The Network is a free four day TV Training event taking place at the Edinburgh Television Festival from the 25th August.  Previous speakers include Charlie Brooker, Russell Howard, Sharon Osbourne and Sir Trevor McDonald, as well as staff from Sky TV, MTV, Channel Four and ITV.

To apply, you must be aged 18 or over on August 24th 2011.  If you’re from Wales and you want some hints and tips on how to write the best application you can, then drop me an email.  This is a great chance to learn a lot about the industry and meet a lot of people.  All you would have to pay for is your travel to and from Edinburgh itself – everything else is covered as part of the event.

Apply directly to The Network here, the deadline is the 15th April, so get in soon!

This short is called Bright Lights, and it’s now listed here on IMDb.  Directed by Hefin Rees, it’s a sweet little film about a teenage girl in the South Wales valleys, and her relationship with her Ice Cream Man Father.  We’ve started submitting it to festivals, so hopefully it will be on screens soon.  I’ll post any news here.

I’ll leave you with a photo of Catrin Faulknall as Ali, and Ian Staples as Dad, taken by our DOP Steven Davies.

I haven’t got a lot of gossip to share (and I had to sign an NDA anyway), so this isn’t going to be the place to find inside information on what’s coming up in 2010, and if you were expecting the scoop on the potential Star Trek sequel, look elsewhere. I’m very grateful to everyone at Paramount for being very generous with their time and for explaining everything in such detail, and to the Media Business School for arranging it for me.

What I do with this new knowledge, I haven’t quite worked out yet. Looking over my notes from the week, I’ve realised just how much I’ve learned, and while it will obviously help me to develop as a producer, I need to see how I can put this into some sort of practice from 2010 onwards.

Aron Cynan & Iwan John in Rhestr Nadolig Wil

Rhestr Nadolig Wil has won Best Drama at the EA Bafta Children’s Awards.  It was the first production I worked on when I was on a CYFLE traineeship, which feels like a long time ago now.  It was first broadcast over Christmas last year, no doubt S4C will dust off the tape and give it an airing again this season.  Congratulations to Boomerang and everyone involved in the production.

It was EAVE in Wales week last week, and thanks to Anne-Marie at the Film Agency for Wales, as I was able to sit in on a few sessions.  The most interesting thing I learned is that many European producers see the UK as a difficult co-production partner because of the amount of red tape and hoops you have to jump through in order to unlock the finance for your project, and that one of the stumbling blocks are the huge legal fees incurred because of this.  If Wales is to develop a real feature film culture, something that we’re told is actually happening, then perhaps we need to consider how we can break down some of these barriers, even if it means lobbying government for change.

It was good to meet other like-minded people from Wales at EAVE, and also some from overseas.  I loved seeing how passionate people are about both crunching the numbers and telling stories they truly care about.  After all, even Ryan Kavanaugh cares about having a good script.  Maybe.

As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, the film doesn’t offer any answers or solutions to the problems it deals with, but I honestly believe it raises issues that lots of people growing up in Britain today have to face, and I hope that the young people of Salford are interested in the film because of this.

Thank you to the festival for selecting the film.

Another new microbudget scheme has been launched, this time just over the border.  iFeatures, a partnership between  South West Screen and BBC Films,  is looking for projects  that  have  a Bristolian vibe and can be made for around £300k.  The web site is actually very informative and is definitely one of the most comprehensive I’ve seen for a scheme like this – but somehow I missed the roadshow in Cardiff when it came around.  I actually have a couple of projects that could really work for this, so I’ll be putting an application together for 85 Films.

The Cardiff film festival that successfully picks the Best Picture winner at the Oscars every year is back for a, er, second year, and they’ve announced the full programme here.  Last year’s inaugural festival beat the hype with an early screening of Slumdog Millionaire, while this year’s closing film will be Bunny & The Bull. Probably not an Oscar contender, but a film that features a lot of stars of British TV comedy from Mighty Boosh director Paul King, so hopefully worth a look.  There’s also a programme of workshops and masterclasses, and other events.  Its focus is on the role of music within film, hence the festival’s title.

If you’re interested in how the festival came about, here‘s the original call out for ideas for the festival from the Film Agency for Wales, though to be honest, it doesn’t give too much away.  Apart from how much money was on offer.