Duke of York’s Picturehouse, Brighton, 5pm
£12

Released in 1982, The Dark Crystal is a much-loved fantasy film from the legendary Jim Henson, best known as the creator of the Muppets. Marking thirty years since its release, The Space presents a special event with guests who will be interviewed, providing an exclusive insight into the making of the film, following a screening. We are pleased to welcome Producer Gary Kurtz and Art Director Terry Ackland-Snow.

As well as producing The Dark Crystal, Gary Kurtz’s other credits include producing Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. Terry Ackland-Snow was also the Art Director on Batman, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Superman 2, Aliens, Labyrinth and The Living Daylights.

TICKETS NOW AVAILABLE! BUY NOW >>>

Komedia Studio Bar, Brighton, 7.30pm
£8.50 / £5.50

Ahead of the 2012 film awards season, The Space (Southern Performance and Creative Energies) marks Oscar winning composer Rachel Portman’s thirty years of acclaimed and award winning scores. In an exclusive interview on February 9th, Rachel will provide an insight into her work as one of Britain’s leading film composers. The event, held at Komedia, will also include an appearance from Dan McRae, head of development of film distribution and production company, Studio Canal.

We also have a raffle draw with some great prizes.

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• Here is a live recording of Skin’s Q&A >>

Skin Deep
Where do I start with Skin? Struck first by those menacing fire-starter eyes we have all grown accustomed to seeing in those dark, dynamic videos of band Skunk Anansie, this first lady of misfit-rock stands with regal Amazonian attitude, posing calmly and composed for photos with fans after a very frank and lively getting-to-know-you. Dressed all in black with sheer blouse and elongating skyscraper wedged shoes to remind us of her Athenian shape, as put to use on the catwalks by the likes of fashion houses Alexander McQueen and Gucci; I can only surmise that meeting her does not disappoint.

As a fervent fan of Skunk Anansie’s second studio album Stoosh, this album saw me through my teens with the externalised angst I could only dream of letting explode out, as I traipsed from the four walls of my bedroom to the four walls of my secondary classroom. Their music encapsulated the inert energy of anyone who found themselves wishing to scream at the top of their lungs, with a jagged galvanised edge, wipe-clean leather trouser, with a fairy dust delicate voice of pure emotion and soul.

Skin is honest. Not scared, nor PR conditioned to be bubble-gum pop innocent, she tells it how she sees it, making her one of the most entertaining guests I feel exceptionally lucky to have met. Despite her reputation and fame, we learn that under that layer of obvious presented beauty, is a virtuous, self-deprecating strength; the truest evidence of why Skunk Anansie are not back, but really have never been away.

Sing For Your Supper

Far from the processed musical standard of Stepford-reality shows littering the music industry today, Skin and the rest of Skunk Anansie were incubated from that old fashioned ethic of hard graft: “The first few Skunk Anansie gigs were just outside London in back yard places. We knew we were rubbish; we didn’t want to be rubbish in front of the NME crowd, so we were rubbish to one man and his dog, and his rope. And he left half way through the first song! (Laughter) There was definitely a vibe of ‘we have something’. You have to start with ‘something’ to build on. A good voice for instance. When we did our first rehearsal together, after 30 seconds playing we just stopped and started laughing; because it was really f***ing good. We’d probably just played the worst song that no one had ever heard. The energy and the chemistry when we played together was just, there. Then we just worked and worked and worked, tour after tour. We did 5 tours before we had any success at all. It was really just down to just rehearsing and playing non-stop and working.”

Getting Signed

“The first band we got together was me and Cass, which we were in for 2 years. We had an amazing guitarist, I liked to call him Jimi Hendrix, but an absolute c*** of a person (laughter). He was so good for those two years, but eventually we were talking about deals and I told my manager ‘I cannot be in a band with this man anymore.’ And I just mashed the band up and said to Cass ‘let’s start something else’. So we brought Skunk Anansie together; it was like a super group, with Cass Lewis who was in Terence Trent D’Arby’s band, big dreadlocks; beautiful man. Then we stole Ace from another band, who started the Water Rats Theatre in London. We went up to him and said ‘we’re starting a band’, and he said ‘you are?’, and then said ‘I want to be your guitarist!’ and that was all we needed to hear. It was the three of us. We did one gig, and because Cass and I were from the band Mama Wild, and Ace was in Big Life Casino, the place was rammed, we did the gig of our lives. Then we did another gig which was rammed again, but full of A&R people – this was back in the day when they used to go to gigs (laughter). It was that horrible day that Kurt Cobain died. So we went on stage, and Rick Lennox who worked as A&R at One Little Indian records was in the audience. Rick was a massive Nirvana fan, who wasn’t initially going to come to the gig. But he came down, and told us, ‘you took me away from thinking about Kurt Cobain’; and so we got signed off that.”

Rise to Fame

“The thing about success in a band is that you go do a fantastic gig, and then you leave that place, onto the next town, and  all that ‘oh my God weren’t they amazing’ excitement is all back there. So it took a few years for it to catch up with us, for us to realise that we were actually doing all right. Especially if you are from a working class background, you always feel like you are surviving; you’ve got to keep going, it’s all going to fall apart if you don’t. Then we stopped for a while and suddenly realised ‘oh, I’m kind of famous, that’s a bit weird’ (laughter). But it was quite hard to contain; we hadn’t been trained by X Factor, we had no skills at all; we were just drunk all the time (laughter).”

