broadcaster in any region.”

Goedhals thinks that 4K will make its mark in the industry in 2013, as products announced in this format have generated enthusiasm from filmmakers across the world.

“I believe that 4K is set to become the next ‘big thing’ in television – the excitement is equivalent to when HD (1920x1080) became a reality for customers in South Africa in 2008. Sony’s Consumer division has just launched the 84” 4K Ultra HD TV with buyers already placing orders.

“The ‘lens to glass’ journey of Sony 4K technology and equipment development has its inception in the range of 4K acquisition products – the F65 Premium and F55 CineAlta broadcast cameras and the XAVC camera recording system,” states Goedhals.

Steve Lauter of Jasco Broadcast Solutions says that the first six months of 2012 was business as usual (ie. ‘tough as nails’).

“Luckily Jasco landed two substantial projects at SuperSport and Namibia Broadcasting Corporation which really got us over the hump. I am pretty optimistic for 2013 as there is so much upgrade work going on at the moment both locally and in Africa to support channel expansion as a result of digital terrestrial television (DTT).

“With DTT looming I think that set-topboxes are going to be a big deal and archiving is still a hot topic,” says Lauter.

Andrew Cole of Concilium Technologies reports that despite the slow downs and subsequent delays in companies being able to spend their budgets, they had a very satisfying year with a number of firsts.

In 2013 he hopes to see initial commercial DTT broadcasts commence in South Africa.

“This should result in the broadcasters requiring investment in infrastructure requirements and clever workflows to provision for the additional channels, both SD and HD, which can be accommodated on the DTT platform. The imminent roll out of LTE (Long Term Evolution) should be a game changer with consumers switching back and forth between linear TV and on demand services.

“With 3D having run its course, more emphasis will be put on 4K. There will continue to be a move towards ‘TV everywhere’. With tablets becoming more prevalent, broadcasters will focus on better quality transmission to handheld devices and the ability to watch a programme on one device, pause it, and continue watching on another device,” explains Cole.

Sean Loeve of Panasonic Broadcast cites 2012 as ‘very tough’ with less units being sold and at tighter margins.

“Customers seemed very nervous about investing in new product in the difficult market conditions. There is also increased pressure from international direct sell websites which cut out the marketing and professional support margin.

“However, trading picked up in November and December and we are looking forward to growth in 2013. From Panasonic Broadcast we can expect a quality world leading Codec family in AVC-Ultra being incorporated into its camcorders,” comments Loeve.

*For predictions of how 2013 will pan out for the film industry see front page story entitled Positive outlook for SA film.

January 2013 | SCREENAFRICA | 11

ADCETERA

| Report on the South African commercials industry

Slick tre atment on a low budge t Bridgestone’s new commercial is all about treading safely. It’s brought to life by Hammersmith and Elephant director Brett Wild, who jumped at the chance to take a departure from the comical performance work he’s known for and aim for a slick, emotive piece of film.

The client originally wanted to use an internationally produced commercial for its tyre brand in South Africa, but Hammersmith and Elephant performed a few tricks to give a high end polish to a very low budget.

Conceptualised by DWF Collective of Johannesburg, it’s a story about cause and effect that touches on the vital connections one makes in life to signify how important your car’s connection is with the road.

A man drives down a rain soaked street and stops to buy flowers from a roadside salesman. After driving on he suddenly has to brake hard to avoid an old cyclist but manages to stop the car in time.

Meanwhile, the flower seller heads to a café to buy a meal and the cyclist and driver both carry on their separate ways. As it turns out the flowers are meant for a woman and the money he spent on the flowers buys both the flower seller and his grandfather a meal – the grandfather being the very same cyclist.

One of the most challenging aspects of the shoot was requisitioning Fox Street in

By Anton Crone

Bridgestone commercial Johannesburg. Because of timing and budget, Wild chose to shoot without a go-ahead from the authorities.

“We started rolling at 5am and carried on through Friday rush hour until the cops shut us down at 9pm,” says Wild. “We were at it again on Saturday and this time we had to divert a National Union of Mineworkers

(NUM) protest to keep our street. It required a meeting with the union leaders and some real choice diplomacy from Byron Grant but that’s what producers are for, aren’t they?”

Another budget beating aspect was the visual treatment. “We filmed on digital with a RED yet it’s got a really high film end feel,

and where we’ve used a split screen, the two different scenes are actually from the same frame,” says Wild. He admits he enjoys the challenge of matching high expectations as budgets get tighter and tighter, and Hammersmith and Elephant seem prepared to do whatever it takes to produce the goods.

A (smiling ) re alit y check Freelance director of photography Tim Chevallier took time out from a busy schedule to document Operation Smile’s latest medical mission in Malawi.

The international NGO provides free surgery to disadvantaged people with facial deformities – mainly children with cleft lips and palates – and they invited Chevallier to volunteer his skills.

“It’s important that people divert from the mainstream,” says Chevallier. “I’ve been shooting a lot of ‘reality’ stuff lately and doing this makes one realise the importance of taking a reality check.”

As the photographer on the mission, I’m chatting to Chevallier from the shade of a mud hut along a road to Lake Malawi.

We’ve finished documenting a week of surgery and now we’re off to the lake to relax with the team. The bus we’ve been travelling in is having brake problems after the driver stepped hard on the pedal to avoid hitting a child running across road.

While the driver tightens the bolts on the brake callipers, Chevallier practices his Chichewa with the locals.

“I’ve been spoilt with this project because I’ve come home,” says Chevallier who grew up in Malawi. “These are the loveliest people in the world and it’s inspiring to watch these medical pros come

12 | SCREENAFRICA | January 2013

Tim Chevalier filming in Malawi for Operation Smile into this environment and witness the immediate effect they have on people.

Their lives have been changed by this surgery.”

It’s not all lakeshore sojourns for Chevallier and the other volunteers. The mission is hard work and one has to be sensitive to patients and medical professionals. “To film this requires a solid understanding of protocol. You’ve got to avoid being intrusive, not just of the patients and their family but also the medical team as they work,” explains

Chevallier. “Once you understand how far you can go it becomes easier. You’re filming in an environment with a lot of pain and you’ve got to understand it’s a process; it’s necessary to push the limits somewhat to capture that emotion.”

Chevallier decided to shoot handheld so he could manoeuvre easily in the operating theatre and around the frenetic activity in the hospital. But much of the story happens outside of the hospital and Chevallier focused on two individuals, went to their homes and captured a sense of their lives.

He explains the importance of setting the scene and about shooting the environment and the people on the periphery.

“But ultimately it’s in the hospital where it comes together and it affects you no matter how objective you become.”

It’s been a worthwhile reality check for this filmmaker who has shot for the likes of National Geographic Channel and Survivor South Africa. This project has compelled Chevallier to want to come back to Malawi and spend more time there to work on other projects. – Anton Crone

| ADCETERA

C ap turing the pororoca

By Linda Loubser

In June last year a South African crew flew to the Amazon in Brazil, slept on hammocks on an overcrowded boat and faced parasitic fish to shoot the Pororoca TV commercial for Investec Asset Management.

“From the moment we heard about this job, we all knew it was the job of a lifetime,” says director of photography (DOP) Robo Wilson.

Their brief was to capture world champion surfer Sergio Laus on the pororoca – a massive wave, also called a tidal bore, which flows up the Araguari River in the Amazon basin once a year due to changing tides.

The ad was conceptualised by agency Ireland/Davenport and brought to life by production house Spitfire Films. The concept was that, similar to the endless wave, Investec Asset Management could find opportunities in the most unexpected places.

“Our first challenge was to plan what gear we would need. We didn’t have a massive budget and we had to fly to São Paulo, take another four-hour flight to

Robo Wilson

Andrew ‘AK’ Kyriakou

Investec commercial Macapá and embark on a 16-hour boat trip from there to the northern tip of Brazil near the border with French Guiana, where the wave is at its best,” explains Wilson.

“The logistics started eating away at the budget so we decided to go the Canon 5D route – we took along two 5D MKIIs and one 5D MKIII. They’re small cameras that can still produce pretty images, so we packed very lightly and kept whittling down the gear before it could fit in our luggage.”

They also took along four Go Pros and two Canon 600Ds as well as many lenses.

“The most amazing one was the Canon EF 70-300mm stabilised second generation lens. We did close-ups at 50 metres that were rock steady from a bouncing rubber duck – we were amazed!”

Extreme field testing In addition Wilson also believed they needed aerial shots and super slow motion to do the commercial justice. “We rented a small, remote controlled helicopter-drone in Brazil for the aerial shots. It could only tilt, but it was absolutely worth it for the added production value.”

For the super slow motion footage they tracked down the new Phantom Miro, often referred to as the ‘baby’ Phantom because it is light-weight and ultra-compact. “We made phone calls all over the world and eventually tracked down the prototype from the NAB Show in Brazil. It wasn’t really production-friendly yet and we had to wire it to the battery of the boat, but we managed to get our footage.

“There was a lot of extreme field testing going on – all hard-fought with very little budget.”

The crew included Wilson and his assistant Nadia Terblanche, producer Rob Neuhold and director Andrew Kyriakou (known as AK), as well as executive creative director John Davenport, executive producer Liesl Karpinski, art director Gina Anderson and account director Ursula van Zyl. Once in Brazil they were assisted by local service company Neon Rio. “AK had built a storyline in his mind which included quite a lot of footage to build tension and anticipation preceding the big wave and show the beauty of the area. For this we shot footage of local children running, a flock of Scarlet Ibises taking off from the river and pink river dolphins. We just filmed anything and everything we thought could possibly be used.”

The tidal bore arrives every day for three days and lasts about 50 minutes. Wilson explains: “There is a low frequency rumbling that can be heard up to an hour before the wave hits. On the first day the wave was big enough for a good ‘rehearsal’ shoot. The next day is the big day, as the wave is so small on the third day that it’s

hardly worth shooting.”

They worked from three boats, one from which the little helicopter took off. “The Brazilian handlers had to let it go from their hands and catch it when it came down. We attached foam rubber to the bottom of the helicopter so that we could salvage the footage if it went down in the water,” says Wilson.

“I was on a rubber duck with Laurindo Almeida, the Miro operator, as our boat had to be manoeuvrable enough to get onto the wave next to the surfers, who were dropped onto the wave by Jet Ski. AK was on another boat with focus puller Bruno Brada.”

The challenges during the shoot included the boat crowded with crew, surfers and gear, heat and humidity, unpredictable weather and the danger of the pororoca itself. “It is a very destructive wave that takes out trees and dead animals as it overflows the river banks,” explains Wilson.

Inside the river was the added risk of the Candiru – also called vampire fish – that are rumoured to invade and parasitise the human urethra. According to Wilson they were terrified of these fish.

While no-one encountered a Candiru, they had their fair share of things going awry. “At one point our little boat hit a tree with the wave advancing on us, but we managed to get the boat running again just in time.

“On the main day of shooting one of our boat’s motors also gave in just before the wave was due to arrive. We had to switch motors very quickly. As we knew we only had this one shot it was quite tense,” explains Wilson.

He notes that his main aim was to give the footage grace. “Although it was shot handheld, with me standing on a rubber boat with bent legs trying to stabilise the camera, we tried to achieve a state where the photography belies the small, light cameras that we were using. We didn’t want rushed and shaky footage; we wanted it to be a calm, beautiful homage to the pororoca.”

January 2013 | SCREENAFRICA | 13

Commercials

|

Reports by Joanna Sterkowic z

The era of brand overload B

randing, in general, requires a rebrand according to Kevin Hill, founder of UK-based agency The Council.

Speaking at the recent PromaxBDA Africa Conference in Johannesburg Hill maintained that brand managers and marketers have to challenge themselves to look at the position brands play in daily life.

“I think that brands have become democratised. Today’s audiences are demanding a passionate relationship and real dialogue with brands,” he continued.

“Brand managers should never put people into boxes or they will be out of step with their audiences. It’s important that we never lose sight of the real lives that our audiences live because this lies at the core of what we do as brand managers,” said Hill.

He should know what he’s talking about, having worked with brands such as Discovery Networks International and News Corp. Hill was also the visual brains behind the branding of Dave, UKTV’s hit channel.

Photo by Simba Nyamukachi

Everywhere they go consumers are bombarded by brands, brands and more brands.

But how consumers interact and respond to brands has changed in today’s world.

‘That itch’ At PromaxBDA Africa Hill questioned whether things have really changed since the days depicted in the hit TV series, Mad Men, which revolves around an advertising agency in the early 1960s.

“The lead character Don Draper (played

by Jon Hamm) is all about creating ‘that itch’. So, are brand managers and ad executives still trying to create that same itch today? People are becoming more suspicious of brands. We’ve gone from monolithic brands to too much choice – a sweetshop of shiny new things where everything looks the same.

“This sameness results in fatigue of choice with the result that consumers can’t make active choices. To get out of this problem brands create their own language, which in turn creates more consumer cynicism. It’s an invented difference which is not authentic,” commented Hill.

He quoted, as an example, the different names Starbucks has created for varying take-away coffee cup sizes – ‘Tall’, ‘Grande’, ‘Venti’ and ‘Trenta’.

Invented double speak Hill maintained that this invented difference is new rather than true. “We do this to try and stand out but it’s meaningless and the world is full of this invented double speak that’s empty and means nothing. A good example is the campaign pay-off line of England’s Metropolitan Police: ‘Working together for a safer London’. It’s a silly line because the actual word ‘police’ implies 14 | SCREENAFRICA | January 2013

BRAND NEW WORLD – Kevin Hill

that anyway.

“Brand managers and advertisers don’t own their brands, the audience does.

Consumers are no longer passive and they want to be in a relationship with the brand.

If as brand managers you get your communications wrong you will be faced with a raging mob. Remember that your brand only exists in the context of your audience.”

Examples of brands that successfully engage with their audiences are Gap and Dell. Gap allows people to design their own Gap logo on the Internet, while Dell created ‘Dell Hell’ where people could vent about their problems with Dell computers.

“Technology companies generally don’t interact with consumers,” explained Hill, “but Dell used a blogosphere to publicly discuss problems consumers had with their products. This was a revolutionary strategy as their blog was basically saying, ‘Tell us what’s shit about our products’. It managed to convert angry consumers into ‘passionate superheroes’ of the Dell brand.

“Change for change’s sake is something consumers react to very strongly. They’ll tell you if they like it or not, as they did with Tropicana’s new branding, which was crap. I think brands can still build honest

relationships with consumers but it takes lots of work and don’t go in too strong at the beginning.

“Broken brand promises will be exposed like that of petroleum giant BP, which did dangerous extraction of oil in the Gulf and ignored public protests. I think BP should have gone back to their old brand of a shield as it suggests protection.”

Masters of the universe Thanks to the blogosphere, Twitter, YouTube and the Internet, nothing stays in the home, which makes consumers the masters of their own universe, according to Hill.

“How do we succeed in this brave new world? In our rush to take part and engage with the Twittterverse, we might miss the point and get it wrong.

“Marmite isn’t an in-between product – you either love it or hate it. So Marmite got consumers to identify themselves and state whether they were Marmite lovers or haters.

In this instance a brand’s honesty paid off.

Marmite engaged with their loyal fans by creating a Marmite shrine – they handed the brand over to the consumer.

“Orange is also doing innovative things.

At the Glastonbury Festival they recognised that cell phone batteries run out at festivals so they created a lot of audience engagement by providing Wellington boots that charged phones if you danced in them.”

Old vs new Hill defined ‘old branding’ as being in the corporate context and capturing the consumer, while ‘new branding’ resides in the consumer context and liberates the consumer.

“New branding is a move into eyepopping truths and not spectacle. A brand is no longer a fortress because the audience wants to engage and be charismatic. Talk honestly in a voice that’s completely true to the brand, like the Dove Real Beauty campaign which breaks through beauty myths. Dove even has a self-esteem fund.

“Also, always be meaningful. Don’t be like the Claudia Schiffer L’Oreal ad for Boswelox, which basically tells women not to smile at their babies because they will get wrinkles.

“We’re all our own brand,” concluded Hill.

Photo by Simba Nyamukachi

In search of story

| Commercials

Vice-president and creative director of BET (Black Entertainment Television) Networks, Maurice Marable, revealed the secrets behind the art of story at the recent PromaxBDA Africa Conference in Johannesburg.

W

henever a creative in BET’s promotions department approaches Maurice Marable with a concept for a promo Marable asks: what’s the story; who is the audience; what does the promo look like; who are the characters; how does the promo begin and end?

“The story cannot be unless you have a back story with a human element,” Marable told PromaxBDA Africa delegates.

“Consider this story: back in the 1950s there was a young black man working on a farm in the American south. His father wanted more for him because there weren’t many opportunities for black men at the time. So the young man got married, joined the military and travelled the world.

“The young man was my father and I was born in the late 1960s. I didn’t know it at the time but by travelling to Germany and Spain with my family, I picked up story after story just by experiencing different places and people.”

A self-confessed ‘closet creative’ and ‘a strange kid who watched commercials instead of cartoons when growing up’, Marable’s motto in life has always been to do the opposite of what is expected.

“At school instead of training to become a 100m sprinter I did pole vaulting, just because there were no blacks in the sport at the time,” explained Marable. “When my family moved to Georgia I decided to become a filmmaker and make commercials but my parents said no. So I did accounting only to drop out soon after. I joined the military, thinking I would be like my dad. But he got angry because I had put myself in danger.

“While on military duty in the Iraq desert I again asked myself – what do I want to be and the answer was a filmmaker. I left the army and went to study film at Georgia State University. When I told my Dad and he

said: ‘Who do you think you’re going to be – Spike Lee?’”

Bit part At that time Marable worshipped Lee and became a line producer for him. They made several commercials together, including one with the late Michael Jackson.

“But then it struck me that in my own story I was playing a bit part in Spike Lee’s story,” said Marable. “So I left Spike and didn’t work for six months. I’m a big believer in the universe and one day I saw a poster for HBO on a train. Then the train doors opened and suddenly a lady from HBO called to offer me a production manager job.

“Yet there I was still working on someone else’s creative. I asked each and every creative director if I could write something and they all rejected me. But I kept nagging and eventually they gave me a 15-second promo for a science fiction show that aired at 2am. It was heaven to do.”

Cinematic thread Marable was later promoted to the position of writer / producer. “At HBO they did promos very simply, just by putting the talent in front of a white screen and getting them to say, ‘Watch my show!’

“I grew up loving films and that’s why I create such cinematic promos with strong, dramatic storylines. At HBO I kept telling directors how to direct the spots I’d written so I wasn’t very popular. The HBO top brass noticed, moved me to the creative department and finally allowed me to direct my own promos.”

Marable stressed that creatives must always break the rules and find different ways of attacking the same problems.

“It all comes down to storytelling and

HUMAN ELEMENT – Maurice Marable

being as epic and cinematic as possible,” he commented. “Failure is where success is because it gives you a chance to learn and try again.”

Award-winners While at HBO Marable created and directed promos for hit shows like Six Feet Under, Boardwalk Empire and The Game.

The Six Feet Under spot, in which the stars of the show shop in a grocery store was, according to Marable, controversial.

“At HBO you have to pitch 10 ideas to the network bosses before you get the go-ahead to do a single promo. They hated my grocery store idea and they didn’t like my other nine pitches either. So I told them about the grocery story again, about the symbolism and metaphors and the hints it gives to what happens in the series.

Eventually the bosses agreed.

“Two days before the shoot we still didn’t have a song for the promo. My VP told me to choose a song and Nina Simone’s

Feeling Good spoke to me. No-one apart from the actors came to the shoot. As any creative knows, you never know whether it will work. I thought I’d messed up but the promo won a Promax award so it worked. It was a case of standing up for my creative and winning.”

The Boardwalk Empire promo, a high budget piece because it incorporated lots of CGI, picked up three gold statuettes at the last Promax event in Los Angeles.

Marable has also been Emmy-nominated for his opener for Big Love.

“I love my creative team in the workplace and I preach family, trust and respect,” stated Marable. “Work hard and you will be rewarded. Talk less, listen more and remember that every story is about the human story.”

At the end of his PromaxBDA Africa presentation Marable revealed to Screen Africa that he was working on his first ever long form project.

“It should be ready to go in about a year and a half,” he said.

January 2013 | SCREENAFRICA | 15

|

Photo by Blake Woodhams

Documentary

A day in the life of Jeppestown

A group of female directors shot a collaborative, direct cinema style documentary in Jeppestown in the east of Johannesburg’s CBD on 9 March 2012.

W

ith 10 crews, 52 crew members and eight female directors, Jeppe on a Friday is a collaborative effort that aims to help foster a creative community in Johannesburg.

The documentary, directed by Shannon Walsh and Arya Lalloo, interweaves five storylines directed by local female directors Kitso Lynn Lelliott, Lucilla Blankenberg, Mujahid Safodien, Natalie Haarhoff, Ryley Grunenwald and Xoliswa Sithole.

Collaboration Walsh directed a similar documentary, St-Henri the 26th of August, in her home country Canada in 2011. Inspired by this process, she started looking for Johannesburg-based directors to collaborate with, and met Lalloo through a mutual friend and filmmaker.

“Arya and I really clicked – we had the same fascination with the everyday life in the inner city and the process of gentrification it was undergoing. We’ve shared an amazing collaboration over the last year and a half of working together.

“We also couldn’t have done it without the incredible team of South African directors who participated in the process and gave their time, creativity and trust to us.”

According to Walsh the film was made on a ‘shoestring budget’, funded by the Gauteng Film Commission and the Swiss film fund Vision Sud Est, as well as $12 000 raised on crowdfunding platform Indiegogo.

“Of course, for a film that was as much an uphill battle to finance as this one was, our producers Sarah Spring from Parabola Films in Canada and Elias Ribeiro from Urucu Media in Johannesburg were instrumental in making it happen,” notes Walsh.

