Birmingham Film and TV Marketplace 2018

Hello again. It’s been a while since we’ve had a blog post on here, and that’s predominantly because we’ve just been getting on with Off Grid’s post-production and there isn’t a lot to tell on that front. To quickly update you on that, we’re around 70% through the edit, and we’re also looking into professional VFX for the Shining Ones’ eyes at the moment.

Anyway, we’ve been to the Birmingham Film and TV Marketplace again, an annual event in Birmingham, put on by the Producers Forum, for filmmakers to pitch to industry representatives. Last year we weren’t quite ready, unsure what to expect, and brought along a couple of projects that maybe needed a bit more work. One thing that did come from last year though, was meeting a producer who strongly advised us to consider making Off Grid into a feature, and that’s exactly what we’ve done.

This year we went along with a very solid proposal to make a feature version of Off Grid. I’ve written a script for it, we have a full treatment, and budget planning is currently underway. In fact, we pretty much have all the pieces in place, locations, cast, crew, script, and the only thing we’re missing is a financial producer who can secure us the investment to make it. Which is where the marketplace comes in.

We decided this year we would go in with a confident pitch, and had some snazzy brochures printed up to accompany that, and these proved a real hit. The brochure covered STILL, Off Grid and had detail of a few other projects that are in varying states of development, including Theatre of War, a Phillip K Dick inspired military sci-fi, Hunter’s Moon, a horror feature set in Roman occupied ancient Britain, and The Squire, a folk horror short.

We had three meetings scheduled in the afternoon, and we met with a couple of distribution companies and a production company. In all of our meetings, the reps we met were interested in seeing scripts, and in some cases footage from the Off Grid short. As mentioned above, we really need a producer on board to move forward, and that was the case for the distributors, though we do have the possibility of optioning the script, which would be cool. The meeting with the production company went very well, so with a bit of luck and a lot of hard work already put in, we may be able to follow that up with some positive news. Watch this space.

After the scheduled meetings there was a social gathering, where I hung around for a couple of hours chatting to people. Met a lot of other writers there with a wide variety of projects, from rom-coms to paralympian biopics, so it was great to see so much going on.

All-in-all a great event, and this year it really feels like we might be able to level up to getting a feature produced! All appendages crossed.