Clit-Rock

Google Skunk Anansie for their genre, and you will soon some across the term ‘clit-rock’. Self-invented, it was a way to find their feet in a lad-clad lager and fag led era of British music: “It was weird – there was this massive Britpop and Britrock scene, and then there was Skunk Anansie. We weren’t allowed on any of those TV shows; we were doing our own thing over here. We were asked one day what we thought of this Britpop scene, and we just turned and said ‘well, we’re our own scene; we’re ‘Clit-rock’. And that was it. There were scenes being made up everywhere to sell more copies of NME or whatever, and I was totally taking the p***; yet people still ask me to this day in interviews (Skin puts on mock Euro-trash voice): “So zis zene that you ‘ave cre-a-tid in ze 90s,‘clit-rrrock’.” Skin exclaims: “For the life of me, it was just a joke!”

“The Americans tried to pigeon hole us; we were an RnB band in America, I kid you not! (At this point the audience erupts with amused chortles) We’d see our albums in the RnB sections every time we went into a record shop. On a plane over there once, one of the  American record execs from one of the labels we were going to see was on it, and asked us if we were in a band, and told us (Skin puts on an American accent) ‘When we get back I’m going to introduce you to the Head of the Black Music Department’, and stunned, we were like, ‘why?’ We’re a rock band. It went straight over his head. And true enough we went there and got introduced to him. It was just hard back then for Americans to look at me, and understand that I’m not an RnB singer, and I can’t rap! It was very segregated; there were no white rappers or black rockers. Of course there actually were, but they weren’t taking us seriously. There was a whole scene of black rock music going on at that time, bands like Living Colour. They had to try and club together and knock on the door of the big radio stations. It was very difficult for us all out there.”

Skunk Anansie have headlined many a festival in their time, and asked about being at festivals and whether they actually got to enjoy them, Skin replied: “A little bit too much (audience laughter). Our first album is called Paranoid & Sunburnt, because the first time we played Glastonbury was at 12noon on the first day; a Friday. We only did four songs as we had the wrong passes to get in, so we jumped out the bus, ran on stage and did four songs. Then we came off stage, we remained for the weekend. I don’t really remember much, but we did call our album Paranoid & Sunburnt because of the experience – so you can fill in your own jokes there (laughter).”

Trust in your fans

Not averse to getting caught up in the moment whilst performing, Skin is known for stage diving at their gigs. Presenter Briggy asked about the inherent risks that go hand in hand, if such an expressive trust in your fans were to go wrong: “Touch wood, I’ve never been dropped (Skin quickly starts earches for wood to touch while seated, eventually settling her hand on the stage floor). You have to tell people you’re coming”. At this point, Skin stands up and starts animatedly gesturing to an imaginary crowd; “And they get it. You have to warn people.”

Models Own

Skin isn’t just a pretty voice. She’s also a black swan of a runway icon, with a side-line of modelling in her repertoire. The audience was warmed by her self-disparaging approach to the glitz of the supermodel sway: “It feels uncomfortable. I can’t take myself seriously. I’m a singer-writer, and because of that people ask me to model their clothes. It is really good fun, a laugh.” Briggy asks about Skin’s skills in the sashay: “Shall I do it for you?” With audience encouragement, Skin walks towards one end of the stage and floats with elegance, but simmering with ferocity. “That’s my ‘taking the p***’ walk that everyone does.”

Soundtracks

Skunk Anansie have produced a menagerie of feisty numbers, and its no surprise to hear that they have featured on film soundtracks too. Most recently in 2011 they featured on Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch with their track Search & Destroy: “It is like an hour and a half music video, a beautiful movie.”

They also featured on  Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days:  “It was funny as we’d just been a band for six months…We got asked to go to Hollywood to write music for this film, and we soon realised that this is some big s*** right here. They aren’t kidding around. So we write a song, and we were in the film singing Selling Jesus – and it was possibly the hardest we have ever worked. We had to do this for 8 hours non-stop without a break, full steam jumping – it was mind-bogglingly exhausting. Imagine doing an eight hour Skunk Anansie gig. We didn’t eat, we didn’t rest; we just went on and on. The movie was fantastic, and incredible to be part of; a lot of people in America still love Skunk Anansie because of that film.”

Splitting Up Is Hard To Do

After a successful run in the charts from 1994 to 2001,Skunk Anansie split up, coming back for more reforming in 2009. Asked what it was that led to the disbanding, Skin explained: “Lots of small reasons, but  I think the main feeling is that we just grew apart because we were just exhausted. We’d done a lot of work in a short space of time; through our own doing – we wanted to work that hard, no one made us do it. You just get a brain fog, you get Yoko Ono in the band; weird things start happening. Skunk Anansie have always been this ball of amazing chemistry, a circle of energy – and that just dissipated because we were all in little worlds doing our own thing. There’s lots of different reasons why that happened, there wasn’t any one major thing; which is the reason why we’re still such good friends. We didn’t have any beef with each other. No one slept with anyone else’s girlfriend, no one slagged any one off to the press, and there were no horrible stories of hate in the press. We just grew apart; I think we all just wanted to do something else for a while.”

