HMS Vernon – Call for Ex-Service Personnel

Southsea based film and media company Compulsive Productions are working with St. Johns Catholic School on a photography project as part of the 10th anniversary of the opening of Gunwharf Quays that explores HMS Vernon’s history during the Second World War. Before Gunwharf Quays was built the area was HMS Vernon, which operated as a base for work on torpedoes and mines and during WWII was heavily bombed yet also visited by Winston Churchill on two occasions.

As part of the project the Year 6 pupils would like to interview ex-service personnel who served at HMS Vernon during the war years and discover and document real people’s stories and social history be that during the important event’s in the base’s history or just the day to day activities. These stories will then be used for inspiration in creative writing and also in the searching through of the city’s photographic archive identifying views of the base. The pupils will then be taught the principles of photography and the use of b&w 35mm film so they can then go to Gunwharf and recreate the photos with the remaining buildings, this time with shoppers instead of naval staff. All work then then go in to an exhibition located at Gunwharf on the 4th December.

If you know of anyone who served at HMS Vernon who might like to be interviewed by the pupils please get in contact! Please call 07752 007101 or email paul@compulsiveproductions.com.

One Man Party at LJRs

One Man Party (aka Steve from Soulwax) DJed at Little Johnny Russells last month and LJRs got in myself and Lisa as part of Compulsive Productions to film a little edit and take some film photography. As expected, Steve killed it and it was an amazing night. The edit and a couple of photos are below and you can see more photos over at Forever Circling.

Chichester Harbour Conservancy

Local community film and media production company Compulsive Productions recently worked on two films for Chichester Harbour Conservancy, highlighting why Chichester Harbour is so special and also how they work to keep it special. Chichester Harbour meets Langstone Harbour at Langstone (north of Hayling Island) and is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty as well as a Site of Special Scientific Interest. The harbour itself is a wide variety of different habitats and is surrounded by some beautiful villages (Emsworth, Dell Quay, Bosham, etc) and is a definite geographical gem, right on our doorstep.

You can watch the first film ‘Why So Special?’ below and watch ‘Working To Keep it Special’ and find out more over at the Conservancy website. You can find out more about Compulsive Productions on their website.

Have You Made a Short Film?

Local film production company Compulsive Productions are working with Oak Grove College in Worthing for their first Community Film Festival. The film festival is open for submissions up until 1st August, to submit your short film (no longer than 10 minutes) please download, print and fill out the submission form (PDF) and then post it to Compulsive Productions with your film (MiniDV, DVD or AVI/MOV).

To see the short films already submitted to the festival please visit the festival Vimeo page (many more submissions to be added in the next few days or so).

The festival awards and screening evening will be held at 7pm on the 21st October 2010 at The Dome Cinema in Worthing.

For more information please email Compulsive Productions or write to Compulsive Productions, Making Space, 2 Bishopstoke Road, Leigh Park, Havant, Hampshire, PO9 5BN.

Happy Cloud by Worthing Youth Media

Love Albert Road Day – 2008

We should have posted up this video from last year’s Love Albert Road Day (filmed and edited by Lisa Gomer) before this year’s but didn’t manage to get round to it, sorry Lisa! It’s well worth a watch.

PRIMARY – Extended & Improved

We have some great news about our PRIMARY phonography exhibition (find out all the details here) that we can now announce:

- The deadline for submissions has now been extended to Sunday 4th March. We have had some incredible submissions but want to set aside more time to make the exhibition something really special.

- The competition is now open to up to 10 submissions from each individual. With the ability to capture many photos on your phone over the next two months we we want you to not feel restricted to just three. The same rules apply about the photos conforming to compositions using the primary colours though. If you have already submitted feel free to send more photos over as and when you please.

- The exhibition will be hosted by Albert Road’s own Bonzo Studio who are also partnering up with us in the creation of the exhibition space. More news on this soon!

- Finally, we will be running a competition as part of the exhibition where the best three photos submitted will win some incredible prizes. We will be announcing the prizes available very soon but got to say, these will be the best prize haul we have ever offered.

- We will be putting together a poster for the exhibition that will be on sale on the opening night. The poster will feature some of the best submissions and all profits from the sales will go to a local charity (details to follow soon). Due to this we need to say that any photos submitted to PRIMARY will involve you giving us permission to use them for commercial purposes, if you do not want your photo used in this way simply let us know via email.

Well, that is it for now! We really hope to drum up as much coverage locally for PRIMARY in the next couple of months so if you could Facebook/Tweet/+1 about the exhibition we would really appreciate it. We would love this exhibition to be a real reflection of the whole population of Portsmouth with everyone taking part and feeling involved.

It’s going to be a Strong Movember – Closed at £725

Righto chaps, it’s time to clean shave your boat race and get that mighty moustache on the grow in support of Movember for The Prostate Cancer Charity and the Institute of Cancer Research. For 30 days of November you can help support and raise awareness through selflessly parading your top lip for charity.

You can sign up yourself, as I’m sure many of you already have, or you can join the Strong Island team and seek out sponsorship as a team. Through the Strong Island Movember page you can ask people to join the group, make donations, upload photos and post updates via the MoSpace page, Facebook and Twitter.

Head over to www.mobro.co/StrongIsland if you would like to get involved and grow a Strong Moustache to help raise awareness, or simply head over to www.uk.movember.com and sign up to personally raise money.

The funds raised in the UK support the number one and two male specific cancers – prostate and testicular cancer. The funds raised are directed to programmes run directly by Movember and our men’s health partners, The Prostate Cancer Charity and the Institute of Cancer Research. Together, these channels work together to ensure that Movember funds are supporting a broad range of innovative, world-class programmes in line with our strategic goals in the areas of awareness and education, survivorship and research.

Poster: Tristan Savage