Our friend and collaborator Aschlin Ditta’s film SCENES OF A SEXUAL NATURE openned this past weekend around the UK. We’ve been following it closely for a bunch of reasons.

• We love Ash – who is one of the funniest and nicest men in the world. (Don’t just take our word for it – Ewan McGregor thinks so too); and of course are making his next film FRENCH FILM (and folk are talking about it already, which is nice)
• It was made for a slingshot sized microbudget.
• And it’s been released independently, by the new distribution company set up by the film’s exec producer, the faishon entrepeneur Suran Goonatilake, utilising some of the niche marketing strategies that we have been espousing here: most notably the clever stunt and viral idea of the World’s Biggest Blind Date; and a Chief’s and Indian’s strategy.

Honesty compells us to admit that the results to date have been mixed. The film did around 50k in its openning weekend on 35 screens (it was handicapped by having to compete with the monster which is BORAT); which given typical decay curves would suggest it will end up grossing around 100 – 150k; but on the basis of that it has done a good DVD deal with Sony which suggests that it will break even, perhaps even post a small but satisfactory profit, to its investors and small deferral cheques to its talent – something it would not have done if it had been budgeted conventionally.

So case made for microbudget British movie.
But not yet proved, for unconventional British movie marketing…

Thoughts welcomed from anyone who has seen the film or impacted by its marketing campaign (who is that girl with the wonderful pants?)

This entry was posted on Friday, November 10th, 2006 at 11:45 and is filed under Blog, Film Business 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.