Stills, 23 Cockburn St, Edinburgh
Saturday 30th August 2008, 11am - 6pm

What does an artist need to produce strong stage photography? The latest expensive camera equipment? Additional light-sources? Assistants? Actors? Set designers? No.... just your eye, a little intuition and any camera will do the rest.

Following the screening of SPAM the Musical at the Edinburgh Art Festival, this workshop will show you how to create your very own tableau vivant using a fine selection of spam emails as the starting point.

The workshop will be hosted by one of the anonymous artists behind SPAM the Musical, who has worked with no-budget staged photography for 15 years. All equipment will be provided but you are welcome to use your own camera or bring your own spam email.

This workshop is now fully booked.

Get your sticky fingers on the Edinburgh Art Festival
5th August to 5th September 2009

Explore the artworks using our interactive map. Plan your visit to the Edinburgh Art Festival and enjoy all that there is to see and do with your family and friends.

Be sure to pick up a pack of free stickers from Stills so you can try your hand at curating an exhibition, just download the StickerCurator instruction sheet below.

Hands up... and get ready to stick 'em!

45 Marchmont Crescent, Edinburgh, EH9 1 HF
August 2008 to March 2009

New Media Scotland were pleased to host the artwork 'ink' by ~in the fields. Work began retro-fitting the piece during the Edinburgh Art Festival with the artists being the inaugural users of our new Project Space in Marchmont. We were thrilled to be able to present this dazzling new installation.

An online photo management and sharing application.

Here's our Alt-w Flickr photostream...
www.flickr.com/alt-w

www.e-flux.com/projects/library
1st August to 9th November 2008

With digital technology and camera phones putting the realms of movie making within everyone's grasp, the pocket movie has come of age. These are short films, often less than a minute in length shot on mobile devices. The results are easy to share, easy to cause a storm and could even end up on the news.

Pocket movies are intimate and engaging, and because the technology can go anywhere you get licence to roam free and take risks. The picture quality is often very rough and ready, but work within your equipment’s capacity and if you’ve got a good idea, you’ll hook your audience and pack a punch.

Kicking off during the Edinburgh Arts Festival, Stills gallery has undergone a radical transformation. An open reference library with an eclectic array of over 7,700 books from the personal collection of the prolific artist, writer and political agitator, Martha Rosler will fill the space. Stills will be choosing a selection of titles from her book collection to act as inspiration for your pocket movies. It could be a volume on photography, political science or perhaps a comic book. The library is a repository of knowledge and ideas, it settles, breathes and lives again as new readers arrive, new discussions begin and in our case movie moments are made. Drop by the library and see what they have chosen for you.

Stills, 23 Cockburn St, Edinburgh

How to make your movie...

1. Get an idea and get filming

The ability to film on your feet means that the traditional process of movie-making has been turned on its head. The pocket movie making motto is "shoot first, ask questions later". You don't need to create the classic movie storyboard or even organise any aspect of the filming beforehand. Just look for a little inspiration, nail the idea in your head and get out fliming. Get plenty of footage. You can get to grips with what you’ve got in the edit. That's how a pocket movie is constructed. Now upload the raw footage.

2. Editing

You can edit your pocket movie on your computer using Windows Movie Maker, iMovie and Open Movie Editor, or you may have software on your mobile phone.

To keep the movie under a minute in length, look at your average shot length for each take, edit them so they are around five seconds in length unless of course it’s a single take movie. Mix and match your takes, get a rough cut together.

Keep your transitions simple, often the small size of screen renders them redundant. Titles and credits add polish, but what really makes a pocket movie sparkle is good sound. Make the most of the pre-loaded sound effects in your editing software, and don’t be afraid to add some music.

3. Distribution

The distribution of the final movie is completely in the hands of it’s creator. Use Bluetooth to send it between your friend’s mobiles, attach it to a MMS message, burn a DVD hard copy, fire off a good ol’ email, upload it onto the plethora of free online video sharing platforms such as YouTube or embed them in social networking applications such as FunWall on Facebook. Just check the file types required, and optimise the quality of your movie for your chosen platform in your editing software when you come to export.

4. Let us know how you got on