Saturday 11 June 2011

Mandy McIntosh, online exhibition

Dear friends and fellow filmmakers!
I thought you might like to see this link to my work, it is being exhibited online at Animate Projects UK

here is the link

http://www.animateprojects.org/films/by_artist/m/m_mcintosh

Friday 10 June 2011

Live - Love - Laugh

Allowing me to be initiated into the world of 'blog' is dangerous.  My emails and letters to friends can become rather long and 'wordy' so I will try to take Mandy's advice about stripping away the meat of our story .... back to the bare bones, or as Robert said "kill your darlings".  To anyone outside the group this sounds more dangerous than intended!!!
This week has been transforming and helped me to look at the future with different eyes and the opening  of all sorts of opportunities.  New friendships forged and an increasing awareness of all sorts of possibilities.  The people in terms of tutors creative Maddy and Hannah amazing technical support from Paddy and getting to know the international participants plus the support of young talented volunteers has been inspiring.  A big thank you to everyone.
There is a definite excitement amongst us about tonight's showcase.  It will be so good to see everyones hard work and results come to fruition.  Wonderful how our Love stories are so different and we could each write or rather digitalise another on the same topic.  Food for thought.
My husband Roger and son Paul will be at the "Oscars this evening, (I'm looking forward to seeing their  reaction when they see themselves 32 years ago and the story attached!)  
Back soon - Anita

Many thanks for my achievements in Love Storytelling Workshop







Hello,
I am very pleased with this Love Storytelling Workshop and all activities we have done through this learning week.
I would like to say many thanks to Hannah and Mandy for excellent organization and support and actually to all our volunteers, especially to Mia and Claire, who helped me a lot.

I was attracted to the Workshop because I like to learn, like to work in a group and share experiences, to improve my English and computers skills.
During the Workshop I have learnt how to use digital technology and realized how the learning process is important / maybe more than the final result.

I enjoyed very much in all activities, my favourite moment was, when I realized what we can do with all these digital tools, support and help in a short time.

I enjoyed in boat tour and visiting Clifton Village as well. Bristol is a very good environment to learn in!

With love and all the best,

Nada

How I love Nordic Walking Style or my happy week in Bristol

It was a happy week in Bristol. The week among amazing people thinking and speaking about love.
It was very nice to hear impressive and exciting love stories the friends of the group were telling about.
My story about  my love for Nordic Walking Style was not very  attractive.  It was  usable mainly  like good base which helped me in creating digital film about love.  Yes, I love Nordic Walking, but my love for my close  people is much  more deep.
One of the main actors in the  film is my grandson  Augustas. In order to convey an emotion of  the “excellent feeling” it was the best way to show the happy smile of a child.  I love him very much.

Another “actor- sportsman”  was my son Vytautas. I am happy, than in the same day when I finished my  job - small digitall film, he finished his big job –  became the bachelor at Kaunas University of technologies.


All materials for my film I took from my own archive and from my site  www.siaurietiskasejimas.lt  (English version in the near future will be in  www.nwstyle.eu).

I would like to thank our excellent leaders and teachers Hannah, Mandy  and Paddy. Your help in creating digital films is very important and usefull to me. I found the great  possibility how to put  information and my  living experience into the film by using digital technologies.


With grateful thanks,

Jonas Koryzna

The last day of Love, the next day of Love

We are winding down and preparing for our showcase this afternoon, an incredible atmosphere, peaceful, calm, one or two people were still finishing this morning, last minute tweaks, under the wire last minute scans, Michel, the prefectionist wanting to re-record un seul mot of his text, then the letting go of the story and preparing to launch these gems into the world.

As someone who works in stories and digital media and uses biographical material in my own work, I am happy to have had the opportunity to enable this with others and I respect and admire each participants depth and honesty and commitment to their work. Every story is unique and every story is special. Very many thanks and congratulations to everyone, what a remarkable achievement. It was SO MUCH FUN!!!!

Best Wishes to you all,

Mandy

Sue-g

Hi,
I am a participant of this love-story workshop in June this year. I am happy have been working with
12 other people coming  from Lithuania,Portugal, Germany, UK, Slovenia, France, Norway and Belgian.
I learnt to shorten a story to it's heart, which took two days. This was very important. I learnt new things, to do on the computer and got a lot of help, whenever I needed it. I learnt to bring pictures to a film.

