Palais des Festivals, Cannes, Wednesday, 5:10pm
A quiet day. A lot of people have already gone home.
The issue of TV vs. film was raised again at a meeting this afternoon, the point being that I might get far more control over the project if I’m making it for a TV channel than if I have a bunch of production companies and distributors to satisfy.
A living statue on the Croisette was balancing cats on his head. Real cats. I guess the French aren’t big on animal protection.

UK pavilion, Cannes, Wednesday, 5:45pm
When I’ve got home and the dust has settled, I’ll break down what my final costs were for attending Cannes this year, but right now it looks like I’m on budget. I allowed myself a 20 Euro per diem, which was fine until I went out to eat with friends twice on Monday and racked up a 30 Euro total for the day. That means yesterday and today I had only 15 Euros each day. Hence the MSG last night. Plenty of people just live off canapes at the plentiful Cannes parties, but that’s not for me. What you can definitely do is avoid buying drinks, since these are all overpriced. Take a water bottle and keep filling it up from the coolers downstairs at the Palais.

Le Chateau des Artistes, Ranguin, nr. Cannes, 9pm
I bumped into Michael Booth, a filmmaker I’ve seen every time I’ve been to Cannes. His debut feature Diary of a Bad Lad was completed around the same time as Soul Searcher and we briefly shared a distribution company. The difference is: he’s made two more features since and I’m still stuck in No Man’s Land.
Carl and I went to a reception at the Luxembourg Pavilion. I made the massive faux pas of mistaking a Belgian producer for a Frenchman, to match with the one I made on Monday where I asked the Canadian Elliot Grove which part of the States he’s from. We talked to a woman who develops iPhone games and I realised again how technologically out of touch I am. There’s no getting away from it; I’ve reached the point in my life that we all reach some day or another when we regard everything invented after that point with a mixture of disinterest, contempt and/or suspicion. This is probably why I don’t want to make 3D films, why I can’t get my head around which hybrid DSLR or HD video camera to buy, why I don’t own a phone capable of taking pictures or accessing the internet, and why I prefer the soft, flickering images you get on a CRT television to the harsh, pixellated ones a flatscreen delivers. It also explains why I worship eighties cinema and loath CGI with a passion. I’m a grumpy old fart at 31.
So Cannes is over for me for another year. We’re unlikely to be back next year. Either we’ll be too busy making The Dark Side of the Earth, or we’ll have put it on the back burner. We have made progress over the last few days, but as always with Cannes the proof is in the pudding, the pudding being whether people follow up positively in the coming weeks or not.

UK Pavilion, Cannes, Tuesday, 11am
Found time for a quick dip in the hotel pool this morning before heading into Cannes. Missed the train in so had to get the bus instead – demonstrating the value of picking accommodation close to multiple travel options.
Our first meeting was a no-show.

Le Chateau des Artistes, Ranguin, nr. Cannes, midnight
The end of another day. As a filmmaker, eventually all this sitting around talking about making films but not actually making any films becomes annoying.
Went to a talk about co-productions. What is a co-production? Well, if you have a script about British people going on holiday to Spain and you shoot it in Spain then it’s not a co-production, it’s just a British movie shooting on location. But if the script deals with Spanish issues or characters, or some key cast and crew members are Spanish, then you could legitimately set up a British-Spanish co-production. The benefit is that, providing you jump through certain hoops, you can theoretically access the public funding and/or tax incentives of both countries.
Co-production has been a major theme of our meetings this year. What’s quite unique about Dark Side in this regard is that it would be shot mostly on stage, so we can choose any country we like to shoot it in, based solely on the incentives and resources that country has to offer, without having to worry about whether it has suitable locations.
Carl and I had dinner at a cheap Chinese place he introduced me to last year, Delices Yang. Probably loaded with MSG, but very tasty. No-one knew of any good parties going on, so we decided to go see one of the films. (I don’t have a good track record of actually seeing films at festivals.) We picked what turned out to be a documentary about a bunch of young people digging up some old punk rocker and having long conversations with him about the changing music scene, intercut with archive footage. We left halfway through and found the Cinema sur la Plage screening of an old Titanic film (possibly A Night to Remember) much more entertaining. Imagine Cameron’s Titanic in black and white with locked-off cameras, without all the screaming and panicking, and people with very clipped accents saying “Let’s have a nice cup of tea” while the ship sinks and you’re pretty much there.

