We announced this deal today, as reported in Screen and The Hollywood Reporter:

Pathé and Slingshot have signed a deal which will see Pathé distribute a slate of four films produced by Slingshot, and co-financed with BBC Films and Screen West Midlands.

The deal provides guaranteed UK theatrical distribution and international sales representation for no less than 4 titles, which will be selected from Slingshot’s slate of low budget movies being co-developed with BBC Films.

Thank you to The Observer’s Phillip French for your support of our baby, FRENCH FILM, which enjoyed its World Premier at the Dinard Film Festival last weekend.  Philip said:

A word too for Jackie Oudney’s delightful French Film, a truthful romantic comedy about the breakdown of a relationship between a London couple and the role played in the affair by a suave movie director (a winning performance by Eric Cantona). They all deserve distribution.

Needless to say we agree, and are glad to say that we will shortly be announcing UK, US, Australian and Canadian release dates for our second, much loved, child.  Meantime you can feast on the trailer and register for updates here.

• The Real D. Joshua Greer, President and Founder of Real D, and one of the more inspirational and impressive entrepeneurs I’ve met in a long while, gave us a jaw dropping demo on the current – and future – state of 3D Cinema Technology, including never to be publically seen clips from a 3D converted KUNG FU PANDA and sneak previews of ALIEN vs. MONSTERS.  There is no zealot like a convert, and I’m now convinced – like James Cameron and Jeffrey Katzerberg before me – that 3D is the future of cinema.I don’t think – as some cinema owners do – that this will be the saviour of cinema, because Home 3D is only a few years away – but I do think that if the technology continues to improve at the rate it has over the past few years, it will become ubiquitous. The function of cinema is to transport, entertain and inspire and making the experience more fully immersive and overwhelming can only serve that. When will slingshot make its first 3D film, I hear you ask? Watch this space….I had a chat with Joshua afterwards and the cost implications are not as prohibitive as one might think.
  
• A fascinating overview of the global TV markets from the perspective of an American Studio, given by the formidable, lovely and impressive Belinda Menendez who I am quite prepared to believe is every bit as powerful as her lisitings suggest.
• Seeing an independent in ascendance – through an exhilarating session with Lionsgate’s founder Michael Paseornek who has shown that it is possible to challenge the Studios on their own ground – if not quite at their own game.

There were many other great moments also over the past week that I haven’t recorded here. So here is quick numerical summary of all that has gone on in this past week:

• 5 days of non-stop meetings, generally starting at 0800 and finishing at 1900 on the early days, with most days going on to evening events.
• A total of 49 speakers or panelists, across 25 sessions, comprising a veritable ‘Who’s Who’ of hollywood, going through the entire value chain from writers, agents, managers, lawyers, producers, financiers, analysts, marketeers, home entertainment, television, technologists, directors, executives, sales agents, acqusitions people, and then a few more lawyers and agents.
• Visits to six studio lots (and too many photos of us underneath every Studio sign)
• Thousands of questions and debate
• Hundreds of miles criss-crossing LA in our mini-bus, driven by the every cheery and always punctual Jerry
• An endless meringue of organisational navigation, expertyly handled by our Programme Director Julia Short of Verve Pictures, our redoubtable Programme Organizer Tor Lorkin Lange and our own hero, the only man ever to truly build a pan-european studio, Michael Kuhn, all of whom did an amazing job and to all of whom we owe our thanks.

All of this has added up, for me and I know all my fellow IPs 2008, to an unforgettable and potentially career and even life-changing week. Our eyes have been opened and we have seen the promised land. The week was exhillarating, exhausting, challenging and yes, enourmous fun

Quick sidebar: I got a bizzare email this week from someone concerned that my blog was making the trip seem *too much* fun. Whilst its hard to see how going on a trip to the mecca of your industry and meeting the gliterati of Hollywood with a group of your peers could be anything but fun, I’m hoping this account makes clear that it was the type of fun that happens when your mind is expanded to the possibilities of the universe and you are challenged to respond accordingly. Not the type where you’ve had too many shots of vodka-jello on a girls-gone-wild video. Although admittedly there was perhaps *one* night where both those categories of fun started to collide….

For me the trip came at a perfect point as 3 years and 4 movies into the slingshot journey we plan the next steps for us as a team. To be given an overview of the studios just at a point where economic and technological shifts of such a dramatic, tectonic variety are occurring in the ground beneath their feet was nothing short of inspiring, and I am looking forward to taking this learning back to team-sling in blighty and see us rise to the new world order that is to come.

For now though, I’m taking a week of holiday. My first this year and much needed. I’ve retreated to Northern California, writing this at a friends beach house overlooking the ocean and I’ll hope you’ll forgive me if I now sign off from blog duty for a little while.

It’s been unreal. And real. The real deal.

