I have made many films, including four feature films and one Oscar shortlisted film (pic right, from the 1998 premiere of my feature film Urban Ghost Story) Every one of them has had an ‘event’ premiere. I highly recommend you do the same for your film too. A few weeks back I held the premiere […]
Charles Gant of the Guardian and first stop for all industry players looking for last weekends box office analysis just wrote in his piece on the UK box office figures… ‘Showing in a one-off screening the day before Valentine’s Day, 50 Kisses achieved a robust £9,435 at east London’s Genesis cinema. Billed as the world’s […]
Talking to the press, especially when it’s recorded, can be a daunting task and your mind can go sometimes go blank suddenly. So here are my top thirteen tips to getting your message across when being interviewed in front of a microphone. News NEEDS your story, so take action No matter your story, you can […]
Last Monday I was invited by the BBC to appear on their late night arts show on Radio 3, Night Waves. I was to chat with film critic Kim Newman about king of low budgets Roger Corman (in light of a new documentary that has just been released). You can listen to the show below […]
As a film maker I am in the business of communication. It is the cornerstone of my business. Communicating big ideas with the world. Communicating stories with financiers, backers, actors, producers and broadcasters. And communicating with my community, sharing my journey and sometimes asking for help. As I write this I am downloading 79 emails. […]
On Friday, Channel Four news came to interview me about the impact of the Sony Warehouse fire on the indie film business. You can watch that interview above. I really do believe that this fire is a tipping point for DVD. It’s not just indie films that will disappear from UK distribution, but many old […]
In the run up to the London Screenwriters Festival I found myself with a Tiger by the tail. We had been attempting to get publicity for the festival, and one journalist had perused me for a story about the film industry. And she was clear, she needed a story with some meat on the bones. […]
So apparently I am both an Oscar nominated director and Sir Michael Grade agrees with my views on the British Film Industry. All beamed out to millions of viewers this morning on Sky News. Very entertaining! I did the interview yesterday literally at a moments notice (to be clear, I was in fact Oscars shortlisted […]
Whenever I run an event, I always get handed scripts and DVDs from film makers who want some kind of feedback on their work. And when I have spent time getting to know them, I find it hard to say what I really want to say… ‘Sorry, but I don’t have time to even work […]
Watch… and enter a parallel universe… I really wish I knew what these guys were saying! Last year we played as part of a big Korean film festival, and after that event, we were approached by a Korean Fishing TV channel to show clips, and presumably, get some fishing experts to talk about the film, […]
A couple of weeks back I was a speaker at the Cheltenham Writers Festival (day 1 blog here, day 2 blog here), which was a fantastic event. I recommend you go next year as it’s such good value and superbly organised. During the event, I was interviewed by Sky for the Move Geek Show, which […]
While I was in LA I did a great interview with IndieFest.com. It was just after I got back from Heart Of Gold and the weird jetlag combined with the very large café latte I had just drunk made for a particularly entertaining phone conversation with the delightful journalist, Laura Lee. It went live just […]
Today has started with a series of interviews for Australian media – and as there is an obvious time zone difference, so I was up at 6.15am talking to down under drive time talk show hosts, bleary eyed with coffee in hand. These interviews are a warm up for The Heart Of Gold Film Festival […]
I had a fantastic meeting this morning with the publicists who have been offered to us by the very nice people at Actix, who have partnered with us on the next, and potentially most exciting step on the Gone Fishing journey. We are lucky enough to have head honcho Julian Tanner, at Axicom Cohn&Wolfe handling […]
I walked into the office at Ealing Studios today to a barrage of emails and calls regarding the Variety article. I had known about this since last week, but it’s just hit the streets in print, and it’s a WHOLE PAGE! This is very good PR for us as Variety is one of the top […]
As we welcome in 2009, I was delighted to get notice of two separate articles about Gone Fishing in two very prestigious film journals. First off is a great write up in Daily Variety, a piece about how short films contend for the Oscars. It’s really great news for us. You can read the article […]
The new Gone Fishing PRESS website is now up and running. This is a dedicated website for members of the press and is not a film site about the movie. I decided to do this when I noticed while attending festivals, just how reluctant journalists seem to be now, to carry a press pack around […]
We are in the throes of updating and reformatting the whole ‘Gone Fishing’ press pack. What we have is great, but it’s a little outdated now, and also, now I have been out there in the world with it, I can see how we can improve it. The big thing I have found is that […]
During the festival at Dinard, I made a whole pile of new contacts and built some good new relationships. One new relationship is with a reporter from Variety magazine, and over dinner on the closing night, we discussed among many things, the Oscars and Gone Fishing. He said he would see if he could put […]
My life is starting to fill up with choices. Tough choices. For the first time ever in my career I have been forced to turn down work, and to add to the amazement, really good work too. In the last few weeks I have been offered a really great little film for Ford, and also […]
Today I dropped off some framed posters from Gone Fishing, signed by myself, Ivan, Eddie and Vernon. Pictured here is the lovely Rebecca Budds from Midnight Transfer. Rebecca really helped us through some tricky post production problems back in December of last year when we were grading there, with John Claude. She commented how it […]
IMDB has finally updated our user rating and we have our score – as write this, it’s 8.6 which is derived from 75 votes – in the screengrab here you can see the breakdown of those votes, which is interesting. IMDB weight these scores, so you will see that we actually have a score of […]
Finally, the postal tubes for the posters arrived – at the same time as the newest member of Team Living Spirit. Catherine Balavage, pictured here, started today. Hoorah! After being asked why she thought it was a good idea to get cramped into a tiny, overheated, noisy office, her answer was simple… ‘I wanted to […]
On the closing night of the Rhode Island Film Festival, I did a radio interview with Toni Pennacchia of Merging Arts Productions, for a Rhode Island radio station. That interview has since been podcast by Toni on her site, Spolier Alert Radio. It features interviews with a bunch of other film makers and gives you […]
Yesterday was the official selection screenings of the Kodak shortlisted films at the Curzon West End. I have written a much lengthier blog entry to publish next week, after the whole event has ended, about my thoughts and feelings regarding the entire experience and the British Film Industry. For now though, this is just a […]