Spirit She explains that the film is meant to reflect the spirit of the people in Jeppestown, as captured in a single day. “It is one of the oldest neighbourhoods in Johannesburg, 16 | SCREENAFRICA | January 2013

and so rich with stories. We wanted to show the beauty and the everyday magic of the city, without shying away from the darker side of Johannesburg.”

The five storylines follow the lives of Beninese entrepreneurs Arouna and Zainab who run a restaurant and survived the xenophobic violence; Ravi, a second generation Indian shop owner; garbage reclaimer Vusi; JJ, a young property developer who wants to create a New York style urban environment in the inner city; and Robert, who lives with thousands of other men in the Jeppe Men’s Hostel and is part of a Isicathamiya singing group.

Walsh explains that the themes that emerged during the day were the struggle for survival against all odds in Johannesburg, and people working towards their dreams.

According to Lalloo they found the stories by exploring the neighbourhood as often as their schedules allowed. “Shannon and I spent our spare time in Jeppestown meeting people, listening to their stories and really doing a lot of hanging out, walking, watching and just feeling the space.

“This developed into discussions about the kind of characters we were most interested in following, what the mix would look like and how these separate narratives could potentially play off against each other. We started meeting and talking with the other directors and finally committed to the wonderful group of people in the film and started bringing everyone together.”

Local production Walsh adds that the documentary is an unofficial co-production between South Africa and Canada. “However, we were committed to making it a South African production, and we really committed to using women directors because we really wanted to ground it in this country.”

According to Walsh the 10 crews followed eight stories throughout the day with two roaming cameras. “They were small crews – a director of photography (DOP), a sound recordist, a production

Photo by Hanro Havenga

By Linda Loubser

COLLABORATED EFFORT – Elias Ribeira, Arya Lalloo and Shannon Walsh assistant and director. Two of the stories were eventually cut out during editing.”

They filmed on Sony EX-3 and Sony EX-1 cameras. “We used some of the cameras on shoulder mounts, but both cameras are pretty easy to use, and we’re really happy with the way it looked,” says Walsh.

They sourced cameras with the help of Gavin McCulla of The Cameraman rental company.

Adds Ribeira: “We started the day with Adam Bentel shooting establishing shots from a helicopter and we also had Karen Slater filming traveling shots from a truck moving through the neighbourhood. The DOPs were amazing.”

Walsh continues: “The crew’s response on the shooting day was phenomenal. It was as though we had organised a party, it was so joyful. The day was about getting back to the roots of cinema of engaging with the world.”

Direct cinema An important aspect of the documentary is the use of the direct cinema style, which is similar to the cinéma vérité style and tries to capture reality and represent it truthfully.

Walsh explains: “It’s a day in the life, shooting from the hip kind of style which aims to cause as little disruption as possible.

“In pre-production we spent a lot of time

workshopping the cinematic look we were aiming for and how we would approach it – for example we decided there would be no talking heads. We set clear parameters and also talked a lot about film ethics in how we would approach the documentary and what we would include.”

Post-production took six months and Jeppe on a Friday premièred at the Montreal International Documentary Film Festival (RIDM) in Canada in November.

Says Walsh: “As it was our first screening internationally we weren’t sure what to expect, but people really understood the film and loved the characters and the pace.

It showed them a side of South Africa that was completely new. Lots of compliments went to our incredible editor Vuyani Sondlo, who wove the film together so magically.”

They are currently in discussions with distributors and broadcasters to decide the next steps with the film, as they have received lots of interest in South Africa and abroad. “We will continue on an international festival run through early 2013 before launching here in Johannesburg with a festival we are organising in Jeppestown in August 2013, as well as some local screenings across the country.

“We are also hoping for a wide distribution in South Africa and internationally through broadcast and a theatrical run,” concludes Walsh.

| Film

Bringing Screendance to South Africa

By Mike Aldridge Translating the principles of movement into meaningful form on screen has been an intrinsic part of filmmaking ever since the silent movie era, when the lack of narrative sound forced directors to exploit movement to tell a story.

T

oday there is a renewed focus on the body as a narrative instrument on screen with the advent of the theoretical discipline of Screendance, which informs filmic modalities from music videos to popular dance films and the extremes of video art.

Screendance specialist Jeannette Ginslov recently returned to South Africa after some years spent overseas, where among other things, she did an MSc in the discipline at the University of Dundee in Scotland.

As Ginslov explains, Screendance is “an umbrella term to encapsulate dance film, dance video and video dance”. Dance film prioritises linear narrative and plot in a cinematic production which has a script and characters. Dance video on the other hand prioritises the choreography of dance in terms of how shots are set up and sequenced to inform the narrative.

Then there is video dance, which is the most theoretical and experimental mode,

extracting from filmic genres such as dogme, cinema verité, film noir and so on and even uses video effects to expand the range of narrative form on screen. “It is questioning and open-ended, exploring and pushing the envelope,” says Ginslov.

“That is the model that I like most to explore.”

film production, television and the Internet.

And there is a special place for dancers as filmmakers in such productions, for as Ginslov observes: “Dancers who cross over into cinema understand what the medium does in terms of the moving body. They are exploring other ways of seeing the body, other ways of registering and capturing the movement than was traditionally taught in filmmaking.”

Ginslov’s background as a dancer led to her interest in the Screendance genre. Born in Durban, she studied dance in South Africa, New York and France. She choreographed and directed awardwinning dance works and in 2006 founded multimedia dance theatre company Walking Gusto Productions.

As an interdisciplinary artist Ginslov facilitates Screendance residencies and directs, shoots and edits her own Screendance works that centre on the moving body and its digital materiality. Her Screendance works have been screened at the BBC Big Screen Outdoors UK, Danish Film Institute DK, British Film Institute, Lincoln Centre NY, Red Cat Theatre LA and many other Screendance festivals around the globe.

Influential figure

Personal experience

One of the most influential figures that helped shape Screendance was the experimental and avant-garde American filmmaker Maya Deren. In the 1940s and 1950s Deren made experimental dance films, reinventing and breaking traditional cinematic rules. This helped pave the way for Screendance to emerge as an art form in its own right.

Since then Screendance has diversified and moved on to mainstream forms and outlets such as music videos, mainstream

Ginslov brings her own experience of movement to the observational viewpoint of the filmmaker. “For the dancer, the lens is an extension of the filmmaker’s eye – but the lens is connected not only to your eye but to your centre of gravity.

“If you are using your legs as a bipod, everything is highly mobile and you are connected through this moving body to your own centre. This is the perfect meeting point where the cinematic medium can really exploit the full potential of the moving

body.”

She believes that filmmakers are often disengaged from the moving body and so their cinematic technique is also disconnected from the body in motion. “As a dancer you learn about the connection of movement with cinematic production. You are not standing back and framing, you are engaging with the moving material – it is a completely different set of rules,” she says.

“That movement is translated into the film and then to the viewer, where the viewer is viscerally engaged with the moving images. Just as in the locally made film Otello Burning where there are hardly any static shots at all.”

Collaboration Ginslov’s current venture in collaboration with dance filmmaker Dominique Jossie is a company called Screendance Africa (Pty) Ltd. “Our aim is to grow Screendance in South Africa and Africa generally, to teach youngsters about Screendance and to organise events such as Screendance festivals and Dance-aAlongs – outdoor events where we screen well-known dance films that the audience can dance along to, led by professional dancers,” she says.

Ever at the forefront of technology, Ginslov is also working on projects using augmented reality, blending Screendance and location-based video which can be viewed on smart phones or tablet computers.

“Augmented reality is one of the next big steps for the future of Screendance,” she says.

So the next time you find Ginslov, it may well be on the screen of your smart phone – creating dances in the virtual space of digital materiality.

January 2013 | SCREENAFRICA | 17

FILM

|

Director Speak Linda Korsten Following a long career in television, South African Linda Korsten co-produced the hit Afrikaans-language musical, Liefling, before going on to direct her first feature film, Pretville. Also an Afrikaans musical, Pretville released locally in November.

WITH SUCH A FAMOUSLY MUSICAL FATHER (THE LATE OPERA SINGER GÉ KORSTEN) WAS IT INEVITABLE THAT YOU WOULD END UP DOING MUSICALS? My father definitely had an influence on my love for music. I grew up with opera and other classical music in the house and loved watching musicals on stage and on film. Working in the SABC’s Afrikaans Light Music Department for four years gave me quite a lot of knowledge about the making of music programmes.

HOW DID YOU PREPARE FOR YOUR FIRST FEATURE FILM DIRECTING GIG? I’ve been working on children’s TV programmes for the past 32 years and am still busy with Carike Keuzenkamp’s children’s DVDs. It’s quite a mind shift moving from children to adults. But we did intensive workshops with the crew on Pretville. I also had time, during the filming of Liefling to learn more about film directing.

I could make decisions on what to do and what not to do. Because I was also involved in the scriptwriting, it was easier for me to get my head around the process.

FOR THE LOVE OF MUSIC: On the Pretville set: Renske de Klerk (assistant director), Linda Korsten and choreographer Ferdinand Gernandt HOW DID YOU MAKE THE MOVE FROM TELEVISION TO FEATURE FILMS? Paul Krüger and I met when I needed a cameraman for my children’s programmes and we have worked together since 2000. Nine years later we stopped producing children’s programmes for the SABC and Paul came up with the idea behind Liefling – Die Movie. He asked me to co-produce the film with him. After Liefling it was time for Pretville and Paul asked if I would like to direct as well.

WHAT WAS THE INSPIRATION FOR SETTING PRETVILLE IN THE 1950s?

Machiel Roets, composer of all Pretville’s music, sent a few songs he wrote to Paul Krüger, to see if he could use them in any way. These songs were written in the 1950s style. Paul immediately liked what he heard and started thinking of a film set in that era. He played the music to some of us, and we all loved it. The 1950s were great, such a fun time and what better than to re-live that era through film – a nostalgic trip for the older generation and a journey of discovery for the younger generation.

The result was Pretville.

18 | SCREENAFRICA | January 2013

WHAT WAS THE HIGHLIGHT OF YOUR TELEVISION CAREER? Remember the delightful children’s programme Pumpkin Patch? Louise Smit came up with this wonderful concept. I directed Pumpkin Patch from the first episode in 1986 until it ended in 1997. We worked incredibly hard, but also had enormous fun recording it. Snazzy Stories and Fun Factory were two other programmes that I’ll also never forget. The crew and cast were like a family and we invested so much love and passion into these shows. They also happened to be the last two programmes I produced and directed for the SABC.

PRETVILLE WAS A MASSIVE PRODUCTION – HOW DID YOU COPE WITH THE STRESS? We worked on Pretville for almost two years. I am generally good at handling stress – the older I get, the calmer I become (sort of). The most stressful times on this film were during the filming and also just before the première in November. Because I also co-produced the film, there were so many things to think of. It was also very stressful when my mother became ill and passed away during the filming in March 2012. Luckily, I have a wonderful family who stood by me through that time.

The kids would visit during weekends, and playing with my grandchild, Danelle, was a wonderful way to de-stress. The Pretville family (cast and crew) were incredible and did their best to make everything run smoothly.

WHAT WAS THE FUNNIEST THING TO HAPPEN DURING THE SHOOT? It was when Willem Botha, who plays the postman, Hennie Hakkel, had to bump Rina Nienaber with his bicycle. The first take he did very well, but during the

second take he bumped her so hard that she ended up sprawled on the pavement. I don’t know why but I can’t help laughing when someone falls. I cried with laughter, but also checked that she wasn’t hurt.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO LIVE IN PRETVILLE? I would love to live in Pretville, especially if all the characters (the hairdresser, Pierre Lukuveer, Serah Somers, Ouma Sarie, Roeda Regyt) also really lived there.

IS THERE A STAR FROM THE 1950s THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO MEET? I would love to have met Grace Kelly. What a beautiful, charming, graceful young actress she was!

DID THE SONGS FROM PRETVILLE LINGER IN YOUR HEAD LONG AFTER THE SHOOT? The songs still linger in my head. I can’t get rid of them. They are really very catchy tunes!

DO YOU SING AND DANCE AROUND THE HOUSE? I sing a lot, but dancing around the house after a knee replacement – NO!!

WHAT IS YOUR BEST EVER MUSICAL FILM? The Sound of Music – it was released in 1965 and as a young girl I saw it about six times! My second best is My Fair Lady. These two musicals are, to me, the most wonderful classic musicals ever. The music is incredible. I still remember every song and all the words.

DID YOU HAVE ANY MENTORS IN THE INDUSTRY? Louise Smit is one of my biggest mentors. I learned so much from her about the industry, especially TV. ARE THERE ANY UP AND COMERS THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO WORK WITH IN THE FUTURE? Yes, people who are not famous yet like Ferdinand Gernandt, who was our choreographer for Pretville.

He is very talented in so many disciplines – scriptwriting, music, dancing – I think he will be a great director one day.

WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY WORKING ON? I’m working towards retirement within the next three to five years with my husband, but who knows, there may be another film or two in the pipeline.

New comedy is in the pink

By Linda Loubser BEING YOURSELF – Louw Venter and Gys de Villiers in a scene from Jimmy in Pienk

Afrikaans fish-outof-water comedy feature film Jimmy in Pienk is slated for release in the second half of 2013.

Says Goodman-Bhyat: “I met Hanneke several years ago and was impressed by her comedic ideas. When the script came to me it was in decent shape, but I felt that it needed more work and that it would make much more sense in Afrikaans. Hanneke and I discussed these ideas with the NFVF and once we were all on the same page regarding the film we wanted to make, getting on board was easy.”

He adds, however, that funding a film is never simple. “Arranging finance on independent films is an endless series of tackling insurmountable obstacles every day followed by brief waves of relief and starting again – except I lied about the relief.”

The film’s budget, estimated at R5.5m, was eventually funded by the NFVF, IDC and the Department of Trade and Industry (the dti) rebate.

Photos by Morné van Zyl

A

ccording to director Hanneke Schutte, the biggest theme of quirky new Afrikaans comedy Jimmy in Pienk is ‘being yourself’.

“It’s about an honest, hard- working young farmer who has never been to the city, but in order to save his family farm he goes to get help from his rich, gay uncle. In the city he has to work in the world of hairstyling where everyone tries to change him and he is a complete fish out of water,” explains Schutte.

The film stars Louw Venter (The Most Amazing Show, Semi Soet) as Jimmy, alongside Gys de Villiers – who plays twins, as well as Terence Bridgett, Gérard Rudolf, Tinarie van Wyk-Loots and Shaleen Surtie-Richards.

Pitching competition Schutte started developing the film in 2006 for a pitching competition run by the National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF) and the UK Film Council. Jimmy in Pienk was one of four genre-specific loglines picked from the entries to be developed with a UK script editor and a local script editor.

Says Schutte: “My genre was fish-out-ofwater comedy, and it was a wonderful process. The development of the script happened over about a year, and I learned so much from the script editors, Justin Trefgarne from the UK and Thandi Brewer in South Africa.”

After the script was developed, the NFVF started working with Schutte to get the film funded. “About two years ago the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) got on board, and then Zaheer Goodman-Bhyat (Confessions of a Gambler, Skeem) from Light and Dark Films got involved as producer.”

Louw Venter

Learning curve Production started in July 2012 and wrapped four weeks later. Says Schutte: “We shot in and around Cape Town, including locations on a farm outside Philadelphia, a house in Constantia and a hair salon in De Waterkant.”

According to Schutte, she learnt some important lessons while directing her first feature film. “Next time I won’t shoot in Cape Town in the winter – being out in the elements in the rain and the wind was quite challenging and as we didn’t have weather insurance we lost some time and had to juggle around indoor and outdoor shooting. However, the weather also added to the story, which in the end, worked out beautifully.

“For example, when we were shooting quite a sad section of the film on the farm, the weather was dreary – we had dark skies and it was quite dramatic. When we went back to shoot the very last scene of the movie, which is a very happy scene, we had the most beautiful sunny skies.”

Schutte also wishes they had more time to shoot the film. “I wish we had more time for performances, more time to make sure we frame everything beautifully, and more time to tweak the art direction and work on the script. We had to do a few rewrites along the way, and being both the writer and director I had to constantly switch between those roles and wear both hats at the same time.”

Jimmy in Pienk was shot by up and coming director of photography (DOP) Jacques Koudstaal on a RED Epic camera.

Says Schutte: “We also got to borrow the

RED Mysterium for a short while – we got an amazing deal from Media Film Service in Cape Town. We had a very small crew so it was challenging for our grips and DOP, but everyone worked incredibly well together.”

Perfect cast She notes that, while casting took ‘quite a while’ they eventually found exactly what they were looking for in each character.

“We had a lot of comedians and other funny people on set. Terence Bridgett was hilarious and fantastic in his role as Bunny.

Louw Venter was phenomenal – so easy to work with and so funny as a person. He was also on a very strict diet and gym regime to bulk up for the role as he wanted to really look the part of a farmer and sound like a farmer. He grew a massive beard as well, and it was successful, because at one point he was mistaken for a real farmer.”

According to Schutte, Venter’s dog also plays a big role in the film. “He would have just have had a small role at the beginning in the farm scene, but he was so amazing that we wrote him into the whole story. He was one of the best actors on set, a little one-take wonder.”

The film was edited by Zelmari Degenaar and grading was done at Searle Street post.

Goodman Bhyatt believes that South Africa has not seen a local film like Jimmy in Pienk before. “It’s a well written and brilliantly executed comedy with genuine comedic stars and plays to a family audience without being lavatorial. It’s aimed at an Afrikaans family audience and will have some niche interest in the gay community.”

Photos by Ilan Godfrey

Photo by Ilan Godfrey

| Film

Director Hanneke Schutte

Zaheer Goodman-Bhyat January 2013 | SCREENAFRICA | 19

FILM

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Serbian films come to SA In a first for South Africa, a festival entirely dedicated to Serbian films was held in Johannesburg at the end of November, exposing 15 Serbian films to local audiences. JOANNA STERKOWICZ spoke to the producers of Montevideo, Taste of a Dream, and the director of Death of a Man in The Balkans.

T

he opening night film of the Serbian Film Festival, which screened on 22 November at Nu Metro Montecasino, clearly demonstrates Belgrade-based production company Intermedia Network’s mission to make films that shed light on the positive aspects of previously strife-torn Serbia, and to emphasise values such as friendship, diligence and heroism.

A charming and delightful film, Montevideo, Taste of a Dream successfully combines soccer history with themes of patriotism, aspiration, brotherhood, rivalry and love.

Set in Belgrade in 1930, the film focuses on 11 largely unknown soccer players and their journey from impoverished neighborhoods to the formation of the national team before the very first World Cup in the Uruguayan capital city of Montevideo.

It was the film’s creative producer, journalist Zvonimir Simunec, who originally conceived the idea of making a screen adaptation of Vladimir Stankovic’s best-selling novel of the same name.

“When Vladimir informed me that he wanted to write something about the Soccer World Cup I told him he couldn’t do it without including Belgrade in the storyline,” explained Simunec. “Together we added local elements into his story as here was an opportunity to create something about one of the most important events in Serbian history.

“I approached Intermedia Network and proposed they produce the film.

Fortunately they saw the potential of the project.”

Montevideo, Taste of a Dream is based on fact and follows the adventures of two real life Serbian soccer stars – Tirke and Mosa. The scriptwriters also introduced a few fictional characters to help depict the Serbian mentality of the time.

Emotional authenticity Tijana Konstantinovic, CEO of Intermedia Network, one of the biggest independent production companies in Serbia, noted that 20 | SCREENAFRICA | January 2013

BIG KICK-OFF: A scene from Montevideo, Taste of a Dream

the choice of Dragan Bjelogrlic as director was unusual.

Said Konstantinovic: “We considered many different directors but didn’t think that they could accurately depict the emotional journey of the characters. Our aim was to make a movie with different emotions to all the Serbian films produced in the past 10 years. A lot of these films have been about the conflict in the country – about war, sanctions, etc. We wanted to present a fresh, nice story with new faces.

“Dragan Bjelogrlic is a well-known Serbian actor so we knew he would be able to get the best out of the cast. The five male leads in the film are now big stars, as are the three girls.”

Most of the actors playing the soccer team in the film, as well as the female leads, were sourced from the Academy of Dramatic Art in Belgrade. The ‘soccer team’ had to train for six months prior to shooting to look like authentic players.

A key role in the film is that of the young, crippled orphan who narrates the story. He is played by Predrag Vasic, who at 12 was the only youngster in the cast with an established career.

Pilot Although released theatrically and screened extensively at film festivals throughout the world, Montevideo, Taste of a Dream is actually a pilot for a TV series of the same name.

“Feature films are not yet a business in Serbia – they exist to promote TV series,” commented Konstantinovic.

Simunec added: “We believe the TV series caused a small revolution in the Serbian production industry. When we were making the first film and the series we knew we had something special on our hands and planned a sequel. This covers the players’ arduous 22-day journey to Uruguay and the World Cup itself, where they won the bronze medal.”

According to Konstantinovic, the film was financed through various film funds in Serbia, sponsors and private investors.

“There is a fund for cinematographers within the Ministry of Culture and there is also the Belgrade Film Fund. In addition we received funding from the Ministry of Sport and the Football Association,” she said.

Montevideo, Taste of a Dream was the biggest theatrical hit in Serbia in the past seven years, attracting 525 000 cinema goers.

The film has been released in the Slavic countries as well as the US, Canada, Austria and Australia. It has won numerous awards such as the Audience Award at the Moscow International Film Festival and the Best Picture Award at the Beijing International Sports Week.

Other films from Intermedia Network to screen at the Serbian Film Festival in Johannesburg included When Day Breaks, Love and Other Crimes and the documentaries Cinema Komunisto and O Gringo.

