Summer Media Studio
locations inspire!
23 June - 6 July, 2021 | Pervalka, Neringa
Take a closer look
Participation
Registration for SMS 2021 is open!
Deadline for applications extended to 27 May, 2021.
Selected participants of various audiovisual art backgrounds will be informed via e-mail no later than June 2, 2021.
Summer Media Studio will take place in Neringa, Lithuania on 23 June - 6 July, 2021. Selected students and young professionals must be able to participate during all days of the workshop.
Participation fee for each participant is 300 Euros.The cost covers accommodation and catering in Neringa, also travel from and to Vilnius.
Note: Due to sensitive situation regarding COVID-19 pandemic, all participants must test before coming to the workshop. Further details on testing will be provided to selected participants.
More information for participants traveling from abbroad can be found at National Public Health Center website.
Become a partner
Collaboration with other higher education institutions is important for us in order to improve experience exchange, the students get to know about various audiovisual schools work specifics, choose their possibilities for further mobility exchange, creative internships.
Become a part of the Summer Media Studio experience! We invite various Europe film schools to collaborate. For bigger groups (starting from 5 persons) discounts of participation fee are applied.
About the project
SMS (Summer Media Studio) is a collaboration platform for young professionals of the audiovisual arts industry, who are eager to gain international contacts, improve their professional skills while learning to work with new technologies, facing and analyzing the changes of the industry and will create an opportunities for future artistic initiatives.
The main SMS event – two-week residential workshop – is ran in the Lithuania’s seaside area Neringa. Established in 1999, young film professionals and film school students are welcome to attend the workshop for the 23rd time. Here they will have the possibility to explore the unique Curonian Spit locations and inspirations they hide, their applicability in various film genres and produce a short film.
Each year SMS is dedicated to a different aspect of audiovisual industry. SMS 2021 is inviting the participants to explore location scouting curiosities in the unique landscape of Neringa and Klaipėda. There are no limits on film genre - the inspiration is all that matters!
Workshop surroundings offers wide selection of locations, from sandy beaches by the Baltic sea and small villages by the lagoon to truly urbanistic streets of Klaipėda or historical wibe of the city's oldtown with it's neoclassic architecture.
Neringa with its UNESCO-inscribed scenery is the elite seaside resort of Lithuania. It is an exceptional place of recreation with unique nature and specific culture, which inspired and continues to inspire artists throughout the world. It spans a narrow peninsula called the Curonian Spit, merely 2 kilometers wide and 98 kilometers long, with half of that length in Lithuania.
Find out more here
Klaipėda is the third biggest city in Lithuania situated in the Western part of the country, just near the Baltic Sea. The city is the only ice-free sea port and the important economical, educational and transportation center in a country. The city offers a great range of locations: picturesque old town, industrial premises, Ship port and ferry terminals, Lithuanian Sea Museum and Dolphinarium... you name it!
Find out more here
The whole workflow is carefully guided by the tutors: participants present pitching ideas and the tutors decide on which ones to be realized. Later on, all of the participants are divided in international teams of director, cinematographer, sound designer, producer, scriptwriter, and actors, they prepare for the shootings and go to the locations. After four days of hectic work, they sit by the computers and do the post production, write musical scores.
At the very last evening, final short films made by the participants will be screened. This is a truly special evening as they have an actual result which could be evaluated by themselves and the wide audience. Finally, the participants will have a feedback session on what aspects of the workflow they seek to develop further.
Each of the evening public film screenings will be held. Tutors will show their own movies or the ones that should be noted in the context of the workshop. These events will be open to the general public and will be followed up with discussions which will help to better absorb contents of the lectures, as well as learning about major industry stories that impact the ways of production. They will discuss the biggest industry changes and how the young filmmaker should adapt to it.
After the workshop each participant will receive 6 ECTS credits that are approved around higher education institutions worldwide.
Jonathan Tammuz
Director and Screenwriter, GB
Birutė Kapustinskaitė
Screenwriter, LT
Audrius Stonys
Directos, LT
Mantautas Krukauskas
Composer, LT
Jonathan Tammuz
is a British-Canadian film director, best known for directing the short film The Childeater and the feature film Rupert's Land. The Childeater was a shortlisted Academy Award nominee for Best Live Action Short Film at the 62nd Academy Awards, and Rupert's Land was a Genie Award nominee for Best Picture at the 19th Genie Awards, with Tammuz also nominated for Best Director.
Tammuz is also the director of Stephen-Tammuz Productions, which develops and produces feature films, TV programmes, commercials and corporate videos. His expertise on feature films helped to develop films for tens of SMS participants in the previous years.
Birutė Kapustinskaitė
is a Lithuanian screenwriter and lecturer. She works on various film, theatre and audiovisual projects, including full-features Sasha Was Here (2020), The People We know Are Confused (2020), theatre piece Terapijos and audio-series Šiaurės miestelis. Her piece Terapijos received Golden Stage Cross (2018). Kapustinskaite actively presents her work in international workshops, festivals and conferences. Currently, she is the head of the LMTA Film Dramaturgy courseand teaches at Vilnius University.
