Missing People Website
Call Missing People on 0500 700 700. 24 hour confidential Freefone service.
- other press releases:
- press release: London River Charity Film Premiere in Aid of Missing People
- press release: Local Charity Marks 'Volunteers Week' By Calling for New Recruits
- press release: Organisations highlight International Missing Children's Day
- press release: Third Anniversary of Madeleine McCann's Disappearance
- press release: More Help for Missing People and Their Families
- press release: London Run Remembers Missing Loved Ones
- press release: Kate McCann Joins Charity Run in Aid of Missing People
- press release: Celebrities Join Charity Run to Remember The Missing
- press release: Charity Launches Run to Remember Those Who Are Missing
- press release: GMTV Launches 'Come Home for Christmas' Appeal
Charity to Benefit from First Ever 'Pay As you Like' Film Download
The charity Missing People today (4 January 2008) announced that five years after actress Posy Miller's death, her debut feature film, Sam Jackson’s Secret Video Diary, is to be released as the first ever movie release to use Radiohead's ‘pay what you like’ model. The film has been released as an exclusive download (28 December 2007) and will benefit two charities including Missing People.
Sam Jackson's Secret Video Diary (nominated for a British Independent Film Award in 2005) is the first to allow the public to choose how much, or how little, they pay for it. It is the same model UK rock band Radiohead chose for their last album, In Rainbows.
The release date has been chosen because it will be the week of the fifth anniversary of the sudden death of the film's leading actor, Posy Miller. 20% of all proceeds of the film will go equally to the UK-based Leukaemia Research and Missing People charities.
Chief Executive of Missing People, Paul Tuohy said “This film is an innovative way of not only remembering the extraordinary life of Posy Miller, but also supporting two national UK charities. People can download this film for as much or as little as they like –each time knowing the more they give the more will go to charity.”
The fictional film takes the form of a UK TV documentary about the search for Samantha Jackson, a missing person. Her friends have discovered tapes which show Sam involved in a secret reality TV experiment. Will they lead them to the truth as to what really happened to Sam?
To download Sam Jackson's Secret Video Diary visit www.samjacksonmovie.co.uk
-End-
Media Enquiries
Missing People - Communications team – media@missingpeople.org.uk / (0208 392 4520). Out-of-hours 07872 600178.
Notes to Editor
Available for interview
- Missing People spokesperson
- Director Guy Rowland will be available for media interviews, as will by arrangement members of the cast and Misha Herwin, Posy Miller's mother. Trailers, images and more information are available at the film's website at www.samjacksonmovie.co.uk.
About Missing People
Missing People (formerly National Missing Persons Helpline) is the UK’s only charity that works with young runaways, missing and unidentified people, their families and others who care for them. As well as actively searching for missing people and supporting those who are trying to find them, the charity offers three other services: Runaway Helpline (for young runaways), Message Home (for missing adults) and Identification (helping to resolve cases of unidentified people).
For more information visit our website at www.missingpeople.org.uk
Registered Charity No. 1020419.
Sightings
If you have a sighting of a missing person, call the charity Missing People on its 24 hour confidential Freefone service - 0500 700 700 / seensomeone@missingpeople.org.uk
Support Missing People
To make a donation to Missing People call Freefone 0800 2 98 78 58 or visit www.missingpeople.org.uk/donate
To find out more about how you can support Missing People please visit www.missingpeople.org.uk/supportus
To buy an official Missing People yellow ribbon email your name followed by your full postal address to ribbon@missingpeople.org.uk. Ribbons cost £1 each, min. order of 5 via email plus £1.50 p&p.
KEY FACTS
General
- The work of Missing People directly finds around 10 missing people every week
- An estimated 210,000 reports of missing people are made to UK police forces each year. Around two-thirds of these concern young people under the age of 18.
Christmas statistics
- Last Christmas (23 to 31 Dec 2006) Missing People received an average of 130 calls per day to the Runaway Helpline – 28% more than the daily average for the year.
- Missing People recorded over 130 enquiries on children (17 and under) who went missing over the Christmas period last year (23 to 31 Dec 2006). 85% of these enquiries concerned children aged 13 to 17.
- Missing People recorded 220 enquiries on adults (18 and over) who went missing over the Christmas period last year (23 to 31 Dec 2006). 30% of these enquiries concerned missing females; 70% missing males.
- Two vulnerable cases remain open - Roy Bridger and Kathleen ‘Kay’ Hawke,
To view more information on the issue of missing people, please visit the Policy and Research area of our website.
CURRENT PROJECTS
‘do it for missing children’ campaign
from December 17th to International Missing Children’s day (25th May 2008) the charity Missing People will launch a new fundraising appeal called ‘do it for missing children’ that aims to raise £1.4 million and to publicise missing children in new ways – from stickers on refuge trucks to the promotion of video appeals with YouTube
BBC Lifeline Appeal for Missing People
Missing People was selected for a BBC One Lifeline appeal on Sunday 16th December 2007. TV presenter Amanda Lamb led the appeal.
