Ghost TV NZ Feature

Posted on 14/02/2016 by whitlesstours — Leave a comment

A few years back I was the Production Manager of a Dunedin based NZ feature movie Ghost TV that is marketed as a “A nasty, nasty comedy”. In 2013 I organised a Hamilton premiere of the film as a fund raiser for the Hamilton Stroke Foundation, unfortunately not as many people as we hoped for came along but now you can watch this movie for FREE on YouTube, legally and with the full blessing of the director Phil Davison. This movie was unique in that the crew were all present or past students of the director who had studied for the Diploma of Digital Film through the Southern Institute of Technology. I was in the UK at the time when Phil mentioned this film and being over due for a family visit to NZ at the time I put my hand up and was thrust into the role of Production Manager. The film set was based at the site of the infamous former Sea Cliff asylum just out of Dunedin, and I was lucky enough to be the only crew to ‘live’ onsite for the entire shoot at the local Asylum Backpackers. My role was varied and the whole experience was fantastic and very successful in that we completed the 21 day shoot in 11 days so we must have been doing something right. Anyway you can now watch to your hearts content on the below link and let us know what you think with a comment and of course tell your friends as we would love as many people as possible to see it.

Posted in Find Woody

Hamilton Short Story Vendor Machine

Posted on 29/01/2016 by whitlesstours — Leave a comment

Through Creative Waikato I came across the existence in France of a Short Story Vendor Machine – basically there are 3 buttons on this machine

The city of Grenoble, France, is testing the first models of a local startup’s short-story vending machine.

Picture from New Yorker.com: The city of Grenoble, France, is testing the first models of a local startup’s short-story vending machine. Credit Photograph by Pauline Bock

for you to print out a 1, 2 or 3 minute short story for FREE. What a fantastic idea and how about throwing poetry into the mix, well apparently this has been done as well and the stories/poems collected and supplied by the “Short Edition” (Note: This site is in French so use Chrome with Google Translate if you like me you don’t have much or any French language skills) community. Short Edition provide a platform where any one can upload a short story and have a process where the best can then be eventually provided on the vending machine – Short Edition also have all sorts of Supporters and Partners with all sorts of reading innovations including Reading Aloud festivals (imagine neighbours complaining “Could you please keep your reading down it is disturbing my…”) and Reading Head (your short story is read out loud by a celebrity, how about – Mike Hosking’s will now read Joe Blogg’s story “The Mouth that Swallowed the World”). I got so excited by this idea I visualised a machine like this (or at least a prototype) at the Hamilton Bus Terminal by the end of 2016, WOW!, is this possible or just a silly idea…?

In my next post I will try to list the components for such a project, just to get a measure of what would be required for this undertaking.

NOTE: I am doing a full year creative paper at Waikato University this year and this could be a great project to do, is there anyone out there that would help or support this?

Posted in Short Story Vendor Machine

Love is Blind (A terrifying experience)

Posted on 04/01/2016 by whitlesstours — Leave a comment

As a last-minute replacement this “old” man was cast as a hopelessly lost person in search of love on a blind date. No need to act as the other actors bore amazing “experience” resemblance to experiences many years a go – there were some technical issues with the sound but what fun as Woody “trembled” and “bumbled” through each take.

Posted in Find Woody

The Conversation or Confrontation?

Posted on 03/01/2016 by whitlesstours — Leave a comment

Source: The Conversation or Confrontation?

Posted in Find Woody

The Conversation or Confrontation?

Posted on 03/01/2016 by whitlesstours — 1 Comment

When some of the most annoying people sit down near you have you ever thought what you could do about it…? In this project we came up with 1 solution, can you think what else might be effective, come on don’t be shy go for and help contribute towards to you’re sitting enjoyment!

Posted in Find Woody Blog

Chasing Shadows

Posted on 03/01/2016 by whitlesstours — Leave a comment

Source: Chasing Shadows

Posted in Find Woody

Chasing Shadows

Posted on 03/01/2016 by whitlesstours — 1 Comment

A detective is “Chasing Shadows” until he catches up with a masked man carrying a knife but is he the killer despite his appearance?

Anyway follow the link below and let Woody know what you think…

Posted in Find Woody

Mental Floss

Posted on 26/11/2015 by whitlesstours — Leave a comment

Mental Floss is a term that was developed in an email conversation with a very good friend.

It is a term to me that is taking on a deeper meaning with regards to Woody’s thoughts and behaviours as he goes through this rich vein of creative opportunities.

