Category: Twitter

A French connection for new project

Post author By Jonathan Melville
Post date 8 Jan 2013
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It’s a new year so it’s time for a new project in a new country. Following my work in 2012 on Cinematic Scotland, a project which looks at various connections between the country and film, this week sees me take a slight diversion as I head to the French Riviera, better known locally as the Côte d’Azur.

In collaboration with European super-blogger Kash Bhattacharya, the Budget Traveller and one of the masterminds behind Edinburgh’s recent hugely successful Blogmanay project, I’ll be the guest of the CRT Côte d’Azur, the tourism agency for the Riviera.

I’ll be touring the area to discover some of the locations of movies such as To Catch a Thief, Ronin and The Transporter, plus TV series including The Persuaders! (a guilty pleasure of mine). I’ll take photos and shoot some video while meeting people who live and work in the area, all of which will be collected on a new blog, to be officially launched in a few weeks time.

A short version of the itinerary is currently looking something like this:

Nice – To Catch a Thief (1955), The Persuaders! (1971), Condorman (1981), Ronin (1998), Swordfish (2001) and The Transporter (2004). Visit the homes of director Romain Gary, Gabrielle Chanel and more…
Villefranche-sur-Mer – The Adventures of Captain Fabian (1950), An Affair to Remember (1957), Never Say Never Again (1983), The Jewel of the Nile (1985), Ronin (1998) and Killers (2010). A visit to the Chapel St Pierre, decorated by filmmaker Jean Cocteau
Grasse – GoldenEye (1995)
Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat
Saint-Paul de Vence – Moment to Moment (1966), OSS 117 – Mission to Tokyo (1966) and Big Kiss (2004)
Antibes – Let’s Not Get Angry (1966), Never Say Never Again (1983), The Big Blue (1988), Lolita (1998)
Cannes – French Kiss (1995), Ronin (1998)

So feel free to tweet me any suggestions for the trip and I’ll see if I can visit them.

I’ll be using the #cinemazur hashtag to pull it all together and try to get some suggestions from film fans and travellers about some of the best things to see and do in the French Riviera.

Tags Budget Traveller, Cote d'Azur, The French Riviera

Film Newspaper Twitter

One Skyfall screening is not enough

Post author By Jonathan Melville
Post date 3 Nov 2012
No Comments on One Skyfall screening is not enough

As my latest Edinburgh Evening News column isn’t on the website I thought I’d publish it here instead. I couldn’t resist writing about Bond as Skyfall takes the box office by storm.

It can’t have escaped anyone’s notice that there’s a new Bond film in town, the 23rd adventure for Britain’s favourite spy.

Skyfall ignores the lacklustre Quantum of Solace (2008) and returns the series to its bombastic best, sending 007 (Daniel Craig) on a mission that takes him around the globe and back in time.

I revelled in every second of the spy saga, with one of the series’ classiest casts – from Dame Judi Dench as the steely M to Javier Bardem as the seriously nasty Silva – doing justice to a script that gives its audience something fresh while respecting its past glories.

On the subject of the past, my own memories of seeing Bond at the cinema stretch back to 1987’s The Living Daylights. With no internet to build the hype, we were left with TV adverts and promotions on packets of Trio biscuits to whet our appetites.

While I still think Sean Connery was the best Bond, I’ve a soft spot for Timothy Dalton as a harder-edged 007 who questioned his motives long before Daniel Craig picked up his Walther PPK.

Somehow I missed 1989’s Licence To Kill on the big screen and it wasn’t until 1995 that I was able to head to the Dominion to watch Pierce Brosnan don his tuxedo in GoldenEye. Since then I’ve waited patiently for each new Bond film, sneaking a peek at the trailers and reading the occasional plot outline without wanting to find out too much.

For Skyfall I had to avoid Twitter, Facebook posts and TV specials for weeks, ensuring no spoilers leaked through. MI6 couldn’t have done a better job.

I have a feeling I’ll be heading back to see Skyfall again soon, one screening is not enough.

Full disclosure time: memories of The Living Daylights Trio promotion were recalled thanks to the fantastic new Bond book, ‘Catching Bullets‘, by Mark O’Connell – here’s my Good Reads review.

