Special Guests

This year Cinemagic welcomes a host of special guests from the world of film, entertainment and new media. Roy E. Disney, Vice Chairman of the The Walt Disney Company and nephew of Walt is one of the Keynote speakers at the "What's the Story?" conference which will bring together a host of internationa teachers, producers, youth organisations and young consumers to demystify the digital revolution and put peole in the picture. Also giving keynote speeches will be Chris Deering, President of Sony Computers Europe and Mayra Langdon Riesman, President of Film Scouts LLC.

Every year Cinemagic offers a series of unique, prctical and fun series of masterclasses and workhops led by top profesionals from the film and television industries. This year Seamus McGarvey, Director of Photography for Films such as High Fidelity and the soon to be released Enigma will talk about his work, discuss camera techniques and examine the effects of style and lighting by shooting a short scene in a variety of ways during the class. Prolific Irish writer Enda Walsh, who has recently adapted his stage play Disco Pigs for the big screen and was winner of 1997 Best Emerging Playwright (previous winners include Mike Leigh and Hanif Kureshi) will explore the differences between writing for stage and screen as well as explaining how he went about adapting his own script into a screenplay. Men from Mars are one of the UK's premiere visual and digital effects compnies. They are responsible for computer generated visual effects on big movies such as Lost in Space and Elizabeth. Their head of Production, Simon Frame will explain how some of these effects are created and let 20 lucky participants in on a few exclusive high tech tricks of the trade.