Crossover Mentors
The mentoring team for Crossover Labs includes some of the most experienced professionals working across the new media and TV industries. The mentors for the Crossover Labs in 2008 will include:
Matt Adams
Blast Theory
Matt Adams makes performances, installations, games and interactive artworks. He co-founded Blast Theory in 1991, a group renowned for its multidisciplinary approach pioneering the use of new technologies within performance contexts. The group has used interactive pressure pad systems triggered by audience members, video and audio streaming, and more recently, the convergence of collaborative virtual environments and mobile devices.
Since 1997, the group has collaborated with the Mixed Reality Laboratory at the University of Nottingham. Works such as Desert Rain, Can You See Me Now? and Uncle Roy All Around You have been nominated for four Interactive Arts BAFTA Awards. Can You See Me Now? won the Golden Nica for Interactive Art at Prix Ars Electronica 2003.
Since 2000, Blast Theory has developed cross platform works for BBC Fictionlab, Channel 4 and BBC Interactive. Matt co-curated the Screen series of video works for Live Culture at Tate Modern in 2003 and curated the Games and War season at the ICA in London in 2003.
Matt has participated in conferences such as Hot Docs documentary film festival in Toronto; Banff Television Conference; Cairo International Festival of Experimental Theatre; The Future of War: Aesthetics, Politics, Technologies in New York; Dutch Electronic Art Festival in Rotterdam; dLux Media Arts festival in Sydney. He has been a consultant for a variety of commercial and cultural organisations such as adera+ in Stockholm and the Royal Opera House in London. He has co-authored over a dozen papers with colleagues at the University of Nottingham and has an Honorary Fellowship at the University of Exeter.
Frank Boyd (Lab Director)
Unexpected Media
Frank has worked on a series of innovative programmes to support creative, social and economic development in the UK’s new media sector since founding the Arts Technology Centre (Artec) in 1989.
He established the European Multimedia Labs, the Digital Media Alliance and BAFTA’s Interactive Entertainment Awards before joining the BBC Innovation and Learning team as Director of Creative Development in 2000.
He has recently worked with Creative London on a series of initiatives to encourage growth in London digital media industries including the London Games Festival and a new A/V market, Rights Lab. He also directs the InSync programme at zero-one in Soho.
He has designed and directed the BBC Innovation Labs since 2005 and will be leading the mentoring teams in 2007/08. He has also designed creative workshops for Sagasnet in Munich and Finland, for the Mediaguild.
Since 2007 he has directed highly successful Crossover Labs in Australia and the UK. The 2008 Crossover programme, developed in collaboration with Doc/Fest, will include labs for commissioning editors at Channel 4, Crossover Kids, Crossover Docs, Crossover Games and Crossover Nordic (in Sweden).
Frank is facilitating a series of workshops for the UK’s National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts to assist in the planning of the Creative Economy Programme. He is also an assessor on the Technology Strategy Board’s Creative Industries R&D Competition.
Heather Croall (Lab Producer)
Sheffield Doc/Fest
Heather Croall has been a documentary producer and festivals director since 1992. Croall was the director of the Australian International Documentary Conference from 2003 to 2006 and now lives in the UK, where she is the Director of the Sheffield Doc/Fest, the UK’s leading documentary festival and conference with an internationally renowned screening program, a thriving marketplace and high-quality industry sessions. It is the only event in the UK that attracts the entire British documentary industry under one roof each year and is the best place to make deals with the Brits.
For the last 10 years, Croall has been one of documentary film’s most enthusiastic proponents of the emerging field of new media and cross-platform production. Croall produced award-winning documentaries and cross-platform projects for ABC, SBS and Channel 4, among others. In 2005, she was awarded an Australian Film Commission fellowship to research digital, interactive and cross platform docs internationally. Sheffield Doc/Fest presents a leading cross-platform strand including the Crossover Lab, the DigiDocs360 programme, Doc Agora and a cross-platform doc pitch competition with prize money of $20,000.
Paula Le Dieu
Magic Lantern Productions
Magic Lantern Productions Ltd, founded in 1996, is a media company for the broadband age, bridging the space between traditional media and the interactive, on-demand world.
MLP is known for creating innovative interactive media, ranging from rich media websites, mobile games, digital video, DVD, right the way through to content and rights management systems.
Working with clients and partners in the media, technology and public service sectors, including Channel 4, BBC, BT, Tiscali, the UK Film Council, Skillset and many others; MLP specialise in understanding the power of broadband networks and emerging digital platforms, for the creation, presentation, distribution and sharing of ideas. As well as her role as MD, Paula heads up the Open Media division at MLP.
Prior to joining Magic Lantern, Le Dieu was the director of iCommons, the international arm of Creative Commons.
In 2006, Magic Lantern was nominated for a Webby Award for Best Broadband for FourDocs, its broadband, user-generated documentary channel with C4. The company has won numerous other industry awards including four IVCA awards, the Guide Award for Excellence in Public online services and the Revolution Award for Best Online Property by a Media Owner. FourDocs, continues to be recognised by the broadcast industry winning a prestigious BAFTA. The BAFTA Television Craft 2007 award for Interactive Innovation recognises Magic Lantern's outstanding creativity in the new media and new broadcasting space.