Going Solo

During the split, Skin went on to establish a successful solo career, releasing solo albums Fleshwounds and Fake Chemical State, along with becoming a name as a DJ. But it wasn’t all plain sailing: “In the end I don’t think I’m narcissistic enough for it. I love doing different things, different kinds of music, and doing the solo thing was really amazing as it really honed in my song writing skills, and it really taught me a lot about the other parts of the band. I’d really only been a lead singer and a played a bit of guitar, but I really got to understand the bass, the guitars, the drums. I had to go and buy gear, amps and stuff, and I really learnt and had a more respect for what everyone else in the band was doing in Skunk Anansie, as I was having to do it all for myself. Being solo is like being in a tree and you’re at the top, and everyone else does what you say as they want to keep their position in that tree. You have to be right, a lot. Whereas in a band we argue, we challenge each other…everyone’s throwing ideas in the pot. When you are solo you have to be coming up with it all. You need a huge dose of healthy narcissism to deal with that. Which I think is good and why some people are amazing at that; but I prefer being in a band.”

Skunk Anansie’s reformation album, Wonderlustre was released in 2010. So how did Skin feel, getting back into : “We’d all learnt volumes about our craft. Ace had gone away and produced 14 albums and had a radio show here in Brighton, so he came back with a huge amount of knowledge and information and excitement. Cass had been working with other people and had put bands together, teaching kids how to do music production and had a studio and rehearsal room. Mark had been in the band Feeder, among other things, and he was the one who had probably done the most emotional, internal work, and so brought that energy into the band. I think that when we came back together we were very much more solid as individuals, very excited about music, and very learned; old statesmen of ourselves. So it was great having all these different parts of the band;  Cass would do the studio music, Mark was doing all the videoing and the internet stuff, and Ace was helping with all the merchandising, and I was creative doing all the fashion, photography and the artwork. We did it all ourselves; it was so much easier to run and organise because we just talked to each other. There was no record company helping, no 20 people you had to refer to, to get permission from. What we learnt from being away from the band is that it’s supposed to be f***ing fun! If you’re worrying about this and worrying about that, with big ambition trying to get on this or that TV show, it squeezes out all the fun of everything you are doing. In the 2-3 years we’ve been back, we’re already in a bigger position than where we left off. And that is something to be very humble about (audience applauses).”

In August of this year, harrowing disaster struck the Belgian music festival Pukkelpop, with five people losing their lives during a freak storm that hit the festival causing a stage to collapse, injuring many others. Skin gave her account of this tragic happening: “Terrifying. I’d actually walked on stage with heat stroke; it was so hot; not one single cloud in the sky. We were doing press and I didn’t have a hat on, and I have no hair so got heatstroke.  People were saying there was going to be a bit of a storm and I was thinking ‘I don’t think so’. Then just before we went on stage the sky went dark. Really dark. We went on stage, and we were having a great gig, and it just got darker and darker, rainier and rainier, until just before the end, we were doing the last couple of songs, it just started vertical hail storming, with 5p size hailstones falling straight in to us. I was saying stupid things like ‘we’re going to carry on!’ because the more the weather was getting more atrocious, the more crazier the crowd was getting; ripping their shirts off. Then I just got blown backwards, and we were literally holding onto each other, walking at obtuse angles, trying to get off the stage as we really thought it was going to get blown off after what had happened previously in Indiana (a stage at The Indiana State Fair also collapsed resulting in fatalities) . So it was really, f***ing, scary. I’d never experienced anything like that, and never want to again. It just came from nowhere, within five minutes, and then it was gone twenty minutes later.”

Skin went on to give us a brief overview of all the charities she is involved in, more details of which you can find out about on her personal website: http://www.skinmusic.net/bio/skin

An advocate and fighter for the nonconformists, Skin and Skunk Anansie stand loud and proud, and long may they continue to Tear The Place Up: “We’ve always been outsiders.” But with a defiant smile, and to audience applause: “But we’ve lasted.”

• Skunk Anansie band website
• Skin’s own website, SkinMusic

And here are a couple of Skunk Anansie’s music videos:

BRIAN TUFANO: An Eye for Detail

The role of a cinematographer is not easily placed from the title, but plays a fundamental part to how a script is translated into the pixel perfect projection upon which our eyes feast at the multiplex.

Brian Tufano is quite possibly one of Britain’s national cinematic treasures, having been one of the creative minds behind such cult pieces as Trainspotting, Quadrophenia, Billy Elliot and East is East. A career spanning over four decades  in the industry, Brian still seeks satisfaction in a story with grit, helping realise some of the latest British emerging auteurs, working with the likes of Noel Clarke on Kidulthood (2006) and Slumdog Millionnaire director, Danny Boyle on his first feature film; Shallow Grave (1994).

One would say that he deserves a medal. But instead he has been recognised with both a BAFTA Award (for Outstanding Contribution to Film and Television 2001) and a Special Jury Award for Outstanding Contribution to Independent Film at the British Independent Film Awards (2002). Brian is jewel in the British celluloid crown methinks.

So when asked what it is Brian actually does, Brian had this to say: “I’m responsible for photography; I work closely with the director and decide how to interpret the script visually, then working with the crew to meet that end. It’s my job to work out the logistics to get that shot, and to keep on schedule.”

