So, no rest for the slightly wicked. Actually, that’s not true. Knackered from the Sugarhouse Lane shoot, I’m on a brief holiday, and the feeling is good.

But the slingmachine chugs on. No sooner than wrapping on our first film, we have put our second out to cast, and further have commenced in earnest our search for the rest of next years projects. We announced last week our shinny new development track, supported by skillset, in which we are seeking new talent and new projects.

You can read the news about it here and if you are a writer, agent or producer wanting to submit a project or team for consideration, the process for doing so can be found over here

What we are trying to do in the grandly named “Training and Development towards Greenlight” process, in association with our friends and parterns at PAL ant the Met Film School, is improve on the dismal odds of the typical British development cycle, where (according to Arista only 1 in 27 films with significant development spend in them, convert into production. That’s such a depressing figure, we thought we could hardly do worse.

If you have had a good or bad development experience, in particular if you have views on The UKFC development track, PAL or Arista Development Programmes or have a view on our own programme, we’d love to hear from you as we prepare to launch into the “TDTG” (see above) process.

yes, believe it or not (and I’m not quite sure I do yet) we are done on principal photography on our first film. Sugarhouse Lane wrapped last night: on schedule and amazingly on budget. A testament to the remarkable cast and crew who assembled under the slingshot banner to prove that a thing can be done differently and well at the same time.

Tonight the party, tomorrow the sleep; and day after normal service will resume over here on the slingblog.

Somthing that has been occupying me this week is how much a movie going audience values “newness”. That extra value that we impart to something, because it is so NOW, so JUST OUT, so the FIRST.
Three very different contexts for thinking about this:

1. First, in the release-windows. Do you remember the days that VHS used to be premium priced on release, in the early 90s a VHS of a block-buster could cost as much as 40 quid when it first came out. Why? because people value new-ness. In all the debate (not all of it civil or sensible) about day and date, VOD and collapsing the DVD window, people should remember some basic economic theory about premium pricing - there is almost certainly a way to still capture the value that people place on “newness” whilst catering to the reality that not all of them will be able to get to the cinema to experience that newness on the big screen.
2. Another example that demonstrates the value of newness is the current consternation about Infamous the 2nd movie in as many years to investigate Truman Capote and the writing of In Cold Blood. Despite the excellent pedigree and advanced notices that the movie is getting, it is received wisdom everywhere that it won’t come close to achieving the audiences that Capote did. Why? Because its second. Despite the convicing arguments made here that “We do not write off this year’s “Hamlet” because we enjoyed last year’s”
3. Finally, an example of our own. We released a photograph of the Sugarhouse Lane logo this week on the production blog to immediate excitement. Despite the fact that its not necessarily the logo that the film will have, but a tag done by graffiti artists that we like. Why? Cause its new and they saw it there first.