Life’s Just Events

For quite a while now I’ve been talking with the others about the idea of creating some kind of event to link in with the film. Much like the social networking that I’ve discussed previously, the event would allow us to meet new people, make new friends, help spread the word about the film, and potentially find collaborators for the project. In the last week or so the idea has become a bit more solid and I’ve drafted proposals for not one, but two different events that we’re going to try and get off the ground. It might be that they both happen, that only one of them happens, or even that neither of them happen: even though the ideas have been developed, right now they’re still just ideas. That said, we’re starting to talk to venues, so watch this space. Details of these events will of course be posted on this blog and our site if/when they come to fruition.

So, what else has been going on? Well, we have been continuing to approach various financiers and right now we have various people looking over the script after expressing interest in the project. Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking about the script and noting down ideas for a new draft and yesterday I had a meeting with Bart (our cinematographer) to talk through some ideas about the script, the schedule, and the shot list. Finally, we now have over 1,000 friends on our MySpace page, so a big thank you to each and every one of them and here’s hoping that this thing continues to grow.

- Alex

Edinburgh and beyond

As I mentioned in my previous post, last week I attended the Edinburgh International Film Festival. As I was there with a short film that I made (called Hungerford: Symphony of a London Bridge) I had a filmmaker’s pass, which allowed me access to the delegate centre and industry events. I’ve written at length about my experiences at the festival over on my personal blog, so I won’t go into details here, but I will just quickly talk about the festival from a Life Just Is perspective. While at the festival I met a lot of great people and I was able to promote the film to them, but beyond that there were also many people who might be able to help realise the project in a more direct way. Networking at a festival like Edinburgh offers a lot of opportunities which other networking events don’t, and this is partly to do with the fact that everyone there is serious enough about filmmaking to pay for a pass, or is making films of a high enough quality to get them shown in a major festival. Also, the printed Who’s Who Guide is an incredible resource and we’ve managed to get interest in the film from people in the guide who we’ve contacted since the festival. Whether anything will come from any of this interest remains to be seen, but it’s a nice avenue to have open for us to explore. Other opportunities created by the festival for the film included a one-to-one session with the Head of Development at Film4 and an individual session with a panel of industry experts. Obviously both of these sessions offered a great opportunity to get advice about the project and help make people from within the industry aware of what we’re doing. In short, I would highly recommend that filmmakers attempting to get a feature off the ground attend a festival like Edinburgh.

- Alex.