Tags Edinburgh Evening News, James Bond

Film Filming Online Twitter YouTube

Cinematic Scotland launched

Post author By Jonathan Melville
Post date 30 Jun 2012
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I’ve been busier than usual this month with the launch of a new film website, Cinematic Scotland, one that also includes elements of travel journalism.

The idea for the site has been around since late 2011 and finds me collaborating with ScottishCinemas.org’s Gordon Barr and BudgetTraveller.org’s Kash Bhattacharya as we cover film locations and cinema history in Scotland.

Our first two projects launched within a few days of each other. Firstly, we collaborated with the National Library of Scotland on a new map to accompany their Going to the Pictures exhibition. The free map allows visitors to take a trip around the centre of Edinburgh, spotting filming locations and cinemas, past and present, as they go. The map was also reprinted in the Edinburgh Evening News and can be downloaded as a PDF.

The second project tied into the latest Disney-Pixar film, Brave, which is set in the Scottish Highlands. Although the film is animated, the filmmakers did travel to various part of the country in 2006 and 2007 on research trips and I attempted to follow in their footsteps along with Edinburgh tour operator, Rabbie’s.

I headed to Inverness, Ullapool and the Isles of Lewis, Harris and Skye and the result was a series of blog posts, photos on Flickr and YouTube videos that described the tour, with a number of tweets allowing people to follow my progress. I also wrote about the trip on BudgetTraveller.org.

It’s not my first attempt at travel journalism, following some recent work for Guardian Travel, and hopefully I’ll get a chance to do more of the same soon.

It’s still early days for the site but we are working on more projects which we hope will bring Scotland’s cinematic connections to life.

Tags Brave, Cinematic Scotland, Locations, National Library of Scotland, Rabbies Small Tour Groups, Scotland

Interview Online Twitter Writing

Return to the TCM Classic Film Festival

Post author By Jonathan Melville
Post date 2 Apr 2012
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It was just under year ago that I wrote about my visit to the TCM Classic Film Festival, something of a mecca for classic film fans around the globe.

Guest appearances from Kirk Douglas, Warren Beatty, Peter O’Toole and Eva Marie Saint were just the icing on the cake of a four day event which saw some of the finest films ever made screened in the heart of Hollywood on LA’s most historic screens.

I enjoyed the Festival so much that I’ve decided to head back again next week, this time covering it for the esteemed classic film magazine, Cinema Retro, who have commissioned me to see as many films as possible in the alloted time.

This year the decisions are as difficult as they were in 2011, with screenings of Rio Bravo and The Pink Panther (introduced by Angie Dickinson and Robert Wagner respectively) clashing, while Casablanca is shown at the same time as the 50th Anniversary screening of Dr No.

You can see a list of the full line-up on the TCM website and there’s more from my interview with TCM host, Robert Osborne, on my classic film blog, Holyrood or Bust.

I’ll be tweeting about my trip and recording my thoughts for Cinema Retro while trying to arrange a few interviews along the way.

Tags Hollywood, Robert Osborne, TCM

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I want to tell you a Storify

Post author By Jonathan Melville
Post date 15 Jan 2012
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I ended 2011 the same way I started 2012, with a story. To be more precise, in December I had something to say about a year in the life of Screen Machine, Scotland’s mobile cinema that I’ve blogged about a few times here, and I needed a good way to tell it.

The answer was Storify.

For those who haven’t heard of Storify, it’s a tool that allows users to curate social media posts from numerous accounts, including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Vimeo. It’s free to set up and easy to use, so it seemed perfect for my needs.

With numerous stories in the press, video published, comments on Twitter and other mentions for Scotland’s most unusual cinema, I spent a few hours looking back through my work around the web and ended up with the aptly titled Screen Machine: 2011 year in review post.

The success of that post led me to pull together another one this month, detailing the online reaction to the repeat of a 1974 BBC Play for Today, The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil, on BBC ALBA.

