Richard Symons, founded a company called Spirit Level Films in 2001. In true independent fashion, the company makes films that they want to make on their terms

photo courtesy of Spirit Level Films

and in their own way.  This preserves the creative vision, allows them to tell stories that are compelling and important to them, but also makes life very challenging as they are completely self-financed.  Their two-film endeavor, Price of Kings, has received critical acclaim from all corners of the globe.  It was not easy to produce, however, and interviewing Yassar Arafat and Shimon Peres took many months of planning.  The team persevered and the results are classic documentary filmmaking at its finest.  Richard joins us to talk about how it was accomplished, what he learned during the process and what he might do differently next time.

Bruce Nazarian, CEO of Digital Media Consulting Group has been a long-time friend and contributor to the BuZZ.  I was speaking with him a couple of weeks ago and asked him if he would  clarify his take on the continuing discussion many of us have been having about the  “death” of flash, the rise of HTML 5 and how best to use H.64.  He wrote a great post about what is happening to each of these in all aspects of our production and post-production lives and Larry talks to him on the show so we can more details.

There are many unsung heroes in our business, some of them are tech experts, creative gurus and consultants who are buried several levels behind the front lines and who work behind the scenes with major companies on major projects.  Because they are consultants, however, we don’t often get to meet them and we certainly don’t see their names up there in the credits.  Mistika post production solutions have been used recently on films such as,  The Hobbit, Prometheus,  and The Amazing Spiderman.  Nicholas ‘Nico‘ Recagno is an online stenographer, with SGO Mistika and tells us more about what it is like to provide technical support for some of those award-winning projects.   

I’ve been privileged to have been involved for a very long time with the Producer’s Guild of America Diversity Committee. Each year for the last few years, the Committee announces a Call for Entries and accepts applications from people around the globe who wan to vie for a chance to be accepted into the Diversity Workshop.  Ten lucky people are chosen each year to attend a nine-week series held at the Guild offices in Beverly Hills.  Guest mentors have included such notables as Marshall Herskovitz, Damen Lindelof, Ali LeRoi, Luis Barreto, Shonda Rhimes, Mark Gordon and more.  Subjects covered include story development, pitching, packaging, financing, marketing and new media in the areas of tim, television, docs and web.  It is a veritable master class.  We want all our BuZZ listeners to know that the 2013 Call for Entries opens on February 25th and invite you to submit yourself and your projects for consideration.  If you have a project that you believe might be appropriate for a diversity workshop, act now, as you only have until April 15th to apply.  You can go here for more information.

Tonight’s show has been pre-recorded because Larry Jordan is on his way to London to speak at the BVE.  We are looking forward to hearing how the trip went and what new information he will be gathering while he is there.  Visit this link to see the list of seminars the Larry will be conducting from 26-28 February, 2013, at the BVE in London!

Don’t forget to contact me with suggestions for guests: news@catania.us – please put The BuZZ in the subject line!

See you on Twitter at @Cirina and @DPBuZZ

Thanks for listening!

Cirina Catania
Producer, Digital Production BuZZ