We Are Team Rubber

Another successful year for Bristol’s Short Film Festival, ‘Encounters‘, has been and gone which I attended as a member of the audience and as a volunteer. Encounters saw in its 14th year with style and showed off some fantastic shots from around the globe.

For all of you that are dying to know who the winners were and haven’t gotten around to searching for them, I have made a list below:

INTERNATIONAL JURY AWARD

DENNIS

BEST OF BRITISH AWARD

SEPTEMBER

SOUTH WEST SCREEN AUDIENCE AWARD

LEAVING

CHILDREN’S JURY AWARD

OFFICE NOISE

DEPICT! AWARDS

ENOUGH

BREAKING THE MOULD

WHAT’S VIRGIN MEAN?

UK FILM COUNCIL AUDIENCE AWARD

SKHIZIEN

4MATIONS INTERNATIONAL NEWCOMER AWARD

OUR WONDERFUL NATURE

NAHEMI / KODAK PRIZE FOR CREATIVE FILMMAKING

STAND UP

I have to say one of my particular favorites had to be ‘Our Wonderful Nature’ and to my delight it is on YouTube (whoop whoop), so check it out and enjoy the matrix fighting water shrew.

Hello all! I am taking this opportunity to introduce the latest member of Team Rubber staff. Jake Wittlin, who is our new Digital Studio Runner and is here to help in the Bristol office.

Welcome to the Team Jake

Just a quick blog to say I LOVE my new Dymo labeler, it goes beautifully with my franking machine and telephone headset. Thank you Andy

A little bit of friendly competition is always welcomed at Team Rubber, be it sport related, writing related (who is at the top of the blog posts) or even eating related (there are some people that will never eat pizza again). Now there is a new Team Rubber craze that a lot of us are lapping up, especially Tim. BAKING! We have been talking about having a bake off for sometime now and I am officially (with the use of our blog) declaring it on! I have a chocolate chip cookie recipe that will put everyones baking skills to shame. Watch this space for the first baking date.

I am a big fan of Popbitch as it feeds my need for random crap and gossip. In this week’s newsletter titled “The porn pets of Saudi Arabia” (nice) I came across a link that made me think of a certain someone. Also Team Rubber loves its music so I just had to blog it! Album covers recreated with Lego, I particularly like the fact that Morrissey looks better in plastic form. Amazon saw potential in this form of art work, if you click on the covers it takes you to their site so you can buy the CD, nope, I still don’t want a Morrissey album.

I am not going to lie, I was drawn to this book purely because of its size! I thought, “can I really learn something useful from a book only 47 pages long?” I am delighted to say I did, and it didn’t hurt to do so. It was easy to read, flowed well and had enjoyable similes such as, “For it is with the advertising man as with the cow: no browsing, no milk”.
Young’s book believe it or not came across as if it was padded at first, but the run up to his ‘technique’, where you do lots of nodding in agreement, did give it more substance. I don’t think his five-step method would seem as interesting or respectable without it, which in a nutshell is:

1. Gather raw materials
2. Work over them
3. Stop actively thinking of it/ them
4. Give birth to an idea
5. Shape the idea

His ‘technique’ taught me (as Andy put it) that you don’t have to lock yourself in an empty room for hours and hours until you come up with something and that being organised is a good thing – which I always like to hear. This book is short and sweet and proves that…. Yes I am going to say it… size doesn’t always matter… sorry!