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Console vendor information

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe: Technology Group

Developing for XBOX

What's the Story?

Anyone wanting a ticket for "What's the Story?". Please contact Ken.

Discussion with David Parfitt

I had a long discussion with David Parfitt about the What's the Story event and my interest in making contact with feature film productions on behalf of this project. David (the producer of Shakespeare in Love, Henry V) made a number of interesting comments about the viability of re-mixable films.

• He didn't understand the concept at first but thought it was interesting.
• Film producers are often in no position to re-use material after the event, once the film is sold for distribution. Offcuts and other material is sold, lost or thrown away without any thought of re-usability.
• If the idea is to work, producers need to be thinking about the issues at the start of production.
• He suggested contacting The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy production and provided a contact through Disney who are distributing it.

Follow-up with David this week.

Aim to have re-mixable service a budget line of Film Council funded projects. Hard to sell this idea in budget without it being a requirement.

distributors -> producers -> budget

Producers do not control extras (I Capture The Castle)

Talk to midscale producers - direct links into sales (e.g. DNA, Working Title)

Interactive media frameworks

Reasonably up-to-date summary across all interactive media frameworks.

http://www.colleges.org/~support/filsPresentation/img0.html

NESTA application put back

Just had a long call with Ian @ NESTA. Bottom line, the project is recommended to go to the board but with several reservations and there’s 18 applications (normally around 5) lined up for this committee…

So I’ve agreed to take his advice and not put the application forward till the March 25th board meeting (papers sent out on the 12th). The assessment to-date is that NESTA should fund this but that there is some work to do to make the application more palatable.

The areas we’re going to work on uptil then (with Ian’s help) are:
• identify interest and names for film producer and game producer roles
• get in touch with Sony and Microsoft for expressions of interest
• reduce the vision somewhat so that NESTA re-couping their investment is not primarily based on 10weeks being greenlit (identify other opportunities with other films)
• gather more market evidence (“harder nuggets”) as to why the target market will like this

Slightly painful news but not bad news. As it was just put to me, if they didn’t feel that this was worth funding then the proposal would have simply been put to the board with a recommendation not to fund, end of story.

Any leads or thoughts relating to above please let me know.

Otherwise stay tuned…

Information Warfare - aka the fog of war

See my blog on The Fog of War for a neat summary of information warfare (albeit spoilers for the film).