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?)

OK, so whilst I’ve been relatively quite on the blogosphere, I have been out spreading the word of slingshot in other places.

Last Friday saw not one but two conference appearances (what can I say, I’m like a travelliing troubador, singing the songs of the sling). In the morning I was at the London Media Summitt where I got to debate Content, Cash and Creativity with Reuter’s “Head of Innovation” and the aliterating nemesis of the UK digital media scene Azeem Azhar

One of the more interesting questions was about how one can use new technologies and new business models to better harness creativity. It’s a question that tends to stump most creative business entrepeneurs, but there are interesting examples of it out there.

Here is one: StarWreck – a collaborative creative phenomenon which would have been unthinkable in the pre-social media era. The transformative effect of MySpace on the garage band (a melee my brother has just joined); as is the collaborative journalism/discussion of the blogosphere itself: see the high scholarship and wit being applied to shopping by the VisaDiarist and her peers.
Any others people can think of?

But that was just the mornings conference. In the afternoon, I was speaking, with the gorgeous Mr. Gary Love at the BFI’s Young Talent week, part of the London Film Festival. We told war stories, including this one, from our experience on Sugarhouse Lane, and it all seemed to go down quite well. Almost as well as the vino tinto at the reception at the end of that day of speaking. Well what can I say, one gets a dry throat…

one of the things we set out to do at slingshot was think about niche audiences that the traditional film-making establishment was ignoring.

Recent pieces in the press about “britsh urban cinema” suggests that we may be on to something in that area with Sugarhouse Lane. More on the sugarblog…

HOWEVER, the fact that 3 of the 6 movies in competition in the British Film Festival at Dinard (including 2 of the 3 winners) were also British Urban stories, suggests that we aren’t the only ones… which on balance is a good thing….

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.