Encore Magazine articles from October 2005

Encore Magazine archives from October 2005

Editor's note.
October 1, 2005... It's good that we've hit the tail end of the year where traditionally the backslapping and celebrations begin. With the majority of annual industry conferences and events behind us it's time to stop talking about the gloom and doom that's...

Levy's shock defection to the Nine Network leaves Aunty in the lurch.(NEWS)
October 1, 2005... AS the Nine Network seeks new Australian drama to fill the void left by its short-lived outback romp, The Alice, all eyes are on newly ensconced director of development Sandra Levy following her shock defection from the ABC last month. In...

Brooke exits Grundy.(PEOPLE MOVES)
October 1, 2005... Grundy Television CEO Andrew Brooke has resigned from his post after 25 years with the company, nine of those as CEO. Effective from January 31, 2006, Brooke has resigned from Fremantle Media's production company but will stay on as a...

Sklan boards SBSI.(PEOPLE MOVES)(SBS Independent)(Carole Sklan)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Australian Film Commission (AFC) director of film development Carole Sklan will exit the organisation this month, to join SBS Television's commissioning arm, SBS Independent, as its commissioning editor for drama at the end of November. Sklan...

McLean targets tourists, again.(PRODUCTION)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Writer/director Greg McLean's follow up feature to Wolf Creek, The Rogue, which is being made under the mantle of executive producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein's Dimension Films, will shoot in Victoria next year. The film, currently in...

Tropfest backs features.(PRODUCTION)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Tropfest organisers have established a new feature film production arm, the Tropfest Feature Program (TFP), which aims to produce one low-budget (up to $1 million) feature project per year. Fully funded by Movie Network, the program will...

Evaluation films get marketplace support.(NEWS)
October 1, 2005... SINCE the launch of Film Finance Corporation Australia's evaluation model in July 2004, 16 films out of a possible 23 have secured marketplace finance and been given the greenlight for production. At its September board meeting, held in...

Inspiration and motivation: ASDA serves up a creative cocktail.(Australian Screen Directors Association)
October 1, 2005... This year's Australian Screen Directors Association (ASDA) conference committee sure know a thing or two about mixing a potent event cocktail. Its theme, Creating Freedom, or rather Low Budget Filmmaking, was a cleverly selected mix of craft...

Austrade's Export Music Office to give local musicians a voice in Hollywood.(NEWS)
October 1, 2005... MUSIC by local artists already appears on the odd soundtrack of US films and series but now the establishment of a new Austrade Export Music Office (EMO) will give Australian musicians an even better shot. Headed by Austrade's newly appointed...

Director responds to not so 'peachy' review.(LETTER)(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2005... Dear Editor, I write in response to the article/review of Peaches written by Bob Ellis in the July issue of Encore. I was intrigued by Bob's fatwa on Peaches and found it surprising that he wants me to have made it derivative of a Ken...

DI and mobile TV drive record numbers at IBC: Europe's biggest screen technology trade show, IBC, attracted record numbers this year. Despite the impending pullout of some big names, the event continues to keep apace with the rapidly changing industry. Fiona Williams reports.(IBC 2005)
October 1, 2005... Representatives of all of the Australian free-to-air networks made the annual long haul flight to Amsterdam this September for Europe's major broadcasting technology showcase, IBC 2005. However, delegates from local post houses were thin on the...

'Little Fish' looks small: next to 'Oyster Farmer'.(ROUGH CUT)
October 1, 2005... If ever proof was needed that black-and-white movies will always outreach colour movies (and lately, I would think, on average outgross them) it's Frank Miller's and Robert Rodriguez's randy sadistic masterpiece Sin City. Black-and-white...

Independent drama.
October 1, 2005... The recent AFC Drama National Production Survey and the mischievous denial by FREE TV of the increasing strain Independent drama is under in this country, has again highlighted the predicament that our industry faces. Drama production, adult...

Bundles of good: wishes herald Rothkrans' Ausfilm exit.(LA INSIDER)(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2005... After 14 months in Los Angeles it was wonderful to return home to Australia in September for two weeks. Ausfilm held its Annual General Meeting during the last week of August at Fox Studios in Sydney and, in addition to speaking at that...

Local production surge sends ripples through post: a busy year for Australia's major sound facilities in local feature films hasn't masked concerns over both the low level of local TV drama production and the tendency for us runaway features to post overseas.(FEATURE: AUDIO)
October 1, 2005... Although the post sector has enjoyed a much improved 2006 thanks to an increase in local feature production, larger-budget overseas-financed work again eluded Australia's audio facilities. High-profile features such as Australia/UK...

Outback poses eerie 'Proposition': London-based sound supervisor Paul Davies was handed the task of designing the sound for Australian/English co-production the Proposition. David Hull reports.(FEATURE: AUDIO)
October 1, 2005... Adapted from a screenplay penned by Nick Cave, it was a safe assumption that The Proposition would embrace an edgy mood, particularly when the notoriously dark Australian musician has co-written the film's score. Add these creative elements to...

Time constraints 'Feed' enthusiasm: two post houses worked around the clock to complete the sound to the local feature Feed.(usage of audio equipment)
October 1, 2005... Sound post for US director Brett Leonard's psychological thriller Feed became a joint effort undertaken by Cutting Edge and Audio Loc, with the two companies sharing both the design and mixing components of the job to meet a tight deadline. ...