Honestly, I still wasn’t overly clear about what this entailed on a day to day basis, so when Brian was pushed further by presenter Briggy on this, the haze soon transformed to sepia filtered crystal: “In my other life as Head of Cinematography at the National Film School, I try to convey to students, what I call the ‘visual subtext’, or there is another phrase for it; ‘seeing sideways’. In a cinema, you can take your audience anywhere, and I start thinking: ‘How do I interpret the script visually, in such a way that I am adding to what the writer has put on paper.’ You look for clues in the script. This sets me off thinking about what pictures I want on the screen. There is one scene in Billy Elliot where Billy’s father becomes a scab, a strike breaker, and attempts to go back to work. In the script it was quite a simple scene where he has to get on a coach with the other strike breakers to get to work.  We didn’t have a location for it initially – but my idea came from a moment in the future scene where Billy is excited and asking his dad about a future trip to London. His father admits he has never been, as “there are no mining pits”. He has only ever known this Northern English mining life – so it’s that back story you are looking for. You never see this back story but it’s what drives the characters. So it was my feeling that when this father character has to throw everything he knows away to earn money for his family, these people would not be catching a bus at the local bus stop; they’d be somewhere hidden away, where the pickets couldn’t get at them. The location manager had found us 5 different areas, and the one we chose was the only one that was one completely surrounded by coal. So by using that location from the moment he walks to the bus to the moment he breaks down, that is what I call ‘visual subtext’. Visually it’s very interesting. It’s what I am looking for.”

“After a research trip for Trainspotting, Danny told me that heroin addicts spend most of the time on the floor, so he wanted me to play with that and work out a way for the camera to reflect this. This is another case of ‘visual subtext’.”

But it’s not just imagination and theorising, the role of the cinematographer is a rather faceted, hands-on role. Speaking about that iconic toilet scene in Trainspotting (warning: step away from the Campbell’s before reading): “Ah yes, we got very intimate, Ewan (McGregor) and I, and the camera. It was a mix of soup; oxtail and mulligatawny. But I don’t want to put you off tinned soup! It’s a standard throughout the industry. Then the other scene where the character Spud doesn’t do too well in the night (a fair amount to excrement representation in said scene); it was not pleasant filming it. There’s a wonderful publicity photograph of me and Danny (Boyle) dressed in our rainproof clothing, with a lot of the substance coming straight at us. So oh yes; it was definitely soup.”

Not being entirely a film buff myself (but always learning), I always find it refreshing to hear how the guests we have at our events have ended up where they are; from serendipity to passion, to who they know and ‘falling into it’. With Brian, it was down to a mix of destiny and an unfazed youthful confidence: “When I started I’d never heard of the word cinematographer, it was just ‘a cameraman’. According to my mother, from the age of 9 in my school books, which she very thoughtfully kept, were drawings of men with cameras. It just fascinated me. Aged 11 I discovered amateur film clubs, and one in Shepherd’s Bush where I lived, knocked on their door, and they let me become a member. So at the age of 11 and a half I’d started on 16mm and 9.5 camera, and have been shooting film ever since then. However I couldn’t get into the film industry when I left school; I was told by the employment officer to become an apprentice in the engineering works, which looking back may have been a wise thing (laughter). I didn’t know anyone in the industry and had no family members in it. To get into it I discovered you had to be a member of the union. But to be in the union you had to be in the industry doing a job; which when you are 16 makes no sense at all. The only way in was through the BBC. So as a page boy (runner), I discovered the film department, I badgered the film crews to take me along to nightshifts and I went from there into BBC Sport.”

It’s no secret that a film can be an arduous adventure to get off the ground through to completion. And the buck stops with budget. A Life Less Ordinary was the highest budget film he has worked on: “It was a figment film for Danny (Boyle, director) and Andrew (McDonald, producer). It was an American film, shot in America with 20^th Century Fox money, which started out as $16 million; which is peanuts by today’s standards. But Danny and Andrew had made this pledge that they would have final say on the final cut of the film. But this isn’t the way American studios work; they always have the final cut. And so there was this continual backwards and forwards between Danny and Andrew and 20^th Century Fox. We were up in Salt Lake City getting ready, when they went back down to Hollywood for yet more meetings, and when they came back, the budget had been dropped down from $16 million to $10 million, so that they could keep final cut.”

Further budget challenges are part and parcel in the film industry. But you can have all the money in the world thrown at a film and it still turn out a train wreck. It is more the skills required and the minds behind the imaginative uses of the resources available to play with. The 1999 British identity comedy East is East is one film that Brian cites from his repertoire for having the budget limit his creativity (though it still turned out to be a corker): “There is an opening parade scene, the kids are running up a back alley, parallel with the road. I wanted to get a crane up over the top so you could see them running, with a contrast to the parents who were the other side of the parade above them, getting them all in the frame. There was a big time pressure due to the money. It would have needed half a day to get the timing right, and one of the biggest cranes in the industry requiring four men to operate; it could have proved lethally dangerous – acting as a giant catapult had it gone wrong! So I hate to use the word compromise, because what you are trying to achieve your vision with the material and money that you have got.”

