Hello everyone!

First off, please accept my apologies for the delay in this update as i know the last one was in August. A few people have pinged me to say its been a while and i’m sorry for that. I know communication is absolutely vital. We’ve been flat out arranging things and working damned hard on toppling our 3 big interdependent “dominos”: a) finance, b) cast and c) distribution. We never could have anticipated changing direction to be a much bigger operation and it’s been tricky re-ordering things so we’re able to carry on for longer.

3 press features are coming up this month:

* TIME Magazine (Yes!)
* Screen International
* Variety

Investment
Public contributions were finished on Sept 1st and have been fully calculated. Just under £60k has been raised in development funding from February 2009, which is a stunning achievement and incredible gesture of appeal and faith. The figures will be going into our first set of annual accounts at Companies House this December. Current running costs are coming in at around £7k/month and the vast majority of the big chunks of money needed have been allocated and paid out. This is less than 1% of the normal cost associated with development that a major studio would spend, and around 5-10% of what an independent outfit would typically invest in a new script.

Private Equity-wise, it’s damned tough out there. Really, really tough. We’ve been on the road speaking to people for around a month now with the full budget and financial data, and the British investment community’s perception of film (and the creative arts in general), is in pretty bad shape. Dealing with this kind of fundraising is a full-time job in itself – all want to see a headline cast, sales estimates and a distribution agreement, which no film ever has unless its a major studio. Naturally you can’t get those until you’re “green lit” financially.

One of the very best and most innovative investment networks we have in the UK is CAIN – the Creative Arts Investment Network. It’s a business angel network set up by Nicki Hattingh that specialises in financing creative projects like music, film and theatre. And so desperately needed:

CAIN: http://www.cainuk.com/

What we’re looking for is 2 HNW (high net worth) guys who are able to put in around £200k each for equity, and so far we’ve spoken to around 40 people, of which we’ve met with 11. 4 of those are serious contenders, but it’s still tough. Because it’s a relatively small amount, we’ve also spoken to the major banks (and 2 media banks) about just simply borrowing the money outright against future distribution as it’s essentially a cash flow issue . We’ve also spoken to the usual institutional suspects (Ingenious, Future Films etc) but their typical range is 2-10M. And of course, we’ve had our fair share of sharks – people wanting co-productions, wasting our time, critics etc.

Sales & Distribution
The first step to any of this is securing a sales agent, or a broker that will sell your film around the world. Quite why you need one is anyone’s guess, but investors use their guesswork on the film’s future performance to judge whether an investment is viable. The theory is that they have relationships with distributors all over the world can pump your work to them instead of you doing each deal individually. The trouble is that no-one can predict the performance of a film, and the estimates are based on guessed percentages that are essentially made-up, e.g. “You should sell 3% to the US, 7% to Thailand” etc.

Some of the UK best, in order of preference:

* The Works International (http://www.theworksmediagroup.com/)
* Protagonist Pictures (http://www.protagonistpictures.com/aboutus.php)
* Goalpost Film (http://www.goalpostfilm.com/)

So, once you have a sales agent to magically guess your numbers, it’s a lot easier to get a distributor involved. We’ve gone straight to these guys as its where most indie films fall down, and they all love the script. Thankfully they’re all back from their jollies at the Venice & Toronto film festivals. You have a distributor in all of the main 40 countries where film does well, and they then book it into the cinema chains and DVD wholesalers, whilst paying for the print & advertising (P&A) costs. Generally speaking, after VAT is deducted, the cinema/exhibitor takes 75% of the ticket price, and the distributor 25%, until you reach the “house nut” sales level, where it switches round to be more favourable to the distributor. Out of that 25%, the producer gets 65%, after all the advertising costs have been deducted. Unfortunately, 40% of films in the UK never go on to make even 100k at the box office (most individual cinemas average around £2k per night in sales), and filmmakers end up owing the distributor. Theatrical release is now used as a marketing “platform” to sell DVDs, which is where most Uk filmmaking is concentrating – hence so many Danny Dyer straight-to-dvd supermarket sales.

Some of the UK’s best, in order of preference:

* Momentum Pictures (http://www.momentumpictures.co.uk/, Dorian Gray, Bruno)
* Optimum Releasing (http://www.optimumreleasing.com/, The Hurt Locker, Whiteout)
* Revolver Entertainment (http://revolvergroup.com/uk/, Sin Nombre)
* E1 Entertainment (http://www.e1entertainment.com/, Twilight)

Scanbox Entertainment (http://www.scanbox-international.com/) are backed by the company that are the only ones who supply Blockbuster with indie films.

Rarely, once in a while, a film achieves a “negative pickup” by a major studio where it is bought outright. Unfortunately this causses issues with actors, who make loadsamoney on the “back end” by taking a 2% cut of the profits because their name is what makes the film sell.

Casting
When we started this, no-one thought we could get big names involved. Then we talked about cameos. Then we met a well known casting director who was so impressed with the script that she suggested Tom Hardy for the lead role and told us we could easily get major talent/Names attached on the script alone.

Why is a casting director necessary? Well, if you call anyone’s agent to ask them whether they’ll do the film, they’ll simply ignore you and throw your stuff in the bin (yes, the self-importance is unbelievable). But a casting director opens the door because of the influence they have.  Get the Names, get the finance and everything else.

