Well, the good news is: you can. With our Website In One Day class series, we’ve designed beautiful and fully functional websites for hundreds of happy businesses, both large and small. On your chosen day we will create your website together. You provide us with information required and we help you create a website.

Why?

I have been developing websites for 15+ years and I want to show you how easy it is to create your own website (Hint: there's no coding required). With COVID-19's impact on our daily lives, it is important as ever to build up your brand's online presence. Stop waiting for the right opportunity and have a website in one day.

Join award-winning producer and educator Steele Filipek for a series of presentations on the Japanese animation company Studio Ghibli and its co-founder and director, Hayao Miyazaki. 

Each hour-long family-friendly program will look at one of Miyazaki's classic feature-length films through the prism of Eastern and Western culture and philosophy. The presentations will additionally showcase rare and seldom-seen images from the NYPL Digital Collections and reading recommendations from our circulating collections

Castle in the Sky

Studio Ghibli's first film was a smash hit and an inspiration for steampunk lovers and animators, but there's more to it than just high-flying adventure. Join in as we'll discuss how European media inspired Hayao Miyazaki's film, and how this film has gone on to influence fantasy, science fiction, and even video games!

Learn how to make a music video or an animation.

A course aimed at Media production teachers or those wanting to deliver film education to children aged 10-18.

Learn how to script and plan a production for the classroom

Learn how to choose appropriate Moving image texts

An introduction to storyboarding and job roles within video production

Learn how to use your android or i pad device for filming

Learn simple stop frame animation techniques

User friendly tech advice so you feel confident sharing your digital film making skills in the class room.

This talk is part of a series of virtual masterclasses by film and media practitioners, seeking to enable scholars and professionals in the field to share their experience and grow new partnerships. The series forms part of a strand within the newly established Creative Industries Research and Innovation Network (CIRIN) at Oxford Brookes University, which responds to the need for increased attention to the role of the creative industries in social, political and economic terms.

I am Greta, the story of teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg, is told through compelling, never-before-seen footage in this intimate documentary from Swedish director Nathan Grossman. Starting with her one-person school strike for climate action outside the Swedish Parliament, Grossman follows Greta - a shy schoolgirl with Asperger’s – in her rise to prominence, and her galvanizing global impact as she sparks school strikes around the world. The film culminates with her astonishing wind powered voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to speak at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York City.

In another outstanding OU/BBC co-production, film crews followed climate change activist Greta Thunberg as she took a year off school to embark upon a mission that would take her across the globe to demand world leaders meet their promises to try and limit global warming. With unique access, this series follows Greta over this extraordinary year in which she comes of age as she takes her fight against climate change to a global stage. But when Covid-19 brings life to a standstill Greta is faced with an even bigger challenge – to convince a world reeling from one crisis finally to face another.

To celebrate the broadcast of this fascinating documentary, we are offering unique opportunity to explore behind the scenes and hear from both the academics involved with the production and the BBC production team.

Our new LGBT+ Film Club will be meeting on the first Thursday of every month. Running similarly to a book club, members will watch films or tv series during the month, then meet to discuss them. 

The first meeting will explore various different films and tv, and will include watching some trailers, and discussing what you've already seen.

While conducting research on facial recognition technologies at the M.I.T. Media Lab, Joy Buolamwini, made the startling discovery that some algorithms could not detect dark-skinned faces or classify women with accuracy. This led to the harrowing realization that the very machine-learning algorithms intended to avoid prejudice are only as unbiased as the humans and historical data programming them. (watch trailer below)

Coded Bias follows Joy, along with data scientists, mathematicians, and watchdog groups from all over the world, as they fight to expose the discrimination within algorithms in employment, banking, insurance, dating, policing and social media.

Coded Bias documents the dramatic journey that follows, as Buolamwini goes public with her findings and creates a movement for accountability, including testifying before the US Congress to push for the first-ever legislation governing facial recognition in the United States and starting the Algorithmic Justice League.

We're joined by two award winning filmmakers to talk about the various paths you can take to get into the film industry 

If you've ever wondered about how to break into the film industry then this is your chance to ask your questions to the professionals

Sophie Pavelle

Sophie is a zoologist and science communicator. She is Communications Coordinator for Beaver Trust, as well as a podcast host, public speaker and freelance writer for publications like BBC Wildlife.

Sophie is currently writing her first book Forget Me Not for Bloomsbury Publishing, about British wildlife and climate change - released in June 2022.

Nina Constable

Nina is an award-winning conservation filmmaker. 

Her films have screened in festivals globally and her work has featured in a number of broadcasts including BBC Springwatch, BBC Countryfile, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, CNN, The Guardian Online & WWF UK and her photography has featured in BBC Wildlife Magazine, WWF Action Magazine, BBC News Online, ITV News online and in a number of other publications. 

