Categories : Financing, Trailer

15 Dec

Motel stories

A video bonus for your entertainment (and ours). Some funding news. A new blog. And a few mysterious names for some crazy encoders.

There’ been lots going on over the last few days at Prison Valley. First and (very) foremost, the Centre National du Cinéma continues to believe in our project after being mad enough to give us a Writing Grant last spring. Then, on 26th November this year, somewhere in Paris, the ‘New Media, Film and Television Project Development Fund’ committee awarded us a production grant. We must admit that if we didn’t have this money, none of this would be possible.  Well, not the way we’re doing it. Anyway, we can breathe a bit more easily now. Anyone who wants to know a bit more about this thing can take a look here. N.B. The next deadline for submissions is 15th January 2010. We’ll be there.

The other news is Arte’s presentation of Prison Valley at the Panthéon cinema on December 1st as part of their press screening of the channel’s programmes for autumn 2010 (here’s the PDF file, cf. pp. 30-31).

Otherwise, the Prison Valley blog has now moved, thanks to good work by Maxime Quintard, a crazy encoder at Upian, and Seb Brothier, artistic director of the same (fine) company, who’s responsible for all the web, iPhone and other design for Prison Valley. Many, many thanks to them.

The guy’s name is Jan. Jan is the husband of the motel managers who’ll play a big part in Prison Valley. If you really want to know, this motel is kind of the base camp for Seb Brothier, Eric Drier, David Desprès, Bertrand Tronsson, Maxime Quintard and the rest of Upian’s development team. They spend the whole day there – literally – and so did Philippe and I during shooting. And soon, so will you. We hope so anyway.

While we’re on the subject of Philippe, he’s just got two gigs rolled into one – a drama at the Louvre Museum. It’s part of the partnership between Arte and the Louvre, and it’s now online: ‘L’étrange syndrome de Jean René’.

Hang on, we need to give a shout-out and a helping hand to a wonderful self-produced web series called brevesdetrottoirs.com, which takes you on a journey into the heart of the real Paris. We recognise some of the cameras and sound equipment on the crew’s website… We wish you a fair journey, guys!