Evidently in the thick of it, working on a film is a constant and delicate balancing act. But before filming comes the biggest decision of all; choosing which film is the right film: “The script is the most important part when choosing what film to work on next, if I think there is something I can do with it. Then the next step, if I get it, is to meet the director. They always think they are interviewing me, but if I don’t like them, I call up my manager to make up some diplomatic excuse, because I don’t want to spend the next 2 months of my life not seeing eye to eye with them. This was the case with Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll – I set up all the shots but then we parted company simply because I didn’t think the director was doing Ian Drury’s character in the story justice. I thought Andy (Serkis) was brilliant in the role, which was what was bugging me; it was that the director was interested in shooting the film like one long music video, whereas I wanted to get inside Ian Drury’s head, because that’s where the story was. And because Andy is such a brilliant actor, I could see it going on before my very eyes, and I wasn’t able to get it on camera. Everybody sees it differently, but I can’t spend those weeks being frustrated; it’s just one of those things.”

Meticulous with his script choices to which colleagues he works with, Brian has a keen sense of direction and forethought. Despite over forty years in the show we like to call ‘biz’, Brian confessed that there is still al lot of energy and excitement to be found working with new talent in comparison to established directors: “I think I prefer working with first time directors, simply because they don’t bring any baggage with them, which is kind of wonderful. There is more freedom and an open mind, and to a great extent they use more imagination. I’m a bit off the wall with some of the things I suggest and they tend to listen to me, whereas the others don’t as they tend to get nervous (laughter).” Brian openly welcomed any budding artists in the audience to send him their scripts for visualisation (though don’t ask me how to get them to him, that’s your first challenge).

Not quite the norm for a cinematographer, Brian has even dabbled in casting: “There was one really interesting time in Trainspotting. Danny (Boyle) said ‘we’ve got to find the actress to play Diane in the next casting session tomorrow morning’. So the following morning we went into this rehearsal room, and had a succession of young actresses come in. As the queue left, I watched Kelly (Macdonald) from the window as she left the building and cross the road, and you just know. I said ‘Danny, Kelly’s the one, she has to be.’ And he said ‘you’re absolutely right; she’s just got it’.”

So, a talent spotter on a number or levels, Brian is still going strong, with an active creative eye and mind, helping raise a generation more of passionate and original storytellers. There is something very comforting in that thought for our British filmic future.

“My problem is that, in England, people applaud new bands, but they forget that new music can come from anywhere…If you’re just obsessed about new bands, you don’t give careers to rock musicians who get better and change with age like painters. We’re artists, we go through one period in our teens, then our 30s, 50s and 80s – it’s all vibrant and fantastic and it’s all necessary.” Skin from Skunk Anansie

• Click here for the full event guide from Brighton’s The Argus >>>

“Had fun at The Space tonight, thanks everyone for coming down and to the lovely staff who looked after me so well. Was great to meet & chat with cinematographer Brian Tufano, what an interesting man, told us some great stories.”

Thank you to Skin for her kind words, and to Brian Tufano for yet another wonderful event.

Check out Skin’s Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/SkinOfficial

WE RETURN ON THURSDAY OCTOBER 6TH TO KOMEDIA WITH TWO MORE GREAT GUESTS INCLUDING ROCK SINGER, DJ AND ICON – SKIN

A groundbreaking presence, Skin is one of Britain’s leading female rock singers, having made a huge impact with Skunk Anansie. She is also a fashion icon, a renowned DJ, a charity activist, and an inspiring role model for different generations of fans.

After giving up her career as an interior designer to write songs and devote herself to music, she played in bands in the London indie scene before forming Skunk Anansie. Within a year after their first gig, they were voted Best New British Band by the readers of Kerrang! In 1997 they were nominated for Best Live Act and Best Group at the MTV Europe Music Awards. The latter 90s saw them dominating the UK album chart with their top twenty albums: Paranoid and Sunburnt, Stoosh and Post Orgasmic Chill. The decade saw them achieving ten top forty hit singles, including Weak and Hedonism (Just Because You Feel Good). Skunk Anansie toured globally with such acts as U2, Aerosmith and Lenny Kravitz, and headlined Glastonbury in 1999. In 2001, however, they split up.

Skin later launched a solo career, releasing and touring the albums Fleshwounds in 2003 and Fake Chemical State in 2006. Spawning the hit single Trashed, Fleshwounds was a pared-down, soulful album. Skunk Anansie reformed in 2009 and the same year they released a greatest hits album. In 2010, they recorded their fourth album, the sensual and funky Wonderlustre.

As well as fronting one of the UK’s key rock bands, Skin is a multi-talented artist involved in varied projects. She is also an established DJ, playing house and rock. She has modelled for top fashion designers, such as Alexander McQueen and Gucci. Skin does a lot of charity work, from The Medical Foundation and the Baobab Foundation, charities that focus on torture victims and asylum seekers.

www.skinmusic.net

www.skunkanansie.net

ANDY PARFITT: Master and Commander
Andy Parfitt, owner of the hefty title ‘Controller of Radio 1, 1Xtra, Popular Music and Asian Network’, arrives on stage. His time with us is opened with a retrospective account of how the seed of his radio-acorn was first planted: “In Bristol, where I was growing up, my mother was always ‘worried about me’. My interests were my bicycle and the band that I was in, and that was about it. I loved doing the sound for my band and I loved the radio, right from early doors. My dad bought me a radio for Christmas and I discovered Radio Luxembourg, Radio 1 and Radio 4 and was a radio nut. My mum spotted that the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School had been criticised in the Bristol Evening Post for never giving a space at its prestigious production course from anyone in Bristol, so she wrote off to them –‘You should see my son’. They called me for an interview, and on my walk up, it hammered with rain and I turned up to the posh Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and was interviewed looking like a drowned teenage rat… and they gave me a place. So that was my little bit of serendipity.”