Dedicated to capturing and exploring the world we live in Nina believes in the power of film and photography to educate and inspire and, ultimately, to protect.

Are you looking to distribute your independent feature film?

In this talk with Dean Fisher we'll discuss best practices and up to date strategies to distribute your indie feature film including:

Self distribution - What should filmmakers be prepared for when self-distributing their films for the first time? What are the common pitfalls and how to avoid them?

Building an audience - How do you build an audience for your film whether it's through social media, PR or bloggers?

Online distribution - What platforms should you pick and should you use aggregators? How do you maximise your viewership and revenue from online distribution?

Film Festival Run - How do you get the most of your festival run and what can they achieve? Where and where is it possible to find sales or distributors during festivals? 

Finally how to think outside the box and make up for the lack of marketing budget with creative marketing techniques

Join award-winning producer and educator Steele Filipek for a series of presentations on the Japanese animation company Studio Ghibli and its co-founder and director, Hayao Miyazaki. 

Each hour-long family-friendly program will look at one of Miyazaki's classic feature-length films through the prism of Eastern and Western culture and philosophy. The presentations will additionally showcase rare and seldom-seen images from the NYPL Digital Collections and reading recommendations from our circulating collections

My Neighbor Totoro

This beloved classic of children's cinema put Miyazaki on the global map. Learn how he used his own childhood in the Japanese countryside to help craft this whimsical tale in such a way that it would become a phenomenon.

This conference examines how LGBTQ representation has changed through time, continues to evolve in the present, and what role it might play in the future. It draws on recent developments in queer representation in order to trace how LGBTQ media comments on both the current state of queer rights, as well as the possibility of queer futurity. The conference seeks to represent a multiplicity of queer experiences, spanning divergent historical and geographical areas of representation, as well as the plurality of ideas of what it means to identify as queer today, and what this identification might look like in the future. With our inclusive focus on transmedia representations of queerness, we aim to examine narratives of sex, identity, politics, family and gender across a broad range of contexts, mediums and artforms. We ask how queer representation has changed, what versions of queerness we remember today, and how that can manifest in our hopes or fears for the future. Through investigating which narratives of queerness persist, and how representational patterns have evolved, we hope we may learn about creative spaces in which queerness can thrive.

Divergent Thinking will be delivering a free online vlogging masterclass that is hosted by Media Trust, in partnership with Jack Petchey Foundation, the Evening Standard and Youtube.

Our Vlogging Masterclass is part of the Vlogstar Challenge! 

The Vlogstar Challenge is a unique competition and training initiative run by Media Trust and the Jack Petchey Foundation, in partnership with YouTube and the Evening Standard that equips young people with the relevant skills for a modern communications age. It aims to harness the passion and creativity of young people and provide them with the technical and communications skills they need to create content, develop their voice and share their passions with new audiences.

From the session you will:

• Understand the codes and conventions of vlogs;

• Learn filming fundamentals for smartphones;

• Learn edit basics on your smartphone.

The workshop will begin by engaging with a wide variety of different vlog types, identifying effective ways to tell a story and engage your audience. This will be followed by filming fundamentals, edit basics and a series of challenges.

Ryan Green and Gabo Arora will discuss the future of the video game medium. For over 40 years, the presiding cultural narrative is that video games are simply a means to escape the grind of life through play. Often they are derided as a mechanism to waste time, or a hobby best left to childhood. Ryan will recount how his own journey as a game designer led him to discover the transformative power of the video game medium through the creation of a videogame to memorialize his dying son. Through choosing to encode the echo of his son’s life in videogame form, Ryan and his collaborators discovered that videogames can convey players into sacred spaces; spaces where players can mourn, find catharsis, examine deeply held convictions, and emerge transformed through their willingness to share in the suffering of others.

Ryan is a digital interactive artist, programmer, and video game designer currently focused on narrative VR, serious, and accessible games. The first decade of his career was spent as a UI/UX designer, programmer, and software architect for Davita Healthcare, a Fortune 500 company. Ryan currently serves as a Creative Director and Head of Narrative for Numinous Games, a studio he co-founded in 2012. 

Numinous Games first title, That Dragon, Cancer, was created as a poetic memorial to Ryan and his wife Amy's third son Joel, and Joel's fight against terminal brain cancer. That Dragon, Cancer went on to receive broad critical praise, winning a BAFTA award in 2017 for innovation as well as a 2016 Peabody / Facebook Futures of Media award.

Join award-winning producer and educator Steele Filipek for a series of presentations on the Japanese animation company Studio Ghibli and its co-founder and director, Hayao Miyazaki. 

Each hour-long family-friendly program will look at one of Miyazaki's classic feature-length films through the prism of Eastern and Western culture and philosophy. The presentations will additionally showcase rare and seldom-seen images from the NYPL Digital Collections and reading recommendations from our circulating collections

Kiki's Delivery Service

A young witch goes on a yearlong quest to hone her skills and find her place in a coming of age story that has wowed audiences young and old for over three decades. Listen in as we detail how Miyazaki explores adolescence, femininity, and maintaining passion for life.