Black comedy Filmed to resemble a single webcam shot some 80 minutes in duration, Death of a

Man in The Balkans was written and directed by Miroslav Momcilovic.

“This film is a black comedy, which is a speciality of the Balkans,” quipped Momcilovic. “When growing up my outlook on life was partly shaped by my grandfather, whose personal motto was that life is a mortal disease.”

In Death of a Man in the Balkans, a lonely composer commits suicide in front of his computer web camera.

“The film is about what happens after the suicide when all the neighbours come into his flat,” explained Momcilovic. “It looks a bit like an episode of Big Brother. While waiting for the police to arrive, the neighbours sit in the dead man’s flat, eating, drinking and playing chess.”

Momcilovic shot the film over 10 days in a flat, with a budget of 10 000 Euros.

He continued: “I used to be a table tennis star and was inspired to write the script for this film because of what happened at a match I went to last year.

During the match an old man died and so someone called an ambulance. Then the players continued playing the match, with the dead body lying right next to them.”

Momcilovic rehearsed the actors for two months prior to shooting and filmed 10 minutes of the script a day.

“I don’t know why I chose to make the film from the point of view of a web camera; maybe it was to get a totally objective view of a strange event. Each day we would shoot 10 minutes of the script. There was no editing or video compositing on this film, I literally just cut the 10-minute shots together so it looks like one scene and a single shot.”

Death of a Man in The Balkans was released theatrically and won the Independent Camera Award at the Karlovy Film Festival 2012.

The Serbian Film Festival in South Africa was held under the auspices of the Embassy of the Republic of Serbia in Pretoria.

| Television

Educating through television

By Linda Loubser

CHANNELLING LEARNING: Macenje Che Che Mazoka, Yvonne Kgame, Yasmeen Engelbrecht, Kofi Falconer, Richard Delate, Pontsho Makhetha and Harriet Gavshon

The power of television to improve academic performance and cause behavioural change was in the spotlight at one of the conference sessions at the DISCOP AFRICA content market in Johannesburg late last year.

T

he DISCOP AFRICA session titled Television with a Purpose was presented by SABC Education and explored three case studies – television drama Intersexions, early childhood development series Takalani Sesame and the non-profit Mindset Network.

Characters from Takalane Sesame

Pontsho Makhetha, head of Funding and Partnerships at SABC Education, explained that they serve two TV channels and 12 public broadcasting service (PBS) radio stations with educational content in every official South African language.

“Our programmes include content aimed at early childhood development, children at home, formal education, youth development, adult and human resources development and public education in general,” said Makhetha.

TV drama She noted that Intersexions is an HIV/Aids drama funded by the Johns Hopkins Health and Education in South Africa (JHHESA). “It started airing on 12 October 2010 and was supported on SABC radio stations through discussion and debate. Intersexions has been an award-winning programme for the SABC, winning 11 South African Film and Television Awards (SAFTAS), as well as a 2012 Peabody Award and a TVSA Award.”

Producer Harriet Gavshon from Quizzical Pictures noted that their brief for Intersexions was to communicate the idea of a sexual network. “We came up with the idea of a series where the form copies the content. The series consisted of 26 separate but interlinked episodes, ending with a documentary explaining how the infection travelled through the sexual network, and tying it all together.

“We worked with a lot of research, however, it was very important for us that this should be an exercise of talent and creativity, not just a message,” said Gavshon.

According to Richard Delate from JHHESA their partnership with Intersexions yielded positive and measurable results.

“The message we communicated through the stories was not just to reduce sexual partners, but also – if you have multiple partners – to use condoms and get tested for HIV/Aids.

We had 45 000 people on the Intersexions Facebook page giving real time feedback and many publicly declared that they got tested after watching the

show,” said Delate.

They also conducted a 10 000-strong survey, consulted 12 focus groups with 76 participants and held in-depth individual interviews.

“Our findings were that the show promoted active discussions between parents and children, between siblings, within the work place and at taxi ranks, and between intimate partners.

“It also showed the power of social modelling. For example, one woman got tested, was found to be HIV positive and started taking medication because she had seen a character on the series go through the same thing,” said Delate.

Developing children Takalani Sesame has been broadcast on SABC1 and SABC2 in South Africa for more than a decade as a partnership between SABC Education and Sanlam. The series, a local version of popular US programme Sesame Street, focuses on early childhood development (ECD) through the use of muppets and live action.

Yasmeen Engelbrecht from the Sesame Workshop noted that their programmes are designed to be educational and entertaining, and everything is built around a comprehensive educational curriculum.

SABC group executive for stakeholder relations, Yvonne Kgame, was involved in negotiations to bring Sesame Street to South Africa.

“Takalani Sesame was born out of a bilateral agreement between South Africa and the US,” said Kgame.

“Our first negotiations with them were to have the programme in indigenous languages. South Africa was also the first country to put Sesame Street on the radio.

However, our biggest challenge was that, different to other countries, South Africa has a high percentage of children with HIV or affected by it.”

Kgame explained that they approached Sesame Street with the idea of an HIV positive muppet that could be a role model to children.

“We needed to be very clear about our

agenda as a country, that it was not just about literacy and numeracy. The idea of the HIV positive muppet called Kami initially created a massive media circus worldwide, but Kami is now an international ambassador for children with Aids.”

Mindset Mindset is a leading educational NGO, established in 2003 by a group of corporate partners. Business Development manager at Mindset, Kofi Falconer, explained that the organisation is run independently through a number of partnerships.

They use different platforms and technology to target teachers and learners in formal education and to provide health education content to the general public and healthcare workers.

“Our key platforms include DVDs and computer-based multi-media, the Mindset Learn channel (DStv channel 319 and TopTV channel 319), radio and push video-ondemand (VOD) technology.

“We give training and support to teach educators and healthcare workers to integrate ICT into their day-to-day delivery of duties.

“Mindset also produces lessons for schoolchildren to bring subjects to life, for example videos of science experiments that can be used as teaching aids in a classroom or for home learning. In addition, we air live revision sessions where learners can submit questions via Facebook, Twitter or text message which are answered by experts.”

Falconer noted that they have over 1 500 hours of educational content that can be adapted for different markets and audiences, and that they can create specific content for specific markets.

Head of funding and partnerships at the SABC, Macenje Che Che Mazoka, summarised the session by noting that good educational programmes benefit from research, that educational television can change nations and be financially viable and that it doesn’t need to be daunting.

“What we can learn from these three examples is to seek out partnerships,” concluded Mazoka.

January 2013 | SCREENAFRICA | 21

| TELEVISION

Is it an illusion?

By Ian Dormer

In 1932 CP Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian newspaper, pronounced: “Television? The word is half Latin and half Greek. No good can come of it!” Arguably television became the greatest and most influential invention of the 20th Century… with bigger and better things to come in the 21st Century.

E

ach year over 1.3 billion households around the world watch an estimated 2 464 hours of television (source: Nielsen). This equates to a total of 3.9 trillion hours of television viewing each year!

People love TV. This positive emotional attachment is extremely powerful, and it takes many forms. People describe their TV as a companion, child-minder, advisor, educator, and stress-fighter, among other things. Over the decades television has seen many changes and this decade we are in for a mind boggling explosion of technology that enable us see television in a new light, literally.

We all remember the Star Wars movie in which a hologram of Princess Leia implores Obi-Wan Kenobi to re-join the battle against the evil empire. This ‘sci-fi technology’ has been developed and refined and is currently undergoing testing by a number of role players around the globe.

Using simple off-the-shelf hardware, researchers at MIT have created a holographic system that updates almost as quickly as feature films. The group believes that holographic televisions could soon be possible.

In November 2010, researchers at the University of Arizona created a holographic system capable of sending, receiving and displaying full-colour, 3D images. Although the system was used to send live images of

a researcher in California to collaborators in Arizona, the display updated only every two seconds, making it much less fluid than today’s televisions.

Faster new system In 2012, a new holographic system from researchers at MIT Media Lab has a display that updates 15 times per second. The researchers are confident that their holographic display will soon update even faster, with rates reaching the 24 frames per second of feature films or faster.

According to the researchers, the main difference between 3D and holographic images has to do with perspective. When a 3D movie, such as Avatar, is shown in a theatre, all members of the audience (regardless of position) see exactly the same image, which is filmed from the same perspective. A holographic image, on the other hand, changes as a viewer moves around it – just like the real world.

This difference in perspective relies largely on the light source for a film. Most 3D cameras, for example, capture light reflecting off of objects from two angles – one for each eye. In the real world, however, light reflects from an infinite number of angles. Holographic video cameras therefore capture light from many more angles than 3D cameras.

The team of MIT researchers built their

holographic camera using only off-the-shelf hardware, including Xbox’s Kinect camera.

“Really, the focus of our work in digital holography – and I think this makes us pretty much unique among the very small community of people in the world even doing holovideo – is that we’re trying to make a consumer product,” said Michale Bove, head of the Object-Based Media Group at MIT Media Laboratory.

In the system’s basic setup, a Kinect camera sends image data to an ordinary laptop, which transmits it over the Internet.

A receiving PC then computes the diffraction patterns using three commercial graphics processing units (GPUs). The only component of the system that isn’t off-the-shelf is the holographic display.

Bove’s display is built off of the research of Stephen Benton, who built the first holographic display in the 1980s and died in 2003. Unlike older models, the new display—called the Mark-II—is compact, produces larger images and should be less expensive to produce.

Holo-TV TV holographic technology has long been in development by a Japanese broadcaster NHK. So confident are the engineers NHK has committed to creating the first holo-TV in the next six years. They are sponsoring research at giant Japanese companies such

as Sony and Mitsubishi and have sent engineers to America to consult with the MIT scientists on their basic holographic transmissions.

NHK had earmarked £2.8bn for developing holo-TVs, as part of Japan’s now failed bid to host the 2022 World Cup in Tokyo.

Jun Murai, a scientist known as ‘the father of the Japanese Internet’, is advising NHK. Using holographic broadcasting over satellites, he said, football games in Tokyo could be relayed to a London stadium where full-sized players would appear so life-like that fans would believe they were at the match.

Pie in the sky? Not according to the business boffins at Apple. Recent acquisitions, and a number of patents including a three-dimensional display system that would ‘mimic a hologram’ without requiring special glasses, all indicate that Apple is ready to move into the TV business and sooner than we think. The patent narrative notes that one current market gap in screen technology is the ability of a device to project stereoscopic 3D images to multiple viewers at the same time.

If anyone can make the world float in the palm of your hand, it seems Apple is intent on doing so, in a big way!

January 2013 | SCREENAFRICA | 23

Television | BROADCAST

Full digital delivery on the horizon

By Ian Dormer

Digital file-based production is here and it is predicted that by 2014 most international broadcasters will prefer digital format delivery.

W

hile TV production has been digital for some time, it is digital tape that has been used as the means of exchange between different parts of the production workflow.

The emergence of file-based cameras, however, removes tape from the acquisition stage of the produc­tion process, and this in turn prompts the production community to look at entirely end-to-end file-based work­flows.

While most international broadcasters prefer digital format delivery – particularly in the UK – the Digital Production Partnership (DPP) recently released details of its agreed standards for the metadata, format and codec quality for delivering content in digital formats.

The DPP was formed in March 2010 by the UK’s public service broadcasters to help producers and broadcasters maximise the potential benefits of end-to-end digital production in television. It is funded by ITV, BBC and Channel Four, with representation on its various work streams from Five, Sky, S4C, UKTV, independent production companies and other key stakeholder bodies.

The partnership has two primary areas of activity. The first is a commitment to establish common technical standards between UK broadcasters (the partnership has already achieved this aim for file-based programme delivery). The second area relates to establishing best practice digital production processes and workflows.

Working closely with the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AWMA) in the United States, the DPP was the driving force behind the creation of the organisation’s

24 | SCREENAFRICA | January 2013

‘AS-11,’ a new international file format for HD Files. The new DPP guidelines will require files delivered to broadcasters to be compliant with a specified subset of this new, internationally recognised standard.

Alongside these new standards, the DPP has released a free-to-use, downloadable, metadata application to enable production companies to enter the required editorial and technical metadata easily.

Several of AMWA’s specifications target the simplified use of MXF, a file wrapper standard from SMPTE. There are three related Applications Specifications (AS) designed to button-down the usage profiles and thereby improve interoperability.

They are: • AS-10: MXF for production • AS-11: MXF for contribution • AS-12: MXF for commercial delivery The new standards aim to remove any ambiguity during the production and delivery process. A key aspect is the inclusion of editorial and technical metadata, which ensures a consistent set of information for the processing, review and scheduling of programmes, as well as onward archiving, sale and distribution.

Noreen Adams, BBC head of Metadata and chair of the DPP Metadata Standards Working Group, comments: “Accurate metadata is now fundamental in identifying programmes and the agreed metadata standards contained within the DPP application helps to simplify file delivery for producers and broadcasters.”

First in DPP A brief rundown of the AMWA specification, known as AS-11, reads as follows: • Each programme should be delivered as a single principal MXF file containing the audio and video, plus a single XML file.

There must be only one programme in each file, although a programme may be either soft or hard-parted within that file, as specified by the broadcaster.

• Each high definition programme must be delivered as a single MXF OP1a file. The video essence in the file must be encoded at a nominal bitrate of 100Mbit/s using the ‘AVC Intra’ codec. It must use the High 4:2:2 Intra profile@level 4.1.

• HD video must be recorded with an active picture area of 1920 x 1080 pixels. This must normally be structured as interlaced at 50 fields per second, described as System 2 in EBU-TECH 3299.

Material may be originated as progressive scan, but should be delivered as interlaced. Also note the requirement; that moving graphics and effects, such as credit rollers and DVE moves are always interlaced.

• The audio must be frame interleaved with the video. All audio tracks must be encoded as PCM with a sample rate of 48kHz at a depth of 24bits/sample.

Sunset+Vine, producers of the America’s Cup, became the first to deliver to a UK broadcaster in the DPP file-based specification using the metadata application in November 2012. They used the application to add in editorial and technical metadata and re-wrap the file to the DPP standard.

Channel 4 then downloaded the 30-minute programmes and associated xml files from its delivery site. Elsewhere in the production process, Sunset+Vine provided archiving and global distribution for America’s Cup Uncovered, a 30-minute weekly HD magazine programme delivered to more than 400 international broadcasters.

I guess it’s a good time to start looking at transcoding servers to replace HDCAM and SR decks so you can output the required files quickly and efficiently.

As Kevin Burrows chief technology officer of Broadcast and Distribution, C4 and DPP Technical Standards chair, says: “Having one set of standards for file-based delivery across the industry is of huge benefit to ensure ease of exchange and compatibility.

It will also reduce costs for independent producers as well as minimise confusion among programme makers.”

The new standards aim to remove any ambiguity during the production and delivery process.

| Policy

Informing the public to make choices

CLASSIFICATION – Yoliswa Makhasi

In November 2012 South Africa’s content-classification authority, the Film and Publication Board (FPB), implemented its new guidelines – the result of an exhaustive research and consultative process.

A

s per the amended Films and Publications Act, the FPB is mandated to regulate the creation, production, possession and distribution of publications and films through classification, and to impose age restrictions and give consumer advice. In addition the FPB exists to make the exploitative use of children in pornographic publications, films or on the Internet punishable.

According to FPB CEO Yoliswa Makhasi, the FPB is required by law to conduct a review of its classification guidelines every two years.

“From start to finish our latest review took a year to complete as it had to factor in our amended legislation. The reason we review the guidelines is to get feedback from the communities and tap into their value systems.

“We also do annual convergence surveys where we get feedback from people who receive classification. This year we surveyed 20 000 Gauteng-based people,” explains Makhasi.

In the next financial year the FPB will conduct a country-wide survey focusing on home entertainment.

Makhasi continues: “When we do the biennial review of the guidelines we take cognisance of the results of the convergence survey. In addition we

undertake desktop research, provincial consultations and meetings with sectoral bodies. The end product of all these processes is the guidelines. Once we have a draft set of guidelines we hold a public consultation with civil society and distributors. Following this round of feedback we gazette the guidelines.”

New classification A number of issues are addressed in the new guidelines, including a separate classification to denote gender-based violence.

“This issue was raised by many people, several of who are women.

Previously we only had a classification for sexual content and another for violence.

But if there is a film with a rape scene then it should be classified specifically to denote that because rape, sex and violence are all separate things.

“We’ve also introduced two new age categories to cater for the younger members of our society. The categories are: 7 to 9 Parental Guidance (PG) and 10 to 12 PG. To fall into either category a film must include an educational element and must be watched with a parent in attendance. The film cannot be offensive in any way,” comments Makhasi.

Criminal techniques in films Interestingly, another issue raised in the feedback to the guidelines was to do with films like Ocean’s Eleven and Gone in 60 Seconds which include the depiction of criminal techniques in their storylines.

“Films like these are almost teaching audiences how to trick people out of money or how to steal cars. We are in the process of training our classifiers to pick up on these themes.

“Additionally, research has shown that our society is very sensitive about sexual content, racism, prejudice and discrimination so we need to warn audiences about films which contain these elements,” says Makhasi. “There is so much harmful content on the Internet and we need to ensure that children are not exposed to it. Our challenge is that children these days all have cell phones which are able to connect to the Internet.”

The FPB is currently working towards a single set of classification for the country, as broadcasters do their own classification, thus confusing the public.

States Makhasi: “We want to achieve a situation where labeling will be the same across film, television and online, thus sending the same messages to South Africa. So we need to work together with

broadcasters and online distributors as this strategy requires policy intervention. We’ve already engaged with broadcasters who’ve said they tend to use FPB classification which is encouraging.”

Online classification The FPB recently introduced an online submission classification system, developed at this stage for games, with films to follow in the future. This system affords the industry an opportunity to submit their games online.

Makhasi says that this is a system of co-regulation which gives those industry players who sign an agreement with the FPB leeway to classify their own games.

“However, we will continuously do industry audits and there penalties involved if games are not classified properly. The advantage of this online system is speed and efficiency – whereas it previously took five days to classify a game, now it can be done in 24 hours.”

Makhasi concludes by urging society, parents and youths to be exercise discretion and carefully monitor children’s exposure to harmful content.

January 2013 | SCREENAFRICA | 25

Music Videos

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A ‘Magnetic’ breakthrough Cape Town-based director Genevieve Akal recently heard that her music video has been accepted by Los Angeles-based band Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes as the official music video for their song Mayla.

“I saw the opportunity to submit a music video for the band – one of my favourite contemporary bands – on an industry website,” explains Akal.

The music video was originally made as a short film assignment while she attended film school in New York in 2008/09.

According to Akal she listened to the band’s album Here to see if any of the songs could fit with her short film. “As soon as the song Mayla started playing it was like a sort of epiphany. I think the song gives the

THE CHOSEN ONE: Genevieve Akal

A scene from the Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes music video for their song, Mayla

By Linda Loubser

story a voluptuous melancholy and creates a visual oxymoron of beautiful suffering,” says Akal.

“I shot the short film over two days on various streets in Brooklyn within walking distance from my apartment. We were a crew of three, including myself.”

Akal notes that it was a fiercely independent process. “The catering consisted of ham sandwiches I’d made the night before. I borrowed some of the major furniture props from my roommates and hired some other items from a local second-hand furniture store. Another expense was paying a guy with a bakkie to lug the furniture around. I couldn’t really afford major filming costs on my waitressing pay, so when I created the story I kept that budgetary limitation at the forefront of my mind.”

The story sees a man desperately trying to reconnect with his wife who has become overwhelmed by their desperate circumstances.

“One of the cultural things that struck me about New York is that people leave unwanted furniture and appliances on the

It’s a ‘dog’s’ life

Ryan Kruger of Enigma Ace was recently tasked by South African record label Gallo to conceive a music video for Arno Carstens’ new single Two Dogs, taken from his tenth studio album Atari Gala.

“Arno’s manager contacted me as Arno liked the work that I’ve done for other local stars,” explains Kruger. “They wanted something completely different to Arno’s existing videos and trusted me to come up with a concept. I wanted to make a video that would stand out so that people would remember something simple that was creative and meaningful. In the end the idea was as simple as exploring a couple’s relationship at the dinner table.”

In the video two people are chained to a table out of reach of each other, in a representation of purgatory and an endless ‘Last Supper’ scenario, waited on by a butler. The only way they can explore each other and fulfill their desires, both good and bad, is through the meal laid out before them. Even though the meal is perfect, monotony overcomes them.

“We had a small crew, one day in which to shoot and a single location – the basement of a restaurant in Bree Street,” 26 | SCREENAFRICA | January 2013

sidewalk. I’d walk home from school and pass flat screen TVs, couches, fax machines…and it’s all good stuff. People obviously upgraded and didn’t have the inclination to sell, so they leave the items for lucky passers-by. This inspired a great deal of Mayla because we see the leading male scouring the sidewalks looking for furniture to decorate his railway home.

“My lead actor Albert Makhtsier has a wonderful naiveté about him. He was able to effortlessly communicate a sort of cheerful melancholy,” explains Akal.

She notes that the process was ‘relatively easy’ for an independent shoot. “I was highly prepared and I have a tendency to AD (assistant direct) myself. So I was very aware of the schedule, the shots I needed to get and how much time I had to get them,” explains Akal.

Mayla was shot on a Panasonic camera in HD. “In order to get the tobacco colour grade, I white balanced to a magenta tinted gel. Aside from a handy tripod, there was no other equipment.”

Akal’s music video was one of three chosen from 78 submissions.

continues Kruger. “I cooked the roast that features in the video the night before the shoot and bought all the costumes from charity shops the week prior to that.”

Kruger chose to shoot the video in black and white on a RED Epic which he sourced from Zootee Studios. “I chose the Red Epic as it’s great for high speed footage and because I’ve always been a fan of the RED. We had a great director of photography in Faheemah Hendricks who I worked with on The Parlotones video,” he notes.

