Women in Film and Television Ireland

#Event: Women in Film and Television Ireland presents INNOVATORS on October 22nd at Light House Cinema

Women in Film and Television Ireland (WFT.I) in collaboration with the U.S Embassy of Ireland, present their October event INNOVATORS with a particular emphasis on creative, business and technological innovations in an ever-changing media landscape.

This exciting event includes the European Premiere of GD-IQ, a tool that employs video- and audio-recognition technology, along with algorithms, to identify gender, speaking time and additional details about characters presented in films, television shows and other media. For the first time this tool will be used to analyse an Irish film and results will be presented at the event.

The software, called the Geena Davis Inclusion Quotient (or GD-IQ), will speed up and automate the painstaking data-collection process that researchers use to study representation, a key initiative in recent years as the entertainment industry has begun to focus on equity onscreen.

Premiering the software is Madeline Di Nonno, the Chief Executive Officer of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, the only research based non-profit working with the entertainment and media community to improve gender diversity in children’s entertainment through research based programs.

“The GD-IQ research is a tool to help inspire change,” said Di Nonno, “It’s not meant to criticize; it’s meant to have the facts so that content creators can be aware and learn from it.”

Joining Di Nonno is Dearbhla Walsh, the EMMY, IMMA and BAFTA Award Winning Director and Jennie Stacey, Director of Development at the multi-award-winning animation studio Brown Bag Films.

Director Dearbhla Walsh will speak to the different directing and storytelling approaches she takes when it comes to engaging audiences for drama, to those who are watching in a traditional episodic TV format, to those who want to binge watch online.

Jennie Stacey will speak to Brown Bag’s innovations in storytelling, featuring their award winning work on titles including Doc McStuffins, Anya, Octonauts, Noddy in Toyland and more, and also in relation to the use of technology in animation, including the rabbit-rig used for the BBC CBeebies series Peter Rabbit.

The event will include presentations, panel discussions and Q&As. Refreshments will be provided. It is free to WIFT members; €10 for non-members. Booking at eventbrite.ie