Today we met David Fincher. Wow.

I remember seeing se7en when it came out in 1995, and going straight from the cinema to a bar because for the first time in my life I knew what it meant to need a drink. Since then he’s gone from strength to strength producing some of the most original and durable films of the last decade and earning himself both a fanatical following and increasing power in the Hollywood system (as well, along the way as endless awards and considerable wealth).

The muscular focussed intelligence that runs like a power current through all of Fincher’s work meant it was no surprise to find this intelligence animating him in person also – and informing everything he does – from a top-down economic analysis of Hollywood to the tactics of deal negotiation to the design of his office.

He is a systems nut, which I love, putting huge time and effort into engineering digital work-flows that give him and his team maximum efficiency – one example he shoots on the Viper and manages production and post work flow with a great software package called PIXS that I got immediate digital envy about.

What makes Fincher so remarkable in person, however, is not his intelligence or his talent, but his unwavering self-certainty in both those attributes. He knows, and seems to have always known, (his career started at about 21) that he is world class at what he does and every decision he makes and every aspect of his behavior starts from the assumption that he is right and unfailable. He seems to have no fear of confrontation, indeed he seems to thrive on it – he told us some incredible stories, but I’m prohibited from sharing them by the NDA which governs our meetings under Inside Pics, even if I suspect David wouldn’t give a rats arse if I did.

His uber confidence is unnerving but also exhilarating, it could be obnoxious, but it isn’t because he backs up the front with an incredibly detailed understanding and a creative profoundity. This isn’t the empty ego of a Hollywood poseur, this is the complete self assurance of a grandmaster of film, who has checked the evidence and found its just faster to assume he knows better than anyone else.

At one point in our meeting he was explaining why he refuses to compromise on budget, knowing exactly the number he needs to make a film, and wouldn’t even make a 2% reduction even if that was the only way to get the film made. Given the increasing size of his budgets (Benjamin Button is reported as costing US$150 m) I was prepared to take this statement as bloody mindedness, when he launched into a incredibly detailed description of how he had reconfigured his digital camera to save on lighting costs in a particular location and broke down the cost and technical steps with a speed and to a level of precision that I doubt many DoPs or Line Producers could have managed.

Our two hours with him was an inspiring master class on how a great filmmaker – producer or director – has to have a consilient mind that can move from the minute to the biggest of themes and back again without breaking a sweat.
I asked him what he looked for in a producer, his answer was straightforward, but again profound: “What I want is someone who I only need to explain once to what the vision is and once its understood and agreed will hold fast to the idea of the film and do everything to safeguard it. Who will never accept ‘this is how we do things’ but will question every detail and fight every battle to safeguard and deliver on that film”

We’ll try to live up to that. Wow again.

Well, we’re now about 10 meetings into Inside Pictures 2008. We’ve traversed a studio lot, debated with lawyers, chit-chatted with casting directors, discussed the relative merits and demerits of superbowl spots with marketeers and eaten large quantities of Korean Beef. A good few days. Here are a handful of highlights:

• Discovering that Chuck Roven, one of the biggest and most successful producers in Hollywood, and the man behind my favourite film of the year, and the second biggest movie of all time, The Dark Knight, is a genuinely decent, profound and eclectic human being. A living, breathing exemplar of the fact that you can triumph within the system without dumbing down one jot. This is a man who in his time has written and acted in films, breeds horses, managed race-car drivers, and a roster of musicans including Alanis Morisette, The Goo Goo Dolls, Weeza and many others, was married to the redoubtable Dawn Steel, first female head of a studio, and some how along the way produced some of the best and biggest movies of all time, including Twelve Monkeys, City of Angels as well as both the Nolan Batman movies. Chuck was our first meeting and an inspirational one.My three take aways from his talk:

1. Producers prove themselves by making hard decisions in hard situations.
2. Audience testing tells you somethings, but not everything. Listen to the audience, but don’t listen blindly. Interpret and when push comes to shove, trust your gut. It’s the only one you have.
3. Grab. Opportunity. Now.

• Meeting some nice agents and managers at our agent and manager panels and drinks party today, including a brace of folk from Paradigm, Endeavor and William Morris.
• Korean beef. Lots of it.

Whilst we have been having fun, of course, the world continues to go to hell in a handcart, with the melt-down in the financial markets continuing unabated and the real economy clearly balanced precariously. The most we can say is that at least we inhabit a counter-cyclical industry. As Content Rights Management and Entertainment One both raise large production facilities.
We hope.

Finally, as a courtesy to some of my colleagues who have felt left out that they have not been mentioned in the blog to date, I should point out that Gemma is with the band, Rachel has nice shoes, Adam uses words like ‘non-correlated’ and ‘granularity’ casually;  and Laura should be on everyone’s list of go to Producers.