In the video the two actors literally have to devour a big meal, tearing it apart with their hands and stuffing it into their faces.

“At the start of the shoot the actors were hungry and thought the food looked delicious. By the end they were full so they chewed up the food for the take and then spat it out into a bucket next to them,” comments Kruger.

He also produced the video together with Darryn Bennett. Other credits include Stephen du Plessis (editor); Nicci Allen (make-up); and production design (Anika Prins).

The video can be viewed at http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=YhOBQ-6lY7I

| Awards

Celebrating African film and TV talent

VIEWERS’ CHOICE: Stephanie O Idahosa, Geneveive Nnaji and Biola Alabi Announced in October 2012, the AfricaMagic Viewers’ Choice Awards (AMVCA), held in association with MultiChoice, is gearing up for the biggest celebration of African film and television talent on the continent, according to M-Net Africa MD Biola Alabi.

“By launching these awards we hope to inspire a new generation of filmmakers and to showcase stories that are truly relevant to, and resonate with, African audiences.

We want to position the AMVCA as the biggest awards event for film and television in Africa.

“The more we can celebrate and

acknowledge the African production industry, the better. I don’t think that the true value of the creative industry and the huge cultural impact it has on Africa has been acknowledged enough to date,” says Alabi.

Winners of the 28 awards in 26 categories will be announced at two star-studded awards ceremonies in Lagos, Nigeria, on 8 and 9 March. The latter event broadcast will be live on the AfricaMagic Channel and there will be screening parties across the continent.

Alabi notes that ever since the AMVCA was launched in September, entries have

been streaming in. Entries were also submitted at the recent DISCOP AFRICA content market in Johannesburg.

“Although the AMVCA is a Viewers’ Choice competition, we also wanted to celebrate talent behind the camera,” she continues. “For this reason we’ve included technical categories such as directing, scriptwriting, cinematography, editing and production design. These categories will be judged by industry professionals.

“Viewers are primarily interested in the acting categories so voting for the best actor / actress and the best supporting actor / actress in both the drama and comedy sections should prove entertaining for them. They will also be able to vote for the best online video – this category is for short films that have only been released on the Internet.”

All films, made-for-television movies and television series broadcast or publicly exhibited between 1 May 2011 and 30 April 2012 are eligible for competition.

Commenting on the large number of categories in the competition Alabi says that AfricaMagic aimed to be as inclusive as possible. “The fact that we have a best film category in three other languages besides English – Kiswahili, Yoruba and Hausa – means we recognise categories that have

not been acknowledged before.”

To ensure that the awards are transparent, fair and credible, AfricaMagic has recruited leading industry veteran Femi Odugbemi to take on the role of executive judge and has confirmed that all the awards will be verified by an independent auditing company to be appointed shortly.

“This is a huge opportunity for all professionals in front of and behind the camera. Creatively speaking, I think all of us have a duty to support every initiative that will raise the game of the African production industry,” says Odugbemi.

The inaugural awards will be held in Lagos but the AfricaMagic team is working with sponsors to move the event around the continent in the future.

Alabi notes that there are currently eight AfricaMagic channels packaged by pay-TV broadcaster M-Net for the MultiChoice DStv platform. They are: AfricaMagic Entertainment (available only on the DStv Premium bouquet); AfricaMagic (flagship channel); AfricaMagic Movies; AfricaMagic Movies 1; AfricaMagic World (a general entertainment channel); and three local language AfricaMagic channels in Kiswahili, Yoruba and Hausa.

January 2013 | SCREENAFRICA | 27

Audio Post-Production

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A sound picture “To me the whole adage is that post-production begins the first day of production.”

– Ron Bochar (The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, Moneyball)

Audio postproduction is a nebulous term that comprises many different disciplines from many sectors of the audio field.

Audio specialist Greg Bester takes an in depth look into this domain and analyses current industry trends.

28 | SCREENAFRICA | January 2013

I

n a general sense, the definition of audio post-production in film and television refers simply to audio that is synchronised with video but, as anyone who works in the audio for video field knows, there can be so much more to the process besides the otherwise trivial task of audio synchronisation.

This includes such steps as ADR (Additional Dialogue Replacement), foley and sound effects, music spotting, scoring, voiceovers, pre-mixing and a slew of processing techniques that can be applied either creatively or correctively.

Of course, the state of the industry has changed considerably since the early days of film and soundtracks are denser than ever. If one had to look back to 1927 at the earliest commercially successfully ‘talkie’ – Alan Crosland’s The Jazz Singer – to compare its soundtrack to that of a modern-day blockbuster, it will likely seem quite sparse and ‘small’ in contrast. We now have massive dynamic ranges to work with – full bandwidth, high-resolution multichannel audio, capacity for hundreds of tracks, vast scores, and electrifying sound effects to titillate the viewer into a netherworld where sight and sound magically collide into something spectacular.

Most professionals working in audio post-production in the current age will almost certainly be working in the digital domain. This revolution – the ‘digital’ revolution – has changed the postproduction workflow considerably since the days of analogue.

So what are the main differences? For one, there’s no need for analogue tape anymore and mechanical technology has gone out of the window. Non-linear manipulation of audio is now the norm and processing power has increased substantially to the point that even the smallest of studios have the capacity to accomplish tasks that were only dreamt of in the past.

Another thing is delivery formats.

Multi-channel surround sound audio is now the norm but this wasn’t always the case

because after all, from the invention of the first recorded sound by Thomas Edison in 1878 mono ruled the sound waves for a good 70 years.

The transition from analogue to digital has been slow and gradual and nowadays we are able to produce masters in formats up to 9.1 surround sound and more are foreseeable in the future. But how does this all relate to post-production? Well, post-production goes a long way in preparing a production for final mix. After all, if a production is going to be mixed in 5.1, the sound effects / foley and score have to be delivered that way, which often requires reworking of the source material and / or adaptation to the final format.

Industry trends But what about the state of current industry and current trends? How has technology impacted the way we do the job and get on with our workflow? How has digital changed our lives and brought us new horizons? Also, what are the negative sides to this revolution and, of course, what does it all mean for us in South Africa?

Well, for one the digital audio workstation (DAW) has changed the way we work considerably and digital media has brought us a whole new world that simply wasn’t available to us before. For one, sound effects can now be purchased by the gigabyte and traditional foley is slowly dying.

Electronic instruments have also changed the way composers work and allowed them to produced fantastic sounding scores entirely within their computer. This, of course, opens up a whole new option for films that do not have the budget to hire a sound stage and a complete orchestra.

Probably the biggest advantage is that digital working formats like MOV, MPG and AVI have become then norm and most modern DAWs are compatible with them.

This means that there is no need to synchronise video machines externally and audio can be synced to the picture entirely

within the computer. Today, with an HD handheld camera, a copy of Apple’s Final Cut Pro and a copy of Avid’s Pro Tools, you could feasibly produce and edit your own film from start to finish complete with a full soundtrack, visual effects and minimal investment. Editing, processing, spotting and mixing have also become streamlined in comparison to the analogue era. Now all tracks are recorded to digital and manipulated in that domain. There is no longer a need to physically patch racks and racks of outboard gear into an analogue console as all of these steps are accomplished entirely within the DAW environment. Splitting tracks, cleaning up noise, processing, and routing are now as easy as clicking a mouse. Speed and efficiency are the names of the game and most of us now cringe at the thought of having to deal with the pitfalls of an analogue system and the time that it takes to set up and configure such a system.

Flip side The flip side of these advancements of these aspects have also changed the job market somewhat and put certain areas under pressure. Firstly, because of the gratuitous availability of cheap digital gear and the emergence of increasing numbers of audio colleges, the industry has seen a massive influx of aspiring engineers who seek to insert themselves into various sectors of the audio field, including post-production.

While on the surface this may seem like a good thing, it has had the knock-on effect of the saturation of the job market and also seeds the growth of many small production studios that offer audio services at a fraction of the going rates established in ages past.

This causes a devaluation of services across the board and puts pressure on the larger studios to lower their rates.

This is especially the case in areas where the smaller studios are actually doing decent work.

| Audio Post-production

In a nutshell, market competitiveness has

considering getting out of the business, I had a change of heart and ever since then my business has flourished. It’s all about passion and what’s in your heart and if you keep that, you’ll survive.”

increased substantially and now more than ever it is important for studios to show their clients where their money is going and why they are worth their fees. Combine this with the omnipresence of the recession that has been on everybody lips, times are tough and many people have felt it.

Despite this, many professionals will not let this get them down and many are optimistic. I caught up with Brett Barnes, owner and operator of Ear Candy, the Randburg-based audio post-production and final mix company, and he told me: “Actually I have had the best year of my business’ history. Granted, I was in a negative funk for a while and I have relied on shortfall promo work for as long as I have been going but things have changed.

“The recession has hit everybody and companies are trying to cut costs wherever they can. Some have taken it in-house, some people have lost contracts and downsized, and I’m assuming a lot of guys are feeling the pinch of it. Essentially, after lamenting the industry for a while and

Increased collaboration The result and sub-sequential upside of these hardships has prompted more collaboration and partnerships (a good thing) and the emergence of the one-stopshop, where all aspects of post-production are handled in one location. These companies offer complete packages like scoring, editing, overdubbing and final mix all in one environment, which can often prove more cost effective for the client and help to keep overheads low. This is a growing trend.

Another issue is time. There is less of it.

Post-production engineers are expected to accomplish more in less time and more than one engineer that I have spoken to during the course of my research for this article has told me that they wish there were more hours in the day.

Barnes explains: “Budgets aren’t what they used to be. Sound must be done quickly. People are under a lot more pressure to get a lot more done in less time and I think that’s the hard part of it at the moment. I think that computers have caused it. These days I have people who come in and book an hour for what would historically have been a two-hour job.”

And there’s no sign of it getting easier.

Audio seems to be an afterthought nowadays which means budgets are constrained by the time a production gets around to it. On the other hand, if you have a strong spirit with a bit of ingenuity and can muster the workload, there is ample work to get through. A new mind set is in order to accomplish this and a new breed of harder, faster engineers are starting to push their way to the forefront. Time to up your game, eh?

So, there are challenges. Despite this,

audio for video and film is still an exciting field and I would never attempt to dissuade anyone from getting into it. Technology is getting more and more powerful and making it easier and easier for us to accomplish what we set out to do in the first place – to be creative.

It is crucial that we never forget this and let the technology or allow the wave-like throws of the industry and economy to

break our spirit. Forget about the recession. Forget about the pressure, forget about the technology because if any of these things get in the way, the vision will be skewed and the goal obscured.

Audio, after all, is an art-form that melds technology and creative expression and it is a blessing if you can find a way to make a living doing it.

January 2013 | SCREENAFRICA | 29

Audio Post-Production

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New approach to production music

Graham Clifford Audio Network and Final Mix Online are one of the newer kids on the block in the production music world here in South Africa with a new approach and completely different business model. With over 55 000 pre-cleared music tracks, their catalogues include genres from classical music to indie rock to dance, offering a comprehensive library to meet almost any multi-platform production music need. With offices in London, New York, Toronto, Sydney and Amsterdam, their reach is truly global.

Final Mix Online was founded by Graham Clifford and is in partnership with Audio Network in South Africa. What sets them apart is their approach to getting people in touch with production music. They offer two different licence types – an annual blanket licence, which includes unlimited use of their music for 12 months; and a single

production licence, which offers unlimited use of their music for a single production like a film or documentary, for example. This is completely different from most production music libraries which are licensed on a track by track basis, based on the cue sheets that are submitted.

Audio Network has three core values that they have stood by for the past 10 years which are focused on putting their customers first. First, their priority is to offer only the highest quality music recorded by the best musicians and composers in the best recording facilities in the world.

Second, they focus on an easy to use interface for their music with a simple pricing structure to cut out the red tape. Third, creativity is a central tenet to their modus operandi. Their music is used worldwide by such notable production houses and broadcasters such as the BBC, National Geographic, Discovery and MTV. With over 1 000+ tracks added monthly, finding new music is a cinch.

Final Mix Online also endorses Recue, a web based music cue sheet generator – www.recue.biz. This time saving method facilitates accurate and speedy completion of music cue sheets and is free for the end user.

MUSIC IS WHAT

FEELINGS SOUND LIKE

We have over

5 5 1 95 tracks & counting

Designed with TV, film, advertising and corporate productions in mind, we have the perfect musical accompaniment to help it come to life!

Our music is created by artists from every corner of the globe from Cape Town to Cairo, Miami to London.

We work with over 270 composers to ensure that your productions have that authentic sound.

All music usage from our catalogue can be cleared with a small one-off fee.

You’re covered for multiple formats, for the world!

Visit www.audionetwork.com or call Graham on + 27 (0) 82 456 4830 / graham@finalmixonline.tv

30 | SCREENAFRICA | January 2013

A year of notable projects On-Key Sound Studios, owned by Janno Müller, opened its doors in Janno Müller and Tim Pringle 2001 and is based in Auckland Park, Johannesburg. Müller and co-engineer Tim Pringle are veterans in the into Portuguese, Swahili and French, as well audio for video industry and On-Key as finishing the audio mixes for all three specialises in all aspects of audio postlanguages. The movie will ultimately be production. Their work covers a wide range broadcast to more than 300 million people of local and international film, television, in sub-Saharan Africa. radio, and multimedia projects across all In 2012 On-Key produced 5.1 surround genres. mixes and sound designs for two local Among many notable projects last year feature films, Verraaiers (Traitors) – a On-Key completed audio post-production historical Afrikaans drama directed by Paul for the 90-minute feature film Inside Story Eilers and Pretville – an Afrikaans musical set directed by Rolie Nikiwe. The film combines in the 1950s directed by Linda Korsten. the exciting, fictional story of a rising soccer Another highlight of 2012 was winning a star, with a fact-based, animated journey 2012 SAFTA for Best Sound Design for the inside the human body to unravel the TV drama series, Intersexions, which also mysteries of HIV. received the prestigious Peabody Award in Müller and Pringle explain: “We had great New York. fun in creating unique and specific sound International projects in 2012 included designs for the animated sequences that five one-hour HD 5.1 surround wildlife demonstrated the workings of the HIV virus documentaries for various international inside the human body. We also created broadcasters including National specialised location, foley and ADR Geographic, PBS (USA), SEVES (Germany) recordings to complement the football and Canal + (France). 2013 is set to bring action sequences of the movie.” exciting new projects for On-Key such as In addition to that accomplishment, they MasterChef SA and four new feature facilitated with the dubbing of Inside Story films.

| Audio Post-production

Navigating the complexities of using music in film Many filmmakers don’t worry about music until late in the postproduction process when they discover that the music they want is more expensive than anticipated, or there are delays in clearing the music which pushes back production schedules.

Mpumi Phillips, music supervisor at Sheer Publishing, unpacks the music rights maze.

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frica’s film industry is making great strides as audiences on the continent increasingly choose made-in-Africa movies over foreign ones. This point was made quite clear when in 2010 Chineze Anyaene’s film, Ijé (The Journey), became the second highest grossing film in Nigerian cinemas, behind Avatar, the highest grossing film worldwide.

With more demand for local films comes increased growth of the film industry. In 1995 the workforce of the South African film industry was a mere 4 000 people. Today, there are more than 30 000 people working in film and television productions.

Along with the rise of African productions and new productions houses comes immense responsibility to educate filmmakers, not just on the art of filmmaking but making sure that close attention is paid to legal matters and that procedures are followed correctly, especially when it comes to the use of music in a film. One of the prominent features of a Film Distribution Agreement is a complete audit of the music rights agreements.

Music in the movies is an essential tool of the filmmaking process and is one of the main factors that helps to determine box office success or failure. Think of a motion picture without music – whether it’s an orchestral or synthesiser score, a brand new hit song or a long time standard – and you’ll begin to realise the value and contribution of music to a film. The most successful motion pictures use hit songs to create a period flavour, establish a mood, give an actor a chance to sing, make people laugh, make people cry, or elicit emotions.

In the mid-1900s it was common for composers to create all the music in a film.

But these days it is more common to have the composer write the score and license popular songs to carry the theme within the film. It may be cheaper or artistically better for the filmmaker to hire a composer to write music especially for the film. In this relationship the filmmaker may acquire the copyright through the contract negotiated with the composer. The filmmaker would in turn own the sound recordings of the music that they commission.

Music libraries

An alternative to using a composer or licensing existing music is to use a piece of library music, which has a huge number of pre-cleared tracks that you will pay a lot less for than almost any commercial piece of music. NORM (www.norm.co.za) can guide a filmmaker in using library music and can administer the licensing process on behalf of its members. Library music is licensed according to the rates published in the production music rate card – enabling filmmakers to budget accurately.

Any piece of music has two rights attached to it: Master Rights and Publishing Rights. When you negotiate the rights to music in your film, make sure you are getting both. The Master Rights are the rights associated with using the actual audio recording of a piece of music, which can be obtained from the record company. An organisation such as RISA can be of assistance in getting you in touch with the relevant record companies. Also, checking the album information on the back of the CD can be very helpful.

The Publishing Rights are the rights associated with the intellectual property of a composition (music and lyrics). To find out who owns these two rights look at the fine print on the CD, ask the record label, check with Performing Rights Organisation (SAMRO) or NORM, or hire a music supervisor or music clearance specialist.

The master and publishing rights holders’ fees are determined by the scope of rights required by the filmmaker. The scope of a licence specifies all the variables like: Term, Territory and Media. The Term is how long the agreement will last; the Territory identifies where you will be exploiting your film. Media specifies the exact distribution channels you are getting permission for (like Internet streaming, DVD, TV, Theatrical). As you begin the negotiation process you should be aware of a common practice known as MFN (Most Favoured Nations). A MFN clause will require you to pay every right holder the same, usually higher, fee quoted.

When applying to clear rights for your film to master and publishing rights owners you should supply them with the following information on the project: the name of the company or individual applying for the licence; main contact number and email address; song title; film title and brief synopsis; overall film budget; context of music used (scene description); duration of

music use; territory of exploitation required; and rights required ie. broadcast rights, film festival rights, online rights.

This information is so important because there are no hard and fast rules in determining fees; they are negotiated in the context of each individual film.

There are a number of factors that must be considered for the inclusion of a song in a film, including: how the song is used (ie. vocal performance by an actor on camera, instrumental background and vocal background); overall budget for the film, as well as the music budget; type of film (ie. major studio, independent, foreign, student, web); stature of song being used (ie. current hit, new song, famous standard, rock n’ roll classic); duration of the use (ie. one minute, four minutes, 10 seconds) and whether there are multiple uses of the song; term of the licence (ie. two years, 10 years, life of copyright, perpetual); territory of the licence (ie. the world, the universe, specific foreign countries); whether the producer also wants to use the original hit recording of a song, rather than re-recording a new version for use in the film; and whether the motion picture uses the song as its musical theme as well as its title.

The same song may be licensed at very different rates for different projects (ie. major studio release, independent film,

foreign film, film festival licence only, web production, or student film).

Music supervision Although not very prevalent in the South African film industry, another great option for clearing music rights is to use a company that specialises in clearing copyrights – usually referred to as music supervision. Locating rights holders can be a lot of work, and music clearance is a highly specialised field that requires persistence and patience. The music supervisor is a key player in selecting licensed music which includes songs used in on-camera situations, such as music playing in a restaurant, bar or club.

A music supervisor’s role consists of negotiating publishers and master rights holders deals for the film’s music. Music supervisors have extensive experience and established relationships with music publishers and record companies. They will prepare contracts, prepare budgets, source music and keep the filmmaker informed and updated about any changes in allocated budgets. A music supervisor can also highlight any possible issues with song usages. Music supervisors are also becoming more extensively involved in the process of hiring score composers.

January 2013 | SCREENAFRICA | 31

Audio Post-Production

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Budgeting for audio post-production studios

By Greg Bester The entry barrier to putting together a competent post-production studio is now lower than ever.

With computing and digital technology getting cheaper, faster and more powerful, we now see entire productions being completed on nothing more than a laptop with little hardware.

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easibly, a meagre audio interface and a decent set of studio monitors will suffice for many applications, but is that enough? Well, maybe in the right hands, but what about setting up a professional grade studio that can cater to a variety of needs?

I was given the task of putting together three fantasy studio shopping lists to outline the costs involved in assembling the core components of three different levels of audio post-production studios. Of course, you could go with the aforementioned setup of laptop / audio interface /

High – R750 000 When one has unlimited budget, the sky is the limit. However, realistically, this never happens so instead of focusing on an unlimited budget, I chose instead to see how close I could stay to R750 000 while still going a bit wild and satisfying the gear acquisition syndrome within me.

I chose the same 12-core Mac Pro tower we see in the mid-level budget, however, this time with a few extras. I added two more 1TB hard drives (four total), two Apple 27” displays and dual ATI Radeon 5770 bringing the price up to a hefty R65 700.

The DAW of choice is a Pro Tools 10 HD|X system, centred around the new C|24 control surface and incorporating an HD 8x8 interface and the HD|X PCI-e card. This system is also offered as a bundle by Avid, coming in at a whopping R424 000 and is five times the power of the previous HD3 system, offering comprehensive routing, mixing, and editing facilities.

Additionally, the C|24 offers a complete front end to the system with integrated I/O, 24 motorised faders and encoders, and a 5.1 surround sound analogue monitor section. I also decided to throw in the Avid HD Sync for R18 700 for occasions where synchronising external video machines such as Betacam is necessary.

Looking to integrate top-shelf monitoring, I selected Focal Solo6s and a Focal Sub6 subwoofer. Focal have been making huge waves in the audio industry with their smooth, clear top end, detailed midrange, and tight bass response, so a fantastic, high-end monitoring system is achieved.

With the addition of the subwoofer for an extended low end, this system can extend well below 35Hz. The five Focal Solo6s plus the Sub6 comes to a total of R76 500.