But it wasn’t just a simple penchant for the airwaves that got him to the heady heights of radio overseer. Andy soon makes us aware that from an early age he had a determination that would see him though to maintaining his current position for well over a decade (he was made Controller in 1998): “When I was on the course, I took every opportunity to meet people who do sound; I pursued it. My ambition was to be John Peel’s sound engineer. That was it. I did achieve it in my 20s; I did the John Peel Sessions and was his sound engineer. I never had a career plan as such; I just followed my enthusiasm and my passions so that by the time I set my sights on the big things, I therefore got to do it. I wanted to become a programme maker, so I worked for BBC Education, the original Radio 5 and I got to make features for Radio 4, the pinnacle of what British and world radio is; an institution.”

Talkin’ Bout a Revolution

Andy has a presence on stage that exudes confidence. A natural public speaker, like a teacher captivating the obedience of a classroom, he talks with passion about the BBC: “I did my time a funny way round, but I went to the BBC 1 because I wanted to learn, I was curious, I was passionate about its purpose as an organisation. I am a real BBC believer, I believe in the public service ethos of the BBC. I thought that it needed to do a job for music and young people and that was my drive to get there. Media has changed so utterly completed since 1967 (the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act was brought in citing pirate radio stations to be illegal); it should be a happy companion to your young life. The media landscape and technology has changed, with a purpose of supporting new music, producers, talent, artists, genres and music scenes. What the BBC calls its ‘democratic purpose’, young people aren’t buying The Times or watching Newsnight. The under 25s consume news in a different way. Our news service is one of the key, if not the only channel of proper, impartial, accurate news for international affairs, so it has a couple of really important purposes. And the environment for most media for young people is a huge lake of commercial media, so it is the only public funded voice to go with that, which I think is very important. So that is what my passion is about, what my purpose is.”

Busy doing nothing

On his day-to-day, Andy initially starts off with what initially seems flippancy, soon backed by a shoulder of responsibility that Atlas would empathise with: “I try to do nothing; in the sense that I don’t do programme production. I try to think about the future, what needs to be done for the longer term because people are very busy working of the short term; this week, this month, even this year. But my job is to think about what is the story for Radio 1 for young people, what’s happening in that market, how is it transforming into that digital web based world. It’s a strategic job. I do a lot of coaching work with my team; I give them responsibility. Then I represent Radio 1 and spend a lot of my time around the BBC making sure they know what I’m doing, or I’m out at Westminster, or in educational establishments, universities, talking, talking, talking like this, about the public value of what BBC Radio 1 represents to young people in the country. So I spend a lot of my time being accountable. I suppose I look after the money as well, deciding what we spend where, and I try to lead creatively. I also fire fight if things go wrong (he mentions the Blue Peter cat-naming competition and Brand/ Ross scandals as his hardest career moments) and handle it with the press team, and then of course I have Radio 1, 1Extra, BBC Asian Network and BBC popular music, which I have to do all of those things for.”

So with the suit comes a cavalcade of corporate boxes to tick, not to mention the people-management skills required to handle the minds and mouths of over 30 DJs: “My job is to encourage their creativity, their personalities, their innovation, but I get them to understand the vision of Radio. DJs are very entrepreneurial individuals; they’ve worked very hard to get where they are, and then I come along and say ‘no, you are part of a team’. Good proper adult goings-on in the workplace is important to me, for morale and performance. It is my job to ultimately take responsibility for everything they say or everything they do. It’s like a family with kids; you’ve got to make sure that the repercussion for certain behaviour is appropriate. Good old BBC word there, ‘appropriate’.”

Continuing this paternal outlook, with both grace and corporate cool, Andy astutely defends the subject matter of both his and Chris Moyles’ salaries: “Like in many other arenas, like in sport, you have to compete for the very top people; you have to compete in arena of the money that’s in the commercial world. Chris (Moyles) can hit any junction, to any split second, on any radio station. That guy has been on air for 52 hours straight and he didn’t make one technical mistake (when he did his Comic Relief marathon) because he’s an extraordinary broadcasting machine. The money we pay for our DJs is way below what they might get paid in the private sector for a commercial broadcaster and that discount is because the BBC is a brilliant place to work, it has brilliant opportunities it gives brilliant training, in Chris’s case it gives the opportunity to build a creative show. For many people, this may feel out of kilter, and what the BBC has said about senior pay (BBC senior manager positions are being reduced along with their salaries), top talent pay also is managed really carefully.” I can’t help thinking to myself that he’s been asked this before.

Video killed the radio star?

When the time moves onto the future of radio, and the subject of whether or not it is a dying art, presenter Lisa is warned that this is his favourite subject matter and she’ll be hard pushed to stop him talking: “If you look at older people in the UK, they are listening to more radio for longer. They love it; radio is in a golden age, unquestionably. Radio does wonderful personal, companionship things that other media doesn’t. Radio for young people isn’t a dead duck, but the amount of time people spend with a pure radio opposed to what they might download or view online has changed. The broadcast reach of a programme; say Adele’s performance on Fearne Cotton’s Live Lounge on that day may be 2.5 million. But then it will be downloaded by a further 3-4 million requests to watch the video. It’s about making that transition.”

