The Fleapit Premieres at Watershed

The Fleapit premiered at The Cary Grant Comes Home For the Weekend Festival at Watershed on 11th October 2014 – its first outing with the new marquee, lights and curtains in full working order – hooray!

The tiny cinema screened the shortlisted entries from the Cary Grant Film Challenge, short documentaries about Cary Grant’s Bristol, together with trailers for two of his most memorable performances in North by Northwest and Arsenic and Old Lace which were later projected on the much bigger screen at the Bristol Hippodrome as part of the festival gala.

If you are interested in programming something on The Fleapit then do get in touch to discuss possibilities.

Coming Soon to a Fleapit Near You: Cary Grant Comes Home For The Weekend

The Fleapit marquee is coming along nicely – getting ready for showing some Cary Grant related material in the run up to the Cary Grant Comes Home For the Weekend Festival.

Decorating the marquee and signage.

You get to play projectionist: you are invited to get the cinema ready by dimming the lights, opening the curtains and queuing the films, which include a selection of vintage 1950s Pearl & Dean advertising (thanks to Peter Seabrook-Harris for permissions), trailers for Arsenic and Old Lace and North by Northwest (the festival gala double bill) and a film about Archie Leach’s Pastry Fork.

Testing back-lighting by inserting iPad inside!

The next stage is for Tarim to fit LED lights to the marquee and auditorium, complete the electronics, give the auditorium one final coat of paint and Bob’s your Auntie’s live-in lover. I can’t wait to see the marquee in situ on the rest of the cinema!

Close up

The Fleapit at DepicT! Reception at Encounters 2013

The Fleapit prototype was showcased at Encounters 2013 International Short Film and Animation Festival featuring the best of DepicT! 90-second films and the 0117 Film Challenge.

Here are some pictures of delegates enjoying the installation at the DepicT! reception:

The lovely Sam Groves of Flatpack Film Festival controlling the cinema:

The Fleapit being papped:

Lego spectators:

Tarim being tinkering behind the scenes:

The Arduino circuitry innards:

Pop-up Fleapit at Encounters 2013

The Pop-up Fleapit was an interactive installation that was commissioned as part of Encounters Short Film and Animation Festival 2013. Using the same mechanism as The Fleapit (the miniature cinema version), passersby were encouraged to scan a QR code to gain access to controlling the cinema where they could open and close the curtains and play at being projectionist, cueing up movies on the screen. Here’s a little video of the Pop-up Fleapit in action at the Parlour Showrooms on Park Street as part of the Encounters Film Festival fringe events:

Tiny Fleapit nearing completion

The tiny Fleapit is due to be revealed shortly.  Once Tarim has finished working on the curtain mechanism we can put the finishing touches on it and display it in Encounters reception at Watershed.  We’ll let you know when it’s live. Here are some photos of work in progress to whet your appetite, including me adding the fringe to the curtains, flocking the beautifully hand-carved seats (made by Simon Dorgan at Urbi et Orbi), the view through the projection booth windows and a mock up of what the curtains will look like once they’re hung.

I couldn’t resist taking a shot of this miniature popcorn stand and little tubs of popcorn with my fingers in shot to show the actual scale.

Setting up at the Parlour Showrooms

Tarim and I were invited to install a giant version of The Fleapit in the Parlour Showrooms as part of Encounters Short Film and Animation Festival’s fringe events this year.  Here are some photos of us setting up with fringe events co-ordinator, Steve Presence and Bert and Joe from Know Alternative.

There’s something rather lovely about these curtains popping up in a shop window – gives a whole new meaning to window shopping.  Tarim suggested calling it Window Screen and we also had Window Jacker as a suggested title, but we decided to stick with Pop-up Fleapit as the film programme and interaction is essentially the same as the tiny version.

Up-scaling the installation to this size has been a huge learning curve, particularly in terms of the physics of back-projection, issues around scanning the QR codes in daylight and the fact that Know Alternative were tasked with setting up Encounters’ Swiss Chalet behind the screen which meant we didn’t have as long a run as we’d like.  But it’s whetted my appetite for further pop-up cinema events in shop windows so watch this space, or get in touch if you have any ideas.

I’m editing a short video documentation of the interactive curtains in action, which I’ll post here soon.

Ladies bloomers cinema curtains

Whilst making the “ladies bloomers” style cinema curtains I strung them across my mum’s kitchen. As you may already know, I’m addicted to cinema curtains.  I don’t know what the attraction is and have ruminated on it a bit here, but I just might have to find space for them at home…

Fleapit update

We are making progress with the digital fleapit with the first stage of the box that will become the cinema now completed by Simon Dorgan of Urbi et Orbi.

Now Tarim is working on the innards and I will soon be sewing the curtains. All very exciting!

Fleapit at Encounters

We’re very excited that the Digital Fleapit has been invited to exhibit at Encounters Short Film and Animation Festival in September alongside other pervasive media screen-based projects – including another project I’m involved in with Tim Kindberg and Hazel Grian, the Nth Screen. The miniature cinema will be programmed with suitably tiny movies – a range of the best 90-second DepicT! entries over the last few years, together with 3-minute films from this year’s 0117 Film Challenge.

Cardboard fleapit

Tarim revealed the cardboard prototype today:

As per Projection Hero the flea pit will situate the spectator in the role of the projectionist, controlling the cinema, hence the little projection booth windows (see close up through one of the windows below). I’m loving the arcade game look. We’ve added a back board which will function as a marquee where we can advertise what’s being programmed, as per the aesthetic of these beautiful cinema hoardings.

The key difference from Projection Hero is the size – we’re designing this one to be super portable, to fit in the suitcase pictured below. Next step is another slightly smaller cardboard prototype, drawing up the dimensions for the box and getting Urbi et Orbi to fashion the shell of the box so Tarim can get down to the nitty gritty of fitting the mechanism and circuitry and I can start sewing the curtains…