Not forgetting that DSP is a huge must in a professional audio post-production studio, I also chose to throw a UAD-2e Quad into the mix for R22 500. This will give the

32 | SCREENAFRICA | January 2013

already powerful system a huge boost in processing power and will supplement the other stock plugins that come with

speakers, but one would have to ask whether it would help you get any of the big jobs. As much as many of us may begrudge the fact, a professional grade studio needs to have some degree of ‘wow factor’.

All the fantasy studio shopping lists I have drawn together cater to audio post-production. They all incorporate the ability to accommodate 5.1 surround sound, have the ability to at least record one source (like a voiceover or ADR), and have some sort of external display monitoring.

Pro Tools 10.

Moving into the video side of things, I figured it would be a good idea to stick with

the Blackmagic Design Deck Link 2 Video Card that we see in the mid-level budget for remedial capture and monitoring of video.

The card remains at the R7 500 price point, however, with the addition of Avid’s Media Composer video editing software for those impromptu occasions where some minor video editing is in order, a further R22 300 is required. For a main display monitor, I selected the same 52” Sharp LC52LE830U professional LED display for R32 000 along with the same 32” Samsung LED for R4 000 in the ADR / voiceover booth.

For voiceovers and ADR in this league a top shelf microphone and preamp combination is recommended so I selected a Neumann u87AI and an Avalon VT-737SP. The u87AI comes in at R36 000 and the Avalon at R23 000, making for a very expensive mono channel. However, the Avalon is a complete channel strip with a high quality preamp, a smooth opto compressor, and a fantastic sounding EQ that can only offer versatility and great sound.

• • • • • • • • • • • •

1 x Mac Pro, 12 Core – R65 700 1 x Avid C|24 / Pro Tools 10 HD|X / HD 8 x 8 bundle – R424 000 1 x HD Sync – R18 700 1 x Black Magic Deck Link 2 Video Card – R7 500 1 x Avid Media Composer 6 – R22 300 5 x Focal Solo6 – R60 000 1 x Focal Sub6 – R16 500 1 x UAD-2e Quad – R22 500 1 x 52” Sharp LC52LE830U LED Display – R32 000 1 x 32” Samsung LED Display – R4 000 (Booth) 1 x Neumann U87 Ai – R36 000 1 x Avalon VT-737SP – R23 000

TOTAL R732 200

| Audio Post-production Medium – R250 000 Jumping into a lower financial tier, we now have a budget of R250 000. This, to me, was the most difficult budget to put a list together for as it’s easy to be frugal and even easier to go overboard. Sticking to a median often proves to be an exercise of logical constraint more than anything.

At the core of this system I chose a Mac Pro 12-core tower, at a cost of R45 700.

Quite simply put, when you buy a Mac, you know you’re buying power and reliability and the tech spec of the base model includes dual 2.4GHz Intel Xeon 6-core CPUs, 12GB DDR3 RAM, ATI Radeon HD5770 graphics, 512GB SSD, 2 x 1TB hard drives and comes loaded with OS X Mountain Lion. This machine is a juggernaut and you will have no trouble running sessions with hundreds of tracks.

The DAW of choice at this level is, of course, Avid’s Pro Tools 10 HD|Native, the industry standard in audio post-production.

As Avid currently offers a bundle that includes Pro Tools 10 HD, the HD|Native PCI-e card, and the HD Omni interface for R51 300, this seemed like the most cost effective and streamlined option as the Omni also integrates a 5.1 surround sound monitoring section.

But what about a control surface? Well, the Euphonix Artist series, owned by Avid, is the logical selection. Combining the Control, Mix and Transport modules, a comprehensive control surface is achieved on the EUCON protocol, which is a best

Low – less than R100 000 R100 000 is not a lot of money these days and not impossible to finance. Given this perspective, I chose R100 000 and less as the lowest tier of our three budgets for aspirants seeking to break into the studio market.

At the heart of the studio is an Evetech i7 GTX custom PC, costing R16 741. This monster PC is based around the latest generation i7-3770, with 8GB of RAM, a 120GB SSD, two 1TB HDDs, with two 20” AOC monitors and wireless keyboard and mouse, all wrapped up in a beautiful white Corsair Graphite 600T case. This will be more than enough power to handle even the most processor-hungry projects.

For the centrepiece of the R100 000 studio I chose the newly released Behringer X32, coming in at a relatively paltry R30 000. The X32 doubles as a DAW controller with motorised faders and many user-assignable knobs and buttons, which means you can use it as a multi-track front-end to record audio and then as a control surface for mixing.

mate for Pro Tools 10, with all the relevant controls, faders and metering at your fingertips.

For monitoring, I chose five Dynaudio BM6as with the Dynaudio Bm9s subwoofer, costing R43 000 in total. These monitors offer clean, accurate monitoring and with the addition of the subwoofer, no LFE will go undetected.

Since many good post-production

studios have some sort of video editing and capture facility, I thought it might be useful to incorporate a Blackmagic Design Link 2 Video Card to playback Pro Tools reference movies out to the video outputs, all in real time and for video capture, if need be. This card offers SD/HD video with SDI, HDMI and analogue connections, a built in hardware down converter, four channels of balanced analogue audio, and two

independent capture and playback streams.

Black Magic Media Express video capture software is also included.

For video monitoring I chose the Sharp LC52LE830U professional LED display at a cost of R32 000 and for the ADR booth display, a 32” Samsung LED flat panel at R4 000.

Speaking of ADR, a Neumann TLM103 large diaphragm condenser microphone seemed like the best choice, coming in at R12 000. The Neumann brand is a staple in the studio industry and affords great sound and fantastic reliability. Pairing it up to the TK Audio The Strip channel strip, high quality pre-amplification, compression and EQ is afforded at R12 500.

• • • • • • • • • • • •

1 x Mac Pro, 12 Core – R45 700 1 x Avid Pro Tools 10 / HD Native PCI-e / HD Omni bundle – R51,300 1 x Euphonix Artist Control – R17 100 1 x Euphonix Artist Mix – R14 250 1 x Euphonix Artist Transport R4 500 5 x Dynaudio BM6a – R30 000 1 x Dynaudio BM9s – R13 000 1 x Black Magic Deck Link 2 Video Card – R7 500 1 x 52” Sharp LC52LE830U LED Display – R32 000 1 x 32” Samsung LED Display – R4 000 (Booth) 1 x Neumann TLM103 – R12 000 1 x TK Audio The Strip – R12 500

TOTAL R243 850

Next, for R20 000, I chose Steinberg’s newly released Nuendo 6 as the DAW of choice. Needing virtually no introduction, Nuendo has been a serious player in the post-production and the mixing sound for video world and continues to offer some of the most comprehensive features in the industry. It also mates well with the HUI and Mackie control surface protocols employed by the X32, and has some of the best

surround sound features available.

For monitoring I chose the Yamaha HS50M with the HS10w subwoofer to provide all six channels of the surround matrix coming in at a cost of R21 000 for the lot. These speakers offer fantastic quality at a very affordable price point, which makes them perfect for this setup and at R21 000 for everything, you can’t go wrong.

For display monitoring I chose a standard

46” Samsung LED flat panel display, which is available through Game stores for a very low R7 000. Because it is LED it has a much lower latency than other technologies such as plasma and has a high refresh rate of up to 240Hz. Finally, to record voiceovers or ADR, I chose the Audio Technica AT4050 LDC, which is a fantastic microphone for around R5 000. Because the X32 offers preamps from Midas and full processing on input, I didn’t include any outboard preamps or processing. This is, after all, the budget setup.

• • • • • • •

1 x Evetech i7 GTX Custom PC – R16 741 1 x Behringer X32 – R30 000 1 x Steinberg Nuendo 5 – R20 000 5 x Yamaha HS50 – R15 000 1 x Yamaha HS10w Sub – R6 000 1 x 46” Samsung LED Flat panel – R7 000 1 x Audio Technica AT4040 – R5 000

TOTAL R99 741

Conclusion Today, an audio post-production studio can be assembled at a variety of budgets. If you’re not satisfied with merely working on your laptop and have a bit of cash to burn, there are many competitive options available, allowing one to get into the market for minimal investment. Of course, one can spend just about as much money as there is available so, as always, it is cost effective to first cater to your needs.

Buying intelligently is a must as the gear you ultimately choose will have to pay itself off at some point. Of course, it is good practice to exercise reason first when making a purchase, ensuring it serves your needs of your clientele, speaks to your workflow and facilitates good work. After all, when all is said and done and no matter how fancy your gear is, you have to deliver the goods!

January 2013 | SCREENAFRICA | 33

Audio Post-Production

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Ultimate one-stop shop Gallo Music Publishers, part of the Gallo Music Group, has an 86-year history and their name is synonymous with South African music. From Ladysmith Black Mambazo to Mango Groove to Caiphus Semenya, their music is everywhere, from Top Ten radio, to TV jingles, to film soundtracks. They are, quite frankly, ubiquitous.

Not only are they home to some of South Africa’s all-time bestselling, locally produced songs, they are also sub-publishers of a huge collection of international catalogues, which, in their words, makes them the ‘ultimate one stop African music publishing operation’.

In addition to the base Gallo libraries, they also handle Warner/ Chappell publishing in South Africa, which handles over a million songs with notable mainstays such as I Got You (I Feel Good) and Winter Wonderland, and includes such artists as Katy Perry, Eric Clapton, Green Day, Led Zeppelin, and many other prestigious names. Warner Music/Gallo Africa also falls under the Gallo Music Group umbrella, which encompasses Atlantic, Elektra

and, of course, Warner Brothers and thus, holistically, Gallo looks after Warner’s music here and Gallo’s music is looked after by them in the States.

“For a long time publishing was seen as the collecting business where our people assigned you the copyright and administered its registration,” says Tsholo Moraba, publisher at Gallo.

“Then we just waited for the money to come in. But now it’s shifted more into a proactive business where we are actually out there advertising in Africa, just to place our music in front of the music users.”

There is an evolution going on about how people use music, says Moraba.

Gallo therefore has a fantastic mechanism for accessing all of this wonderful music, which is available as a digital gateway through their website.

Additionally, Gallo has multiple international partnerships that offer similar gateways through other websites where music users can find relevant music from Gallo through category searches utilising metadata.

These sites consolidate catalogues aimed toward specific markets, making finding the right music for the right application as easy as a click away.

Tsholo Moraba

Music and audio specialist Award-winning Howard Music, owned and operated by well-known composer, producer, musical director, mix engineer and musician Adam Howard, is an audio specialist company based at the Ministry of Illusion in Bryanston, Johannesburg.

For the past few years Howard Music has offered such audio-based services such as music composition, production, arrangements, audio final mix, sound design, and musical direction for corporate events.

Indeed, music is a central tenet of what

HM 1-4 page ad in Screen Africa print.pdf

South African Great Film Composers

S E R V I C E S I N C LU D E

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FINAL MIX SOUND DESIGN COMPOSING & ARRANGING MUSICAL DIRECTION FOR CORPORATE EVENTS

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Joseph Shabalala • Ray Phiri • Ringo Madlingozi • Caiphus Semenya Mbongeni Ngema • Don Laka • Sello Twala • Sipho Mabuse Mduduzi Magwaza • Lloyd Lelosa • Kevin Botha • Thami Mdluli Anton Goosen • Peter Moticoe • John Leyden • Lusanda Mcinga Nico van Rensburg • Mpho Sibotho • Khabonina Winnie Vilakazi• Dan Tshanda Sandile Ngema • Thandiswa Mazwai • Johnstone Mnyandu David Masonda • Joseph Mbiza • Mphatheni Khumalo • Isadora Nkosi Nico Carstens • Josephine Ndou • Thomas Makhatini • JC Taljaard

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Representing some of the biggest international publishers in Africa, including Warner Chappell and Walt Disney, among others.

Use music in new ways

For more info contact Michaelé Codd | 011 280 3000 | michaelec@gallo.co.za

34 | SCREENAFRICA | January 2013

••SA_quarter page_1_composers.indd 1

10/29/12 11:12 AM

A D D R E SS Ministry Of Illusion Block D Stonewedge Office Park No 1 Wedgewood Link Rd Bryanston, Jhb, 2021

C O N TACT www.howardmusic.co.za +27 (0)72 994 9695 +27 (0)11 463 8538 adam@howardmusic.co.za

1

2011/11/23

11:40 AM

| Audio Post-production

Premier production music

Adam Howard Howard Music does, be it composition, production, or mixing and he has composed music for corporate clients such as VW, Toyota, Discovery, and Mercedes-Benz, to name a few. But it doesn’t end there.

Howard has a classical music degree from the world famous Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and eventually made his way to South Africa to fill the principle trumpeter position of the New Arts Philharmonic Orchestra of Pretoria at the State Theatre in 1997. Since then he has composed, arranged, produced, and performed for many of South Africa’s top artists, including Freshly Ground, Loyiso, Mbongeni Ngema, Sibongile Khumalo, Steve Hofmeyer, Brenda Fassie, Danny K, Mafikizolo and Watershed.

Currently, Howard is musical director for William Kentridge, the world-renowned South African artist who is famous for his eclectic musical and visual art. Recently they

just returned from Europe where Kentridge’s Refuse the Hour, an ‘AvantGarde Chamber Orchestra’ was on tour and where Howard took on the duties of arranger, conductor, trumpeter, running the back tracks, and making sure the musicians were taken care of on tour.

In addition to this massive task, Howard has several other accomplishments under his belt that any professional in the field would be proud of. He has won several awards for music in advertising including a Clio and a Silver Loerie for such brands as TBWA Hunt Lascaris, DraftFCB, Y&R, Ogilvy, JWT and Metropolitan republic. Howard has performed at the 2010 FIFA Wold Cup Kick-Off concert, sharing the stage with Alicia Keys, John Legend, Hugh Masekela, and Angelique Kikjo. In 2011, he founded the Johannesburg Big Band, which includes some of the best jazz and session musicians in South Africa.

Lalela Music is a production music library for film and television, with offices in Cape Town and Los Angeles. Inspired by the belief that quality sounds can be born in South Africa for the local and international markets, they offer premier production music with a global inflection.

The library is administered by NORM and all tracks are available through Lalela and its network of sub-publishers in 35 countries spanning 99 albums.

Tanya Douman is the manager of the Lalela Cape Town division and is currently studying for a law degree.

She says: “Music is my passion and it is in the best interest of publishers and composers that we understand the legal dimensions of music to enable a fair and prosperous music platform. Establishing a quality music cue administration office has given me insight into the way the industry works and the pitfalls that impact financially on publishers and composers. Managing Lalela Music gives me a renewed drive to add value to composers and clients.”

Douman oversees marketing, local contracts, sourcing new composers and general management of the business. She recently returned from Los Angeles after spending time with composers and Lalela CEO Alan Lazar, an accomplished composer and author. Lalela aims to grow local composers by developing and

Tanya Douman

expanding quality composition for the international market.

Recently placements of music from Lalela include an international trailer for Dreamworks/Hugh Jackman’s Real Steel, a Playstation 3 trailer for Resistance 3, a CBS promo for the Amazing Race, a documentary on the history of Warner Brothers, and a worldwide Panasonic promo.

January 2013 | SCREENAFRICA | 35

Audio Post-Production

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Finding the right note “I really think production music is the thing of the future as opposed to finding buy-out music or trying to compose. People don’t always have budgets for compositions.”

– Louise Bulley

Louise Bulley

Synchro Music Management is a company that traces its roots back to just after the rebirth of South Africa in 1994. It was founded by former EMI publisher, Vic Ellis in 1996, specialising in music publishing and providing production music to the broadcast industry.

Currently one of the top three major production music library agents in South Africa, they have not been without tragedy,

however. Ellis sadly passed away in 2005, prompting the reigns to be handed over to Terry Meredith, former creative manager at EMI. He had a successful five years but sadly passed away in 2012. Despite these terrible losses, the company continued to grow from strength to strength and its legacy is now in the hands of Louise Bulley, formerly production music manager at NORM and ex Jingles supervisor at SAMRO. Her qualifications and experience made her the obvious candidate for the job and her wide knowledge of the field goes a long way in assisting clients’ requirements.

Synchro Music has strong ties to overseas libraries and its flagship is the Germanbased library Sonoton. Established in 1965, Sonoton is the largest independent production music library in the world. They represent over 65 international labels and each year the library is expanded by over 100 albums from hundreds of composers and producers from all over the globe. In addition to Sonoton, Synchro Music also

represents over 30 other libraries including African Planit (SA), Epic Score (USA), Telemusic (France) and Mediatracks (UK), among many more.

Recently, Synchro Music provided the production music from the Mediatracks library for the Hello World promo for DStv, which has seen notable success and exposure. What sets the piece apart is that it actually has a great hook, instead of just being background music and this is where Bulley sees production music heading.

She explains: “I really think production music is the thing of the future as opposed to finding buy-out music or trying to compose. People don’t always have budgets for compositions. In the past production music was very much elevator music and musical soundscapes. Now I find that, slowly, internationally, it’s becoming more about finding vocals that can be used across the board in the advertising space. That’s what happened with Hello World.”

SCREENAFRICA

us on

36 | SCREENAFRICA | January 2013

| Audio Post-production

A unique perspective

Fred Woods

Red Igloo Music is a Johannesburg based production music company. Founded by Fred Woods in 2003, the company is involved in the distribution, production and publishing of production library music. With more than 35 years’ experience in both the local and international music, television and advertising industries, Woods has a unique perspective when it comes to understanding and meeting client’s needs.

Starting out as a professional musician, Woods moved into music composition in the mid-1980s, and soon established himself as a leader in his field, writing and producing the theme and incidental music for more than 1 200 television series.

He is particularly well known in the field of children’s music with major success both here in South Africa and internationally and his work includes such iconic shows as Kideo and Jam Alley. His catchy melodies and positive lyrics can be heard daily on e.tv’s Cool Catz and Thabang Thabong on the SABC. The launch of Red Igloo was the beginning of Woods’ expansion into music publishing, and from humble beginnings the company has grown to become the

largest independent publisher and distributor of production music on the African continent. They currently represent more than one hundred Blue Chip libraries and offer around 200 000 tracks covering every conceivable genre. All of their libraries are licensed through NORM and are compatible with Recue cue sheet software.

Woods is also the creative force behind

two locally produced labels, Strange Fruit and Cute Music, which are both distributed in more than 45 countries. In addition to his many business interests, he also finds the time to serve as a director on the board of Samro, and is a trustee and vice chairman of the Samro Retirement Annuity Fund, a body that looks after the interests of all South African composers.

The launch of Red Igloo was the beginning of Woods’ expansion into music publishing, and from humble beginnings the company has grown to become the largest independent publisher and distributor of production music on the African continent.

Important announcement Red Igloo Music is pleased to announce that we have been appointed the exclusive South African agents for the CPM, formerly Carlin Production Music library, effective 1 January 2013.

We are in the process of updating all of our Red Igloo Music drives in circulation.

If you are an existing user of this library and we have not yet contacted you, or you would like us to supply the catalogue to you, please send an email to info@redigloomusic.com Please note that the library will continue to be covered by all existing agreements between the broadcasters and NORM / SAMRO, so it’s business as usual.

CPM, a great library with a great new distributor!

We look forward to hearing from you.

January 2013 | SCREENAFRICA | 37

Tracking Technology

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Supporting Oman TV’s playout XOR Media, developer of high-performance, open, IT storage for media applications and private cloud data centers, announced that the Sultanate of Oman Television increased its HD transmission capacity through XOR Media’s video server MediaServer 1200.

Sony Professional Solutions MEA facilitated the systems integration for this project at Oman TV. The MediaServer 1200 is a stand alone video server that offers multi-resolution and multi-format operations with a high channel density of up to 12SD or 11HD in 3RU. It has a built-in storage of up to 16TB in a 3RU chassis.

One of the first customers to choose the XOR MediaServer with the DNxHD120 software codec, Oman TV has increased the capacity of their XOR Media playout servers to a total of 32 channels since they switched to state-of-the-art HD broadcasting. The system is integrated with Tedial Hierarchical Storage Management and Media Asset Management, as well as with Pebble Beach automation.

The XOR infrastructure provides a server solution to handle the DNxHD codec and to support a file-based production workflow in Oman TV. Specific requirements of Oman TV like multi-site media movement from Muscat and Salalah and additional layers of redundancy are also addressed.

“Robustness, flexibility, open technology describe the XOR infrastructure,” says Marcello Dellepiane, vice president for EMEA sales, XOR Media. “XOR Media installations are defined not only by their power but also by how they integrate in an ecosystem of best-inclass media application providers. Our Oman TV setup is only one example. We will have many more.”

Luxor on the ‘Rack’ Providing on-the-go production and post-production services for live television series such as Iceland Idol and Master Chef Iceland is no easy feat, but one-stop creative shop Luxor is always up for the challenge. A part of Saga Film, Iceland’s largest production house, when Luxor recently decided to convert its mobile production truck to digital, manager Bragi Reynisson turned to the AJA Ki Pro Rack.

In October, Reynisson began plans to phase out the use of Betacam tapes in the truck and embrace a file-based workflow to transition from SD to HD. To ease the transition and enable HD recording in a 1RU rack mount form factor, he purchased seven Ki Pro Racks.

“ProRes is our main codec, so we spent a lot of time researching ProRes recorders, and Ki Pro Rack won hands down. It’s one of the most affordable, reliable solutions on the market that can fit neatly within our limited production space and deliver the high-quality ProRes we need,” he explained.

Luxor ordered its Ki Pro Rack units less than two days before beginning production on MasterChef. Within 40 hours, all of the equipment was at Reynisson’s doorstep. He was able to unpack, install, adjust and get the units up and running in under an hour. “Ki Pro Rack worked out of the box. Setup and configuration went off without a hitch,” he said.

