Where to Pitch Your Idea (and Avoid the Commissioners)

Pitching is a bitch. Especially when you are just starting out. There seem to be so many different channels, all of them with closed doors.

But do you actually need to pitch your idea to a TV channel? No. It depends on your motives for pitching. You might think that the only reason to pitch your ideas is to sell them, but depending where you are in your career, there may be different reasons for pitching, and cleverer ways of pitching. (Photo by heiwa4126)

Books That Make You Dumb

Books That Make You Dumb is a chart that uses information collected about the SAT scores, (designed to measure critical thinking abilities), of US college students and superimposed the favourite books of the students at various universities. Colleges with a lower average SAT scores  correlated with students who had Fahrenheit 451 and The Color Purple [...]

The Future Lab

Mindfood has an interesting article about Martin Raymond and Chris Sanderson who run brand agency The Future Laboratory. They have 40 journalists reporting back on their observations on cultural developments from around the world. Once they’ve sent in their reports, The Future Lab gathers a multi-disciplinary team of experts – such as anthropologists, scientists, retailers [...]

TwitPic

TwitPic allows Twitter users to upload photos from their phones. During the Oscars, stars such as Ashton Kutcher sent behind-the-scenes pictures and comments directly to their fans, as they happened. Visit Twitpic to see photos pop up in real time on a Google map of the world.  There must be loads of ways we could [...]

Greenlit: Great and Telling Tales with Timothy Dickinson, History.com

An original, animated web series presented by historian Timothy Dickinson, “a plump man in his mid-60s with tousled hair, wearing a rumpled Spencer-coat, torn striped trousers and a white blossom in his lapel, with a rosewood cane clutched at his side”. (Photo by myyorgda)

Remembering Bogle Chandler

“New Year’s Day on a lonely stretch of riverbank, an man and a woman’s body. Who killed them and why? To this day, no-one knows. All we know is this… their hearts stopped beating, they stopped breathing.”

At the start of 1963, two scientists, a man and a woman were found dead on the banks of the Lane Cove River, Sydney, Australia. The circumstances surrounding their deaths was mysterious; the case became became famous but remains unsolved.

Now an award-winning hypermedia website gives you a chance to piece together the events of the previous day; events that include personal vendetta, secret government experiments, LSD, and sex.

Remembering Bogle Chandler was developed by Rebecca Young as a PhD project. It is a “narrative in five acts”, that is open-ended and immersive. You can roam around in the mystery, collecting conflicting media and personal accounts, deflecting red herrings and resisting the paranoia inherent in a Cold War story. Make you your mind and then see what other people think happened.

(Spoiler alert: there is an account of the case on Wikipedia.)

Greenlit: Japan Season, BBC4

Japan Season – A month-long season of programming about Japan, including documentaries, dramas and animation. The season includes 30 second language lessons, a glimpse into the life of the salary man, and an exploration of Japan’s fascination with fish. Fish! A Japanese Obsession (Keo Films) Japan: In Search Of Wabi Sabi With Marcel Theroux (Keo [...]

Greenlit: Country Tracks, BBC1

Country Tracks – Ben Fogle uses classic Countryfile archive footage from the last 20 years to guide him on a trip around Britain to tell the story of rural Britain past and present. Each week he will travel using a different form of transport – climbing, hiking, white water rafting and camel trekking. Channel: BBC [...]

Greenlit: The Birth of British Music, BBC2

The Birth of British Music (4×60′) – Conductor Charles Hazlewood charts the influence on British of Purcell, Handel, Haydn and Mendelssohn. It tells the story of music between 1650 and 1850 through the music, life and times of the composers, meeting biographers, historians and archivists. Read full press release. Channel: BBC2 Producer: BBC TX: May [...]

Greenlit: Crash Course, ABC

Crash Course (pilot) – competition show in which couples have to plan their strategy before attempting to drive along roads that have been booby-trapped with fallen trees and rockfalls. Channel: ABC Producer: A. Smith & Co TX: Summer 09 (alongside Wipeout) Source: C21