Hey, so we have been screening films via USB and Hard Drives for the last 2 Bluescreens and while the quality of how films look on screen has been largely improved and we have had more films and people in through the door (thank you all!), we have encountered a few teething problems with screening from digital files, which has regrettably caused some delays at our screenings.

Some of the file sizes have been very large, meaning it takes ages to transfer films onto our Laptop to screen; there has been several versions of the same film in a folder and some files were are not labelled at all, causing some confusion which ones to screen. And we had some Hard drives problems too.
I guess we don’t really tell people how we want films ‘formatted’ to screen at Bluescreen, but as screening from digital files has been causing delays at our last 2 screenings and as we do want to carry on screening them, we have decided to put together some guidelines (see below). We also hear that the Tech setup in the Cube Projection room has been upgraded, so this should iron out any other problems too.

So ideally we like to screen from either DVD or USB….
DVD - Should be playable in a DVD Player (ie. not data files) and bring a backup disk if you can.
USB  - Digital Film Files should be clearly marked with your name, film title and our name - BLUESCREEN, so it can be quickly found by our projectionist.
To get the best screening experience at Bluescreen, we suggest your film should be formatted in H264 video compression, with AAC compression for audio. And limit the data rate to 15,000 kbits/sec and films should be no larger than 5GB per file.
https://handbrake.fr/ is a great free program than can help you with this, but there are others out there too.

We hope this all helps to improve your Bluescreen screening experience in the future!

Thanks for reading!

Bluescreen

So having recovered from a very busy Bluescreen back in May, we are now back and raring to go with another Bluescreen on Wednesday July 23rd! So come join us!

Click here for the Facebook Event Page

Click here for the Cube Cinema Event Page

And click here to see the Event Poster

And when you have checked all of those out, please share with any likeminded souls.

Thanks all

Bluescreen HQ July 2014

We have been thinking about this for a while... screening films from Memory sticks instead of from DVDs. Good idea/bad idea? Better quality and no DVD glitches and may simplify the process of getting films off computers and bringing them to screen at Bluescreen.. but we do like to keep your DVDs in our archive...mmnn..

Anyway so at our May event (21st), if you want to bring your films along on a Memory stick instead of a DVD then please do it!

But if you still want to bring films along on DVD then thats cool too.

We are an equal opportunities film formatting event!

Cube Orchestra rescore: Lyrebird Soup (2012) - Naren Wilks - 6 mins
Breakfast - Jo and Pete – 7.50 mins
Gasp - Andrzej Sosnowski & Christian Lapidge – 3.47 mins
The Shadow Remains - Ariel Pintor  - 27 mins
Baffin Island Expedition 2010 - Vijay Shah - 19 Mins
Punishment (Directors cut) - Kevin – 10 mins.
In at the deep end - Diana Taylor - 9 mins.

Wow! Thanks Bristol for another evening of great short films last night! And here’s what we screened...

Cube Orchestra rescore: Earthen  – Tom Swindell  (2008)  - (16mins)
Black Cab To Rehab – Adam Richards & Rowdy - (4mins)
Higher Channels/One Man/Total Immortal – Benji  - (4mins)
Return to Sendai – G Slater ( 12mins)
Into The Light – Declan Smith (7.07mins)
Escalation – Catarina Oliveira – (11mins)
Land of Dreams (Transpersonals promo) – Piski Films (6.34mins)
The End – Santo (10mins)
Dog End – Santo (3.30mins)
The End Point of a Circle – D Wade & R Wickings ( 13mins)
Untitled Short Film – Lukas (5mins)
Rainbow – Muscat/Southsection (4mins)
Flight of the Fly – Muscat/Southsection (4mins)

Apologies to Jammy who brought in My Farewell Ride and we couldnt get it to play; bring another copy in on dvd and we will screen it next time.

We are now off to our Bluescreen bunker to compile our yearly Bluescreen DVD compilation, so the next Bluescreen will be with you in July. See you all then and thanks all for coming down, we all enjoyed it, hope you did too :)

Films Screened in March @ Bluescreen
It is not a little humbling and also just so fabulous that Bristol filmmakers can provide over an hour and a half of thought provoking and entertaining films just two months after the last Bluescreen.

Huge thank you to all who came tonight. It was a total treat. You brought us/ we saw five absorbing and interesting documentaries, a beautiful and haunting animation of a folk tale that had a stronger message, a compelling music video and an unsettling and intriguing drama.