Often on a tight production schedule, Reynisson and his team constantly are on the move in their custom built outside broadcast (OB) truck. Equipped with five Sony D50 cameras and seven Ki Pro Racks, he and his team gather hours of footage each day. The footage is taken back to the studio for editing in an edit suite equipped with 10 Mac workstations running Apple Final Cut Pro X. Since integrating Ki Pro Rack into its workflow, Luxor has experienced tremendous time-savings. Reynisson added: “Importing all of our beta footage could easily take up to 60 hours before, but with Ki Pro Rack, we can easily shoot everything in ProRes, take the files straight from our truck and send the footage straight off for editing, which has really accelerated the post process. We’ve already made our investment back in three weeks with the time we’ve saved.”

Switching on to Jessie J E F F IC IE N T

Aspen 16x16, 32x32, 72x72 3G HD−SDI Effective routing over long distances in a compact design

JHB Tel: +27 (0)11 7709800 KZN Tel: +27 (0)31 5330900 Web: www.electrosonic.co.za

E-mail: sales@electrosonic.co.za

24 Hour Support Lines: AV: 0861 AVHELP (28 4357)

38 | SCREENAFRICA | January 2013

UK based AV specialists VME used multiple Blackmagic Design products to manage the AV production of international pop star Jessie J’s Alnwick Castle performance on her 2012 Heartbeat tour in Northumberland.

The concert was set against the dramatic and iconic backdrop of Alnwick Castle, built in AD 1096, where Jessie J performed some of her greatest hits, including Do it Like a Dude and Price Tag, to a capacity crowd of 12 500 fans.

Blackmagic Design’s ATEM 2 M/E Production Switcher and ATEM 1 M/E Broadcast Panel was used to switch between four CanonXF305 camera feeds and broadcast the performance live in HD to a 13 square metre plasma screen. At the centre of the operation was Blackmagic Design’s Compact Videohub, responsible for routing all video signals and feeds to and from the nearby OB van, while a pair of SmartView Duo SDI rack mounted monitors were used for viewing the cameras video output.

Managing director of VME, Dion Davie sets the scene of the concert: ”British weather can be unpredictable at the best of times and on this particular occasion it didn’t disappoint. It was a total washout and that can be a nightmare when managing outdoor AV installations.

That said, with such a relatively small set up, it was easy enough to manage as everything was compact, and most importantly dry, inside our van. Our only real drama was having the van towed out of nine inches of mud in the early hours of the morning.

“The decision to implement Blackmagic products was easy; the products are affordable, high quality and reliable, and Blackmagic is used by some of the biggest names in the business.” s

RG001 Clear Advert_Screen Africa_Paths_HR.pdf

| Tracking Technology

Introducing new innovations from Sony

C

M

Sony has launched the new XAVC recording format that will be at the heart of its new industry-leading 4K Y products. The XAVC format will encourage the adoption of 4K beyond feature films, in genres such as TV CM dramas, entertainment shows, documentaries and commercials.

MY Says Jess Goedhals, GM, Broadcast Division of Sony South Africa (Pty) Ltd: “The new XAVC format underlines Sony’s commitment to bringing high quality content to the consumer market. The quality of HDTV CY programmes originated in 4K is simply stunning and will allow both broadcaster and production communities CMY to build a future proof catalogue of high-end content.”

As well as the widespread applications for the professional HDTV market, Sony has developed the XAVC K format to enable the expansion of 4K content into the consumer market. XAVC has been designed to provide a future proof codec that can meet the shifting requirements of the fast developing 4K content production and HD120P high frame rate shooting.

Sony’s XAVC format employs MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 level 5.2, the highest picture resolution and frame rate video compression codec based on the industry standards. XAVC enables a wide range of operational possibilities for content production, notably: from Proxy to 4K pixel resolutions, intra frame and long GOP schemes, and 1080 50P/60P infrastructure capability.

Built with the principles of workflow efficiency, evolution and optimised image quality at its heart, Sony’s XAVC can support the following content formats: 4K (4096 x 2160 and 3840 x 2160); HD and proxy resolution; MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 video compression; 12, 10 and 8 bit colour depth; up to 60fps; MXF wrapping format can be used; and 4:4:4, 4:2:2, 4:2:0 colour sampling.

XAVC has been developed as an open format, providing a licence programme for other manufacturers in the broadcast and production industry to develop their own high quality and high frame rate products. The following 14 leading manufacturers’ products plan to support the XAVC format and workflow: Non-linear editors – Adobe CS6 with Rovi Total Code Plug-in installed; Avid; Final Cut Pro X; Grass Valley; Quantel; Rovi; and Sony Vegas Pro 12; On-set dailies – Assimilate; Codex; Colorfront; FilmLight; MTI Film; and YoYotta; Colour Grading – Assimilate; FilmLight, and Quantel; Software codec – Rovi; and Codec board –Matrox.

Sony has also announced the new PVM-X300, a 30-inch 4096 x 2160 resolution monitor for powerful support of 4K monitoring in the field. The PVM-X300’s 30-inch 4K LCD panel is capable of displaying over four times the full HD resolution in a single screen.

The PVM-X300 incorporates Sony’s exclusive TRIMASTER technology architecture, achieving excellent color and picture quality reproduction which makes this monitor ideal for 4K cinema production (onset monitoring, dailies and editing), 4K live production (camera control, programme preview) and real-time 4K presentation.

Furthermore, the PVM-X300 can incorporate an innovative 4K player which offers unprecedented ease of handling 4K content. This expands the new 4K world not only to cinema applications, but also for live production, documentaries, business and industry applications.

“The evolution of professional monitors is essential for 4K production in the field to make greater inroads in the industry, as existing 4K monitors are heavy and unsuitable for field work,” says Goedhals. “We’ve designed the PVM-X300 to be high performance and versatile in terms of the interfaces, controls and compatibility with production cameras and memory media.They will follow content creators to the field and help them find new, creative ways of telling stories without having to worry about limitations in on-the-ground evaluation.”

Also incorporating a RGB 10 bit panel, the PVM-X300 provides uniformity control and can accurately display industry standard colour space of ITU-R BT.709. Moreover, the PVM-X300 features IPS (In Plane Switching) technology for a wider viewing angle.

1

2012/06/28

10

Tracking Technology

|

Modular multi-viewer The SierraView SVG HDMI/ HD-SDI multi-viewer with CV/SD, HD-SDI and HDMI inputs and HDMI/HD-SDI or HDMI/VGA outputs uses a modular architecture, allowing customising of inputs in groups of four up to 20 inputs with the additional HDMI input on each output module.

The three input modules consist of the CV/SD module (auto-sensing CVBS and SD/SDI), the 3G HD-SDI module (auto-sensing SD-HD/SDI) and an HDCP supporting HDMI module (with EDID). There are two output modules available: VGA output with a cloned HDMI output or HD-SDI output with a cloned HDMI output (to 1920x1080p). Dual output systems require identical output modules.

The SierraView SVG Modular Multi-viewer can handle up to 20 high-quality, auto-sensing inputs (Composite, SD-SDI, HDMI and HD-SDI up to 3G) plus an HDMI input located on each output module for a total of 21 inputs displayed on a single HDMI, VGA or HD-SDI monitor (or up to 18 inputs on a dual output system).

The SVG multi-viewer supports customisable layouts, real time audio and video monitoring with alarms, waveform displays, and UMD and tally from switchers and routers. It fits into studios, broadcast facilities, command / control centres, and in production and post-production editing suites.

Features include multi-format input combinations with four inputs per module; autosensing CVBS/SD, HD-SDI (up to 3G) and HDMI input modules; flexible output option – either single or dual display: 4:3, 16:9 and free-form; output resolutions up to 1920x1080p in either VGA, HDMI or HD-SDI; selectable analogue and digital clocks, on-air timer and countdown timer; dynamic UMDs and Tally information from routers and switchers; support of format display of input signals with AFD information; support of audio monitoring and full-screen video output; alarms for frozen or black video, video loss, and audio silence or excessive level; built-in web server via RJ45 for configuration and remote control; SNMP, TSL and GPS serial timing; and 1RU frame with dual power supplies included.

Stylish new AVCCAM camera recorder The AG-AC90 new memory card recorder from Panasonic combines the high image quality, advanced functions and easy operation that professionals demand in a stylish, easy-to-handle design.

Its zoom lens extends from 29.8 mm (35mm equivalent) wide angle to 12x optical zoom, with a high speed of F1.5 brightness.

BSI (backside illumination) type 3MOS image sensors exhibit high sensitivity, full-HD resolution and a high S/N ratio. Plus the AVCHD recorder section supports both PS mode, for full-HD progressive image production, and pro-use PH mode. They give a camera operator the field of view, the image quality, and the file / video formats he or she needs for news gathering and image production.

Other professional operating features include triple manual rings (focus, zoom and iris) that approach the versatility and feel of the interchangeable lenses, XLR microphone/audio inputs, and remote terminals to provide the system expandability that professional application require.

When using the intelligent 25x digital zoom, it achieves up to 25x seamless zooming. In addition, it also features 2x, 5x and 10x digital zoom function. Panasonic’s unique Nano Surface Coating minimises ghosts and flaring, and a high speed, F1.5 brightness enables extremely clear image rendering. The built-in 5-axis Hybrid OIS (optical image stabiliser) ensures stable handheld shooting.

Three (RGB) backside illumination corresponding 1/4.7 type MOS image sensors have an effective pixel count of 2 190 000 pixels. This makes it possible to capture excellent images with high definition and superb color reproduction even in dimly lit locations.

Prompting control accessories Autoscript, part of Vitec Videocom, a Vitec Group company, has launched two new accessories for its industry-leading prompters that use the latest technological innovations in their design and manufacture.

The company has released a new and improved version of its wireless handheld scroll controller, known as the RAT (Receive and Transmit). The RAT 3 has a new RF module, enabling it to use more channels, and features a power saving option that enables a 9V battery to last up to three months. The enclosure has been redesigned to make it more comfortable for the presenter/talent, while the physical size of the RAT3 has been reduced to accommodate smaller hands.

The popular HC/1 five button deskpad control panel has also undergone a redesign, employing a Hall effect sensor to give even greater longevity and absolute prompt control.

Autoscript has also improved the aesthetic look and feel of the HC/1 in response to the growing numbers of these units being used by presenters on the studio floor; the new design fits better with modern studio design.

Says Brian Larter, MD of Autoscript: “As always we have thought carefully about the ways in which presenters and producers want to work, and have employed the latest technologies to enhance our products so that they meet and exceed today’s professional broadcast requirements.”

40 | SCREENAFRICA | January 2013

October 2012

Audience Ratings

|

Audience Ratings

This monthly feature selects prominent local productions and ranks them in terms of audience ratings (ARs). Selected foreign programmes are shown only for comparison.

ARs are weighted over the period of transmission and the number of transmissions during the calendar month. Data is supplied by the South African Advertising Research Foundation and processed by Interactive Market Systems (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd.

The top five programmes

The cream of the local productions

1

Generations

08/10/2012 Soap 22.7

2

Vodacom Yebo Millionaires

16/10/2012

Comp

17.8

Oct 2012 AR

Sep 2012 AR

3

Zone 14

22/10/2012

Dram

16.5

3 Talk

Talk

15:30 M-F S5

3

2.7

2.7

4

Final Whistle

16/10/2012

Spor

16.3

3rd Degree

Actu

21:30 Tue

W

e

5.0

3.8

5

Montana

02/10/2012 Dram 13.5

7de Laan

Soap 18:30 M-F S5

2

6.9

7.1

Binneland

Dram 18:30 M-F S5 K 0.9 0.8

Carte Blanche

Maga 19:00 Sun

W M

1.0

0.8

Fokus

Actu

W

5.0

5.1

SABC2 Genre AR

Day/s

Name

Genre

Genre AR

Frequency

Date

Start Time

Rank Programme

Channel

SABC1

Rank Programme

Date

1

Muvhango

23/10/2012 Dram 12.4

2

Skwizas

28/10/2012 Sitc

9.7

3

7de Laan

29/10/2012

Soap

8.8

Generations

Soap 20:00 M-F S5 1 20.0 19.7

4

Mokgonyana Mmatswale

05/10/2012

Dram

8.5

Gospel Gold

Musi Vari

5

Powerball

23/10/2012 Vari

Inkaba

Dram 20:30 M-F S5 MM 0.2 0.3

Isidingo: The Need

Soap 19:30 M-F S5

3

5.2

5.9

Live Lotto Draw

Quiz

21.30 W/S S2

2

5.8

4.8

Morning Live

Maga 06:00 M-F S5

2

1.7

1.5

8.4

SABC3

18:30 Sun

Sun

W

2

2

5.1

4.5

Rank Programme

Date

Genre AR

1

Isidingo: The Need

26/10/2012

Soap

6.8

2

Days of Our Lives

24/10/2012

Soap

6.4

3

Isidingo – O

21/10/2012

Soap

5.2

Muvhango

Dram 21:00 M-T S4 2 9.0 7.7

4

Isidingo – R

30/10/2012

Soap

4.3

News at Seven

News 19:00 Daily D

e

7.1

6.3

5

Hawaii Five-O

29/10/2012

Dram

4.2

News at Seven on 3

News 19:00 Daily D

3

2.6

2.9

Pasella

Maga 19:30 W

Rhythm City

Soap 18:30 M-F S5

Scandal

Dram 19:30 M-T S4 e 8.3 7.4

Selimathunzi

Vari 18:30 Wed W 1 4.5 4.5

M-Net

W 2

3.7 4.2

Rank Programme

Date

Genre AR

1

Carte Blanche

14/10/2012

Actu

1.1

2

The Hangover 2

07/10/2012

Movi

1.0

3

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

14/10/2012

Movi

1.0

4

Zookeeper

21/10/2012 Movi 0.9

Special Assignment

Actu

3

1.2

1.5

5

Idols SA Finale

02/10/2012

The Wild

Dram 19:00 M-F S5 M

0.2

0.1

Top Billing

Maga 20:00 Tue

W

3

2.4

2.6

Villa Rosa

Dram 18:00 M-F S5

K

0.9

0.7

Yo-TV

Y-Ent Vari Vari D e 1.9 1.9

Real

0.7

e.tv Rank Programme

Date

Genre AR

1

News

11/10/2012 News 11.5

2

Rhythm City

25/10/2012

Dram

11.4

3

12 Rounds

07/10/2012

Movi

11.2

4

The Marine

14/10/2012

Movi

10.5

5

Alvin and the Chipmunks

20/10/2012

Movi

10.3

We feature the top five shows viewed for each of the channels.

21:00 Thu

W

e

9.1

9.4

Top foreign shows Days of Our Lives

Soap 17:30 M-F S5

1

5.1

4.9

W

e

4.9

4.7

Soap 18:00 M-F S5

1

4.9

5.9

WWE Wrestling Smackdown Spor 20:30 W The Bold and the Beautiful

Key: Day/s refers to the day or days of the week the programme is transmitted. Frequency refers to how often it is transmitted D=Daily, W=Weekly, S (followed by a number) indicates a series of that number of episodes.

The above represents a selection of programmes only, and is calculated on the total calendar month’s weighted average of the total audience over all age groups. If you want a particular

Key to genres: Actu: Actuality, Docu: Documentary, Dram: Drama, Educ: Education, Maga: Magazine, Musi: Music, News: News, Quiz: Game Show, Real: Real life, Reli: Religion, Sitc: Sitcom, Soap: Soap, Spor: Sport, Vari: Variety, Y.Ent: Youth Entertainment.

programme included please contact Enid Venter on +27 (0)11 339-1051 or email enid@ihjoburg.co.za. The purpose of the

• Television Universe estimated at 5.232 million households.

• One ratings point of all viewers represents about 145 590 viewers

schedule is to show the types of programmes South African audiences view, and to what extent.

January 2013 | SCREENAFRICA | 41

Africa

|

Reports by Martin Chemhere

Improving African TV technical standards Canal France International (CFI) has rolled out a two-year training programme for over a hundred TV production technicians in Africa, to improve the quality of local programmes.

Only a handful of home grown soapies, such as South Africa’s Generations and Zambia’s Kabanana, have aired on a regional scale in Africa. This is mainly due to poor production standards but many people attribute this low quality to a lack of professional training.

Says CFI project manager for Africa, Frederic Gisbert: “Our aim is to equip African television technicians to produce professional, quality entertainment that can be seen in other African countries and internationally.

“The context of this training programme is that the production of TV series in sub-Saharan Africa is handicapped by the lack of qualified personnel in terms of numbers and technical abilities. African TV production is also hampered by producers’ lack of knowledge of international standards and delivery requirements.”

Gisbert notes that the CFI training programme covers key technical areas of production – image, sound, editing and sound mixing.

Beneficiaries of the programme include supervisory technicians (production, editing, sound mixing, image and sound), producers and production managers.

Young technicians and students from film schools are also included.

A budget of 500 000 euros has been allocated to the project with 70% of funds sourced from the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States and the European Union, with CFI contributing the remaining 30%.

Burkina Faso workshop CFI commenced the programme in Burkina Faso in September with a workshop attended by 12 sound editors and mixers.

Representatives from the Ghanaian and

42 | SCREENAFRICA | January 2013

Cameroonian industries also participated.

“The main part of the training was on a ProTools audio post-production suite, with participants working on an episode of a local television series.

Audio is an important part of post-production that is all too often overlooked in TRAINING AFRICA: Trainer Mathieu Cochin with participants from Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Ghana at a workshop in Ouagadougou African productions,” says Gisbert.

Facilitating the their own technicians to work with in the and 2 February 2013. workshop was Mathieu Cochin, a French training. Recommendation of young Slated for mid-March 2013 is a session sound mixer who has worked at TF1, France professional technicians to CFI on the basis devoted to the editing of a television Television, Canal+, Chanel Four, BBC and of a gender balanced quota is one of the series. It will be held in Accra and enjoy Discovery. main highlights of the training. the participation of a group that Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Ghana will In the current project there are three comprises a producer, head cameraman rotate the implementation of the training, associate film schools – the Higher Institute and editor, who will be working on a which comprises nine workshops and of Image (ISIS) in Ouagadougou (Burkina series shot for the purposes of the results in the production of six television Faso), the National Film and Television workshop. There will also be two editors series – two per country. The series will be Institute (NAFTI) in Accra (Ghana) and the from Cameroon and two from Burkina staggered over a period of 25 months.

Professional Audiovisual Training Centre Faso, an editor from Ghana, two local Included are two coaching sessions (CFPA) in Yaoundé, (Cameroon). junior editors and two local students focusing on international distribution and from NAFTI. attended by Africa-based partner Schedule Session five involves sound training for production companies of the project. These series production, scheduled for June / are Vynavy Productions and Malo Pictures The second workshop was held in the July 2013 in Ouagadougou. Next is from Cameroon, Village Communications middle of November 2012 in Yaoundé, Yaounde as host of the sixth session in Ghana and an association of producers Cameroon during the filming of a local September 2013 to train first assistant from Burkina Faso, Les Producteurs series. Director Christophe Andrei and directors and producers.

Associes. cameraman Philipe Bonnier of France led The training module on lighting is “Eligibility for participation in the project the workshop. scheduled for November 2013 in Accra is through partnerships with production Workshop number three will be held in and takes participants through precompanies and industry organisations. Each mid-January 2013 in Ouagadougou and production to shooting a series. This will production partner determines, in focuses on training directors and producers. be followed by another session on agreement with CFI, which TV series they The group will work on pre-production and editing and one on production will receive training for,” explains Gisbert. filming of a series. management – dates are to be Special attention will be given to the This will be followed by coaching confirmed. project series produced and / or directed sessions on exporting African films to A review of all project activities will be by women. Each partner may host up to international markets, to coincide with the conducted at MIPTV 2013 in Cannes, two workshops during the filming and / or hosting in Ouagadougou of the FESPACO France. This will be combined with an post-production of a series. Partners select film festival and market between 22 January international distribution workshop.

Inspiring Africans to do more

| AFrica

Egyptian start-up multimedia production company Qabila was recently honoured for its innovative crowd sourcing concept.

At Demo Africa held in Nairobi, Kenya at the end of October, Cairo-based Qabila won a prize for a crowd sourcing concept that allows people to send in creative ideas for new television content for funding and production.

Demo Africa is the inaugural edition of US based Demo, a flagship initiative of the Liberating Innovation in Opportunity Nations in Africa – LIONS@FRICA partnership. This public / private alliance seeks to enhance and deepen Africa’s start-up and innovation ecosystems.

Qabila is a platform for ‘fresh’ television content that targets NGOs, governments, television channels and talented individuals.

Since launch Qabila’s entertainment content has been ‘very popular’ with its videos achieving more than four million views online and attracting several millions of television viewers. Qabila has viewers from more than 80 countries around the world, while contributors from more than 35 countries send in various content and ideas.

The company’s content is supported by,

among others, international broadcasters like Al Jazeera, which broadcasts the 14 x 3 minute series, A Citizen’s Guide to Understanding the Constitution. Also aired were the short form titles, A Citizen’s Guide to Understanding Politics and 2Km. Says Qabila Communications director Perihad Abou-Zeid: “It feels great to be recognised as a rising African start-up, given that Egypt is usually associated with the Middle East. It’s also great for us to be able to prove that social enterprises can be a big part of Africa’s entrepreneurial success story.

“We use social media as our online platform to crowd source content. Talented scriptwriters, filmmakers, illustrators or animators can submit their proposals for a specific creative concept that is either their original idea or one submitted in response to a call we issue. The contributions go

On a short film roll Namibia’s Joel Haikali recently completed a slate of three short films – Try, African Cowboy and Differences.

On 25 November 2012 Namibian filmmaker Joel Haikali screened his latest short film, Try, at a red carpet event in Windhoek to raise funds for a local charity.