While repeats of old TV shows don’t usually cause much of a stir, this one was quite rare, and I wrote about it on ReelScotland just ahead of the screening. When the number of page visits and tweets went through the roof, and I led a live Twitter commentary of the screening, I collected the most interesting responses into another Storify.

The result, Twitter reaction to The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil on BBC ALBA, has already notched up almost 250 views, while my embedding of the post on ReelScotland has itself had many hundreds of views.

I spend a lot of time on Twitter trying to sift through a mass of dross for the best information, and being able to present that to my own followers, or those of Screen Machine or ReelScotland, in a concise way is going to become more important. Hopefully I’ll have another opportunity to use Storify soon.

Tags BBC ALBA, Screen Machine, Social Media, Storify

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Screen Machine + classic films = success Galore

Post author By Jonathan Melville
Post date 4 Oct 2011
No Comments on Screen Machine + classic films = success Galore

Back in July I wrote about some of my work with Scotland’s mobile cinema, The Screen Machine, which sees me managing the Machine’s social media presence and PR. With the promotion of an upcoming tour of 1940s film, Whisky Galore, the cinema is back in the news again.

We may have over 2000 Facebook fans and a growing Twitter presence, but nothing beats the traditional press release to generate some buzz around a project, particularly one as exciting as Screen Machine taking Whisky Galore back to Barra, where it was filmed in 1948.

Within a day we had news items on the BBC, STV and Stornoway Gazette websites, plus news items in the Daily Mail and other print publications. I also started some discussion on Twitter, inviting film fans to suggest other famous Scottish films that should be taken to locations around the country.

The response was fast and good fun, with some interesting ideas coming from all over the Twittersphere.

The buzz has continued over subsequent weeks, with a new competition recently added to the main website, offering a tour of the Scotch Whisky Experience and DVDs of the film.

Most importantly ticket sales are strong and the response from attendees positive, hopefully ensuring more special screenings in the coming year.

Listen to the BBC Film Programme’s trip to see Screen Machine on Barra on the BBC iPlayer.

Tags Screen Machine, Social Media

Facebook Online Twitter Writing

Developing Screen Machine’s online presence

Post author By Jonathan Melville
Post date 18 Jul 2011
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Along with my work for Park Circus which I mentioned last week, I’m also working on a major multi-website project for the national leader for Scotland’s arts, screen and creative industries, Creative Scotland. One strand of this sees me heavily involved in developing the online presence of Scotland’s only mobile cinema, Screen Machine.

Screen Machine is an 80-seat digital cinema which has been taking the latest films to remote and rural areas of Scotland since the 1990s. In my role of Web Producer, I’m tasked with managing the development of the main website and associated social media, including a fast growing Facebook page and a popular Twitter feed.

I’m also effectively looking after the press office for the cinema, with a series of press releases written and distributed to Scottish media over the last few weeks tying into the social media work.

The first major release centred on the arrival at the Screen Machine of a Grey African Parrot and its owner at a screening in Brodick on the Isle of Arran. I became aware of the story via a post on the Facebook page and followed it up with a press release, which was picked up by STV’s Entertainment website, in turn spawning a Twitter hashtag, #aparrotinacinema, which asked people to suggest bird-themed movie titles and which propagated the story around the web.

The last fortnight has seen the cinema pushed even further around the web thanks to a visit to Bettyhill, a village on the north coast of Scotland, which the cinema last visited almost a decade ago, just before a cinema opened in Thurso (which has now closed). News of the trip was picked up by BBC Online, The Northern Times and The John O’Groat Journal.

BBC Radio Scotland’s Movie Cafe also featured the story and I was interviewed by Inverness-based radio station, Moray Firth Radio, both of whom have loyal audiences around Scotland.

At a time when we’re constantly told how important online is for getting the message out to customers, it’s important to remember that old-fashioned print media still has a major place in the lives of readers, particularly in remote communities.

Getting this story into The Northern Times could mean that we’ve reached more people in Sutherland than a tweet or a Facebook update and, although I’ll be doing a lot of work to build our online presence, I’ll also be ensuring we keep Scotland’s print media and radio stations well informed of Screen Machine’s progress for the forseeable future.

Tags Creative Scotland, Screen Machine