Adobe Helps Sponsor the Easterseals Disability Film Challenge

Image caption: Winners of last year’s Easterseals Disability Film Challenge

Nic Novicki is an actor who happens to have a disability. In 2014 he launched the Disability Film Challenge to address the under-representation of people with disabilities both in front and behind the camera. In 2017, he teamed us with Easterseals Southern California to expand the challenge. Now known as the Easterseals Disability Film Challenge, Easterseals is the leading nonprofit supporting people with disabilities.

This year, Adobe returns as a sponsor of the challenge, which aims at recognizing the creative output of young filmmakers and showcases their films. In this way, the Easterseals Disability Film Challenge hopes to help change the way the world views and defines disability.

Margot Nack, Adobe’s Senior Manager of Strategic Programs for Professional Film & Video, states “One of the reasons why Adobe loves to be a part of this competition is it gives the next generation of filmmakers a platform to tell stories about disabilities that may not otherwise be told.”

Nic Novicki (center with mic) presents an award at 2018’s Disability Film Challenge.

Registration has already opened and runs through April 3rd. The competition itself takes place between April 5th-7th; participants will have 55 hours to write, put together a crew, shoot and edit a three to five minute short film. Each team must include a person with a disability either in front or behind the camera.

Finalists will be announced at the Newport Beach Film Festival on April 27th and will be followed up by a red carpet award ceremony on May 9th at Sony Pictures Studios.

Winners will receive a variety of prizes including a full, one year subscription to the Adobe Creative Cloud. Other prizes include a $2000 production grant by Universal Filmed Entertainment, a Sony mirrorless camera, mentor meetings by important people in the industry and subscriptions to trade publications such as Variety and Film Independent.

There are several different categories including Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Awareness Campaign.

The winning film will be screened at the HollyShorts Film Festival, an Academy Award-qualifying competition and the Newport Beach Film Festival.

More information about the Easterseals Disability Film Challenge can be found at their website, http://www.disabilityfilmchallenge.com.

About Joe Herman

Joe Herman is a filmmaker, artist and post production specialist and writes often about the industry. You can reach him at joe[at]legendmultimedia[dot]com. Or reach and follow him on Twitter @JoeHermanTweets.

When the Seattle grunge band Nirvana recorded their breakthrough album, “Nevermind,” at Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, Calif., in 1991, they used a massive mixing console created by a British engineer named Rupert Neve.

The Neve 8028 console and others he made had by then become studio staples, hailed by many as the most superior consoles of their kind in manipulating and combining instrumental and vocal signals. They were responsible in great part for the audio quality of albums by groups like Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Grateful Dead, and Pink Floyd.

Read the full obit in the New York Times.

After nearly a year of closures, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has given movie theaters in New York City permission to reopen at limited capacity starting on March 5.

During his daily press briefing, the Empire State leader said cinemas in the city will be permitted to operate at 25% capacity, with no more than 50 people. Moreover, other safety measures such as masks, social distancing, and heightened sanitizing measures will be required. Last October, New York venues outside of the city were allowed to reopen with similar restrictions.

To read the full article in Variety, click here.

The coronavirus relief package that Congressional leaders agreed to this week includes grant money that many small proprietors described as a last hope for survival.

For the music venue owners, theater producers and cultural institutions that have suffered through the pandemic with no business, the coronavirus relief package that Congress passed on Monday night offers the prospect of aid at last.

To read the full article on The New York Times’ site, click here.

Phase 4 production guidance is available on the Film Permit website. All production activity, whether it requires a Film Permit or not, must comply with New York Forward Industry Guidance.

For more information see, please refer to the State Department of Health’s Interim Guidance for Media Production During the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency. Please review the guidelines and FAQ before submitting permit applications. The Film Office is operating remotely, so please allow additional time for Film Permit processing.

The above paragraphs contain links to the various FAQ – just mouse over the relevant words.

Chris Lindahl and Dana Harris-Bridson outlined Amazon’s position in IndieWire: “When Amazon made a unilateral decision in early February to stop accepting documentaries and short films via Prime Video Direct (a policy that also covers ‘slide shows, vlogs, podcasts, tutorials, filmed conferences, monologues, toy play, music videos, and voiceover gameplay’), the announcement also served as a quiet purge.

The above continues on to some surprising conclusions on DOC NYCs Monday Memo,

Various sources have reported that Disney is in the process of shuttering Blue Sky Studios, the largest animation studio on the East coast. The former 20th Century Fox animation division pulled in $5.9 billion churning out 13 feature films including the Ice Age franchise.

Publications have noted how Disney – which had three animation studios including Pixar and Disney Animation – couldn’t make the case to have these many houses when the pandemic took a toll on the company’s profits.

Some 450 employees will lose their jobs, though some hope to get into one of Disney’s other animation houses.

Here’s Deadline’s report.

Here’s Variety’s report.

Epix revealed that the second season of “Godfather of Harlem” will premiere on April 18. Set in 1964, the crime drama series explores the collision of the criminal underworld and civil rights movement. The second season will follow Bumpy Johnson (Forest Whitaker) battling the New York crime families for control of the French Connection, a pipeline for heroin that runs from Marseilles to New York Harbor.

To read the full Variety article, click here.