“I am happy to bring Try to this event, after its completion in May this year,” says Haikali, who ranks among Namibia’s leading filmmakers. “Try is a multi-narrative action drama that explores the serendipity of life and the humanity which connect us all.”

TRIO OF FILM: Joel Haikali Scripting for the 23-minute Try, Haikali’s sixth short film, started in 2010 before it was selected for funding by the Namibia Film Commission for its total budget of N$300 000 (R300 000). It was funded under a slate that included six other Namibian short film projects, all completed this year.

Pre-production commenced in December 2011, with the six-day shoot taking place in and around Windhoek in the

through our screening process and those that make it get produced and distributed using our resources.”

He notes that the significance of crowd sourcing is that it guarantees that content is relevant to the audience because it is usually created by members of the very same audience it addresses. “It changes the game of media production which typically pushes content on the audience.”

As to the difference between the Qabila crowd sourcing platform and established crowd sourcing platforms, Abou-Zeid says there’s no other media content crowd sourcing platform that focuses on creative content development. All the existing platforms focus on crowd sourcing news like UStream. Qabila also offers contributors access to technical resources like cameras and to offline distribution channels for completed content.

Abou-Zeid puts the size of their potential audience market at around 400 million Arabic speakers around the world.

“We have experienced a number of obstacles such as intellectual property (IP) protection as Egypt’s policy infrastructure is still under-developed in such areas,” he comments.

Qabila, an Arabic term for ‘interaction’ was founded in April 2011. The inspiration to start the company came through the initial frustration of the poor and irrelevant content on Arab media channels.

Says Abou-Zeid: “The Arab Spring revolution provided the perfect inspiration for us. People had a voice and were hungry for content that reflected their aspirations and equipped them with the knowledge they needed to develop.”

The company’s directors range in age from 22 to 28 years.

last week of January.

Haikali elaborates: “We were on a very tight schedule but took a little longer with post-production as we had original music composed by Sonja Majewski.

Mark Mushiva, a Namibian poet and hip hop artist, wrote and performed a piece for the end credits.”

Lead roles in Try include Haikali himself, Thereza Kahorongo, Tulimelila Shityuwete and Lucky Peters. Kahorongo acted in two other Namibian short films in 2012, while Shityuwete is a Londonbased dancer who had her film debut in Richard Pakleppa’s Taste of Rain. Peters is a stage actor and lecturer.

“We literally had no budget for Try but managed to pull it off. It was the first time that I had a producer and production manager so I could really focus on directing and acting,” says Haikali.

Try and Differences (10 minutes) were directed by Haikali and written in collaboration with Sophie Mukenge Kabongo, who is the producer of the former. African Cowboy, also 10 minutes, is produced by Haikali with Rodney Charles co-producing.

Haikali has utilised three different genres to tell his stories as Try is an action-drama, Differences is a drama and African Cowboy has a Western theme.

He says that there is a world of

differences between African Cowboy and Try in terms of genre. “Both films deal with an average person trying to cope with something unfair that seems bigger and more powerful than they are, but Try is a contemporary drama showing Windhoek in a new way.”

Differences stars stage actor and storyteller Panduleni Hailundu, who appeared in Haikali’s My Father’s Son. First-time film actor Richard Redecker stars alongside visual artist and writer Lionel Pieterson.

African Cowboy’s cast includes Haikili and Rodney Charles, who also wrote and co-produced the film. Charles has collaborated with notable directors such as Wim Wenders, Mike Figgis and Antoine Fuqua.

Noted for acting in some of his short films and commercials, Haikali had his international acting debut in 2007 as lead actor alongside Denny Glover in the award winning, Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation, directed by Charles Burnett.

Differences has screened at the Namibian Wild Cinema Film Festival (2009), where it won the Audience Choice award. The same year Haikali was invited for the Berlinale Talent Campus.

African Cowboy premiered for a selected audience in Windhoek in December 2011.

January 2013 | SCREENAFRICA | 43

P R O D U C T I O N U P D A T E S FOR FURTHER DETAILS VISIT www.screenafrica.com

Those productions in red are newly listed this month R

Production Updates Order of Information

E L IA B L E

Ponderosa™

1.

2.

3.

4.

Title Production Company Director Genre

Up to 128x128 3G HD-SDI Matrix Switcher Operates reliably for twenty-four hours a day

JHB Tel: +27 (0)11 7709800 KZN Tel: +27 (0)31 5330900 Web: www.electrosonic.co.za E-mail: sales@electrosonic.co.za 24 Hour Support Lines: AV: 0861 AVHELP (28 4357)

Unit C5 RobeRtville Mini FaCtoRies 255 nadine stReet RobeRtville RoodepooRt 1709

44 | SCREENAFRICA | January 2013

IN DEVELOPMENT 80 MINUTES Periphery Films Dir: Simon Taylor / Julia Taal Feature Drama AFRICAN NIGHTS Two Oceans production Prods: Giselher Venzke / Bertha Spieker A LION IN THE BEDROOM Two Oceans Production Prod: Giselher Venzke / Bertha Spieker Feature AMABHUBESI Inkwasi Television Prod: Bell Curle TV Magazine At The Creek Without A Paddle Zen Crew Exec Prod: Laura Tarling Documentary BAD MEDICINE Tin Rage TV Production Dir: Enver Samuel Documentary Bagged Izithulu Productions Exec Prod: Donovan Mulligan / Mike Westcott Short Film BLAST FROM THE PAST Sirius Films Prod: Ian Manly Documentary BODA BODA THIEVES Yes That’s Us Prod: James Tayler Feature BREAD AND WATER Periphery Films Dir: Simon Taylor / Julia Taal Feature Documentary BREAKDOWN Bollysamo Pictures / Apeiro Productions Prod Man: Carolyn Gregorowski Feature CAPE OF GOOD HOPE Two Oceans Production Prods: Giselher Venzke / Bertha Spieker Feature CHILDREN OF FAMOUS ACTIVISTS Current Affairs Films Prod: Jane Thandi Lipman Feature Film CHILLI CHICKS International Radio Pictures, Inc Kit Reynolds TV series COILED DO Productions Prod: Marlow de Mardt / Brigid Olën Feature CONSERVATION & BEYOND SuitePeople TVP Prod: Bell Curle Documentary DAISY Bamboo Media (PTY) LTD Dir: Marguelette Louw Feature Film do good design south africa Concept Interaction Producer: Karl Fedderke Educational ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION Gaonakgang Film Productions and Publications Writ: George Phuthiyagae Documentary ESCAPE Current Affairs Films Prod: Jane Thandi Lipman / Beata Lipman Feature Film Ex Pats Current Affrairs Films / French Connection Prod: Jane Thandi Lipman Drama series

FOR THE NEW CITY – DANCE ON FILM SWiTCH / Resonance Bazar Prods: James Tayler / Julia Raynham Film FORSAKEN DO Productions Prod: Marlow de Mardt / Brigid Olën Feature Genius Inhlakanipo Films Dir: Dumisani Vusi Nhlapo Short Film GOUE STERRE Suite People TVP Prod: Bell Curle TV Series GRIZMEK Two Oceans Production Prod: Giselher Venzke / Bertha Spieker Feature HISTORICAL KIMBERLEY Spike Productions Prod: Steve Mueller Bsc. Documentary HOTEL SONGOLOLO The Media Workshop Dir: Benito Carelsen Comedy Series IIQ Sukuma Media Dir: Bonginhlanhla Ncube Feature IK1 – TOURISTS IN DANGER Two Oceans Production Prods: Giselher Venzke / Bertha Spieker Feature Inventing Africa Imageworks Prod: Anthony Irving Documentary IYEZA THEATRE & TV LIGHTING (PTY) LTD Iyeza Theatre & TV Lighting (Pty) Ltd Prod/Dir: Cal Morris Corporate JAN SMUTS: AN INTERNATIONAL ICON AHEAD OF HIS TIME Tekweni TV production Prod / Dir: Sandra Herrington / Neville Herrington Documentary KADU’S JOURNEY DO Productions Prods: Marlow de Mardt / Brigid Olën Feature DYINGCRACY Sabstance Productions Producer: Edmund Mhlongo Documentary LION GIRL DO Productions Prod: Marlow de Mardt / Brigid Olën TV Feature Lonely Planet Two Oceans Production Prods: Giselher Venzke / Bertha Spieker Feature MHLONGO Inhlakanipho Films Dir / Writer – Dumisani Vusi Nnhlapo Feature MUTI DOT MOBI Vuleka Productions.

Prod / Dir: Julie Frederikse / Madoda Ncayiyana .

Feature Film NEW BEGINNINGZ Sukuma Media Dir: Bonginhanhla Ncube Documentary Nongoloza Current Affairs Prod: Jane Thandi Lipman Feature Palace of the Faithless Production Company: White Heron Pictures Dir: Themba Sibeko Feature PASSARES (BIRDISH) White Heron Pictures / Casa De Criacao Cinema Prod: Themba Sibeko Feature RAF INDUCTION VIDEO Panache Video Productions Prod: Liesel Eiselen Corporate

ROAD ACCIDENT FUND INDUCTION Panache Video Productions Dir: Liesel Eiselen Corporate SEBOKENG MPA (Motswako) Dir: Charls Khuele / Zuko Nodada Feature SHORT BUSINESS FEATURE WITH BBC / ABC Current Affairs Films Prod: Jane Thandi Lipman Short Business Features SUPERMAMA GoogelPlex Productions Dir: Karen van Schalkwyk Feature SWANK! International Radio Pictures Prod: D Gillard Musical The Black Blonde Steve Radebe Post Productions Prod:Steve Radebe Feature Film tHE blood kIng and the red dragon Current Affairs Prod: Jane Thandi Lipman / Mtutuzeli Matshoba Feature THE CONSEQUENCE DO Productions Prod: Marlow de Mardt / Brigid Olën Feature The Dreaded Evil Eye from Past to Present and Across Cultures It’s a Wrap Productions Dir: Eugene Botha Documentary THE EDGE International Radio Pictures Kit Reynolds TV Series THE FILM MAKER Elle Bolt Productions Prod: Elle Bolt Reality Series The Scores Are In Current Affairs Films Prod: Jane Thandi Lipman Game Show / Entertainment Series VULTURE KILLING FIELDS SuitePeople TVP Bell Curle Documentary WAY TO ROLL Blue Ice Productions Dir: Freddie Strauss Feature WARD 22 AKA SPECIAL OPS DO Productions Prod: Marlow de Mardt / Brigid Olën Documentary Welcome To The Club Two Oceans Production Prods: Giselher Venzke / Bertha Spieker Feature ZERO DIET Two Oceans Production Prod: Giselher Venzke / Bertha Spieker Feature ZEBRAS DO Productions Dir: Bruce Beresford Feature ZEN FILM CREW MANAGEMENT ZEN Film Crew Management Prod / Dir: Laura Tarling Commercial

PRE-PRODUCTION Chabela Day Spa Grey Cloud Production Dir: Jacques Brand Information Video Die Verhaal van Racheltjie de Beer Brett Michael Innes Films Producer: Brett Michael Innes Historical feature film Elegy: forsaken in South Africa Market Street Productions Prod: Paul Van Zyl Short film Holidays for Madmen Imageworks Prod: Anthony Irving TV Series

P R O D U C T I O N U P D A T E S IMATU UNION VIDEO FC Hamman Films Prod Man: Odette van Jaarsveld Corporate Video JUB JUB DOCUMENTARY (working title) Baxopath Media Nolitha Tshinavha Documentary LET HEAVEN WAIT Revolution real entertainment Prod/Dir: Deon Potgieter Sitcom Mandela Synergy Films Drama / Documentary MISTIFY Gleam studios/ Wilddogs productions Prod/Dir: Sonja Ter Horst / Johnny Swanepoel Independent short film NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SOUTH AFRICA Panache Video Productions Prod/Dir: Liesel Eiselen Genre: Corporate.

PSALTED Engage Entertainment Exec Prod: Vusi Zion (previously Twala) Variety RATE MY PLATE International Radio Pictures Exec Prod: Kit Reynolds Community Project SAFE IN THE CITY Imani Media.

Comedy SAINT & FREEDOM FIGHTER It’s a Wrap Productions Dir: Eugene Botha Documentary Si-solutions International Radio Pictures Exec Prod: Kit Reynolds Community Project SHAKESPEARE IN MZANSI: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM Fireworx Media Prod: Bridget Pickering Mini Series SLENDER WONDER INFORMATION VIDEO Grey Cloud Productions Dir: Jacques Brand Information Video TALK OF THE TOWN SuitePeople TV Productions Bell Curle TV Series The Black Out Dithakeng Projects and Flms Exec Prods: Thabang Nkunyane Short Film THE LOST ANGEL Inhlakanipho Films Dir: Vusi Dumisani Nhlapo Feature Film TO CARE FOR YOU ALWAYS Noble Pictures Prod: Claudia Noble Short Film TRUE DREAM South African Great Movies Production Dir: John Wani Feature THE MESSENGER Spirit Word Ministries/Footprint Media Academy Exec Prod: Annalise Van Rensburg Series THICK SKIN Media Navigation Prod / Dir: Dan Akinlolu Feature Film VKB LANDBOU BEPERK FC Hamman Films PM: Odette van Jaarsveld Corporate Video VROU SOEK BOER West Five Films Pro / Dir: Maynard Kraak Feature Film WAY TO FREEDOM Two Oceans Production Prods: Giselher Venzke & Bertha Spieker Feature Film

IN PRODUCTION 3 Talk Urban Brew Talk Show 3RD DEGREE e.tv Investigative TV series 50 50 Clive Morris Productions Current Affairs A 400 year old bestseller – The King James Version of the Bible Eugene Botha Productions / It’s a Wrap Productions Prod: Eugene Botha Documentary

ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE 5 Endemol South Africa Reality ANGLO GOLD ASHANTI SAFETY SERIES SummerTime Productions Prod/Dir: Sean Gardiner Corporate ABC AMERICA NEWS SPECIAL ON MANDELA Current Affairs Films Prod: Jane Thandi Lipman Feature News Special AFRICA FACTS SEASON 3 Lebapi Productions Dir: Daniel Moleabatsi TV Magazine AFRICA 360 eNews News Head: Patrick Conroy Current affairs AFRO CAFÉ SEASON 7 Bonngoe Productions Exec Prod: Pepsi Pokane Music Show AFRO SHOWBIZ NEWS SABC News International Exec Prod: Jody-Layne Surtie TVMagazine AFROX AFRICA INSIGHT EPS 4 FC Hamman Films Prod Man: Odette van Jaarsveld Corporate Video AFROX YEAREND RESULT FC Hamman Films Prod Man: Odette van Jaarsveld Corporate Video Agape Gabaza Productions Prod: Sarah Ngubeni Magazine Alex: A history from below Uhuru Productions Dir: Rehad Desai Documentary ALL ACCESS Homebrew Films Prods: Paul Venter/ Hannes van Wyk / Tammy Anne Fortuin Magazine Show AMBUSH ALLEY NHU Africa Exec Prod: Vyv Simson / Sophie Vartan Wildlife Documentary ANIMAL COMMUNICATION NHU Africa Exec Prods: Vyv Simson / Sophie Vartan Wildlife Documentary Awesome Africa Steplite Films Dir: Jacqui Logie Tv Series barbour and thorne: 60 years strong Our Time Productions Dir: Juan de Meilon Corporate Video BBC PLANET EARTH LIVE Wild Images Dir: James Smith, Tim Scoones, Roger Webb Documentary BINNELAND Stark Films Dir: Danie Joubert TV Drama Bopsy Bunny Firefly Animation Prod: Ant Steel Animation Short Bonisanani Kagiso TV Talk Show BOPSY BUNNY Firefly Animation Studio Exec Prod: Antony Steel Short Films Carte Blanche (inserts) Modern Times Prods: S Phirippides / J Pienaar Documentary Child Geniuses Talent Attack TV / Fuel Media Productions Prod: Paul Llewellyn Documentary Series The Communist Republic of South Africa Jam TV, Creative South Africa, Nkhanyeti Production Prod: Barthelemy Ngwessam Documentary Codesign – commercial spot for furniture designers SWiTCH Dir – James Tayler Commercial Cool Cats Red Pepper Exec Prod: Cecil Berry Children’s Show CORTEX MINING FC Hamman Films PM: Odette van Jaarsveld Corporate Video

Come Dine with Me South Africa Rapid Blue Prod: Kee-Leen Irvine Reality Cutting Edge SABC News Current Affairs DADDY’S MESS Dzunde Productions Prod: Thandiwe Mashiyane TV Sitcom DIE VIERDE KABINET Jan Scholtz Productions Prod: Jan Scholtz Series DINNER DIVAS 2 Blonds and a Redhead Filming Exec Prod: Anne Myers Cookery Series DIY Met Riaan Prods: Riaan Venter-Garforth Magazine EM PETROCHEMICALS TOP END Betta Beta Communications Prod/Dir:Tommy Doig Training Program EXPRESSO 2 Cordover Trading Prod :Paul van Deventer Lifestyle EASTERN MOSAIC Red Carpet Productions Magazine Programme FORMIDABELE VROUE: LEONORA VAN DEN HEEVER Khaki Productions Prod / Dir: Christelle Parrott , Wynand Dreyer Documentary FORMIDABELE VROUE: Petronella van Heerden Khaki Productions Prod / Dir: Christelle Parrott , Wynand Dreyer Documentary FOX NEWS CHANNEL Betta Beta Communications Prod/Dir: Tommy Doig News Current Affairs Freeway Frog Firefly Animation Prod: Ant Steel Animation Short FRENZY Red Pepper Pictures Prod: Palesa Mopeli Variety GENERATIONS Morula Pictures Exec Prod: Mfundi Vundla Soapie GNLD AFRICA CONVENTION FC Hamman Films Prod: FC Hamman Corporate Video GOOD MORNING AFRICA Planet Image Productions SA Prod/Dir: Wale Akinlabi TV Magazine Gospel GOLD Engage Entertainment Exec Prod: Vusi Zion (previously Twala) Music Show GROEN Homebrew Films Prod: Jaco Loubser Wildlife HEADLINE 5 Bitch Films TV magazine HEAVEN – Africa Two Oceans Production Prods: Giselher Venzke / Bertha Spieker Feature Hectic 99 Okuhle Media Prod: Wilna van Schalkwyk Magazine Show HITACHI POWER AFRICA MEDUPI & KUSILE Betta Beta Communications Prod/Dir: Tommy Doig Documentary THE DR. MOL SHOW Prods: Michael Mol Magazine HOUSE CALL Izwe Multimedia / Urban Brew Series Prod: Annalie Potgieter Live Medical Talk Show Imizwilili Ukhamba Communications Music Inkaba Urban Brew Studios Prod: John Kani Telenovela INSIDE STORY Curious Pictures / Discovery Channel Dir: Rolie Nikiwe Feature

AVAIL ABLE STUDIO 7

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For Dramas/Newsroom

STUDIO 4

270m DAYLIGHT 2

For TVCs/Events/Screenings

24 hr Security

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cnr. Frost ave & Owl Street Milpark | Joburg TV ★ FILM ★ EVENTS ★ SOUNDSTAGES & SUPPORT FACILITIES

Phone +2711 482 7111

ISIDINGO Endemol South Africa Dirs: Raymond Sargent / Johnny Barbazano Daily TV Drama IT’S MY BIZ Urban Brew Studios Reality business makeover series JOU SHOW MET EMO en Wickus Homebrew Films Prod: Jaco Loubser Variety Show Judge For You Self eNews Current Affairs Laugh out Loud Exec Prod: Rapulana Seiphemo Comedy Khumbul’ekhaya Urban Brew Prod: Enel Viljoen Reality KWELA Pieter Cilliers Productions Prod/Dir: Pieter Cilliers TV Magazine LATE NITE NEWS ON E.TV Diprente Productions Prod: Tamsin Andersson Satire Live Urban Brew Music Show Live Lotto Show Urban Brew Game Show Maggs on Media eNews Prod: Jeremy Maggs Current Affairs MASSMART CSI REPORT SummerTime Productions Prod/Dir: Roxanne Rolando/Sean Gardiner Corporate MATRICS UPLOADED Educational Improvement and Study Help Exec Prod: Lisa Blakeway Educational MGONGO BY SONY Sony Prod / Dir: James Lennox Lifestyle & Entertainment Million Dollar Race Two Oceans Production Prods: Giselher Venzke / Bertha Spieker Feature

www.atlasstudios.co.za

MK Campus Homebrew Films Prods: Jaco Loubser / Ben Heyns Student Show MOFEREFERE LENYALONG Moja Movie Factory Sitcom Montana 2 Penguin Films Exec Prods: Roberta Durrant Drama Series MOTSWAKO Carol Bouwer Productions Prod: Vesko Mrdjen Talk Show MUVHANGO Word of Mouth Prod: Pieter Grobbelaar Feature MZANSI INSIDER Bonngoe Productions Exec Prod: Pepsi Pokane TV Magazine Music Moves Me Engage Entertainment Exec Prod: Vusi Zion (previously Twala) Music Show News Night eNews Prods: Nikiwe Bikitsha Current Affairs NIGCOMSAT – TELEVISION COMMERCIAL SERIES SWiTCH Prod: Sarah Wanjiku Muhoho Commercial Nomzamo Tom Pictures / Authentic Images Comedy ONDER DRAAI DIE DUIWEL ROND Sonneblom Films Writer: Chris Barnard TV drama series ONS MENSE Homebrew Films Prod: Jaco Loubser Current Affairs OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Plexus Films Prod: Miki Redelinghuys Corporate Film PASELLA Tswelopele Productions Insert Dirs: Liani Maasdorp / Werner Hefer TV Magazine Programme PEACE PARKS NHU Africa Exec Prods: Vyv Simson/ Sophie Vartan Wildlife Documentary Series

