It's hard to believe that three months have passed since my last update! So much has happened for us and it's all good.
First, to catch up, the Gig Harbor and Tacoma fests were fun and brought us critical acclaim but no awards. D.O.T.E. was also invited to the Lucerne, Switzerland festival and had a favorable screening there. We couldn't afford to attend but fortunately, Victoria and I have some dear friends there that rep'ed it for us. Many thanks to Victoria and Terri Derringer (Alisa's step-grandmother) for translating our marketing materials into German for Lucerne.
But the big event was the American Film Market (AFM) in Santa Monica,CA in November. This is arguably the premiere film market in the world where most of the world's exhibitioners come to buy programming. Even though we were offered a distribution deal by Breakthrough Entertainment of Toronto at the New York festival, we wanted to get into the deep water and see what interest we could generate and to find a distributor that could also give us a pre-distribution deal on the next project "Michael's Ride" and facilitate a co production deal for it as well. Our strategy proved to be a good one as we created quite a buzz among the attendees which brought many rewards as I'll get to in a minute. The one disappointment was that no one was giving up front advances on sales which will mean we will have to hang on and tighten our belts for awhile until net profit's start to materialize. The interest came down to two distrib's, a near mini-major and the smaller Breakthrough Entertainment that had approached us in NYC. The 'big guy' wanted to package us with his other films with Oscar winner's and stars galore, which, on it's face, seemed like a dream chance. But they wanted a $100K expense cap-unverified and would have all our art work redone above the marketing expenses which we would also be billed for. Tom and I just felt that we weren't comfortable with that extreme un-verified expense cap, and our film just didn't fit the package we would be in.
BE, on the other hand, really liked and believed in Dancing.. and the script for MR and offered to distribute it as well. There was our pre-distribution deal we were seeking. Their verified expense cap was $10K (normal). The have had an on-going sales relationship with ABC-TV where D.O.T.E. was originally designed to go. And finally, BE offered a 25/75% revenue split favoring us which is very generous. And the vision we saw for the film's distribution expectations agreed as well. The result of all this is we signed a world-wide distribution deal with Breakthrough Entertainment.
Now we have the task of getting to them all the 'deliverables', the paper work, publicity and marketing materials (which they loved and will use as-is saving us a ton of expense!), and all the individual technical data tracks that contain the sound and picture, and effects, off to them. This is not cheap. About $20,000 which we will have to come up with but they are happy to work with us in finding a way to make this happen and I'm sure we will. Each day that goes by, Tom and I grow more happy that we made our deal with BE, as they really do believe in our film. We have ordered 1000 copies of the film for our cast, crew, and investors and to sell to defray this cost so if you are one of the aforementioned and haven't received your copy call me. The rest are for sale at $20 each. There are also various posters and t-shirts available. It is expected that DOTE will be seen on TV in North America and world-wide. The lack of recognizable stars make a major theatrical release un-likely.
November also brought two more awards from the Best Actor's (in a) Film Festival in San Francisco; Best Director for me and Best Actor for Nicole McCullough; the two top prizes of the fest! That brings our grand total to 13 awards. I can't tell you just how much of an amazing accomplishment that is! I'm so proud of every one of you who made this film possible!
As I mentioned earlier, the news that we had signed a deal lifted us to celebrity status among the attendees and we now have a much more potent slate of projects to produce as producers offered their projects to us.
While in New York I was asked by a major financial entity to produce and direct a $20M> film in conjunction with the Russian government who will supply 62% of the budget, about the historic trans-polar flight of Valery Chkalov from Moscow to Vancouver, Washington in 1937. I've had two conference calls with Moscow / NYC now and it seems that the project is real and moving forward with a much larger project to follow. A producer from Scotland has asked us to co-produce a historical drama about the legendary early North West explorer Alexander MacKenzie (well of course he's a relation if you go back far enough) who explored this territory.
I will also be co-producing in company with an extraordinary Canadian producer from Toronto that I am not at liberty to name as she is not quite free of her existing contractual commitment. This is a family TV comedy movie that I anticipate shooting in Toronto.
All this in addition to our original scripts give us enough to keep us busy for several years.
But now we are starting to raise money for "Michael's Ride". A family film much like 'Dancing...', about a teenage dressage rider who is rebelling as a result of the divorce of her parents and the negative influence of her friend Ashley. When after being admonished by her Dad to straighten up or lose her prized Arab she gets in trouble and her horse is donated to an equestrian center that has a therapy program for terminally ill kids. Angry, she decides to steal her horse and run away but is caught in the process. Forced to volunteer at the center, she is assigned to ten year old Michael Abbot who, unknown to her has terminal lymphocytic leukemia.
And it's Michael that teaches her about love, friendship, and giving of yourself. The script has won an Honorable Mention out of 14,000 entrants in the Los Angeles Movie Awards, as well as the Platinum Award; the top prize for screenplays from the Oregon Film Awards .
So we have an award winning Producer, Director, and Writer and an award winning script with a distribution deal in principal to work with. None of which we had for Dancing. So keep us in your prayers as we embark on the next level of the journey to success for Highland Light Productions.
