Monday, July 11, 2011

Clare Stewart created Head of Exhibition, BFI

The BFI announces the appointment of Clare Stewart to the newly created role of Head of Exhibition, BFI. Reporting directly into Heather Stewart, Creative Director BFI, Clare’s new position brings all of the BFI’s film exhibition activity together and will be responsible for the cultural and commercial performance of BFI Southbank, BFI Festivals including the BFI London Film Festival, and BFI IMAX. 
 
Starting late August 2011, Clare will lead the delivery of a dynamic world class programme of British and international cinema that is designed and contextualised to attract the broadest and most diverse audience. Outgoing Artistic Director for the BFI London Film Festival Sandra Hebron will continue to lead the 55th BFI LFF until it closes at the end of October 2011.
 
Clare, whose career in programming spans sixteen years, joins the BFI from her position as Festival Director of Sydney Film Festival, a role she held for five years. Clare introduced and built the reputation of the festival’s Official Competition, successfully increased audiences, built box office takings to an all-time high, attracted new funding and sponsorship deals and curated new experiential strands. Clare’s final Sydney Film Festival was June 8-19 2011. In addition to critically and commercially successful festivals, Clare brings venue experience to the task having previously served as the inaugural Head of Film Programs at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne.
 
Clare Stewart said “I am thrilled to be joining the BFI at this significant moment in the organisation’s history and to be working with Creative Director Heather Stewart to forge the future strategy for the flagship BFI Southbank venues and leading film festivals. This new position provides the opportunity to align the expertise of BFI’s team of programmers and producers with the objective of further enhancing the cultural and business impact of the BFI’s diverse screening programmes.”
 
Heather Stewart, Creative Director BFI said “This new role is a great opportunity for the BFI to bring together our exhibition activities and think about how we reach audiences for both historical and contemporary filmmaking in our festivals and all year round.  I’m confident that Clare can meet the challenges ahead with flair and imagination. Clare has an impressive track record, most recently leading the Sydney Film Festival from strength to strength, and proven that she has both the creative and commercial expertise this role needs.’
 
Clare Stewart biography
Clare Stewart’s sixteen year programming career has encompassed leadership roles as Festival Director, Sydney Film Festival (2006-2011) and the inaugural Head of Film Programs at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne (2002-2006) as well as various roles at the Australian Film Institute (1996-2001), including Exhibition Manager, and programmer and Committee Member of the Melbourne Cinémathèque (1995-2002)
 
During Clare’s time as Festival Director, SFF introduced the Official Competition (2008) for films that are ‘courageous, audacious and cutting-edge’, offering the richest cash prize for film in Australia ($60,000 AUD) and the FOXTEL Australian Documentary Prize (2009). In 2009 the festival program was re-scaled by 33% in scope and duration (from 19 days to 12 days, 180 features to 120 features) and re-branded. Clare introduced the ‘pathways’ concept designed to make the selection more navigable and accessible for audiences with six sections: Take Me on a Journey, Fire Me Up, Love Me, Push Me to the Edge, Make Me Laugh and Freak Me Out. 31% of the festival’s audience started attending the festival for the first time in 2009 and 2010 following this restructure and rebranding of the program. The 2010 edition achieved a 15% increase in box office, a 20% increase in overall attendance year-on-year, and substantial growth in younger audiences and single session purchasing. NSW State Government funding has substantially increased during her directorship.
 
Clare has served on juries at the Hong Kong, Dubai, Rio and Atlantic film festival and the Hollywood World Cinema Awards. She has presented on panels at Toronto International Film Festival, IFP (New York), Cinemart (Rotterdam), Hong Kong International Film Festival and Festival do Rio.
 
Previously Clare was the inaugural Head of Film Programs at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) where she was responsible for the creative direction of ACMI Cinemas, managing ACMI’s festival and event partnerships and corporate events business.  She was also the Australian producer of Resfest and Creative Director of ARTV, a joint commissioning project between ACMI and SBSi.
 