CHRIS DICKENS: Cut above the rest
In stark contrast to the composed and perhaps rehearsed demeanour of Andy, our headline guest of the night is evidently not so used to the limelight. Humble and maybe a little nervous, it takes Chris Dickens a measure of time to settle in. You may not be familiar with his name, but Chris’s work precedes him, having been responsible for editing TV series ‘Spaced’ and ‘Look Around You’, plus a filmography including zombie romance ‘Shaun of the Dead’, alien adventure comedy ‘Paul’ and coming of age kooky romance ‘Submarine’.

After struggling to find the right words, Chris tells us of the time surrounding his Oscar win for Best Achievement in Editing (2008) for ‘Slumdog Millionaire’: “It was amazing, unique really. It was a chance to shine. It is obviously my most known and successful film that I have won awards on (he has won a further 6 awards for Slumdog), but at the time you would never have imagined, as it was a small film, on a small budget, with stars who were not really known. A voyage into the unknown. I just wanted to go to India and experience it. You never quite know how something is going to turn out.”

Accidents in the workplace

One of the biggest surprises of the night for me came with Chris telling us how he inadvertently got the job in the first place: “I got involved more accidentally; somebody else couldn’t do it. It’s very sad in a way as editor Chris Gill, who has edited four of five films with Danny (Boyle), couldn’t do it – these things happen. So I went to meet Danny and the first thing he said to me was ‘Why is Hot Fuzz so long’? Which I thought was a really good question; he put me right on the spot! And I basically blamed the director, which Danny didn’t mind.” With the audience still laughing from his honest admittance, Chris continued: “I’d read the script and had a good feeling about it, I thought ‘this is something special, an adventure’, and speaking to Danny, this is an actual quote, his philosophy is ‘if you’re not taking risks, there’s no point turning up’; that’s what he said to me. And I understood, that’s how you try something. On paper that film was beautifully written. It was an interesting book that it was based on but very ambitious; children who were 6/7 years old and this whole idea of moving through 3 stages of their lives; we have them as adults, as older children and young children and it looks great on the page, but how is that going to work? And also half of it’s in Hindi and part English; I was worried ‘are people going to believe they start talking English?’ So that’s what interested me; the adventure, the ambition of the film.”

So, from a shy talker, we discover a chap, slowly emerging, who can weigh up the pros and cons and make a decision based on the life experience and personal development he will get from it: “The initial risk was just going out to India, only a few of us went out so we had to work a lot of locals which was a great experience in the end but very difficult; going out to an alien world, trying to make a film. Working in your country at the best of times can be difficult, but India was very difficult culturally. We would ask ‘can you do this now’ but ‘now’ meant ‘perhaps tomorrow’ over there. Well, actually I was too soft. I would say ‘maybe tomorrow it’ll be alright, you can do this for tomorrow morning’, and it wouldn’t happen. Then the next day you’d say ‘maybe later in the day is fine’, and then it doesn’t happen. And then I realised what you had to do was to jump up and down and to shout ‘I want it now!’ and it did happen. We needed some curtains in the room for instance, and within the hour five people had come in with tailor made curtains. So we got to understand culturally what the place was like, which was important for me because having that experience in the end really helped me edit the film.”

Speaking highly of Slumdog director Danny Boyle, it seems the pairing of personalities may be the key to the successful piece of cinema: “Creatively I never felt it was risky because I felt that Danny is particularly very interested in experimenting, he allows that to happen allow the cameraman to experiment, particularly me, he was not scared of failing. To me that what making a film is about; you develop it through the editing, you tell the story in a different way; you make something that works on the screen, rather on the page.”

Anything goes

Aspiring editors in the room were next given the treat of what preparation techniques were employed and just how the film won it’s trophy in time travel traversing: “Danny asked me to watch a lot of Indian films; they are great because anything goes. You can have a song and dance and then get on with the rest of the story, which in a way is bad, but then also good as it frees you up, you can try all sorts of things. That why I like Nic Roeg’s films; he plays with time a lot; a lot of flash backs, flash forwards, which is really essential in Slumdog. What I really took from watching some of his early films, particularly ‘Don’t Look Now’, ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’ and even ‘Walkabout’, it’s almost like you are watching memories, which happens a lot in Slumdog; it has a lot to do with how you recall things. Memories aren’t structured, they come through in waves, in a more random way, and that I thought was quite inspiring. It meant that we could put flashbacks in places you might not expect.”

Among Chris’s editing credits thus far, it seems his CV spans from quirky cult to fabulous feel-good. But he explains how the editing of different genres can change the tone of the whole piece: “It’s a cliché but you shouldn’t really notice the editing in a film; but as an editor I do notice. Essentially the aim is to make a film that people enjoy and like the movie as a whole, rather than think ‘that was great camerawork’, or ‘that was a great cut there’. It’s not about you, it’s not my film; it’s the director’s film, the producer’s film, and that’s what you have to remember. You’re working with these people; you are trying to get what they’ve written and shot onto the screen, and interpreted it the way they wanted. So you could say the editor is the unsung hero, but that’s the way it should be. Every cut you make has to have a reason, and that reason comes from ‘what story are we trying to tell?’ or what feeling you want, or how you want the characters to come across. Going further, a comedy might be about timing, and you need a cut in a certain place to make people laugh. Editing’s quite crucial for comedy. I think it’s very hard to make something that isn’t inherently funny, be it on the page or how it is performed, funny later. And people often make that mistake. Simon (Pegg) and Nick (Frost) for example are just very funny to look at and their behaviour is funny, so you are working with good material, but you can certainly wreck their performances if you’re not careful. But we don’t work in a bubble either; the directors always watch it and we test the films on audiences. With comedy you can really quantify whether it’s working or not in terms of the comedy. It’s a little harder to work out if it’s working on the whole, but you still get a feeling. That’s why comedy is rewarding.”