P.S. Blacklisting
Due to problems we’ve had with CastingCallPro people bad-mouthing the project, we’ve actively created a “blacklist” of extras/supporting artists we will not be working with under any circumstances. We have production staff searching through the net to match up anyone who has given us crap with people who have been screened. If they’ve done the dirty, they don’t get to play on any projects we do. I’m keen to widen/extend this further.

Publicity Stunts
Well, i have some ideas, and most of the team think they’re totally, utterly insane. They’re right. Publicity makes the difference between a successful film and a flip – the best script and financing are useless if you can’t get bums on seats in the cinema. We’ll be having a “stupid ideas party” before the shoot where every member of the crew contributes 10 ridiculous and unworkable ideas – there will be 5 gems at the end of the evening.

The main theme is like the Derren Brown “Events”, or a 7-day schedule of 15min madness before the first day of cinema release each fed to the newspapers and paparazzi daily, minutes before they are due to happen:

if you have ideas, let us know!

Stunts & SFX
The fun bit. Well, it certainly is when you’re speaking numbers all day. We’ve achieved a biug-budget effect on screen by working our deals very cleverly. We’ve managed to get our firearms, explosives and general violence in a package from the Armoury Group at Pinewood (http://www.thearmourygroup.com/), who are looking to road-test all the new kit being used on “Bourne 4″ on us first. Their CEO is ex-22 SAS and they’re all completely insane.

One of the best explosives guys in the UK is Charlie Adcock, a senior pyrotechnic technician on every Bond project you know. Charlie also runs fun 3-day SFX/explosives courses in Somerset for £480 (or free if Skillset pay), so if you ever fancied blowing the shit out of something, or your son/daughter needs an outlet (like many of us did), check out his company and give him a call:
http://www.fireworks.org.uk/SFX.html

Visual FX are going to be done by Leigh Took (http://www.mattesandminiatures.com/), who is like one of the A-Team in that you can put him in a skip and he’ll come out with something that could earn him a engineering PhD. Leigh is responsible for building “Rosslyn Chapel” in “The Da Vinci Code” (which is actually 3ft tall), the collapsing model of “Venice” in “Casino Royale” (18ft) and also worked on “The Descent”, “Batman Returns” and “The Mutant Chronicles”.

Locations
These are all done, and a montage of all the 21 places we’re shooting are attached as 3 “mood boards”.

Technical
Now, time for the nerdy stuff. If you’re bored by that kind of thing, best to move on to the next paragraph.

We’ll be hiring our gear from Filmscape, who are based at Pinewood and run by the hilarious 27 year old maniac known as Kev Harvey, who started the business when he was 23 with just a Canon Camcorder and 35mm lens adaptor:
http://www.filmscapemedia.com/

We’ll be using Zeiss Super-Speeds lenses for their shallow Depth of Field (speed/aperture) and general resilience and “cold” feel. Kev also has Angenieux Optimos, which cost around 50k/lens and are found on every Hollywood set. The film “look” is a mixture of high-quality lenses, depth of field, 35mm image size, colouring, film “grain” and typically Panavision cameras are hired in with Arri grip equipment. Our Zeiss fronts will be attached to RED ONE camera bodies, recording digitally as 2GB 4K RED RAWCODE .r3d files, straight into Final Cut Pro. Sound is recorded separately onto solid state/DAT as WAV/AIFF, and then cleaned up/enhanced later. Clapperboards are used to sync multiple cameras and sound when they are combined later in a “conform”.

Camera negative footage is typically stored in pro-res DPX files for transporting, but if you have a 35mm projector, you need to get a physical print. Clearly, that’s a bit silly nowadays in the digital age, but the multi-billion dollar film industry has yet to catch up with the rest of the world.

From the 4K master, we downscale/transcode the film into HD (Huffy/MPEG-4 1080i), Blu-Ray (2x HD MPEG-4, Java menus) and DVD (MPEG-2),

All our footage (”rushes” or “dailies”) is being backed up at multiple locations, the main one being done by our friends at the Refine Group (http://www.refine-group.com/). They have a 20TB RAID box for us connected to a 100MB SohoNet line to Pinewood. At their offices in Latimer Road, they press 80,000 DVD/Blu-Ray discs a week as well as distributing to iTunes and PPV circuits.

We’re also talking with In-Three (http://www.in-three.com/), who are an LA-based technology company who RealD claim lead the market in 2D -> 3D conversion through a process they call “depth grading” or “dimensionalisation” in post. If we go ahead, we will be the first indie film to have key scenes converted into 3D for use in IMAX and 3D-equipped cinemas.

Website
We’re falling behind on this one, but it needs to be done as the old one is holding us back. We’re up to the next stage, so we need something cool up there. We have plenty of ideas, but if you’ve got a feel for what we should be putting up there, let me know. Jenni Davies is doing the write-up, with James Ratnarajah (http://www.newrevolution.co.uk/) doing the graphics and branding.

Making Of/EPK
I’m pleased to announce the folk from the hilarious Jelly Moustache (http://www.thejellymoustache.com/) are going to be producing our “behind the scenes” footage when we start production with the help from Filmscape’s equipment cupboard. They are led by the erstwhile Howard Cohen, a TV producer from North One Productions who is doing an amazing job in bringing together young comedians, actors and crew on the weekends to make brilliant comedy shorts/sketches.  One of the best to watch is “Something For the Wickend”.

Hope you’ve all had a great week, and very much looking forward to giving you all the good news very soon!

Alex