I do appreciate the good atmosphere. Hannah and Mandy really encouraged us and supported us to find our own way. Many thanks to Mandy, Hannah, the Volunteers , to Watershed and the grundtvig support.
My best regards to all the lifelong learners,
Sue- g

Chiseled from the Heart

Chiseled from the Heart, A tribuet to Life in the Sculptures of Gustav Vigeland (in the Vigeland Sculpture Park in Oslo, Norway).
A wonderfull 5 days at the Watershed Love Workshop!
First, great thabks to Hannah, Mandy and Paddy for their disciplined organisation of the project, for their and the volunteers knowledge, helpfulness and not at least patience.

As my theme, 'Chiseled from the Heart'm  I have chosen some of the scuptures of Gustav Vigeland which implis a 'Cirle of Life', from infancy to old age. There are obviously too many sculptures to fit in a digital story of 2 minutes, so the examples are inturely my own and personal.
One part of a sculpture that is being repeated, is that of a child reaching for, picking up a serpent. I have followed this image by sculptures or details that contrast with the immediate response to Love: the angry little boy, the raging youths (pestering an old, retarded man), a young boy withdrawing from the hand of a grandfather, man drifting apart from his woman and the man trying to break the ring, the bonds of (everyday) life.
Finlly, the Circle of Life, the Wheel of History, a sculpture placed at an height at the west end of the park, showing 5 humans integrated as a ring.

The Road Goes on Forver, wrtites Tolkien; or as we say in Norway, Life takes place as we wander along the road.
The inspiration and gained knowlegde of these five days will help me 'getting into' the tools of digital storytelling. I hope to be able to master the craft within soon  - and there will be many more stories told.

Again, great, great thanks to the staff for their patience, knowledge and inspiration!

Best regards to all.
Bjørn Kongsgaard

Love stories



This is the last day of the "Digital Love Storytelling" and I'm already with "saudades" (Portuguese word for missing) of this town and of the people I met here at the workshop.
There were six days of hard work but also of learning and getting to know people from nine different European countries and of knowing a beautiful European city – Bristol.
Bristol is a lovely town with its churches, the river, gardens,... and mainly so at ease with itself, so it seemed to me. I loved it; I could make a digital love storytelling about Bristol...
I would like to thank all the organisers, especially Mandy and Hanna; they were so very nice and always wanting to help each and every one of us at the workshop.
Maybe we will meet again. Who knows...?

I hope you like this music and this video!


Maria José

Listening With Love

Its day 5, time to pause after a truly wonderful experience of our Love Story happening.  I wish to share this with you, the rain still falling outside, a cosy hum of completion in the room.
As we bare boned our stories on day one, I doodled my images, when Mandy slipped by, inviting me to use this as an illustration. An electric moment, a huge relief not to use photos  which I was aware of in the preparations days before.  A poem, images archetypal voices , illustration, colour, texture, paints,oils, pencil waited in the wings. A new beginning, yet with the guidance of Mandy and Olivera and Hannah honouring "fusing mediums" a storyboard, no matter how simple, found its way (imported...) into the photoshop.  Then the marriage of art and techno had begun, a whole new language slipped from my lips, such as duplicate, hue, saturation..............yep.  Its now day 5, Listening With Love is now exported. We wait to see it on bigger screen.  I am happy.  I am excited to see what we, a group who shared boat rides, menus, laughter, our heart beats this afternoon.   love Rissa

Final countdown

Final day of the workshop. It was a very busy week, but I also had great fun, meeting nice people. The organisation was perfect! Hannah did a realy great job and Mandy was a very good coordinator (I love this Scottish accent). Paddy and the vollunteers were a great help for all the technical questions and problems. I had the opportunity to tell a story that I wanted to do for a long time. It will be an inspiration for my next play.
Love to you all!














Robert (aka Bob)

The Little German Girl

First of all I really wish to thank the team of Watershed Story Telling , Hannah ,Mandy , Paddy and the
volunteers for their patience .They encouraged and helped me from the very first beginning ,and I am
afraid , it was hard work with me .
I have had no idea , how a story and some old photos will make a film . But now as the work is done , I
am happy .

My film is about my love to Wales and the Welsh people  . My intentions is to thank for the chance
coming to Wales in1949 .

Vera Landgraf

Thursday 9 June 2011

My Dream and Love to Les Sables

Now, I have nearly finished my video.
I'd like to thank the organisers, especially Hannah and Mandy and the volunteers for their very kind welcome and their good organisation and management of the group. Very nice group with very different and sympathetic people. And everybody is working hard with much concentration in a good ambience.

