Film and Digital Media @ Messiah

By Steve Gorman LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A day after their counterproposal to major studios’ “final” contract offer was rebuffed, Screen Actors Guild leaders huddled on Friday to consider their next move in a Hollywood labor stalemate almost certain to drag into next week. In a brief statement released in the evening, SAG said its negotiating team “met behind closed doors throughout the day today discussing bargaining strategies. The negotiations team remains committed to continue to bargain for a fair contract.” But no further talks were scheduled, and SAG made no mention of how it might proceed to reopen negotiations now that management has taken the position that bargaining is over. SAG has, for example, sought higher residual payments for actors from DVD sales and to extend contract coverage to virtually all made-for-Internet programming. The two sides even disagreed over whether they were still bargaining, or what constitutes a rejection. “Our national negotiating committee did not, as has been erroneously reported, reject the AMPTP’s offer,” SAG said in its statement on Friday. “Instead, we made a comprehensive counterproposal that adopted some of their proposals and offered alternatives on others.” But AMPTP spokesman Jesse Hiestand responded by saying, “The counterproposal to a final offer is a rejection to a final offer. It can’t be anything else.” How the status of talks is defined is more than academic. With the old contract now lapsed, the studios could declare a formal impasse in talks, freeing them to impose the terms of their latest offer, or to institute a lockout. Both moves are widely seen as unlikely for now, in part because they could backfire on the studios by giving SAG a rallying point for its members.

     See the entire article at Reuters

Internships at WGBH

WGBH has many internship opportunities for qualified students. Check each individual internship for a position description, school requirements, and desired qualifications.

WGBH internships –open only to students enrolled in an accredited college or university– are soley for college credit and are unpaid.

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Now seeking plays which meet the following requirements:

• Full-length
• Unproduced
• Non-musical
• Written by a Pennsylvania resident
• Minimal set
• A cast of approximately 10 or less

The winning play will premiere as part of York Little Theatre’s 2009•2010 Season.

The playwright will also receive an Honorarium in the amount of $100.

Deadline for Submissions is Friday, October 17, 2008.

For more information please visit our website at www.ylt.org or call the theatre at 717-854-3894.

Send submissions to Eric Bradley Long, Director of Artistic Development, York Little Theatre, 27 S. Belmont St., York, PA, 17403; or via e-mail to eric@ylt.org. Please include a cover letter which includes a character breakdown and brief synopsis.

York Little Theatre, located at 27 S. Belmont St., York, Pennsylvania, is currently celebrating its 75th Season of providing community theatre dedicated to engaging Central Pennsylvania’s diverse community through a broad range of professionally directed, entertaining, and stimulating performances.

York Little Theatre is a member of the Cultural Alliance of York County.

With The Dark Knight, all the action sequences were shot in IMAX, and later intercut with 35mm film. This film also marks cinematographer Wally Pfister’s sixth collaboration with director Chris Nolan, which began with the indie hit Memento and was seen most recently in The Prestige.	Wally Pfister ASC, at the IMAX eyepiece with director Chris Nolan in foreground. The late Heath Ledger is seen behind the glass. The camera and lighting crew included camera operator Bob Gorelick, and chief lighting technician Cory Geryak.
As a team, Nolan and Pfister are notable for their efforts to adhere to an “in-camera” ethos. Pfister famously avoids the digital intermediate process that has become commonplace among Hollywood filmmakers for the ability to tweak nearly everything about the image. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Pfister comments. Though “The Dark Knight” does include digital visual effects, many of the effects are captured in-camera.
In one notable sequence an exploding four-storey building was destroyed for the filmmakers, who shot it in Chicago. In other words: What you see in this film may actually have been there on the set.
From IMAX senior VP David Keighley’s point of view, The Dark Knight is a long-time dream come true. “We’ve tried to get a filmmaker to shoot a film in IMAX for 40 years,” says Keighley, who ticks off Coppola’s Apocalypse Now as one project he pushed for. “But everyone said, the cameras are too big, too heavy and too noisy.”	David Keighley
That makes it all the more impressive that the very intense action sequences, which include the six-minute opening shot of a bank heist, were shot in IMAX. Pfister revealed that he and Nolan have long been fans of the IMAX format. “There’s no better image quality,” says Pfister. “And Chris wanted to enhance the film-going experience.”

Work in Hollywood already has ground nearly to a halt as film and TV producers wait to see if there will be another long work stoppage. By next week, there will be almost no films in production. At major studios, more than two dozen television shows for next season are already shooting, but if a strike appears imminent, plans for the balance of next season’s TV series could be scrapped in as little as a few days, according to people close to the studios.

Company Pushes for a Texas Girl to Match Miley Cyrus’s Success With Young Fans
By PETER SANDERS
Wall Street Journal
June 17, 2008; Page B1
North Hollywood, Calif.

At a recording studio in this gritty neighborhood, Walt Disney Co. executives are putting the finishing touches on a project of pressing importance: grooming a 15-year-old Texas girl as a possible successor to Miley Cyrus, star of the Disney Channel’s “Hannah Montana” and myriad other entertainment ventures.

As a rare spring thunderstorm clatters outside, executives from Disney’s Hollywood Records huddle with Demi Lovato and her management team to complete her debut solo album, to be released this fall. By that time, the company hopes Ms. Lovato will already be a household name in the tween world, thanks to a multimedia blitz that is aggressive even by Disney standards.

For Disney, there are few more crucial tasks than finding and developing talent that appeals to 8- to 12-year-olds and perpetuating the pipeline of clean-cut Disney Channel stars whose singing, dancing and acting can be exploited across multiple platforms. “Hannah Montana” has spanned hit albums, blockbuster concert tours, a 3D concert movie that grossed $65.3 million in North America, and, down the road, a theatrical movie and a book deal. In addition, Ms. Cyrus’s concert tour last year helped launch Disney’s heartthrob boy band, the Jonas Brothers, now one of the hottest acts in pop.

Pope Benedict, in a May 23 address to participants in a meeting sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. explained that “if communication is to be effective it must be based on truth.”

“A communicator can attempt to inform, to educate, to entertain, to convince, to comfort; but the final worth of any communication lies in its truthfulness,” he said. The “passion for truth” that communications students and professionals must have and develop “can be well served by a certain methodological skepticism, particularly in matters affecting the public interest,” Pope Benedict said. However, the pope said, students need guidance to ensure their questioning is not so distorted that it becomes “a relativistic cynicism in which all claims to truth and beauty are routinely rejected or ignored. ” As media become more and more important in people’s daily lives, he said, helping people learn how to judge the ethical content they are accessing and teaching future professionals the necessity of always upholding the truth take on even greater urgency. “It also is necessary to promote justice, solidarity and respect in every circumstance for the value and dignity of each person, who has a right not to be harmed in that which concerns his private life,” the pope said.