Opportunity To Work On A Short Film

안녕하세요,

Sobweb Productions is looking for a talented young British Korean who can help with an online TV production. The show is a comedy about three Brits who move to Busan, South Korea to teach English, and the excitement, trials and tribulations they encounter whilst living there. We are filming the short film in London with the aim of it leading to a commission for a six part television series.

South Korea is a fantastic country with a vast history and a very bright future, and it is leading Asia and the world in a variety of areas. However it still remains somewhat of a mystery to the majority of British people who tend to think of China and Japan when considering East Asia.

We talk about the importance of globalisation in the UK but what we really mean is westernisation. If we truly want globalisation, the western world needs to absorb some other cultures as well. This project will help to bridge this gap and put South Korea in the spotlight and into the British public’s consciousness.

The show informs the audience of various Korean quirks from a western standpoint in a humorous way. The production also shows how South Korea is leading the world in technology and the aesthetics of the show reflects this.

We are looking for someone who shares our vision, is committed and dedicated to the production and will put their all into it. Any experience in film making is preferred but not essential.

We want someone who will act as our primary Korean handler. We need a keen partner to work with our location manager and find places suitable for shooting in Korea Town, New Malden, London. This is where we plan to shoot the film that we hope will lead to a commission.

This is an independent production and will provide you with experience in programme making and pre-production. However, it will not provide you with an immediate salary as funding is limited for this independent production.  This job will reward you with great experience and knowledge that you are helping to spread the word about Korean culture, throughout the UK. We hope that we will be able to provide future paid work if the short film is successful in securing a commission.

Major Roles

- Improving the screenplay by ensuring that possible cultural inaccuracies are reviewed and addressed.

- Working with our location manager to scout and secure locations in Korea Town, New Malden.

- Helping with auditions for Korean actors.

- Providing on-set expertise in Korean pronunciation and customs.

Minor Roles

- Help to secure funding with Korean companies and art grants.

- A small amount of translation work, primarily for the screenplay.

Experience Required

- Fluent in Korean

- Good communication skills in English

- Detailed knowledge of Korean culture

- Currently living in London.

- Has spent a minimum of 3 months in South Korea.

If you would like to apply for this fantastic opportunity, please send an email to contact@sobwebproductions.co.uk explaining why you would like to get involved and the skills that make you the perfect fit for the role (in English please). Applications close at the end of October 2012. We will start interviewing immediately so get those applications in!

There are other roles available in the team so if you have experience in film and would like to share some of that, please contact us. Sobweb Productions is a young production company in its early days but we are growing in numbers. We look forward to welcoming you to the team. 

감사합니다,

David Sobell & Kathryn Pascoe

Director & Producer

In The Beginning...

I've known since I was a child that I wanted to be a comedian. I found out two things when I was 12 that changed everything though. Number one was that comedians are not lizards that change colour. Number two was that I was dyslexic.

I started writing screenplays at 18 and haven’t stopped since. I am now at a point in my life where I wish to pursue it in a more serious way. This is why I am bringing a team together to produce a short film or pilot which will then hopefully get commissioned for a short series.

My first major life choice was to study the dream that is Comical Engineering. Unfortunately my newly invented dyslexia had struck again. I wasn’t going to be engineering comical situations but was in fact learning about heat transfer and fluid systems. Trying to make these subjects funny was like trying to breaking one of the laws of thermodynamics (which are impossible to break by the way.)

After studying Chemical Engineering for four years and working for a year as a process engineer, I realised that as much I enjoyed it, I have other ambitions. I chose to move to South Korea, a country I knew very little about, to teach English. It was there that I decided that I wanted to create a show about this fascinating culture. It was so cliche and predictable - I was following in the footsteps of so many others, on the way to becoming a sitcom writer; study chemical engineering before moving to South Korea to teach English.

It has become clear that if I want to get my Korean show made, I will have to do it myself. No-one is waiting around for my script with a few hundred thousand pounds in their hand. I am grabbing this project by the horns and learning to steer – it’s all very exciting. This website (and its brand new domain!) will promote the production, as well as acting as a release valve for all those pent up moments of angst we encounter as a team.

I am looking for contributors and anyone who wants to help with the production. There will be a lot more information coming in the next few weeks so stay tuned. You can help Sobweb Productions and the show by sharing this website, liking this post, and becoming a fan on facebook. Thanks for reading.

Hello World

Welcome to Sobweb – the latest website that will be falling into the world of obscurity over the next year... or not, depending on which manic depressive tendency I'm exhibiting at any given moment.

This project, let’s call it a project, is all about creativity and the journey it can take you on. We all have our creative moments. That flash of genius as it comes thundering through our consciousness – be it about a personal decision, a book you’ve been thinking of writing, or just a witty facebook status. It happens to everyone, all the time.

What you choose to do during this “divine” inspirational moment varies from idea to idea, and person to person; some things get written down, others painted, some ideas are tweeted, or sometimes a thought process it just marvelled at before disappearing into the clutter of our mind.

After this flash of creativity, when the thunder is now just a mere whisper, doubt creeps in. This doubt and fear can be paralysing at times and can stifle the most imaginative ideas. Sometimes this a good thing; I don’t think the horror movie idea about bed bugs that eat people, which was conceived on a long car journey in Scotland, was ever going to be the blockbuster we believed it could be in the moment. But then again who knows? Maybe it could have been with the right direction and a dash of good fortune.

A lot of good ideas are lost every day as a result of this fear and this doubt. We are afraid of failing. And for good reason. Evolutionarily speaking, failing at something would normally lead to death. If you don’t time that rock throw correctly, that lion will be eating your face. You can understand why we as a species are afraid of failure and of creativity in particular. You might think “Actually, I won’t throw a rock, I’ll think outside the box and try talking to the hairy fella.” A few days later that lion is crapping out bits of you, and that creative thinking has cost you your life. Fear is there for a reason. Unfortunately the instincts controlling our response to fear have not evolved nearly as rapidly as our society has.

Death is no longer a realistic consequence of creativity. We can throw off the shackles of our genetic carefulness and put on our “I don’t give a shit what you think” hat. We can develop ideas, stories, pictures, and we can share them globally, with our fear being potentially realised merely by trolls and dislikes.

This is what Sobweb is about – sharing ideas and sharing our own flashes of genius, be it a recent one or something that you may have stored away on your C: drive somewhere. I have two main passions in my life: writing and listening. I love to hear other people’s stories and I love to tell my own. So please, tell us about some of your own inspired moments by clicking "contact us" and sending us something. It will most likely get reposted, with full credit to you of course.

This fear can be overwhelming and unsettling, and this is what we at Sobweb struggle with every day as we try to pursue our dreams. We want to create an independent production about a different culture to our own, exploring the far eastern country of Korea, in a comedic setting. Sobweb will be growing in numbers over the coming months and we hope to welcome people with passion for this project.

This site is about our journey of creativity; the joy we get from achieving the next step or the overwhelming sense of failure that can paralyse the most imaginative of ideas. We want to share our journey and we want you to share yours.

I'll leave you with a TED talk I recently watched that has inspired me somewhat. I'm not really a TED watcher but I got linked on Facebook and ended up spending an hour or so watching a few talks. Enjoy.