My video expresses the love of a villa in the city of Les Sables d'Olonne through the story of a mischievous but happy 18 months old baby, dremt on the beach at night.









Michel Bordeau

Regards from Iceland.

I have finished my story and am very pleased with myself.  I would like to thank my teachers
and all the volunteers  for all they have done for us.
It can't be  easy to teach people like me because I am so very set in my ways, but it was
a very good exsperience to find yourself able do do some new things.
I think also that this has been a very good group and find it nice to get to know all these people
from such a different countries.
 I am going to advertise this workshop in my country and show people how very easy it can be
to try yourself in an other language and commute with other people.
This has given me such confidence to be able to work with you guys.
Many thanks,
Elin.

Some memories of friends and old village

I am very happy participating on Love Storytelling Workshop in Bristol. I am going to speak about my friends from the Northeast of England and my relationship with them. During our professional cooperation, we have become very good friends and have nurtured our friendship ever since.
We love nature very much, we have spent so many great moments together.
We have visited each other in our homes, cities and campsites, but our favourite meeting point has always been our flat in Bohinj.


I have never forgotten our walks through the gorges Mostnica into the Voje valley, where we were together with murmur of fresh, crystal clear water in the deep canyons and local caws with bells crossing the paths!




Wednesday 8 June 2011

Elin, Snow Animals by Vitalija


iceland

Wednesday, lots of progress, some bends in the road, some new ideas...
Most of our participants have a timeline now, with media on it, which is very exciting because its a huge learning curve and a massive achievement for people with no experience of moving image. Apart from Maria and her mathematical choreography. Very very inspiring to see people make the connection between images, words and arranging them together in linear space. Vera and Suse and their sudden realisation that "between the pictures there will be black, we didnt know." they staged their films like points in a map, and now realise the map has gaps. We have a discussion around the gaps, gaps are ok, or we can include video of the world now to contrast with the world then. Unusually, now that I think of it, apart from Michel and his current love affair with Les Sables, or Bjorn and the sculpture park, lots of the stories are about a reconciliation between the past and the now.

I worked with Elin a lot and her incredible black and white images from the home of her maiden aunts. a life with no technology, an abundance of love for a small girl from the one hundred year old women. A wonderful experiment with Vitalija, where we suddenly pinned her prints to the wall to re photograph them and emulate rapidly, her collage assemblage ways. A way to bypass the scanner and make instant dynamic juxtapositions to accompany her vivid love poem to Winter. Filming Rui's mobile dextrous hands. Great group, lots of concentration and lots of realisation re durations and where the story is within all the extraneous text.
Thanks as ever to remarkable, kind, patient volunteers. Incredible support form them, hugely appreciated by everyone. Thank you.

Tuesday 7 June 2011

the feast, the heads down


Tuesday Love

Day two of the workshop and the progress is remarkable, people working very calmly and with great concentration on their narratives. It seems that the theme, LOVE, to which people have responded with great commitment and generosity, has created a solid working atmosphere. Some people feel upset on relaying the nature of their stories, and this is understandable, somehow people have moved beyond the typical themes of LOVE to bigger places. This is really a great leap forward. A bottleneck of people waiting to record themselves, great volunteers who really get behind the nature of each individual story, thirteen people to work with and equip with tools they can use again and again after the workshop.

A great Euro feast last night, toasted with Icelandic schnapps and Lithuanian green wine, cheese and home cooked Portugese bread, icelandic dried fish, salami, oatcakes, artisanal food, pastries and pasties. Then dinner tonight out in Bristol, lots of fun and laughing. The Mexican stare of two cameras pointed at each other, people relaxing after a long day of work in the studio space.

Many thanks to all for their attention, their expectations and their grasp of new tools.


Hooooraaaayyyy!!!

Great Work!

Monday 6 June 2011

falling

some very beautiful simple stories, only one actual romance. lots of archetypes, mothers, family, mathematics even, beautiful, symbolic stories of place and person. sharing, recovering, enduring and surviving. wonderful way to start the week. Lots to do.

KEITH

good morning love

You know your story like the back of your hand,
take all the fingers off the story and put them back in different orders.
Boil up the bone of the story and make some soup.
A volume of stories, a herd of tales.
Don't see your story, hear it. Then see it.