CANNES 2007 - Producer, Christopher Young, in Cannes (Day 4)

20th May 2007

Today has been more like hard work.  No films until 23:00 when I went to Cannes festival 60 birthday film with 3 min pieces from 35 directors floor show with 33 of them there from Abbas Kirostami to Coen brothers with eveyone you can think of in between - all produced by Gilles Jacob.

This was followed by the RomeFilmFest party.  Judging by that we are in for a lot of fun in October.

Back in the real world I tramped round the Market meeting with potential sales agents and inviting them to screening tomorrow.  In fact, even the friendly and interested ones tell me that in Cannes they don't have time to attend viewings as they are too busy having meetings.

This makes me remember taking the Drambuie pipe band to Seville to record music for Festival and the pipe major telling me well into his cups that for him it was really not so much a musical rather a social thing.  This was clear from the fact that the band had started drinking from the minute they arrived and had been plastered most of the time they were here.  Which appeared to have no ill effect on their piping as they played like angels.  Embarassingly, hugely better than their sober Spanish counterparts.

Anyway, I think for the real film business professional Cannes is what you might call a social experience in very pleasant surroundings.

Ed Fletcher at Soda Pictures and I have now agreed the deal for UK in detail and we spent time finalising all this ahead of the press release which went out late Friday!

Good pieces about UK deal in Herald and Scotland on Sunday today and I will formally sign with Ed tomorrow.  It really is a great deal and Soda have such a good reputation that I am already getting excellent feedback

So as of yesterday (press release), today (meeting), tomorrow (signature) -  we have properly sold our first territory and it is arguably the most important one since it is our home territory.

According to my plan we are now ready to have meaningful contact with world sales companies.  I don't rule out doing individual deals on specific territories but ideally we will discover someone out there who has more expertise in international sales than Seachd's producer.

That has to be our next goal.

So half way in and 2 significant steps forward.

A UK release in the autumn.

A launchpad for the rest of Europe at Rome in October.

Roll on Toronto - let's hope they come tonight!

Christopher Young

Producer