• Home
• Magazine
• Blog & Podcast
• Idealog TV
• Directory
• Celsias
• Search:

• Business Magazine of the Year
  MPA Awards 2007, 2008, 2009 & 2010

Drowning Graham's sorrows

Graham is set to star in a series of mobile-friendly films

In 2005, Kahra Scott-James was working on one of the first video-to-mobile projects for Xtra and decided that small screens need a different kind of story.

She began thinking about short form content that was character-driven, in a series of 60-second mobile-friendly films. So Graham was born, a frustrated cubicle-dweller who is just ready to snap.

Scott-James and brother Paul made the first eponymous episode last year and it was promptly shortlisted for the Filminute International Film Festival (one of 25 films from 800 submissions). This year Graham had an award-winning slot in the prestigious New York International Viral Film Festival in April, followed by showings in Berlin and Stuttgart. In July, the siblings presented Graham in Auckland at the AUT-Idealog Innovation Series Plus event.

Now they’re planning more episodes: giving Graham a flat, a lot more live action and a cast of fellow characters. As Idealog goes to press, Graham is making his second Filminute outing (simultaneously showing at Filminute, via mobile, on television and at screenings in London, Bucharest and Toronto).

“You can only go so far in short film,” says Kahra Scott-James, “and for so many people, short film is just a stepping stone to feature film. Our first film was about setting up a narrative style that we can build on.” Graham blends 3D, 2D, live footage, sound design and music in what the Scott-James call a “digital puppet”.

The siblings both have day jobs, so they work with Graham around other work. By day, Paul is an animator, designer and director; Kahra runs audio studio Entirely Sound and teaches sound design and audio post-production. They also bring their non-day job interests (his: sculptor, hers: musician) to their collaboration.

“Doing the commercials is the bread and butter, but there is a [short film] business just taking off,” she says, pointing to Revver.com, a site that shares ad revenue on downloaded short clips with filmmakers. But their real goal is the billion-dollar revenue stream of merchandising cult characters—just like South Park, which originally started as viral email. Expect to see more of Graham.

1 comment

Adrian

2008-09-20 08:34:58

Excellent! I saw this as part of the Homegrown films at this years Film Festival and thoroughly enjoyed it!

Add your comment

Name

Email address

URL

Comment

If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam

HTML will be removed. Web addresses will be automatically hyperlinked.

Tweeted

Overheard

• Steve on Bottled inspiration:
  Next time you're in Barcelona make sure you stay at the famous Hotel Palace where Antipodes is stocked in the mini-bars and served in the restaurant.  …
• tony on Multi-purpose car park design pushes the sustainability envelope :
  You mean pushing the BS envelope.how can a carparking building be sustainable. Doesnt matter how many wind turbines you put on it......cars arent sustainable in their current guise. It like ...  …
• ash on Wellingtonian's boggy blog design piece gets anti-attention:
  cool idea..but is it a smooth wipe too!?  …
• Tamara Pitman on Misery, Inc.:
  Really never thought that she was a New Zealander, her artwork is sooooooo unquie. Really one of my inspirations now :D  …
• Noel mRoberts on The people's court opens for business:
  At last a N.Z. building design that is original,creative and exciting. So different from the standard rectangular concrete and marble structures that have become the N.Z.standard over many years. Well ...  …
• Bel on Camera never lies:
  Oh my. Very excited about this! Saw the doco at the festival a few years back and it was both funny and moving - can't imagine how kick-ass it will ...  …

• Back to top
• Looking for something else? Check the site map
• © 2005–2010 Idealog. All rights reserved. ISSN 1179–3465