Let's do lunch

So Wednesday was an interesting day. Chris Dane and I drove off to Brighton for a meeting with Michael from Spice Factory and Stealth Media. We had randomly had a meeting with Jason from Stealth when we were in Cannes and had obviously made a good impression. A couple of weeks ago Chris sent them a copy of the 1st draft of "Blood Traps" our supernatural period horror film and it turns out it rose above the usual crap their script reader has to go through. It then got passed around the team and they all liked it and wanted to meet.

So Chris and I drove down and went out for Lunch with Michael and chatted for what must have been about 3 hours or more about films and about Blood Traps. Now before this meeting, Blood Traps was written so that we could go out and make a film this year with about £20,000 we could scrap together, shoot it in Scotland and London and pass it off as Canada, act in it ourselves and hope to sell it in Cannes next year. However, over lunch we were suddenly talking about getting a Canadian Production Company on board to Co-produce, a known director, named actors and a budget of 1million or more.

All quite amazing and exciting if it actually happens, though it also means we are back to not having a project to film and act in this year. I wonder if we can write something new that we can film for about £20,000? Back to work :-)

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Cannes Vlog Day 2

So it's taken quite a while, new computers etc but finally here is Day 2 of the Cannes Vlog!  The other days should follow very shortly.




Day 2, which was actually the first full day in Cannes, felt pretty full on. We did so much walking, some of which was pointless as you will see, which is always the case in Cannes. You need good shoes and even then it might not help.  I hope you enjoy the video. More coming soon.

Standing In

Today I'm on set as a stand in for camera tests for a new film called One Day. I'm standing in for Anne Hathaway and the film is being directed by Lone Scherfig the Danish director who did An Education.

This is my third day on the film. The first was at Angels, the costumiers being a human walking clothes dummie, trying on various potential costumes. The next was my first day on set as Anne's stand in. I met Anne and Lone who were both lovely and even spoke to them over lunch and they were asking about what I do and I was promoting Born of Hope to them. I wonder if they'll take a look?

So today was more of the same. A 7:30am call after I foolishly went to bed at about 3am because I'd made a pitch video for my Pirate Movie fundraising on IndieGoGo and wanted to get it up on YouTube and the indieGoGo site but it wasn't working for some reason. I finally gave up before it got light and I'd have had to go straight to work with no sleep at all! Two hours is ok right :-S

So in theory it's not going to be too late a day today. Which is good as I'm due to go watch a show tonight that an old drama school friend of Chris is in.

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Networking

I went to another networking event the other night. It was the Wrap Party for The Production Office Live, the internet show from Chris Jones and the team at Living Spirit. After 10 weekly shows they realised that they were spending more time organising the show and not actually making movies. That's the problem with social networking etc, it can take over if you're not careful.

Anyway, despite the Phoenix Room in London feeling like we were all in an oven, there was a nice amount of people there supporting Chris and the show and networking with each other. Networking is a funny thing. I don't consider myself very good at it and following up by contacting people from their business cards is something I'm especially bad at. My poor communication was actually highlighted to me when I got chatting to a screenwriter who, it turned out, had emailed me at least twice before and never recieved a reply. My problem is that I can often flag emails to follow up on rather than email straight back. Then what happens is I get more emails, more are flagged and they start to disappear off the bottom and some never get a reply. Crazy I know and I know I need to get better at this. I really do. I apologise if any of you have emailed me and never heard back. I need pestering I really do.


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The Darkside?

I have changed sides and I've been warned that once the line has been crossed I will never go back.


What am I talking about? PC vs Mac of course. Yes, after years of being a PC girl and laughing at all my Mac obsessed friends, I have decided that, with my old desktop PC on it's last legs, an iMac is what I'm gonna try next. After working on an iMac for most of the last year while editing BoH I've kind of gotten used to them. I think buying an iphone probably also contributed. They are easy to use, have a compact design and I was just starting to think that an iMac with Final Cut Pro might be the best way to go.

I hope I don't regret it. A friend built my PC computer and could probably do it again for less than the mac but I guess I'm a bit impatient to wait plus the iMac is basically just a big monitor with no huge box taking up space. I'm keeping one foot in to PC world though as I have a little PC laptop.

I only bought the iMac yesterday an it's still sitting in it's box in my room. I'm out working today but would rather be getting it out and having a play.


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Cannes and other events

So, I failed. I've still not gotten used to blogging. Ah well. Maybe it's because I think I have to write something profound. Forget it, you'll find none of that here.

So as I mentioned last time I've just been to Cannes. Here's a little video of highlights. I will be editting together more of the footage shortly and will then blog more about what happened each day.



Here's also a video from the Living Spirit team's book launch for The Guerilla Film Makers Pocketbook. All a bit of fun and I learnt an interesting rumour that's apparently been going round the BBC. If only it were true!



I decided to go along to this event, which was just before I headed off the Cannes, to not only get a copy of the new book to add to the collection but also to start working out my networking muscles. If you know me I will tell you that I think I'm pretty useless at networking. However, I've finally, after years of denial, realised that in this business as in life, who you know is better than anything. Advice to everyone, don't deny it, embrace it. I'm trying but I need to work harder. One thing I still need to do is follow up with everyone I met in Cannes. Lots of business cards to go through and lovely people to say "hello, remember me?" to.


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First Vlog with my new Flip UltraHD camera

I wonder if this will actually be the start of more regular updates on this blog?  Your guess is as good as mine.  Anyway, I bought this new camera to make vlogging easier.  For example I'm off to the Cannes Film Festival next week and want to be able to document my time there.  So, here we go.