The random ramblings of a writer, photographer, film maker, quality analyst, and… well, you get the idea.

Since I was never getting time to update the photo-blog on this site as well as the one on my main site I thought it best to combine the two.  So now I have just the one and only personal site that I’ll use for just about everything.  I don’t post often, but when I do it could be about photography, writing, film making, quality systems, engineering… yes, I do quite a lot of random things, and eventually post about all of them.

My most recent blog posts show up at the bottom of this page, and you can find them all from the menu above or the archive list.

The not-so-sunny Riviera

Posted on May 19, 2012 by

One of the nice things about the Cannes Film Festival is that being on the Riviera the weather is pretty much always good even though it is relatively early in the year.  Not this time though.  This time we’ve had wind, rain, thunder, and quite a lot of cloud cover for most of the time so far.  As I write this in my apartment the wind is whipping around outside and threatening to deposit my washing in Monaco somewhere.  We have had occasional bursts of sun, but so far the predominant weather has been cloudy, cold (for here, anyway), and frequently wet.

But nice weather isn’t the main reason we’re here.  This is the one time of the year that every serious filmmaker from Europe and beyond comes together in one place, and whether you’re selling, buying, or just trying to meet new people to work with Cannes is the place to be.

This year we have already made some very good contacts in some unexpected places, including an early contact with a sales agent who wants to sell our films.  This was not only excellent news but completely unexpected as nobody goes into acquisitions mode this early in the festival as they are all too busy trying to sell the films they already have.  It’s not usually until Tuesday or Wednesday on the second week that you can get anyone to listen to a sales pitch, but this time we just happened to turn up in a free five minutes and almost by accident we found ourselves being quizzed about what we have and what is coming.  They also expressed significant interest in scripts that we have in various stages of completeness and even in the books that I’ve written.

So today I’ve spent the day in the apartment working on a DVD, a trailer for Underwood, and started putting together some stuff about us and everything else that we have on our lists.  With the crazy weather we’ve had I can’t say that I’m particularly bothered about having not gone into Cannes today either.  Hopefully it’ll be better tomorrow.

The first couple of days

Posted on May 17, 2012 by

Well I made it to Cannes in good time this year.  The combination of a more up-to-date set of maps on the SatNav and a car that goes much further on a tank than the one I had before meant I drove down here in about nine and a bit hours of actual driving with a couple of hours in total of stops.  Very smooth, very comfortable, and remarkably uneventful.  If ever I have to get the plane down here rather than drive I’m really going to miss that trip through the French countryside.  It makes a good start to the annual madness that is “The Cannes”*

Day 1 was – as always – largely taken up with the general admin of getting passes, finding out what’s moved, shopping for essentials, and putting out the first feelers.  It was a good start, and one of the benefits of going back to the same accommodation for the third year in a row is that we knew where everything is without having to start from scratch.

Yesterday evening back at the apartment, as Ben and I were sitting down with a glass of wine and a coffee deciding on our plan for the week, a girl poked her head through the shrubbery at the end of the patio and asked if we knew where reception was.  Turns out they had arrived when it was shut and hadn’t received any instructions as to what to do to get in.  There were four of them… Kristi, Laura, Henry, and Vic from Scruffbag Productions… and so I made them a coffee and helped them out a bit whilst they worked out what to do.  It’s one of those things that happen from time to time (like the impossible meeting last year) so it wasn’t really surprising, but it’s lovely to meet new people in such a random and unplanned way.

I ran into Kristi and Vic again today in the Marché and found out that they had a film in Short Film Corner, so I went to check it out.  It’s a 10 min drama about two sisters that have spent their recent lives refusing to talk to each other but who are forced to try to mend the bridges when a tragedy throws them back together.  It’s very well done, and even though it’s not my usual genre I enjoyed it a lot.

I’m about to go into the American Pavilion for a couple of hours for their annual welcome cocktail party (although last year the ‘cocktails’ were bottles of Coors Lite so who knows what we’re going to get).  Hopefully we’ll make some good contacts there, as previous years have done us well.

*as called by Quentin Tarantino in the press conference for Inglorious Basterds

Cannes 2012 Begins

Posted on April 26, 2012 by

Once again Cannes has crept up on us without warning.  I mean it’s always at the same time of the year and it only happens annually so you would think we would have plenty of time to get ready, but somehow we always leave France at the end of May convinced we have all the time in the world, but the next thing you know it’s right in front of you.

For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, Cannes – in this context – is the once-yearly international film festival that takes place on the French Riviera.  This makes the headlines round the world as one of the most prestigious film awards ceremonies of the year, but what many people don’t realise is that more goes on there than just the awards.  It is also one of the world’s largest film markets, and that is where the real business of film-making takes place.

In the Marché du Film behind and underneath the main Palais du Festival buyers and sellers congregate to connect film makers with those who want to distribute them and get them in front of an audience.  Films that have been made on spec are presented as finished products to buyers who then work out the best place to screen them for the maximum return.  Every year thousands of films are connected with audiences in this very building.

And in the hotels and houses on the other side of the road deals are struck and films are commissioned by the big studios and financiers.  It is an ideal opportunity to put a full package together, as during the couple of weeks of the festival thousands of actors pass through the town and cross paths with locations, film commissions, script writers, photographers and everything else you need to make a film.

Cannes is where the film world happens.  And so we go there.