First TXT ISLAND Product Ships!

I placed an order from my SpreadShirt T-shirt Shop to check out the quality of their service. As a test I ordered the same T-shirt printed using their two different methods (one printed as the cheaper 'digital direct' print, the other a '3 colour flex' print). My order came within a week and I can report now that the quality is pretty damn good.

The T-shirts used are thick enough to not feel cheap and of a quality I'll happily sell. The cheaper 'digital direct' printing is obviously inferior to the '3 colour flex' printing, so I'll only be offering the better ones in my shop. So far as the better shirts go, the colour is more vibrant, the feel of the print is smoother to the touch and definitely worth the extra few quid.
Other designs are now available too! Go straight to The Shop and buy some ...

www.txtisland.com Goes Live!

I've not posted anything much here for a while, but I've been busy(ish) at work, and been spending some of my evening time in a bit of a TXT ISLAND publicity push...
I decided now that TXT ISLAND has been out for a while, it was time to take stock of where the film has been and offer answers to some of the questions I get asked about the film sometimes.
To this end, I've put-together a new (and easy to find) online home for all things TXT ISLAND... I've created a site for the film at www.txtisland.com Add it to your favourites now people!

Shop Happens

Fans of TXT ISLAND can now live the dream and wear the T-shirt.
I've opened a shop!

Real-Time Mash-up Experience

Get the real-time french/jazz experience like this.
Open two tabs or two browsers simultaneously then hit up the following two links...

in one run this
http://players.tv-radio.com/radiofrance/playerfranceculture.php
in the other run this
http://www.last.fm/listen#pane=webRadioPlayer&station=%252Flisten%252Fglobaltags%252FBlue%2520Note%2520Jazz

MMM nicely random.

Gadding About

Lot's of going out to interesting things this week. After all these years living in London I finally seem to be making the most of it!

Last Sunday took the family to a screening of Henry Selick's 'Coraline' at the Mayfair Hotel (with thanks to Focus Features for that), then Monday started a couple of weeks stint in Soho doing compositing working for Not To Scale. My first proper work out of TANDEM in the last 8 or so years!

Wednesday turned out to be a rather spontaneous jazz and pizza night, then Friday to the Design Museum in Butler's Wharf for the 'Sparkle The Dark Up Event'. Lots of animators, art installations and old friends too. The Design Museum was also hosting an exhibition of Braun product design, lots of very cool German gadgetry, notably lots of hifi and cine gear from the 60s/70s. There were of course several Braun Nizo super 8 cameras on display, I've got a couple of these; great styling is pretty ageless even if the formats and technologies come and go.

Blogging Out & About

Blogging live and direct from the Bristol Encounters Festival... from a PC in a bar. This is the future my friends...

Going West

Off to the Bristol Encounters Short Film Festival tomorrow Friday 20th Nov. (very early!) to see TXT ISLAND play in the 'Best of British 2' screening.
Details here

I'm a Mish Mash Finalist!

The short film I made for the Getty Images 'MishMash' competition has been selected as a finalist! It's now up against four other UK entries for the prize... winner to be announced on November 18th.
See the announcement online here and watch and vote for my film here.

Simon's Cat the Documentary

Whilst working at TANDEM recently I was asked to organize the production of some video material to create an EPK (Electronic Press Kit) about TANDEM colleague Simon Tofield (creator of the Simon's Cat films and now books too).
We shot interview footage of Simon, then gathered some supporting footage of him at work creating the images and sounds for the films. I cut together this footage to make this short 3:30 documentary about Simon and his creative process. It's now been uploaded onto YouTube by Hachette Book Group, (US publisher of the Simon's Cat books.)

Mashmatic

For the last couple of weeks my night-time production sessions have been devoted to getting an entry in for the Getty Images 'Mish Mash' competition. The brief was to mash together a 1-3 minute music video using tracks, photos and footage from the Getty library. My effort entitled 'Mashmatik' can be seen on the Getty competition website here.
All entries can be viewed and of course rated by the highly discerning on-line audience ;)

Another Showbiz Festival Party!

Your showbiz party correspondent has just come back from his second glamorous film festival launch party in just as many weeks. A Couple of weeks ago it was the launch party for Onedotzero over in Shoreditch, tonight it was the Bristol Encounters Short Film Festival party at the Channel Four HQ over in Horseferry Road SW1.
(Both festivals have taken on TXT ISLAND thus the invites to the parties.)