With regards to to Mental Floss do we really want to clean out all that “furry” stuff because from the ruins and decay “fresh” ideas can arise but beware the danger that these ideas can be riddled by old garbage and this can hide real meaning.

Maybe this is Woody’s crime “Dig to deep and the underneath is to revealing of thoughts that should have composted a long time a go…”

But this is my point THAT THE COMPOST GIVES GROWTH TO THE NEW.

Ahhh now I start to understand, but is it fair to burden you with these things?

I ask you to take a moment and consider how your creativity germinates and would love to hear your comments…

The germination is not so much my problem it is the journey to fruition that I have trouble with – is there anyone out there…?

Posted in Find Woody

Funding Creativity – 3 is a Crowdfunding #3 of 3

Posted on 09/10/2015 by whitlesstours — Leave a comment

My final installment about personal contact a Crowdfunding venture is with little known UK football (soccer) team Grimsby Town Football Club – WHO IS THAT? is the cry…

My Dad originally came from Grimsby (actually Cleethorpes which very near by) and over the years I have supported Grimsby FC and been there a few times as well.

Well Grimsby are not doing to well as they were demoted from the League to Conference (next level down) and have been desperately trying to get back up (lost by penalties in the promotion final last year), so each new season “springs eternal”, but this year there was a Community Project on a crowd funding site setup to help boost the team managers transfer kitty so they could get in a few new players to help with promotion.

This where it gets interesting (so stick with me), they were aiming for £20,000 ($40,000 NZ) and ended up with a mammoth £111,193 ($222,386), yes people in the UK are very passionate about their football but we are talking about a smallish UK north east coastal town (pop approx 88,000) where hard times in the fishing industry have hit hard – so we are looking at over a pound per person, so WHY was it so successful in raising this amount?

3 words tell the story PASSION PASSION PASSION, and not a direct passion for football, but the team and what it means to the wider community.

My whole point to this 3-peat of blogs is if you want to successfully crowd fund a project make sure the project matters to more than yourself and close colleagues, sure these people will support you, but somehow you have to hook into whole lot of peoples passion (wider scale the better) and get them in behind you – not easy but leads to a future discussion on how to give yourself the best chance in a very competitive environment. I actually touched on this in 1 of my other blogs Networking On The Cheap where I went through a series of steps that “would” make your Blog go viral or at least would give you a better chance to get noticed, I put these steps into action on this Blog and ended up with 120 followers where originally the target was 1, being the person marking this paper – I guess in one sense I was most successful in my Blog-funding and in this sense not funding for money but just getting noticed a little.

Footnote: My mum said today a friend of hers follows me from Australia, fantastic and I hope to keep this going well after this paper finishes – secret is this is all part of establishing a digital signature in preparation for my special project.

Posted in Funding Creativity

Creative Incubators – Does SODA Fizz?

Posted on 09/10/2015 by whitlesstours — Leave a comment

SODA Inc. is a quote “destination incubator for founders across New Zealand” unquote, so I ask what is a destination incubator and what does this have to do with creative incubators?

SODA Inc. in the first instance resides in Hamilton (although I’m in their promotional video you what suspiciously looks like the Sky Tower in a view from the harbor -not exactly a view of land-locked Hamilton…?)

and as I am based in Hamilton it is good to look at what potential support maybe derived locally rather than beating the well worn path to the city north of the Bombay Hills.

To discuss this I go back to the Death by Architecture definition of a creative incubator/hub from my previous blog on this, which states quote “it is a space that induce Creative Thinking, which is a combination of creativity, curiosity and communication. A place, real or virtual, where designers meet ordinary people to bring creative influences and creative acts. ” unquote.

Now I think my problem is understanding the word creative along the lines of my latest Google search on the definition of the creative “relating to or involving the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work“. The key word here is especially as in-line with this Blog this is essentially where I am coming from.

So with with my focus on the artistic side I start to get confused when both the HuB (in my previous Blog) and now SODA talk about entrepreneurs rather than artists, but wait here according to Thesaurus.com inventor/whiz/crafts-person are all synonyms of artist so maybe inventor is the look but I am sure any creative (that word again) synonym word chase could firm up a connection – how many degrees of separation is accepted you may ask…?

Essentially I say that the HuB and SODA are are basically collaborative work areas and the mix of “HuBsters” or maybe “SODAsters” is wide and varied and some mixes maybe therefore termed as actual Creative Incubators, but whatever they are positives places and maybe SODA will “fizz-up” the next big thing that will impact all our lives.

Source – https://pixabay.com/en/creative-be-creative-write-bulb-725811/

License – Public Domain

Posted in Creative Incubators