agate road pictures

Art gallery attendance’s are on the increase.

Art is film.

Business needs film.

The material for the Vodafone Cultural Awareness Film has been shot and is being edited.  With assistance from the Doha Film Institute and the Al-Rayyan Football Club the film will help Expatriates to understand Qatari and Arabic/Islamic culture.

This week we’re interviewing Qatari’s for a Vodafone film.

The film features the cultural differences between Middle Eastern and Western business people. 

 Who wants to lose business over a cultural misunderstanding? 

 Vodafone don’t.

 Vodafone is using the power of film in an engaging and entertaining way to reflect back Qatar’s cultural values to it’s multi-national employees.

 Film is about as personal as it can get when the emotional intelligence of a different culture is handled safely and sensitively.

Google recently carried out research into the way business will use the Internet.  Most employees feel that business is lagging behind the personal uses of online media.  Eventually business will use the services of mobile and cloud technology to play catch up with the IPads.
So how can a series of short films help a business during this transformation?

By using good engaging narrative films a business can reveal it’s big picture while undertaking the small steps of change into a new way of doing business.

Radio spectrum is limited in terms of it’s data carrying capacity.  Research is now being developed to allow an ordinary LED light to also transmit data.  In other words in the future it is possible that an ordinary street lamp powered by LED’s will also be the source of your mobile connection.

So what does this mean for film?  In theory it will be possible to download a high definition film in 30 secs!  Over a broadband link at the moment this can take as long as 1 hour.  In other words your film message is immediately received.  Online media will become the primary means for business to communicate their message.

Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, stated in his address to the City on the 16th of  January that business should look to run along the lines of John Lewis.  Employees in John Lewis receive bonuses  from shares held in trust and therefore in return they feel part of the company.  But this does not take into account social and environmental responsibilities – a factor which Richard Branson and other business leaders believe a company must address to survive.  We develop films that build relationships with business and their customers, in a fun and engaging way, and if social and environmental accountability is part of a business strategy we can find a fun way of showing that too! 

Richard Branson stated in his new book, ‘Screw Business as Usual’, that companies will need to think about more than just the balance sheet.  To stay in business it will require business to also think about being socially and environmentally accountable.  But it must be real.  Why?  Because young people who will eventually become the main market will refer to their friends through Facebook or other social media for the recommendations about a product.  They are less likely to go to an article in ‘Which’ magazine for background information about the same product.  Business needs to build relationships with their customers to demonstrate that they are responding to the demands of social and environmental sustainability because if they don’t they will not survive.

Young people are demanding change to protect their future and we have an obligation to respond.

 Yesterday Leading Sports Medicine Specialist Dr.Andy Frankly Miller called for mandatory PE tests alongside maths and reading in the school curriculum to create an Olympic legacy of fitness.

An organisation called ‘London Youth’ support and challenge young people to reach their full potential.

Of course non of this is new. Joseph Campbell in his work ‘A Hero with a Thousand Faces’ wrote about the Rites of Passage necessary to bring a person to the next level in their life.We need challenges to overcome to make that happen. 

This is story! Most notably George Lucas used the ideas Joseph Campbell wrote about to make the Star Wars films. 

The world is changing. You don’t need to be a visionary or psychic to work that one out. So how can a simple short film help a business meet these changes?

A story and a film forces a business to determine its goals because film itself demands simplicity and immediacy. Success in business is about figuring out what the market, and the world, REALLY needs.

So if the world is changing, change with the world, and let a film shine a light in the right direction!

We are delighted to be attending the Tribeca Film Festival in Doha in a region of the world that has seen some tremendous changes in the last year.  Doha is a place of growth in art and culture.

Viviane Reding, the EU Commissioner for Justice has pledged to put more ‘Women on the Board’ in Europe.  To capture the hearts and minds of her intended audience she would be well advised to put her vision into a film.  A ‘designed’ film would engage and entertain far more effectively than any other communication medium.