News and happenings

Hello.

Thought I should check in and update all my many, many, MANY readers...*tumbleweed blows by, coyote howls in the distance*...of my latest news.

Fixing Luka has managed to pick up not one, but THREE awards at the Limelight Film and Arts Awards in June. We picked up Best Animation, Best Visual and then manage to somehow pick up Film of the Night - which came with a £10k Production fund prize! Lordy.

I didn't expect to pick up anything but there you go! I wished at that moment of hearing of our wins that I was wearing a monocle and drinking a cup of tea from some fine china. If only so I could spit out my tea dramatically and gasp so much that my monocle fell out. But I wasn't. Instead, I brought the crew members on stage (producer - Anna Odell, Editor - Rachel Tunnard, Colourist - Tom Balkwill and D.O.P - Ruan Suess) as well as my little sister. Then I proceeded to babble my way embarrasingly through some thank yous. Anyway, to see my horrificly gurning face and to find out more information about Lime Light and it's awards, check out the website here.

FL has also been picked up in a few more festivals, which is always great! It will be playing in the Born Shorts Film Festival in Denmark on September 16th. It will also be at the Ficbeau: The International Shortfilm Festival of Bueu in Pontevedra, Spain.

Speaking of festivals, it's come around to the time of FL showing at Rushes Soho Shorts Festival. It shows as part of the Animation programme, this Saturday (23rd July) at 3pm and on Tues 26th July. More details to be found here.

More news! I was also successfully chosen for commission for my latest short film project by B3 Media on their TalentLab scheme! My project is quite ambitious (animated and live action social realism...) so i'm really excited to have the chance to realise it.

I also had my first foray into public speaking. I was invited by Glasgow based, cross-disciplinary producers, Trigger, to talk at a Pecha Kucha event. Pecha Kucha is an evening of talks from 12 creatives, who show 20 slides based on a topic and have 20 seconds to talk about each slide. Pretty frantic, but I enjoyed it, even if I had to quickly ditch the notes I was clutching in my sweaty hands, finding out that just waxing lyrical about the images behind me works just as well. Definitely taught me a thing or too about how to prepare for public speaking.

Finally, I also revamped my website, jessla.co.uk. Go take a little look.

And that's that. Information overload, much?