Paul Hills’ weekly post production blog
Weekly Blog 14 (February 9th February)
God blessed me. This morning, as if by magic, I ate weisswurste for breakfast. Six of them! I have given up having breakfast at my hotel as it is far too grim, a kind of East German Stalag with rock hard bread and seemingly stale cheese. Instead, this morning, I went to my partner in the distribution company’s palatial Rocco Forte hotel which, by chance, I discovered has weisswurste on Saturdays. They were transported by train from Bavaria first thing this morning as they have to be eaten on the same day they are made. Delicious.
One great thing they have done here is mark on the ground where the Berlin wall used to be. Now with the amount of building that has gone on many buildings have been built over where it stood. The funny thing is seeing streets that were half in the east, half in the west. The Stalag hotel I am staying in is in the former East part of a long street.
On Sunday Williams arrived at my flat at 10.30pm without prior warning. Luckily I was home watching Guinea being beaten by the Ivory Coast (the Elephants). He had all the receipts and invoices that are outstanding. Finally we are now able to claim back the VAT and also get a true picture of where we are financially.
Instead of apologising for the thirteen week delay, Williams complained about the lack of facilities in the production office and all the things that happened during the shoot that weren’t ideal. All his complaints are justified BUT so is my disappointment that it has taken so long to get all the receipts.
On Monday and Tuesday we finished a 3 minute trailer that I have been showing to Sales Agents. I even have it on my mobile phone in case of impromptu meeting where there is no dvd player etc. After finishing the trailer I saw more footage including the stuff that hadn’t been transferred, the car going past the Hindu temple and some of the later office scenes.
I am now sitting in the café at the centre of the Berlin European Film Market. I’m quite tired with all the running about and meetings one after another although Berlin is nowhere near as mad or hectic as Cannes is. Things also weren’t helped by a drunk French girl knocking and clawing at my door last night desperate to get in.
I reckon by Monday I will have seen about 27 sales agents. Three already have expressed strong interest. Only one has passed. Ashley Luke at Fortissimo passed on the film purely on the synopsis and poster. He didn’t even want to see the trailer nor actually take a meeting!
The general response is that people really like the title of the film and respond well to the trailer. Opinions on the poster are a little divided. I think we should do a little more work on that. Of course one problem is that how it prints depends on the printer.
The next step will be to show them a rough cut of the film. This I will do in May either before or during Cannes.