Monthly Distribution Blog

Saturday 31st July 2010

The screening for the cast and crew went well. Beforehand I was quite nervous. Emma Rozanska did a good job projecting the film, checking everything was good and making sure I was happy.

Pete Stevenson didn’t come. I had hoped he would shoot the screening as a coda to the documentary. Julie, Grace and Marc were also absent. Beforehand I read out letters from Julie and Marc. The latter got a good many laughs.

The sound and picture were wonderful in this cinema. The best we have had so far and a big contrast to Phuket. I saw nearly all the film and was able to check the dcp. As a sting in the tail, though, I observed that reel 2 was slightly out of sync. I sent it back to Soren the next week to be sorted but that hasn’t happened as of yet.

After the screening, Cristina Corazza told me that the hard work had been worthwhile. As she was the crew member who gave me the most difficulties during the shoot, that was warming.

Monday saw Jonnie and I working on admin. During this, I discovered that we had missed a few key deadlines for film festivals. I hope now that we are on top of things again. We need to keep going with the festival circuit until the end of the year at least.

The following Friday, Pete Stevenson sent me an e-mail saying that he had thought that the screening would be in the evening and that was why he had missed it. I called him the next week to tell him the progress with the documentary.

At the screening I had discovered that the sound for the doc had not actually been given to JD as I’d thought. On the 13th I finally got hold of Rhys. He promised to give me the sound for JD on Monday the 19th – my birthday. He promised he would take me out for dinner as a forfeit if he didn’t keep his promise.

Rhys kept his word and when JD got the sound he estimated it would only take two weeks to perfect it. The following week he sent me a copy of the doc as I’d not seen the final (64 minute) cut. It didn’t have any voiceover, nor need it. I called Pete and told him that as he was still waiting to find out Rhys’ response to the voiceover he’d recorded!

This month was focused on getting a UK distributor for the film. I had a number of meetings about it. I also decided to do three more screening of the film, one this month and two next as a final chance for people to see it if they haven’t yet. Jonnie and I will need to make a decision at the beginning of September on what we will do. We will also need to make a choice about International Sales. We had a conference call this month with our reps in LA who will be in Toronto representing us also but we still need to make a decision regarding a sales agent.

A bright moment this month was the demise of the UK Film Council, an organisation that did little to help British Independent film-makers. We will see what it is replaced by.

This week Jonnie e mailed me to say he is coming to London next week but that “I will help out with DEP but it is not nor cannot be my priority so please do not try and persuade me otherwise - it won't work.” Amazed, I e-mailed him back immediately. I know full well that his priority is to earn money.

The next month will be absolutely critical for UK distribution. What will happen I do not know but a decision needs to be taken. Everyone involved in this film has other priorities except me. I can’t continue this lonely furrow forever. I have to move on. Will I be able to?

Today JD called. He has finished the sound on the film. What a guy! Total efficiency. Like Roger and Daniel, he is absolute A+. All I need to do now is check the work next week and then master the doc.

2 days away from completing the documentary.

Saturday 28th August 2010

On the 3rd Julie was in town and I met her for a coffee and a chat. She seems to be very busy and things are going well for her. That day also we had the penultimate distributors screening for the film. As has become customary, it was under attended.
 
That day I also watched the final cut of the documentary. Unfortunately I saw some mistakes in the titles and also a glaring editing mistake. I arranged to spend another day with Rhys to correct it.

The next day I went to see JD to check the sound. As always, I had some comments - the most notable were the sounds of frogs at inappropriate places. Pete should really have done this checking but I didn’t want a repeat of what had happened when he was meant to spend two days working with Rhys.

On Saturday the 7th an audio documentary about Hulme in Manchester was broadcast on radio 4 featuring an extended sound clip from The Frontline. Over the next couple of days many people heard it and texted me.

The following Monday Jonnie came to the office so that we could do admin and talk about distribution and sound agents. We decided to post-pone the decision making that we need to do until the beginning of next month as there were a number of things pending.

Jonnie seemed more upbeat than I’ve seen him for a while. I guess the change of scenery being in London for a month and the re-found access to so many friends is the reason – as well as earning some money here.

That day we started paying our last big outstanding debt. I hope we get some more income soon as we need to pay that off before Christmas.

That Thursday, Jonnie called me with the opening line “How much do you love me?”
I tried to rack my brains for what he was about to say but I couldn’t think of anything apart from the unlikely event that he had found a new investor in the film. It turned out that he and Steve Di Marco had wandered into the Raindance Film Festival office and started to talk to Xavier, the festival director, only to find out that Xavier was coincidentally just about to contact us so that we could send him a screener. This festival had been one that we had missed the deadline for last month and I was more than a little sad about the screw up.