Below are the list of films. Filmmakers if you have your film on Vimeo or Youtube please do email us the link for us to be able to post your film on our page in future.

Many many thanks to you all for coming filmmakers and viewers alike – and to the fabulous Cube staff volunteers who made it all happen.

The films:
Andrew Williams Probing the west country. 8 minutes. (Documentary)
Dominic Wade. Decks Dance Videotape. 13.5 Minutes. (Documentary)
Piskie Films. Piper of Hameln. 13 minutes. (Animation)
Fabian Martin. A way of life. 17 minutes. (Documentary)
Fabian Martin. War Face. 9 minutes. (Music film).
Vivi Insightful donation. 20.00 (Documentary).
Santo. The End. 9minutes. (Drama).
Molly Gibney. Frog in the Water. 8 minutes. (Documentary).


Looking forward to seeing you all on May 15th.

Films Screened on January 16th

Thanks to everyone who came along to The Cube on Wednesday, particularly on such a cold night! And what fantastic films too!

So here’s what we screened…

The Cube Orchestra rescored The Cardboard Orchestra by Scott Buchanan Barden (2010).

Then we screened..
La Perida del juicio – Maria Manero
Docobanksy – Docobanksy
A Brief Comedy of Polarisation – Adam Bell
Two Detectives – Tom Betts
Exile – Adam Petruczok
Munbefenaat – Piski Films
Notorious War by Wave N400 – Pablo Mestres
Who Goes We? – Lisa Shuh

And from our 2009 Compilation, we screened..
Gordon Emmanuel - Atem
Tom Mansfield - Felix machines
Ben Dowden - Dub FX1 – Flow/Step
Tajinder Dhami - Alpha, Diagnostic, Hospitalised
Hywel George - The life and life of Horace
Andy Sowerby - Tulips
Ben Dowden - Dance Film 3
Dylan Radclyffe - Doug Tabbard, Human Curler

And the film compilation screening in the lounge was from 2005 …
The Ram Inn – Sebastian Nolan/Chris Bradford/James Atkinson
Rusty Road less Travelled – Woody James
Maja – Chris Barnett
A Royal Obsession - Dan Brown
Short Sharp Shock – Dee Kalakoti
Old Street – Jacob Parish
The Battle of Cable Street – Toby Trackman/Yoav Segal

Thanks again for bringing in your films. Looking forward to the next Bluescreen, which is March 27th. See you all again then.

Thanks to everyone who screened films at Novembers Bluescreen and to everyone who came along to watch; great to see so many past Bluescreeners there too. And some fantastic films too!

We screened our 2008 Compilation in the lounge before proceedings got underway: http://bluescreenfilms.weebly.com/film-compilations-dvd.html

The Cube Orchestra then played the audience in and rescored a couple of films from the Bluescreen archive; then we screened:

The Delivery – Wayne Lee
Piece - Vivi S
Lake - Marina E
Ruth trailer - Kris Griffin
Happy Anniversary – Martin Hall
Blaise – Ben James /Scott Warrham
The Claw – Nathan Hughes/Jacob Parish

And we chose 3 films to end the evening, picked from the last year by us…

Remembering Formby  -  Sue Elliott
Quizmaster - Sam Haire
Me and Reg - Lee Matthews

Apologies to Billie Appleton, whose film Zombie Apocalypse we couldn’t play in either of our dvd players, hopefully she will bring another version to Januarys Bluescreen.

Thanks again to all who came along, a great Bluescreen to finish the year off with.

Coming up in December… we are participating in an event called Microcosm on Dec 15th at The Cube. We will be screening a small selection of films between acts in the evening. The whole day is about buying the Cube! And it’s a free event!  Join us if you can. More details here: http://www.cubecinema.com/cgi-bin/diary/programme.pl#7215

That will be more or less it from us for this year, so thanks to everyone who has screened a film at Bluescreen in 2012, we really have enjoyed screening and watching your films this year!  Inspiring stuff! And thanks to anyone who just came along to watch the films. We do appreciate it. And lastly, thanks to the Cube Orchestra (Marcus et al) and the Bluescreen Hi-Fi Djs (Matt and Tom).

Let’s keep up the good work in 2013, our 12th year of screening your films…

And we will be kicking off Bluescreen in 2013, on Wednesday January 16th. See you then!