In March 2021 Media Trust and CharityComms launched the Covid Comms survey to understand the communications challenges charities are currently facing one year on from the Covid-19 crisis. Our results highlighted that the biggest comms challenge for charities right now is producing digital content including films, vlogs and infographics (53%).

To address this, Media Trust will be running training, and developing resources, on content creation over the rest of the year, starting with this masterclass delivered by our industry partner Facebook. 

The masterclass

On Wednesday 19th May, we will be running a free masterclass on leveraging the creative opportunities of mobile-first video (short & vertical) across scripting, capturing and packaging.

Rich Kivell, Creative Strategist at Facebook, will explore the key aspects to consider when it comes to mobile-first video. He will share his wealth of experience in creating engaging content that resonates with audiences and drives action, helping you to create compelling video for your charity.

Hosted by the School of Film, Media and Communication at the University of Portsmouth.

Join University of Portsmouth authors, Dr Alison Habens and Dr Calum Kerr, in a creative writing workshop inspired by the stories of Stephen King. 

Study his popular writing tips, hear key snippets from his famous texts, and try a few of our fun and frightening writing prompts to pen some thrilling lines of your own. 

The interactive session will include techniques for plotting, characterization, dialogue and imagery; based on samples from Carrie, Pet Sematary, Misery, Cujo and Skeleton Crew.

Disney’s recent princess films Moana (2016), Frozen (2013), and Frozen 2 (2019) cast the primary antagonist as climate change. These films solve their respective climate issues through love for oneself, one’s family, and the environment. Grounding our analysis in ecocriticism in children's literature, Disney’s marketing of the films, and their material culture, we argue that these new princess films can offer young viewers an introduction to issues of global warming, but do not wholeheartedly follow through on their ecocritical promise.

Sara Austin is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Miami University in Ohio. Her interest in race, gender, and childhood identity has yielded articles in Transformative Works and Cultures, The Lion and the Unicorn, The Looking Glass: New Perspectives in Children’s Literature, and The Journal of Graphic Novels & Comics. Her current research explores monstrosity as a cultural metaphor for child identity.

Emily Midkiff teaches children’s literature, YA literature, and reading instruction at the University of North Dakota. Her research interests include children’s and YA media, speculative fiction, and visual storytelling. In her forthcoming book about science fiction for young children, she presents the results of her interdisciplinary studies on the genre and the young people who read it.

Thinking about making a movie, show, or web series? Great! We wanna watch it.

But first, how are you going to pitch it to the people who will help get it off the ground?

We've got answers!

Our Art of the Pitch workshop is about connecting what you really want to do with your career ー that big, hairy, audacious goal ー and how you have to be prepared to pitch to different audiences along the way.

Seed&Spark’s Bri Castellini will expand on the pitching section of our Crowdfunding to Build Independence workshop to help you articulate to every potential audience what makes you and your project special, whether you have 280 characters or a full 30 minute oral presentation. By the end, you’ll be a pro at verbalizing what makes your idea stand out and why you’re telling this story.

Join award-winning producer and educator Steele Filipek for a series of presentations on the Japanese animation company Studio Ghibli and its co-founder and director, Hayao Miyazaki. 

Each hour-long family-friendly program will look at one of Miyazaki's classic feature-length films through the prism of Eastern and Western culture and philosophy. The presentations will additionally showcase rare and seldom-seen images from the NYPL Digital Collections and reading recommendations from our circulating collections

Howl's Moving Castle

A young hatter, a prima donna wizard, a demon in a fireplace, mysterious curse: all of these and more join to create the narrative of one of Miyazaki's most complex films. Multiple interpretations exist, so sign up if you'd like to hear how Miyazaki uses unorthodox structure to make commentary magic and the power of dreams.

In this presentation, Anamarija Horvat introduces her new book Screening Queer Memory: LGBTQ Pasts in Contemporary Film and Television (Bloomsbury, 2021) to talk about the broader significance of film and television for the formation of queer memory. Screening Queer Memory analyses how contemporary British and American film and television have commented on the specificity of queer memory -- how they have reflected aspects of its construction, as well as participated in its creation. Horvat poses several central questions: How are the pasts of LGBTQ people and communities visualised and commemorated on screen? How do these representations comment on the influence of film and television on the construction of queer memory? How do they present the passage of memory from one generation of LGBTQ people to another? Which narratives of the queer past, particularly of the activist past, are being commemorated, and which obscured? In doing so, Horvat adds to an under-examined area of queer media research which has privileged concepts of nostalgia, history, temporality and the archive over memory, therein making a significant contribution to our understanding of the relationship between LGBTQ memory and how it is represented on and shaped by film and television.