Prior to her role at ACMI, Clare programmed for the Australian Film Institute for five years and the Melbourne Cinémathèque for seven years. She curated ‘Peepshow’, a successful spotlight program at the 2000 Melbourne and Brisbane International Film Festivals and ‘Captured’ at the 1999 Melbourne International Film Festival. In 1999 Clare received the Queens Trust for Young Australians Award for expandingscreen, a project that investigated the impact of new technologies on the exhibition of the moving image.
 
Clare is co-editor, with Philippa Hawker, of the publication Leslie Cheung and the establishing editor of Cteq, a journal dedicated to film criticism, now published as part of online journal Senses of Cinema. She contributed to Filmbuffs Forecast on 3RRR for 3 years which included a stint as anchor and also held regular review slots on Melbourne radio stations 774 ABC and 3AK. She also lectured in Cinema Studies at RMIT in Melbourne.

Our Travel a new type of travel information system

Road and rail users will be able to share information about their journey and update each other about delays thanks to a £1.6m research project at Lancaster University. 

Our Travel is a new type of travel information system based on social networking and direct information from transport workers. The aim is to reduce congestion and improve the transport system as users find more efficient ways to travel.

It will be available as an app for mobile devices like iPhones, providing up-to-the-minute information so people can decide how and when they will travel.

Professor Nigel Davies from the School of Computing and Communications at the Universty's InfoLab21 said: “The key is that this is information from other travellers or workers repairing the roads.  There is no third party involvement so it’s very direct and from a trusted source.

“Our Travel enables people to create a community of people who share the same journey and who can update each other about, say, a tree on the route or roadworks. You can check your mobile and find out that someone else who has just done your trip into work is reporting flooding under the bridge, or the wrong leaves on the track.”
Disruption caused by accidents and emergencies could also become a thing of the past as information is provided to travellers immediately, allowing them to avoid incidents and cut down on delays.

Our Travel can also be used to inform people of roadworks, winter gritting, and crews carrying out road markings.  Once the work is scheduled on the Our Travel system, it informs relevant users of the potential impact on their journeys and enables users to give feedback to companies on how the work has affected them.

Professor Davies said: “At the moment, local news updates or radio travel news will only give you a general overview and will not be specific about your route. Even motorway signs warning of delays can be out-of-date by the time you drive past.”

Our Travel is part funded by the Technology Strategy Board, and developed and trialled by Lancaster University in collaboration with the Morecambe company In Touch Ltd and Carillion plc.

Research at the School of Computing and Communications is recognized for its exceptional quality and international reputation. The UK Research Assessment Exercise 2008 found that 100% of its research was of international standing, and 80% was rated as world leading or internationally excellent. An International Review of UK Computer Science cited the School as one of only a handful of centres undertaking "leading edge systems research".

Stop gambling on online video advertising

Ad industry surveys are all revealing a shift from TV to online video ads, but businesses who give up their traditional TV spots in favour of the new online media are taking a risky gamble with their adspend, unless they look before they leap.

This dire warning comes from Anthony Rushton, Emmy-award winning online video advertising specialist and co-founder of Telemetry, the “one-of-a-kind” company which audits online video advertising.

Mr Rushton said that many advertisers were being seduced away from traditional TV by the oft-reported across-the-board superior performance of online video ads.

“Research has shown, for example, that online video ads have 65% general recall, compared to 46% for TV ads; likewise online video ads offer a brand recall level of 50%, compared to 28% for TV, and so on,” said Mr Rushton.
Mr Rushton said he was not disputing the fact that online video advertising was, in the majority of cases, a worthy investment, but suggested that advertisers and their agencies needed to take precautions before diverting hefty portions of their budgets into cyberspace.

“What it boils down to is simply the fact that if you make the leap from TV to online advertising you need reliable information from an independent data source on how the campaign is performing – in other words, are you getting as good a ROI as you did with the TV advertising,” said Mr Rushton.

Telemetry – a British company with an international client base (including the world’s biggest advertiser, Reckitt Benckiser) – is revolutionizing the online video ad sector by providing a full service: preparing, delivering and independently verifying online video advertising campaigns.

“Our reporting tool, Telemetry Gateway, enables advertisers and their agencies to analyse the real time fiscal, positional and executional ramifications of international online video buys,” he said.

“No-one should risk taking the leap from TV to online without taking a dose of Telemetry truth serum to be assured of total transparency in ad performance data.”