The appeal can now be viewed on YouTube by visiting www.youtube.com and searching for ‘lifeline missing people’
BBC Hard Christmas - Family stories behind the festive season
Christmas can be a particularly tough time for families who have lost touch with relatives. This Christmas BBC Learning will be exploring some of these issues from the 17 to 25 December 2007.
The BBC season includes hard-hitting programmes on family members seeking to contact missing relatives and the complex reasons why young people runaway.
‘Reunited’ on BBC One focuses on both the work of Missing People and the Salvation Army Family Tracing Service.
Missing People are among the partners supporting the season and contributing to a dedicated BBC website offering information and support for viewers. This includes details of how to go about getting back in touch with absent family members and how to keep your family from becoming separated or estranged.
Missing People website wins awards
On the 28 November Missing People accepted two awards at the ‘CorpComms’ Awards (celebrating excellence in corporate communications):
- Best Corporate Website (non profit) for the launch of www.missingpeople.org.uk
- Grand Prix Winner (non-FTSE 100 companies) for the launch of www.missingpeople.org.uk
To find out more about the awards please visit: www.corpcommsawards.com
Missing Map and Missing People TV
Missing People has launched an online ‘missing map’ of the UK and an online TV channel, Missing People TV, both available via www.missingpeople.org.uk.
About Molehill Productions
Molehill productions ltd. Reg office – 17 Audley Rise, Tonbridge, Kent. Reg no 4114746
In 2002, Posy Miller shot some speculative fragments for a demo TV microdrama for fledgling UK production company Molehill Productions. The concept was a one-woman video diary, which would be shown on TV for four minutes a night for nine weeks as a supposedly real confessional into phone dating, which goes horribly wrong. The demo was made in secrecy to preserve the reality – even Posy's family had no idea she was doing it. However, while the real TV development execs were responding to the demo, fate tragically intervened. In the space of a week, Posy fell ill and then died of acute leukaemia on Christmas Eve, 2002. Guy Rowland, Deborah Garrett and Chris Healey are the Molehill trio who had made the tape with Posy, and had all loved her instantly. They met her family and friends at the funeral for the first time, and told them what Posy had spent part of her final year doing. When the relatives and mates subsequently saw the footage, they unanimously considered it her best surviving work. But however good the clips were, the original story could now never be told, since the clips were only fragments of a much bigger story which could never be completed.
Rowland eventually hit upon a radical solution - make a totally new story about the search for Sam Jackson, who was now a missing person. Shot as a documentary, the film would follow Sam's friends after the discovery of some of her tapes (as in life, made in secrecy from her friends). It would also star many of Posy's actor friends, and would be a tribute to a remarkable person that all three filmmakers discovered they couldn't just let go. Filming and editing ran throughout 2004 and 2005, culminating in an appearance at the 13th Raindance Film Festival in London, strong reviews (“Impactful, heartfelt and courageous” from BBC Online) and the British Independent Film Award nomination. However, the film ran immediately into major music rights issues - never originally intended for public viewing, some of Posy's clips had commercial tracks embedded, which took a further 18 months to resolve. As it stands, this microbudget movie now remarkably includes songs by Radiohead, Robbie Williams, Nelly Furtado and A-ha.
Sam Jackson's Secret Video Diary, and the accompanying documentary Beyond Fiction will both be available for download from Friday December 28, 2007 at: www.samjacksonmovie.co.uk.
About DIVX downloads
DIVX is a video format which has become enormously successful in recent years due to internet peer-to-peer file-sharing technology. The free codec enabling computers to play DIVX movies has been downloaded 220 million times, enabling owners of Macs or PCs running Windows or Linux to play them using their regular software media players. There are also over 90 million consumer electronic devices that can already play DIVX movies, such as DVD players.It enables near DVD-quality for a fraction of the file sizes. More information on the DIVX format can be found at www.divx.com.
Leukaemia Research
Leukaemia Research is the only charity in the UK dedicated exclusively to researching blood cancers and disorders including leukaemia, Hodgkin’s and other lymphomas, and myeloma.
24,500 people are newly diagnosed with one of these conditions every year in the UK. More information can be found at www.lrf.org.uk.
Molehill Productions Ltd
Molehill Productions is a small UK based film and TV production company formed in 2000 with the aim of making projects that appeal to both heart and head. Several scripts are in development. To date, they have completed two films – Sam Jackson's Secret Video Diary in 2005, and the documentary Beyond Fiction: Posy Miller and the Story of Sam Jackson's Secret Video Diary in 2007.
Sam Jackson's Secret Video Diary – Synopsis
Samantha Jackson disappeared in August 2003. Following the discovery of tapes Sam made for a secret reality TV project, a documentary crew follows Sam's friends and colleagues in the search for clues. Will the tapes lead them to the truth? What really happened to Sam Jackson?
FURTHER INFORMATION AND CONACT:
www.samjacksonmovie.co.uk guy@molehillproductions.co.uk +44 (0)775 384 0579
December 17 2007, Molehill Productions Ltd