The next day Jonnie and I dropped one in.

The distributors screening on the 18th had a very good response despite having yet again a small audience with no combatants. We will now mop up the people who have failed to see it (many times) with DVD screeners. It’s not ideal but we can’t go on endlessly do screenings for people who can’t be bothered to turn up.
 
On the 20th I collected the finished sound for the documentary from JD. On the 23rd I gave everything back to Rhys and spent a morning correcting the titles and the editing mistake. I had to leave before the grading was progressed as I had a meeting. The next day he texted me to say it was complete. Two days later it had been mastered and thus is now FINISHED!

I have also been progressing the soundtrack album this month. More contracts. I’ve negotiated the small lacunas in the contracts done at the end of the music licensing process.

This month Galway, Dubai and the Pusan film festivals all came back negatively. Also I went up two blind alleys with UK preview screenings - both of which were a total waste of time. Amazingly though, this Thursday, Jonnie texted me with the news that Raindance had accepted the film into their film festival. The day before we had got confirmation from the Marbella International film festival. So that’s two more selections and at long last a UK and European premier.

Friday 30th September 2010

Today I am on my way up to Sheffield with Marc. We are going to see our friend John Simm play Hamlet. As Marc is coming to Marbella for the festival, I will see a lot of him over the next few weeks. He even won a week’s stay in a luxury apartment down there in a charity auction last week!

On the 7th was the announcement for the Raindance Film Festival. To my great sadness, though, we are not in competition. I’m not sure why this is. It could be because we don’t fit into any category (we are too big or too small or too quirky) or that we entered too late after those selections had already been made or maybe they just thought that we have won enough already and that it should be a chance for other films to compete!

I am disappointed that we won’t be able to compete but despite that I am glad we finally are in a festival that’s close by and many of the family and friends of cast and crew who were unable to attend the cast and crew screening will get a chance to see the film as well as the general public. Maybe even Pete Stevenson will see it? Also I think it will be the first festival screening where Jonnie, Julie, Marc and I will be all together in attendance.

Apart from following up with distributors, this month has been about working on things for the upcoming film festivals. I have been on top of Soren consistently about the DCP and solving the sync problem on reel 2. Today, as I am away, I have left Neil Harris with that job. It is two months ago now that I told Soren about the problem. Now as the Raindance screening date approaches it is urgent.

On the 9th I had to arrange for a screening so Soren could see the problem for himself. On the clipster he couldn’t see it – the screen was too small. He was surprised when I didn’t turn up for the screening. When he called, I said “I don’t need to see it again. I’ve seen it!” Later he called again to confirm that he had seen the problem now and then set to work.

This week though, the hard drive with the DCP on it was misplaced, only for it to be found a few hours later. Currently we are 9 days away from the screening and the problem still hasn’t been solved. Soren told me yesterday that I was “not to worry”. I have delivered an HDcam to Raindance in case we can’t get the sync problem fixed in time. I hope not – we’ve had more than enough time!

The problems with the DCP have been nothing compared with the Spanish subtitles. Apart from having to get the whole film translated correctly, it turns out that all the timecodes that Jonnie put into the dialogue lists were unfortunately without frame counts. Like a total idiot, it never occurred to me to check them after Jonnie double checked them. They just had hours, minutes and seconds. I went through the lot estimating all the frame counts which took ten hours only to find out that some of seconds themselves were not accurate by a second either way. This coupled with the estimated frames meant that they could be up to 2 seconds out of where they should be. I can easily see something that is 4 frames out so 2 seconds can feel like a lifetime in cinema terms.

Last Thursday – the day before the subtitles were supposed to be delivered - this became fully apparent when I saw a finished copy. There were also issues of placement in frame but the timings were the hardest thing to correct. The next day I started to go down with a horrible case of flu. Most of the weekend I spent going through the film frame by frame fitting the subtitles. It was a kind of minor de-spotting like experience, except it could be done in my home rather than the middle of the night in Soho. The fitting had been done by the end of Sunday, put onto a copy of the film on Monday and was sent to Spain on Tuesday – only 4 days late.

Yesterday we started doing some press for the Raindance film festival. Jonnie who returned to London on the 20th, has really come to life in the last week doing some excellent work on our PR as well as sending the other deliverables to festivals. I hope the PR work will soon start to pay dividends. More exposure in the UK would be more than useful to us.

The day before we had been at the Raindance opening night party at Café de Paris. My illness was at its feverish height and “I looked like shit” so people said but I braved it out to press the flesh and meet fellow film-makers etc.

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