January 2013 | SCREENAFRICA | 45

P R O D U C T I O N U P D A T E S

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ALSO offering flexible, cost-effective post-production solutions for the commercials industry tel: 0860 111 553 fax: +27 11 706 7949 bookings@generalpost.co.za www.generalpost.co.za after hours emergency number: 076 225 9173

46 | SCREENAFRICA | January 2013

Phoenix Rising...The Business of Style Phoenix Entertainment and Production Prod/Dir: Koketso Sefanyetso Reality Docu-tainment POPCRU 7TH CONGRESS FC Hamman Films Prod Man: Odette van Jaarsveld Corporate Event POWER COMBAT ZONE Mixed Motion Entertainment Dir: Dieter Gottert Sport – Martial Arts & Combat Project MV Zen Crew Prod: Laura Tarling Music Video Religion and the ANC Eugene Botha Productions / It’s a Wrap Productions Prod: Eugene Botha Documentary RETROBOUCHON Tunnelvizion Productions Prod/Dir: Ruan Lotter/Hein Ungerer Short Film – Horror ROLLING WITH KELLY KHUMALO Red Pepper Prod: Cecil Barry Reality Series RHYTHM CITY Curious Pictures Prod: Yula Quinn Soapie RHYTHM CITY INTERACTIVE Curious Pictures / e.tv Prod: Viva Liles-Wilkin Interactive Platform Media Rivoningo Asi-B Films Exec Prod: Asivhanzi ‘Asi’ Mathaba Kids ROCKING FUTURE Summertime Productions Prods: Sean Gardiner / Tanya Vandenberg Educational Video ROER Homebrew Films Prod: Jaco Loubser Cooking Show Roots Ukhamba Communications Music Show SAKEGESPREK MET THEO VORSTER Dirk Mostert Camera Production Dir: Dirk Mostert Talk Show SANPARKS YOUTH & PARKS Francois Odendaal Productions Prod/Dir: Francois Odendaal Genre: Natural History TV Series SA’S GOT TALENT Rapid Blue Prod/Dir: Kee –Leen Irvine Reality SCANDAL Ochre Moving Pictures Series Prod: Romano Gorlei Daily TV Soap SCHOEMAN BOERDERY – MOOSRIVIER Khaki Productions Prod / Dir: Christelle Parrott , Wynand Dreyer Documentary SELIMATUNZI Sikhoyana Productions Prod: Baby Joe Correira variety series Ses’khona Tswelopele Productions Prod: Phuthi Ngwenya Magazine SHIZ NIZ Red Pepper Pictures Prod: Allen Makhubele Variety Shift Urban Brew Talk show SHORELINE 2 Homebrew films Documentary series S.I.E.S (SOCIAL IMPACT AND EMPOWERMENT STRATEGY) Penguin Films Dirs: Roberta Durrant and James Ngcobo Sitcom SKWIZAS 2 Lillian Dube Productions Prod: Lillian Dube Sitcom SISTERHOOD Red Pepper Pictures Prod: Vuyo Sokupa Variety Siyakholwa – We Believe X CON Films Dir: Munier Parker Edutainment SKETCH U LATER Chris Morris Productions Dir: Genna Lewis Comedy series

Soccer 411 Engage Entertainment Exec Prod: Vusi Zion (previously Twala) Magazine Soccer zone SABCSports Head: Sizwe Nzimande Magazine Sony Presents Mgongo Sony Variety Spirit Sundae New Wave Productions Prod: Mishkah Roman-Cassiem Spiritual STRANDED NHU Africa Exec Prods: Vyv Simson / Sophie Vartan Wildlife Documentary STUDIO 53 M-Net Inhouse Productions Insert Dir: Navan Chetty Mag Programme STUDY MATE Educational Improvement and Study Help Exec Prod: Lisa Blakeway Educational TASOL “Old Geezer” Bragge Film & TV Dir: Guy Bragge Commercial The B-Ball Show SABC Commissioning Ed: Dinah Mahlabegoane Variety The Chat Room Eclipse Prod: Thokozani Nkosi Talk Show The Cypher Spoon Fed Generation Lerato Letebele Talk show The Justice Factor eNews Exec Prod: Debbie Meyer Current Affairs THE REAL GOBOZA 7 Urban Brew Entertainment THE RUDIMENTALS Periphery Films Prod: Simon Taylor Feature Documentary THE STORY OF LITTLE FOOT Paul Myburgh Film Prod: Paul Myburgh Documentary The Tech Report Greenwall Productions Exec Prod: Nicky Greenwall Magazine THE WILD Magic Factory Exec Prod: Bobby Heaney Daily TV Soap TRANSFORMATION STORIES Media Village Productions Dir: Diane Vermooten Documentary THE TRANSPORTERS Sukuma Media/ Reality Motion Pictures Dir: Bonginhlanhla Ncube Documentary THERE ARE NO HEROES AFDA Cape Town Dir: Kyle Stevenson Science Fiction TOP BILLING Tswelopele Productions Prod: Patience Stevens TV Magazine Top 10 at 10 Don’t Look Down Radio/TV Simulcast TOUCHING THE DRAGON NHU Africa Exec Prods: Vyv Simson / Sophie Vartan Wildlife Documentary TSHIPE BORWA MANGANESE MINE Betta Beta Communications Prod/Dir: Tommy Doig Documentary Turn It Out 2 Fuel Media Productions Dir: Ben Brewster Dance Reality show VKB BRANDING LAUNCH FC Hamman Films Prod: FC Hamman Corporate Video VILLA ROSA Spectro Productions Dirs: Luhann Jansen / Andries van der Merwe/ Leroux Botha/ Isabel Smit TV Drama WEEKEND LIVE SABC News Current Affairs When The World Was Here Fuel Media Productions Dir: Mzilikazi Kumalo Documentary Series

Why are We so Angry?

Fuel Media Productions Dir: Scott Smith, Shaft Moropane Documentary Series Why Poverty?

STEPS International Exec Prod: Don Edkins Documentary Series Wicket to Wicket SABC3 Lefa Afrika Magazine Workers World Series Cape Town Television Prod: Sharon McKinnon TV Series WORLDSOUTH Leago Afrikan Arts Foundation Dir: Sakhile Gumbi Documentary Xihlovo Grace Bible Church Religion Yilengelo Lakho Prod: Nndanganeni Mudau Current Affairs Zone 14 The Bomb Shelter Prod: Angus Gibson Drama

POST-PRODUCTION 4LIFE NETWORK Bragge Film& TV Dir: Guy Bragge Infomercials A BUSHMAN ODYSSEY Onetime Films Prod: Richard Wicksteed Documentary AFRICA CALLING Two Oceans Production Prods: Giselher Venzke / Bertha Spieker Feature AFROX CO2 PLANT FC Hamman Films Prod Man: Odette van Jaarsveld Corporate Video AFROX SHEQ INDUCTION FC Hamman Films Prod Man: Odette van Jaarsveld Commercial ALL’S FAIR PianoJ Productions Prod: Pia van Rensburg Short Film AMBASSADOR II Two Oceans Production Prods: Giselher Venzke / Bertha Spieker Feature Animal Doctor (Working Title) Animal Doctor cc.

Prods: Greg Simpson, Jonty Acton TV Series AURECON STAFF INSERTS Panache Video Productions Dir: Liesel Eiselen Marketing Bally Cullen Guesthouse Ad Panache Video Productions Prod: Liesel Eiselen Corporate Bitter Root Imageworks Dir: Kerry Negara Documentary BLITZ PATROLLIE Diprente Films Prod: Kagiso Lediga Feature BUA NNETE Owami Entertainment Dir: Charles Khuele Short Film Calafornia: Valley Christian School Transformation Media Village Prod: Diane Vermooten Documentary DEAR SISTER Media Village Prod: Debbie Matthee Short Film DRAGON’S FEAST 3D NHU Africa Exec Prods: Vyv Simson / Sophie Vartan Wildlife Documentary ERFSONDES Imani Media Dir: Peter Heaney TV Drama Freedom Park installations Kevin Harris Productions Dir: Nadiva Schraibman Documentary FROM GUN TO TAPE Content House/Shadow Films Producer / Director: Jackie Lebo/ David Forbes Documentary GETROUD MET RUGBY SEASON 4 Bottom Line Productions Dir: Jozua Malherbe Series

P R O D U C T I O N U P D A T E S HARTLAND Bottomline Entertainment / Fix Post Production Michael Modena TV Drama HOME OF THE LEGENDS L. Dukashe Productions Pro / Dir: Lumko Dukashe / Lulu Dukashe Documentary Hong Kong Media Village Prod: Diane Vermooten Documentary INTEL HISTORY Bragge Film & TV Dir: Guy Bragge Corporate IQILI Impucuzeko Prod: Sharon Kakora Feature Israel Inside (Working Title) Imagination Productions / Wayne Kopping Films Dir: Wayne Kopping Documentary JACK UP YOUR SHACK Let It Rain Films Prod/Dir: Lee Doig TV Series JAM SANDWICH Meerkat Media Director – MQ Ngubane Music Reality TV series Kemang? lmol Production Dir: Lizzy Moloto Feature Film KLEIN KAROO Kaapland Films Dir: Regard van den Berg Feature Film JULIUS HAS A DREAM Creative South Africa, Nkanyethi Productions,Jam TV Prod: Bathelemy Ngwessam Documentary Launch of the Academy of Young SA Scientists Panache Video Productions Prod: Liesel Eiselen Documentary LIFE UNDER THE FLAG Lifeundertheflag.Com Prod: Prince Angelo Doyle Documentary LION’S TRACK Two Oceans Production Prods: Giselher Venzke / Bertha Spieker Feature LOVE ABOVE ALL Firstfruits media Dir: Nthabiseng Gamede Feature Film MARRY – ANN Shadow Films Dir: David Forbes Documentary MASTERS OF DREAMS Current Affairs Hambrook Prod / Dir: Jane Thandi Lipman Series Melodi Jazz Festival 2011 L. Dukashe Productions Dir: Lumko Dukashe Live Concert DvD MICROSOFT 365 Bragge film & TV Dir-Guy Bragge Corporate National Heritage Council Educational Outreach Programme Panache Video Productions Dir: Liesel Eiselen Corporate PERFECT SHISHEBO Curious Pictures Prod: Nthabiseng Mokoena AFP – Cooking Show PURPLE TOWN Sukuma Media Dir: Bonginhlanhla Ncube Documentary RESTYLE MY STYLE Curious Pictures Prod: Anita van Hemert Children’s Programming River of Stones Prod: Wiseman Mabusela Documentary SA JUNIOR MASTERS Our Time Productions Dir: Jaun de Meillon Series on SuperSport SCAREDYKAT Dirty Soul Productions Dir: Kyle Lewis Horror Feature Film SCHOOL E-WASTE INITIATIVE/ DESCO/ INCREDIBLE CONNECTION Philip Schedler Productions Prod: Philip Schedler Corporate SLENDER WONDER FC Hamman Films Prod Man: Odette van Jaarsveld Corporate Video

South african Field Band Foundation Championships Panache Video Productions Prod: Liesel Eiselen Documentary STETSON HATS Fourth Dimension Films / Creative Photo Services Dir: Neil Hermann Corporate Stolen Time Prod: Eric Myeni Feature Tanzanian Investment Opportunities Benchmark Productions Dir: Dermod Judge Corporate TASTE OF RAIN Luna Films / On Land Productions Prods: Bridget Pickering / Richard Pakleppa Feature Technology Innovation Agency CEO Address Panache Video Productions Prod: Liesel Eiselen Corporate Technorati Talent Attack TV / Fuel Media Productions Dir: Maxine Nel Technology Magazine Show THE AFRIKANER BROEDERBOND It’s a Wrap Productions Dir: Eugene Botha Documentary The Animal Communicator NHU Africa Exec Prods: Vyv Simson / Sophie Vartan Wildlife Documentary THOSE WHO CAN’T Quizzical Pictures SABC Comedy Series TO THE POWER OF ANNE FX Productions Prod / Dir: Robert Haynes TV Series TOUCHING LIVES SEASON 2 GHANA Launch Factory Dir: Spero Patricios TV Series TREASURE GUARDS Tandem Communications Exec Prod: Jonas Bauer / Rola Bauer Feature Triple O Monarchy Prod: Mosibudi Pheeha Feature TRUE DREAM (Revised Version) South African Great Movies Production Dir: John Wani Feature Film Vallejo Transformation Media Village Prod: Diane Vermooten Corporate Vehicle 19 Forefront Media Group / Pictue Tree / The Safran Company Exec Prod: Paul Walker Feature VERITAS Media Village Prod: Debbie Matthee Documentary VIENNA BOYS’ CHOIR MUSIC STUDY TOUR SummerTime Productions Prod/Dir: Tanya Vandenberg Corporate WALKING IN VICTOR’S SHOES Current Affairs Films SA Prod: Jane Thandi Lipman Feature Documentary WELLBODI BIZNES Plexus Films / Four Corners Media Prod: Miki Redelinghuys Documentary WOLWEDANS IN DIE SKEMER The Film Factory Dir: Jozua Malherbe Movie ZION Letcosmart Prod: Zibusiso Nkomo Feature

COMPLETE AMKA Panache Video Productions Dir: Liesel Eiselen Corporate Angels Of The Sky CDS-Films Exec Prods: Chris Dos Santos, Andrew MacDonald Feature Film

CHINESE SCHOOL, PRETORIA Video clip productions/Panache video productions.

Prod/ dir Rudi Kruger/Liesel Eiselen.

Corporate.

Club Culture Bonngoe Productions Prod: Tumi Rabanye Variety Cooking With Siba Prod: Siba Mtongana Variety DINEO’S DIARY: A MOGUL IN THE MAKING New Vision Pictures and S2 Multimedia Exec Prod: Dineo Ranaka Reality DURBAN/REEF FUEL PIPELINE Betta Beta Communications Prod/Dir: Tommy Doig Documentary FIRESTONE Street Smart Creative DOP: Peter Palmer Commercial JAM ALLEY CREW VS CREW SEASON 2 Red Pepper Pictures Prod: Melody Xaba Music Reality Competition I Am Woman – Leap of Faith Plexus Films and Lisa Chait Prod: L Groenewald, M Redelinghuys, L Chait Television Series Lepelle Northern Water SummerTime Productions Prod: Sean Gardiner Corporate Lepelle Water Safety Induction SummerTime Productions Exec Prod: Elaine Tribe Corporate MENTALIST MARTIAL ARTS Panache Video Productions Dir: Ryan Blumenthal Training MZANSI LOVE Fireworx Media Dirs: Myrto Makrides, Mmabatho Montsho, Neo Ntlantleng, Zamo Mkhwanazi Anthology series ONE LAST LOOK Fireworx Media Pruducer: Dan Jawitz / Philip Roberts Feature OTELO BURNING Cinga Productions Prod/Dir: Sara Blecher Drama SAVING RHINO PHILA NHU Africa Exec Prods: Vyv Simson / Sophie Vartan Wildlife Documentary SHAKESPEARE IN MZANSI: FORCED LOVE Dirs: Itumeleng Wa Lehulera and Annalet Steenkamp.

Penguin Films Drama mini-series Shoprite Showcase SummerTime Productions Exec Prod: Janine Truter Corporate SHORELINE REVISITED Homebrew films Documentary series SING YOUR SONG Dir: Susanne Rostock Documentary SPACE, ALIENS, UFO’S AND RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS Eugene Botha Productions / It’s Wrap Productions Exec prods: Eugene Botha; Anna Teichert Documentary SUZUKI “ Braveheart” Bragge film & tv Dir: Guy Bragge Commercial THE BLACK JEWS AND THE LOST ARK OF THE COVENANT Eugene Botha Productions / It’s a Wrap Productions Prod: Eugene Botha Documentary Verraaiers (Traitors) White Heron Pictures/Film Factory / Bos Bok Ses Films / Spier Films Dir: Paul Eihlers Drama YOU LAUGH BUT IT’S TRUE Day 1 Films Dir: David Paul Meyer Documentary

Events | JANUARY 4 – 6

LONDON SHORT FILM FESTIVAL

London, UK

http://shortfilms.org.uk/lsff10/

26 – 4 Feb MIAMI JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL

Miami, USA www.miamijewishfilmfestival.com

FEBRUARY 1 – 2 Mar

CASCADE FESTIVAL OF AFRICAN FILMS

Portland, USA http://www.africanfilmfestival.org/

7 – 18

PAN AFRICAN FILM FESTIVAL

Los Angels www.paff.org/

15 – 17

JOZI FILM FESTIVAL

Johannesburg www.jozifilmfestival.co.za

17 – 1 Mar DESIGN INDABA FILM FEST

Cape Town www.designindaba.com/events/filmfest-2013 21 – 28

LUXOR AFRICAN FILM FESTIVAL

Cairo, Egypt www.luxorafricanfilmfestival.com/

MARCH 4 – 10

AFRICAN, ASIAN AND LATIN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL

Milan, Italy www.festivalcinemaafricano.org

14 – 24 BFI LONDON LESBIAN & GAY FILM FESTIVAL

London www.bfi.org.uk/bfi-london-lesbian-gay-film-festival 13 – 23

CAPE WINELANDS FILM FESTIVAL

Cape Town http://films-for-africa.co.za/

27 – 31

THE INTERNATIONAL FAMILY FILM FESTIVAL

Hollywood, CA www.iffilmfest.org

APRIL 6–7

MIPDOC

Cannes, France www.mipworld.com

8 – 11

MIPTV

Cannes, France www.mipworld.com

8 – 11

MIPCUBE

Cannes, France www.mipworld.com

Advertisers List

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AJA Video Systems.................. 7 Jasco Broadcast Atlas Studios........................... 45 Solutions...........................OBC Blackmagic Design................... 5 Lalela...................................... 35 Blade bfx.................................. 1 LaserNet................................. 39 BMD....................................... 26 Mediatech Africa.................... 10 Case Connection, The ........... 46 Obeco.................................... 40 CatDV .................................... 44 On Key Sound Studios........... 30 Digital Broadcasting

Red Igloo................................ 37

Switchover Forum (DBSF) ...... 22 SAFTAS...............................IFC Electrosonic...................... 38, 44 Screen Africa......................IBC Film and Publication Board..FC Sheer Publishing Africa.......... 31 Final Mix................................. 30 Skumba Music........................ 29 Gallo Music Publishers........... 34 Sony.......................................... 9 General Post........................... 46 Synchro Music........................ 36 Howard Music......................... 34 Upstairs Post Production........ 27 Ian Dormer ............................ 46 Vision Cases........................... 44

Screen Africa relies on accuracy of information received and cannot be held responsible for any errors or omissions which may occur. E-mail production updates to: online@screenafrica.com

Inverse Films / Encodi.............. 8

January 2013 | SCREENAFRICA | 47

Social

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FPB Stakeholder Breakfast

Riaan Cruywagen Farewell

Kaizer Kganyago, Riana Cruywagen, Riaan Cruywagen, Hlaudi Motsoeneng, Pippa Green and Jimi Matthews

Vuyo Mbuli, Ashraf Garda and Johan Stemmet CEO Yoliswa Makhasi

Photos by Trevor Ou Tim

Telemedia Year-End Function

Michael Wright (e.tv), Dot Front: Telemedia’s Mark Williams and Shoop Bretherick (Telemedia), Derek Kgaratsi and Roland Lehner (SABC). Back: JP Meeser Shaw (Telemedia) (Telemdia), Johan Els (Mindset Network)

Pierre and Frederieke Joubert with Peter Bretherick (Telemedia)

Steve Bretherick (Telemedia), Thierry Mba (Africa Media Link), Yao Piazza (Africa Media Link)

Mawande Seti, Nomonde Gongxeka and Naomi Mokhele

Photos by Simba Nyamukachi

DISCOP AFRICA 2012

Dawesh Maharaj (Telemedia), JP Meeser (Telemedia), James Garden (Telemedia), Keven Keating (Phumelela), Andy Louis (Telemedia)

Teletrack’s Urasha Atcha, Adele Valentine and Stephanie Wohlberg

Telemedia’s Ryan Bretherick and Quentin Barkhuizen

Abongile Vanda and Tjanese Dingiswayo

Nyokabi Kahura, Mwaniki Mageria, Alex Kathyindi Mulwa, Feisal Malik and Peter Mutie

Betty Yengo, Nina Yengo, Mwaniki Mageria, Nicole Bayiha and Jackie Djeumo

CVV International’s Christopher Etenda , Gabriel Filemon and Jonas Nsele

Luda Fourie (SABC), Janine Nicolson (SES), Charlotte Danby (SES) and Jackie Czeredrecki (Telemdia)

Nhlanhla Nyuswa (SABC), Masande Gqosha (Telemedia) and Christopher Okuohghea (ITVN)

Tebogo Matabane, Nthabiseng May and Andre Michaux

Matone Ditlhake

Bonolo Modisakwane, Mzwandile Masina and Bazeli Mbo

Krisen Pather and Jeremy Nathan

Stephen Chigorimbo

Melaney van den Berg and Anton Burggraaf

Hannah Demidowicz and Thandi Davids

Christie Launches Johannesburg Office Photos by Simba Nyamukachi

Advocate L Nevondwe

Annalise Hodgson, Monica Behrens and Daryl Stewart

Siya Tontsi, Will Deysel, Dale Miller and Stacey Degener, Geoff Earnshaw and Hugh Overy Sharon Sibanda

Phil Lord and Annalise Hodgson

Tlale Mokutu,Thando Mketsu, Manala Botolo and Siphokazi Mangoloti

Puma Video Function

Erin McLintock, Karsten Hinrechsen, Brett Lindsay and Kieth McLintock 48 | SCREENAFRICA | January 2013

Clwyd Jones and Monica Caldiera

Dale and Natalie Heath with Mark Parry

Puma Video crew with guests

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Te l e p h o n e : + 2 7 ( 0 ) 1 1 0 2 5 3 1 8 0

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