Featured on AWNtv

Thanks to AWNtv for featuring Bored Stiff. It always means a lot to get on there.

Popcorn Comedy

Final screening anecdotalism of the week.

Somewhere else that we've been screened the last couple of months is at Popcorn Comedy. Run by Jon Petrie (brother of the really quite good Ed Petrie), it seems to be one of the most exciting comedy nights out there. By the looks of it, it's much like Filmrats, in that it has the live/video mix, but instead of musical acts has some of the best break through comedians about and has the choice of some of London's coolest little hideaways. Although they're not afraid to tour around having moved up to Edinburgh this August for the festival.

We were really chuffed to have been approached by Jon to screen some stuff and can't wait to actually get down to one of the nights. Especially with such comedy heroes as Robert Popper hailing the boots off it.

Here's a round up of the night by SpoonFed and an ickle name check to ourselves.

Screened at FilmRats

On Wednesday, was FilmRats, based in the Bristol Pear in Selly Oak. We've had our stuff screened there for the last couple of months but weren't able to make it, so it was a nice surprise to see the evening's films finished off with Bored Stiff and Message in A Bottle.

Organisers Andrew and Tom Hewson seem to have got the event down to a T, warming up the night with some music/live performance, then some films, then polishing of with a final musical act. An audio visual sandwich if you will. I think the guys have got a great feeling for keeping the mood up in the room too. It's easy for these sort of screenings to end up as a endless depressing sludge of grainy experimental films - which is great in moderation - but here the films were mixed up so that there was a nice change of pace and our in-your-face-dirty-little-treats were used as little pick-me-ups at the end. Most importantly though Andrew compared. The most important thing for events like this is to TELL people to clap and get some repore going. For some reason people just don't do it otherwise. I still don't understand why.

The venue's the perfect setting, it's relaxed, nice size and layout, built in projector and a decent sound system. It's a shame no where in the city centre really matches up. Highlights were personal favourites KateGoes plus FaceOmeter, as well as meeting Black Country Cinema collective, Birmingham Salute.

The Great Animation Challenge

The last week involved a few lovely screening/social events. Here's the first.

On Tuesday was The Great Animation Challenge at the Lighthouse, Wolverhampton, which started off with brilliant round up of animations from last year's Flip Festival. My personal favourite was about a man who's slipped coordinates in 3D space and is trying to fix it by being hit by asteroids. I can't tell you the name of it yet as I don't know... (Skhizein, directed by Jeremy Clapin) I also missed the first half of it. Maybe that added to the feeling of just watching a snippet of someone's life, rather than going through the whole process of setting up the character. I quite enjoy watching films half way through or without the sound on. You have to piece together a story which is probably no where near as interesting as it seems because it's turned into a puzzle, everything they do suddenly becomes potentially important.

After that bit of reflection, came the screening and announcement of the winner of the Animation Challenge itself. The prize rightly went to Joe Lea's interpretation of Underwater Fax of Death, which thanks to other people's attraction to the song means I'm still singing that song in my head 4 days later. Afterwards, I got to catch up with some familiar faces and chat to some new ones... which was nice.

P.S. I'll find out the name of that animation and see what I can link to.

Bored Stiff Featured on Dailymotion

Apologies for being a bit neglegent with news, shizzle and other video sites lately. But after finally getting Bored Stiff onto Dailymotion we were featured! Dailymotion are a little bit racier (they have a 'Sexy' category) than their YouTubian conterparts - maybe that's the French influence on the site. We're dandy with that as it means all our poop related silliness gets the exposure it probably doesn't deserve. Thanks Dailymotion!

In relation to that we were given an invite to the preview screening of Mad, Sad & Bad on Monday 20th July by Dailymotion. You can see the trailer here and you can watch the preview on Dailymotion at exactly the same time as the screening (8pm GMT 20th July).