Getting the right director for a feature is one of the most important things to make sure we get absolutely right as it ultimately decides how good the film and production process is. Never, ever work with actors and/or directors if you can help it – they are a sensitivity nightmare. Producers are even worse as they are focused on totally different goals (money, resources and delivery).
Our immediate response has been to build a great crew; a bigger, better and more experienced core of people who are military-like in their professionalism and experience. We now have a working relationship with one of the most respected and professional teams in the business – a script supervisor with an IMDB credit list as long as your arm, a well-known director based at Pinewood, 2 photographer directors with more than 50 years experience between them, a young 1st AD with a growing reputation behind him, and 20 or so others who work together regularly and are renowned for their speed, focus, talent and professionalism. Together we’ve built a new plan and contracted to work together on all 7 movies in a package format. The whole team are highly positive, road-tested, amazingly resilient and everyone has absolute confidence in their ability to deliver an amazing feature.
We have been working with this new amazing team to create a really resilient and effective plan for shooting and delivering the movie that has so far exceeded everyone’s expectations and hopes – morale is very high because of it. The schedule, story twists, photography ideas and ballsy attitude to production are just something else. We couldn’t hope for a better plan or people to execute it.
One thing that has driven us mad lately is the changing goalposts of our shooting schedule. Originally we’d been scheduled to start filming in mid-June, but it got put back several times because of problems and diary clashes. Most features suffer some form of delay – typically 3-6 months, but even up to 12-18 – but our task is much harder simply because we’re asking a lot of favours and don’t necessarily have the cash resources to demand people work at our timescales. We’ve done several days of tracking/recce filming so far around potential locations (as well as material for the “Making of..”) but things have changed so much every single week that it’s been impossible to pin the production down to a proper schedule. Our original plan was to shoot on 4 consecutive weekends to save money, time and hassle, as well as allow crew to keep working commercially during the weekdays, but it’s proved more effective to run a straight 10 days or 20 working days to keep things consistent. Best laid plans!
The upshot is that through discussing it and working on the bigger picture, we’ve got a much bigger plan we want to execute that will make a better film and a lot more lucrative return for everyone. It will involve pushing the shoot back until September, but it’s what’s come out of a lot of wrangling and debating since we moved into the office.
We’ve received 3 approaches from potential distributors already due to the press activity, which is great news. We’ve also been offered the investment needed for the 2nd film (£100k) as well as private investments of around £10k for MR. Locations we’ve been offered either free and.or at reduced rate include Somerset House, the Tate Galleries, London Zoo, Southwark Cathedral and more.
We are at the most important junction we’ve faced so far, and need to make a very heavy decision about the future of the project. Through our discussions with the new team, we’ve all agreed that we have a HUGE opportunity in front of us that we’d be crazy to miss. We’re effectively at a “T-junction” where we have 2 main options:
a) Use the money we have now (£30k) to make a good and gritty modest-budget indie film with an untested pool of inexperienced crew; or
b) Treat the money as “development” capital and do a 2nd round of funding to raise a modest feature total of £150k to shoot a fully-loaded feature film with a professional team.
Everyone who has worked on the project has a sense that its potential is not being fully realised, and it’s been coming to a head. We all want to make the best film possible and realise what we’ve got, and it looks like 99% of the people involved want to take option B. The feeling is that if we’re going to do it, we should go the whole way. But we need the acceptance, approval and consent of existing shareholders to be able to take that route. It would give us the ability to hire a fully-paid 25-strong crew we already have identified and easily deal with the problems we’ve faced so far, as well as give us another achievement to add to our belt. The product would be better, the schedule tighter, and the Sept/Oct timing would put us right at MIP TV to present it to distributors. It would mean a delay whilst we re-sculpt things over summer (raising the money privately, re-jigging the script, line manager pulling it apart, location-recce’ing etc) but it would give us a very secure platform to shoot, edit and market from that would almost certainly provide a much better financial return for everyone.
At this stage we don’t believe it will involve any dissolution, reduction in shareholding value or affect anyone financially. We will need to work through percentages but will act to secure that public and private shareholdings are prioritised.
If we take this route (as we want to), it will mean we need to immediately start talking to private investors about putting in the 2nd round of £150k and re-working the script immediately so its in place within a few weeks. Once that secondary finance is in place a 4-week shoot schedule for September can be finalised, crew paid up and SFX/props brought in over a miniscule 8-week rehearsal period. It’s still much lower than any other feature and we don’t believe it will compromise the original vision for the film and/or the platform for unknown talent we set out to build.
A decision has to be made on A or B by the end of the week, so we’d appreciate as much feedback as you can give us in this regard. If you have ideas, advice, feedback, concerns or queries, please call or email.
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