On Wednesday night at Bluescreen we screened a total of 12 films with a running time of approx. 100 minutes. Some regular contributors and some first time contributors entered the dark cube on a stunningly hot and sunny evening to show their films. The range was broad from Art film, documentary to comedy and drama. Also we were privileged to see some special effects that ranged from the distinctly fishy, thanks to Sam Iles, to the head scratchingly complex thanks to Naren WIlks. We were also treated to some rather fabulous music and some sparkling cinematography too. Thank you all for bringing and showing your films.

We screened:
1 Selfs portrait – Sally Lifely. 4 min 13sec.
2 3rd floor 6h door – Laura Perez. 18 min
3 The yellow tie – Film School Bristol (Ian Pirrie, Lara Perez, Emma Shannon, Niamh Farrelly, Bicky Henriques, Bianca Munoz). 3 min.
4 Burn out – Director, DOP, Editor Jack Offord; Written by Jack Offord and Lorraine Blumenthal; Actor Lorraine Blumenthal. 1 min 30 sec.
5 Lyrebird soup – Director Naren Wilks; Actors Cameron Miller, Brian Elllowy, Scored by Minima, Set construction Shaun Luker. 6 min.
6 Dream – Director Sam Iles; Actors Fred Iles, Peter Harris, Duncan Bounds. 6 min. 33 sec.
7 Chess man – James Matthews Amattttama 8 min.
8 Scared - Wayne Lee. 18 min.
9 Burned out – Film School Bristol. Director Ian Pirrie; Starring Angus Brown, Matthew McGill, Raphael Duncan. 10 min.
10 Square pianos – Piski films. 7 min 49.
11 Esso man – Director Diana Taylor; Poem Rosemary Dunn. 1 min 28.
12 The Pitch – Director Hannah Petts; Asst Director Lewis Rogers; Sound Chris Worth; Editor, camera and cinematography; Actors Marley Hamilton, Chris Foster, Iain Gorrie, Darren Thompson, Andrew Wilkinson, Lewis Rogers. 15 Min.

Bluescreen is back at The Cube September 19th when we are teaming up with the ENCOUNTERS film festival at the Watershed. It’s likely to be a busy night. We’ll screen up to 180 minutes of short films. Arrive early to avoid disappointment, as films that arrive after we have filled up our time slot cannot be shown.

We compile a DVD of films every year that are suitable for festival screenings. We just finished the 2011-12 DVD and we’ll be showing this at the Supernormal festival August 10th and 11th 2012.

Thanks all for coming and thanks again for bringing in your films.

to edit.

Clifton to Easton - Diana Taylor (3 min 36)
Le francaise Episode 2, Sam Haire (3 min)
Chlorpromazine .The Doubles, Tom Hall and colleagues (10 min)
Cloned, Wayne Lee (20 min)
Wonderland, Laurie Wood (13 min)
Evil Day, Piskie Films  (7 min)
Keppie uppie, James Stokes and Joe Ryan (3 min)
Intensive Point Fight training, Rob Creet of AV8 Creative, (14 min)
Queen of the sky, Bruce D (9 min)
Martin Hall, The Interview (5 min)
Derien, Eric Boyd and Imogen Birdwell (4 min 30)

And apologies to:
Laura Perez, (No 3 6th Floor)
Kris Griffen  and Brad Powell (6 AM)
I’m with them productions (3:00 AM)
…whose films we tried to screen, but their DVDs just wouldn’t play.  But do bring along another copy to the next Bluescreen and we will screen them again then. 

Kriss Griffen and Brad Powell did eventually show their film on a laptop in the bar afterwards – but we hope he’ll bring it for another Blue screen night for us to see on the big screen.

Some of the films we showed were entries for the Bristol Encounters 0117 competition – in which a film had to be made in 0117 hours or less (6 AM and Keepie Uppie)  - the films will be shown at the MSHED They will be screened  - and judged!  - along with other entrants - as part of a celebratory event at the MSHED museum on Friday 24th June good luck to both of those films in the competition..

Martin Hall’s film ‘The interview’ was screened at the 2 Days Laughter Short Film Competition  festival in Margate and won two awards for acting and one for sound! Congratulations to him and his team.

Bluescreen is back at The Cube July 25th, and with some news of a few Festival screenings over the Summer!

Thanks again for another great Bluescreen!