Looking to the future

“I’m currently working on a very strange film about filmmaking. A very low budget film, it hasn’t got a definite title but I think it’s going to be called ‘The Equestrian Vortex’ and the director (Peter Strickland) has only done one film before called ‘Katalin Varga’. It’s to be shot in Romania about a sound editor who goes to Italy to make one of those horror films like Hysteria in the late 70s, and they are doing the soundtrack. He’s an Englishman and they are all speaking Italian, and you never see the film, you just see them making the sound effects or doing the voices to the film. It’s like a David Lynch nightmare film and a Roman Polanski suspense film; it’s like you are pulled into the soundtrack of this film they are making. It sounds very obscure but it’s actually very interesting. It won’t be Oscar winning I wouldn’t think, there are no big stars or anything. It’s interesting for me partly because it experimenting again as you can’t do that all the time, but it goes back to not being afraid to try.”

It’s safe to say that Slum dog Millionaire was a cinematic success. But with speculation of a possible ‘Slumdog Millionaire 2’, it seems Chris would welcome the sequel with open arms: “The film was partly based on another book called Maximum City, which is great actually. It was written by a journalist who left Mumbai, and then went back to rediscover it. It’s about all the people who live in the city, all the walks of life. That book I’ve heard, they potentially want to make. I think Chris (producer Christian Colston) has optioned it, and it’s sort of a documentary as well. I think it will be a very difficult film to make but if they do it, I’d love to be involved, it’d be very interesting.”

Conversation moved on to Chris’s prized possession; his Oscar. But where to put it? On a shelf in the WC? On the mantelpiece for all to see? Where exactly does one home an Oscar? “Funny you should ask! The Oscar is actually hidden away because we had a house burglary. They didn’t steal the Oscar, which is amazing, but they did try to see if it was gold and realised it wasn’t, and so left it. So I thought I’d better hide it.”

Throughout his time with us at the event, Chris continuously spoke in high regard of all the cast and crew he has worked with, which I suspect is reciprocated as he comes across as truly being suited to his career choice. Even of the slightly more challenging moments encountered, he mused with a great smile of affection: “In Slumdog I could have continued editing that film forever because I just loved the faces in it, particularly the kids. Normally you do build up a relationship because you are really delving into their performance, but in reality it is really difficult to have actors in the editing room, because they are seeing different things on the screen they don’t like. Simon and Nick came in a lot during Paul because they wrote that, and they were in it, so that was slightly tricky because they were part of the process, saying ‘Oh don’t like that’,’ well why don’t you like that? ‘Well because I don’t like that shot of me’ or ‘I wish you hadn’t used that shot’. But it’s hard because you can’t really make decisions based on that. But they are great to work with. I loved working on Spaced too. Edgar (Wright) liked shooting lots and lots of stuff, he has an idea of how he wants it to all fit together, but he also has a B, C and a D plan. He shoots to edit in a way. But it was sometimes very hard; it was one of the first things like that I had ever done. I’d never worked with Edgar before, he was a lot younger than me, and actually taught me a lot of things. He’s a very good editor as well. The problem is that I’d leave the room to go to the toilet and he’d have jumped on the editing machine and we literally had to fight each other; he’s so keen to get on with it.”

To conclude the night, we ended on another inspirational, formative high as Chris encouraged us all to always see the possibilities in the smallest venture: “Do it, get to the practical part as soon as possible. The theory is never going to get you anywhere, you need to get filmmaking. Getting an actual job, you need to know a lot of people. Build up an itinerary of friends and relationships working in whatever industry it is you work in and do any job. I started in documentary films as an assistant making the tea, and then I was interested in sound, so I did some sound editing and recording. Lots of jobs for no money, then lots of shorts films. Not only do you build up practice so when you do get a chance to do something bigger; you can do it, but you also get to know all these brilliant people. Spaced again was an accidental thing – the editor dropped out and they called me, and that ended up with me doing a film with them three years later. Don’t burn any bridges.”

“An essential event.”

Thursday 7th July / Komedia, Brighton

7.30pm / £8.50

Joining us on stage, we are very excited to welcome Oscar winning film editor Chris Dickens and BBC Radio 1 Controller Andy Parfitt for a unique and imtimate Q&A, Space style.

Film editor Chris Dickens’ credits include Slumdog Millionaire, for which he won an Oscar, the highly acclaimed Submarine, Shaun of the Dead, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s comedy film Paul, Edgar Wright’s popular sitcom Spaced and The Comic Strip Presents.

BBC Radio 1 Controller Andy Parfitt has been in charge of the radio station since 1998. He is also responsible for 1Xtra, the new black music station, and the Asian Music Network.

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“With credits between them that include both the original Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogies, they wowed the crowd with stories of filming in 125-degree heat, where to go when you need 7,500 live snakes and how to melt the face of a Nazi henchman.”