Audrius Stonys
is a Lithuanian documentary filmmaker. He is recipient of the European Film Award for the documentary film Earth of the Blind in 1992 and the Lithuanian National Prize in 2002. Since 1989 he has created 13 documentaries and one short fiction film. His film The Flight over Lithuania or 510 Seconds of Silence co-created with Arūnas Matelis was well received at the Expo 2000. Stonys is a member of the European Documentary Network and European Film Academy with retrospectives of his work shown in Switzerland, France, Russia, Israel, the Czech Republic, Japan, and throughout Lithuania.
Mantautas Krukauskas
is a composer and sound artist, teacher at the Department of Composition of Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, as well as Head of Music Innovation Studies Centre. His compositions, including chamber music, audiovisual and sound art works, music for theatre productions have been performed in Lithuania, Austria, Germany, France, Canada, USA, and other countries. Mantautas Krukauskas has been actively involved in various organizational activities, including project coordination, event organizing, participation in international artistic, research and educational programmes. His interests comprise interdisciplinarity, creativity, music and media technologies, and a synergy of different aesthetic and cultural approaches.
Location in Film
by Jonathan Tammuz
This workshop will focus on the crucial function of location in filmmaking.
It will consist of a brief introduction stressing the importance of Location as a major element of visual storytelling and an integral part of a filmmaker’s tool kit. Through interactive and critical viewing of clips from a wide variety of films, we will explore the function of locations in each segment as characters, metaphors, mood setting devices, enhancers of human emotions, adding contrast to the plot and sometimes as actual antagonists.
Landscape as a cinematographic space
by Audrius Stonys
The use of landscape in the film frame is never accidental. Even when the director or cameraman uses the landscape only as a background for the action, the choice is influenced by the aesthetic and ethical ideas of the artist: from a simple “it’s beautiful”, to a complex capturing of associative signs of reality, with each choice informing the meaning of the frame. The landscape documents the reality in its complete temporal existence: the landscape, as captured in the film frame, did not exist yesterday or one hundred years ago; this landscape will no longer exist tomorrow or in a hundred years. The landscape is a powerful expressive tool; it is a cinematographic manifestation allowing the filmmakers to speak the truth about their time, their relationship to the world and the infinite, and to expose the multifaceted, dramatic inner reality of the contemporary human being.
Workshop schedule
23 June, Wednesday
10.00 Departure from Vilnius
11.00 Pick up in Kaunas
15.00 Pick up in Klaipėda
16.00 Bus Tour in Neringa
20.00 Arrival in Pervalka
21.00 Dinner and opening evening
Midsummer's night JONINES
24 June, Thursday
09.00 Breakfast
10.00 Lecture by Birutė Kapustinskaitė
13.00 Lunch
14.00 Klaipėda presentation
17.00 Lecture by Jonathan Tammuz
19.00 Dinner
20.00 Location scouting
22.30 Open-air film screening
25 June, Friday
09.00 Breakfast
10.00 Lecture by Mantautas Krukauskas
13.00 Lunch
14.00 Lecture by Audrius Stonys
19.00 Dinner
20.00 Pitching session
21.30 Distribution to teams
22.30 Open-air film screening
26 June, Saturday
09.00 Breakfast
10.00 Location scouting
Script consultations
13.00 Lunch
14.00 Location scouting
Script consultations
19.00 Dinner
20.00 Script consultations
22.30 Open-air film screening
27 June, Sunday
09.00 Breakfast
10.00 Location scouting
Script consultations
13.00 Lunch
14.00 Technical meeting
(for DOP and Sound directors)
15.00 Preparation for shooting
19.00 Dinner
20.00 Preparation for shooting
22.30 Open-air film screening
28 June, Monday
Shooting day 1 | Individual schedules
09.00 Breakfast
13.00 Lunch
19.00 Dinner
22.30 Open-air film screening
29 June, Tuesday
Shooting day 2 | Individual schedules
09.00 Breakfast
13.00 Lunch
19.00 Dinner
22.30 Open-air film screening
30 June, Wednesday
Shooting day 3 | Individual schedules
09.00 Breakfast
13.00 Lunch
19.00 Dinner
22.30 Open-air film screening
1 July, Thursday
Editing day 1 | Individual schedules
09.00 Breakfast
13.00 Lunch
19.00 Dinner
22.30 Open-air film screening
2 July, Friday
Editing day 2 | Individual schedules
09.00 Breakfast
13.00 Lunch
14.00 Editing review
19.00 Dinner
20.00 Editing review
22.30 Open-air film screening
3 July, Saturday
Sound post & Editing day 3 | Individual schedules
09.00 Breakfast
13.00 Lunch
14.00 Editing review
19.00 Dinner
20.00 Editing review
22.30 Open-air film screening
4 July, Sunday
Sound post & mixing | Individual schedules
09.00 Breakfast
10.00 Editing review
13.00 Lunch
19.00 Dinner
22.30 Open-air film screening
5 July, Monday
09.00 Breakfast
12.00 Film delivery deadline
13.00 Lunch
18.00 SMS 2021 Films screening
20.00 Awards ceremony
22.30 Closing party
6 July, Monday
09.00 Breakfast
10.00 Feedback session
12.00 Departure to Klaipėda / Kaunas / Vilnius (total ~4-5 hrs)
Gallery