Tannoy studio monitors.(audio equipment)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Tannoy has introduced new Reveal and Precision ranges of studio monitors, which each incorporate digital speaker measuring techniques such as Klippell symmetry and non-linear distortion analysis, and offer options for passive or active versions...

DPA 4006 upgrade.(DPA Microphones)(audio equipment)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... DPA is offering owners of its 4006 omni-directional condenser microphone the opportunity to upgrade to the transformer-less DPA 4006-TL version at a cost of $890. Participants will receive a factory-based retrofitting to the DPA 4006-TL...

Wohler HD monitoring.(AUDIO PRODUCTS)
October 1, 2005... Wohler Technologies' new HD monitoring line up is headed by the AMP 2-E8 series, which offers multi-channel monitoring and decoding of Dolby E and Dolby Digital, inputted directly or embedded in HD or SD-SDI, with decoded discrete AES outputs...

Onyx 1640 desktop console.(audio equipment)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Mackie's flagship small-format mixer, the Onyx 1640 is a 16-channel/4-bus analogue product with 24-bit/96kHz FireWire I/O. The 1640 builds upon the XDR design of previous models, while offering improved radio frequency (RFI) rejection and wider...

Kids add spark to Flame Trees recording: Sydney-based composition house Supersonic took a raw approach to produce a track for the Rowan Woods--directed feature Little Fish.(FEATURE: AUDIO)
October 1, 2005... Late last year Supersonic was approached by the creators of Little Fish to arrange and record a rendition of the Cold Chisel song 'Flame Trees', which was to be used as a pivotal point in the film. The mood or emotional reading during this...

Is it the end of all DAT? Does a film industry without film mean we say 'goodbye' to the Digital Audio Tape (DAT) recorder?(FEATURE: AUDIO)(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2005... Recently a story on the ABC TV's Foreign Correspondent focused on the emerging film industry in Africa. It showed a director, using video cameras, shooting action scenes in the street. It then explained how it was all edited in two weeks and...

Hullaballoo's new studio: less-space, more power suits Hullaballoo down to the ground.(new facility in audio recording industry)(Hullaballoo)
October 1, 2005... Sydney music and sound post facility Hullaballoo recently relocated to a smaller, better designed studio space in the northern Sydney suburb of Crows Nest, where it now runs four Pro Tools HD 1 systems. Composer/audio engineer Glenn Heaton...

Digital investment at Soundfirm.(technology application in audio equipment)(Soundfirm)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... SOUNDFIRM has recently upgraded its facilities in both Sydney and Melbourne. In Sydney; each of the company's two Harrison Series 12 consoles have been digitized, which has meant an increase to 128 and 96 channel respectively, the installation...

Production report.
October 1, 2005... ENCORE's production report includes all known features and television drama and non-drama television programs which have a network presale. Projects in the planning stage appear once only and the listing ends when a project goes into post...

Highland life: Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson rough it in PNG.(book review)(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... Filmmakers Bob Connolly and his late wife Robin Anderson flipped a coin to determine which of them would keep a written account of their experiences living and working in the remote Papua New Guinea (PNG) Highlands in 1990. Anderson came off...

Band-Aid solution for the business.(book review)(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... As someone who's been around the traps for some years, it's good to see Storry take a contemporary look at the key players and policies and asks important questions about the film industry including the appropriateness of the current funding...

Around the world in 200 pages.(SHELVED)
October 1, 2005... Rather than attempt to be a comprehensive nation-by-nation overview of global filmmaking activity, Contemporary World Cinema instead details feature film trends and influences within a select handful of filmmaking hubs, a clearly focused brief,...

Tss turns two.(PEOPLE)
October 1, 2005... TRACKDOWN DIGITAL CELEBRATED THE SECOND ANNIVERSARY OF ITS TRACKDOWN SCORING STAGE ON SEPTEMBER 9. 01: Trackdown's chief music engineer, editor and technical director Simon Leadley (left) caught up with Kennedy Miller's Bill Miller at the...

Burnett goes back to school.(PEOPLE)
October 1, 2005... VICTORIA'S RMIT UNIVERSITY HAS APPOINTED BURBERRY'S EWAN BURNETT ADJUNCT PROFESSOR IN MEDIA. 01: Ewan Burnett (left) and Media Discipline leader Leo Berkeley. 02: From left: Writer/director Mark Poole with Australian Screen Directors...

Pictures in Paradise proposes a toast.(PEOPLE)
October 1, 2005... IN AUGUST PICTURES IN PARADISE LAUNCHED PARADISE PRODUCTION SERVICES, AND CELEBRATED COMPLETION OF THE PROPOSITION. 01: The Daily Telegraph's Michael Bodey (left) with Movie Network chief financial officer Paul Wylie. 02: Film Finance...

Broadcasters hang loose at IBC.(PEOPLE)
October 1, 2005... THE BROADCAST INDUSTRY CONVERGED ON AMSTERDAM IN SEPTEMBER FOR IBC, EUROPE'S MAJOR SHOWCASE OF INDUSTRY TECHNOLOGY. 1. Friends and former colleagues reunite at the RAI Convention Centre's IBC pub. Pictured left to right: Mike Walters, Sony;...

Why the future of local production is history: well connected industry columnist Harvey Shore keeps his ear close to the ground for the latest gossip doing the rounds at the major broadcasters.(HARVEY'S HEARSAY)
October 1, 2005... It's blatantly obvious that Australia's independent production sector is going through a serious crisis. In particular, drama hours on free-TV continue to fall as they've done over the last five years. The Australian Film Commission's...