I can report that tonight's event was rather more appealing... No loud music (I'm getting old!), the chance to actually meet a few people and talk to them, a screening of some great shorts, some nibbles (including miniaturized cheeseburgers) and even a goody bag with some DVDs in.

The Festival programme is now up, details of the 'Best of British #2'screening (including TXT ISLAND of course) can be found here.
I'm thinking maybe I should go to see the festival in November!

TXT To Go To Holland

The TXT ISLAND international tour continues... The film has been selected in Competition at the Holland Animation Festival (HAFF) 4th-8th November 2009.

Second Born

Well, after being one of the 3 finalists in this year's Rushes Soho Shorts film festival, TXT ISLAND has faired slightly better at the Danish 'BornShorts' festival by being announced as 'Runner-up' in the animation category.
So I made it into the last two this time!

Check out the BornShorts winners (and runners-up!) here.

Directed a Guardian Ad

I don't usually blog here about my dayjob at TANDEM (most of my work there gets an airing on the TANDEM blog anyway) but over the last 2 weeks at TANDEM I directed another commercial. This 10-seconder was made for agency Wieden+Kennedy to promote this weekend's Guardian and Observer guides to drawing and painting. The ad is now running on UK television, the newspapers go on sale this weekend.

See the finished commercial here.

Down By The River

I journeyed into the centre of town on Sunday to go see TXT ISLAND playing at the BFI Cinema 1 on the South Bank. My short-film showed as part of the Onedotzero festival in a varied programme called 'Craftwork 09'; the theme of which was film work inspired by a 'hand-made' aesthetic.



Nice to meet the 1.0 folks (thanks Jo and Shane etc.) and enjoy the hospitality of their Green Room ;) they also rather rashly let me take the mic at the Q&A session before the screening and even videotaped some of my ramblings afterwards!
Having been thoroughly 'documented' I headed back over the river and found myself amongst the revellers of the Thames River Festival.



My gosh, on a nice evening with things going on London is one spectacular city.



I'm finally starting to enjoy this rather shoddily constructed Canon 350d camera I've had for some years now.



800 ASA, and at one with the manual controls I can even take pictures at night!

Open To Offers

Well then,

Apparently today 09/09/09 is the 'World Day of Interconnectedness' and 'The Recession is officially over!'

As of 4 weeks from now 12/10/09 I'm officially a freelancer again and looking for gainful employment. Any offers most welcome!

TXT @ the NFT for 1.0

TXT ISLAND will be shown next week at the NFT Cinema on London's Southbank as part of the upcoming Onedotzero Festival. A festival preview clip can be seen here. As well as a couple of screenings throughout the week (wed 9th sept & sun 13th sept) as part of the 'Craftwork 09' programme, the film may get some further international screenings by way of Onedotzero's touring programmes.

P.S. Thought I'd better add a TXT ISLAND page to the www.chrisgavin.com website. So back into Flash; and though it's been a couple of years I've added a new TXT ISLAND button and accompanying page.

Born On The 28th of August

TXT ISLAND will get it's first international screening (and in competition too!) at the 'BornShorts' Festival at the end of this month. Bornholm Island off the coast of Denmark hosts the festival, TXT ISLAND will screen during the Animation show at the Scala Cinema on Friday the 28th August.

An 8mm Journey

Well, it's 2 months after our wedding and the Super8 film from the day is finally back in the country. The film has been on a long journey but here are the nerdy details...

My friend Ellis borrows my Nizo S800 camera on the day and shoots one roll of Kodak 64T Super 8 film. I send this to Bart at Blue Cine Tech here in London and he sends it on to Andec Filmtechnik in Berlin for processing. I get the film back by post then send it (with a USB memory stick) over to Uppsala Bildteknik in Sweden. Uppsala Bildteknik telecine the film using the FlashScan HD machine and return the film reel and the memory stick with one big Quicktime file. I then do a bit of AE noodling with some mild de-graining and levels settings.

Et Voila! Here are a couple of still frames from that very movie...





For the very curious, I might well follow this up with a post about the telecine service used.

Big Brother, No One Is Watching You!

I notice with some ranting smugness that nobody is watching Big Brother at all this year.


A long time back, Channel Four had built itself a hard-won reputation for edgy, innovative and unpredictable programming; they even used to fund lots and lots of film and animation production. Yet witness the endless freak-show of wife-swapping makeover reality programming they carry these days.

Well, it seems the game's well and truly up now. Lets hope there's anyone left at Channel Four HQ with some new ideas they're going to need something to fill that rather large void...