Marc Goodchild
BBC
Marc Goodchild is that rare breed of traditional TV producer turned cross-media evangelist.
Earlier this year he was named by Broadcast Magazine as one of the top 100 movers and shakers for his pioneering work bringing interactivity into the mainstream of factual programming at the BBC. At the same time he has picked up awards at Producer and Executive Producer level for his linear documentaries.
Recent credits include 2004 Grierson winner 'Dunkirk - The Soldiers' Story', the BBC's big Climate Change Experiment and accompanying 60 minute 'Meltdown', a 4 part geology series for BBC4 called 'Journeys Into the Ring of Fire' and the multi-award winning interactive science special for BBC1 'How to Sleep Better'. In the recent BBC restructure he's been asked head up Cross-platform Development across all factual output.
In New Media terms he could be considered an old timer. As an accomplished radio and Children's TV producer in the mid-nineties, Marc was quick to exploit the two-way relationship that the web offered his audiences (using live webcams within TV shows, incorporating online treasure hunts and putting email tickers on air etc). Then when interactive TV kicked off in the UK in 2000, Marc was an early convert to its potential.
He wrestled with the limited technologies being developed for the early BBC Sports' services to scope, shoot and implement the world's first factual interactive TV programme; Walking With Beasts which subsequently won him a BAFTA. Over the next few years he went on to build and head up a dedicated interactive TV production unit for BBC factual output launching some 15-20 new services every year (from Great Britons, to Chelsea Flower Show and Live8 Interactive).
In his new role he hopes to help bridge the gap between the worlds of linear and non-linear production and nurture a new breed of multi-skilled producers to develop that holy grail of the modern broadcast industry - the truly integrated cross-platform production.
Roger Graef
Films of Record
Roger Graef is a writer, filmmaker, broadcaster and criminologist.
In January 2006 it was announced that Roger had been awarded an OBE in the New Year's Honours List. He now joins Bill Cotton, John Thaw, Steven Bochco, John Schlesinger, Peter Bazalgette and Morecombe & Wise, having been recognised by the Academy for having achieved "great heights in their lifetime". In 2004 he was awarded the prestigious Fellowship to the British Academy of Film and Television, again for his outstanding contribution and achievements. Roger also won a BAFTA in 2003, as the Producer of the Flaherty Best Documentary, Feltham Sings!
Among his more than eighty films, he is best known for his pioneering work in gaining access to hitherto closed institutions ranging from ministries and boardrooms to police, courts, prisons, probation and social work.
These influential films include the Thames Valley Police, which helped change the way the police deal with rape victims. In Search of Law and Order, took a unique look at some groundbreaking ways of changing juvenile rehabilitation. And The Secret Policeman's Ball - a film that helped make Miramax and Harvey Weinstein household names, and influenced a generation of comedians and musicians to try and change the World.
As a consultant and communications expert, he has served on numerous boards and government committees. He was a founding board member of Channel Four and a governor of the British Film Institute. Roger Graef has served on the board of the ICA where he created and chaired the ICA Architectural Forum.
Ana Serrano
CFC Media Lab
Ana Serrano is the Director of CFC Media Lab, a world-renowned new media research, training and production facility created in 1997 at Norman Jewison’s CFC (Canadian Film Centre). As director of CFC Media Lab, she provides strategic leadership, fiscal development, program design and creative direction for all of the Centre’s new media initiatives, including the development and production of a diverse range of critically acclaimed interactive narrative prototypes.
In 2003, Ana was recognized for her contribution to Canada’s new media industry with three Canadian New Media Awards including Industry Advocate of the Year, New Media Educator of the Year and New Media Visionary. In addition, she was selected to be the sole Canadian expert panel member for the 2003 and 2005, World Summit Awards, part of the United Nations’ World Summit on the Information Society.
She has also co-developed the Bell Globemedia Content Innovation Network, a partnership with the Banff Centre for the Arts and L’INIS, thus founding the Interactive Project Lab, a unique alliance of knowledge, resources and funding fostering the creation of innovative projects and viable start-up new media companies.
In 2000, Ana produced the Great Canadian Story Engine Project, a national tour and bilingual website that serves as an interactive storytelling community where all Canadians can share personal stories about their experiences in Canada. In 2004, she created Canada’s first interactive feature film program designed to create, develop, produce, distribute and market long form interactive narrative works.
Ana is currently producing the Interactive Narrative Feature Program’s (INFP) first project, in co-production with the National Film Board. Named one of Canada’s 100 Canadians to watch in McLean’s Magazine, Ana is active on the boards of Artscape, Laidlaw Foundation, M3F, and several start-up companies focussed on interactive entertainment and adjudicates awards for the Webby, Resfest, CNMA, and others. She teaches at York University’s Communication Studies Department and frequently speaks at new media and film festivals throughout the world about the emerging realms of interactive art and entertainment.