Riviera Building, Cannes, Monday, 10:30am
Free breakfast this morning courtesy of the Mandarin Hotel Group. Benefits to me: pain au chocolat, bread, cheese, fruit, yoghurt, OJ, coffee. Benefits to Mandarin Hotel Group: Er… well, they got mentioned on this blog.
The UK Pavillion hosted a talk on 3D. As you all know by now, I hate 3D. Increasingly this opinion is making me feel like a freak and a luddite. When I say I want to shoot a fantasy film on 35mm and in 2D, they look at me like I want to throw out my flush toilet and started crapping in an outhouse.
Anyway, here are some interesting things I learnt from the talk:
1. Because kids’ eyes are closer together than adults, the depth in 3D films appears greater to them, unpleasantly so in some cases.
2. It can take 45 minutes to changes lenses on a 3D shoot.
3. 3D adds 30-35% to your budget.
4. 3D technology that does not require glasses will likely be a reality in cinemas in about 12 months.
5. An associated sea-change in the industry that is just starting to appear is shooting higher frame rates. The Hobbit will be the first film distributed at 48fps, with Avatar 2 following.
One of the speakers argued that if you don’t like 3D, you should wear an eye patch, since real life is in 3D. My response is that interlaced video has more life-like motion than 24P, but very few people would argue that the former looks nicer.
One thing that’s worrying about 3D is how it encourages other traditions to be undermined. Shooting celluloid in stereo is prohibitively expensive, so 3D means shooting digitally. But that’s not the end of it. Take set building. Imagine a scene in a room that has a window. If shot on a set, unless what’s outside the window has to move or is important to the scene, on a 2D film you would typically put a painted backdrop out there. But in 3D you can’t do that, because it would have no depth. The only real choice is to bung up a greenscreen outside the window and put the backdrop in digitally. So now all those fantastically talented scenic artists are out of jobs. This is not cool.
Okay, enough about 3D for today. Gerard told me yesterday that he saw the Soul Searcher poster in the Riviera building, so I went in to have a look and, sure enough, it’s up on York Entertainment’s stand (the US sales agent). Sadly it’s the same crappy artwork as the US DVD release, with a random hooded guy and a disgustingly misleading splatter of blood.

Palais du Festivals, Cannes, 6:15pm
Had lunch with Gerard and co. Mostly we talked about how much 3D sucks.
Had a meeting that involved talking about sets, and the large shopping list thereof. Got shown a photo of a soundstage in Hungary bigger than Pinewood’s 007 stage. That will do nicely.
Wandered around the town for ages looking for shops selling postcards, then at last three came along at once. As I was sitting by a fountain eating a delicious brownie ice-cream I got a text from Carl containing excellent news of a significant person who has just jumped aboard the good ship Dark Side.
Bumped into Richard Cambridge, who was cast as the lead character Joe in Soul Searcher when it was due to be shot in 2002. He’s now running a company hosting indie films online.

Bus station, Cannes, 8:40pm
Went briefly to a low-rent party, then to a much swankier one. Carl unplugged the fridge so I could plug in my laptop and show someone the pilot. Then we went for pizza with Elliot Grove of Raindance, amongst others. Someone (possibly Elliot himself) made a remark about Elliot, then someone else joked I should put it in my blog. But I can’t remember what it was now. This is his seventeenth Cannes. That’s a lot of bullshit and canapes.
It was brought to my attention that there is no Kodak pavillion any more. A sad symbol of the decline of celluloid.

Luton Airport, Sunday, 6:10am BST
I’m experiencing that peculiar sensation, that unique feeling-like-utter-crap that you can only feel on an international journey. I haven’t even flown yet. Perhaps it’s something they put in the air conditioning at the airports. Perhaps it’s in the shampoo dispensed from the box on the wall in the hotel bathroom. It can’t just be lack of sleep, because I don’t feel like this if I don’t get a full night’s kip at home. I feel like my ears need to pop but can’t. Like I haven’t showered in days. Like I want to take my eyeballs out for a bit to give the sockets a rest. Ughhhh.
Does anyone else think those rolly suitcases that have four tiny wheels on so you don’t have to tilt them back are against nature?
Small triumph: got my empty flask through security despite the signs saying no containers over 100ml were allowed. Funny how putting stuff inside your bag hides it from the security guys. Even though they have DIRTY GREAT X-RAY MACHINES. Maybe x-rays don’t really exist. It’s a con. They tell us they exist so you don’t think you can hide stuff from them, but really they’re just watching the football at that little monitor and they can’t see into your bag at all.
My gate just opened. Time to go.

Le Chateau des Artistes, Ranguin, nr. Cannes, Sunday, 8:00pm BST
The journey was smooth and uneventful. I got to Cannes at about 11:30am local time, collected my lovely free festival pass and soon went into a series of meetings Carl had set up with various international folks. I had forgotten how busy Cannes gets, and how knackering it is to slog up and down the Croisette in the hot sun with a heavy Powerbook in your backpack.
My one observation so far about how Dark Side is being received this year versus last is that the involvement of Benedict Cumberbatch is much more exciting for people now that he is on the brink of stardom. Ah, the industry is so fickle.
I bumped into Gerard Giorgi-Coll, lenser of many of this site’s behind-the-scenes videos. He and his friends had come to experience their first Cannes and were just as shocked by the cynical commercialism of the market as I was on my first visit. You can find out all about Gerard and co’s own film projects on their website, www.fascinationpictures.co.uk
My hotel is a considerable improvement on last year’s dive, being much quieter and cleaner (though still a bit manky in the corridors) and blessed with a swimming pool. Hope I get time for a dip this week….

UK Pavillion, Cannes Film Festival, 8am BST
Finally got onto the internet so I can upload blogs and vlogs! Yay!

At the weekend I received some private investment towards the development of Dark Side, which will enable me to go to Cannes. I immediately started trawling the internet to book my flight and accommodation.
In previous years it has cost me around a grand to attend Cannes, but this year, even with the investment, I can only afford to spend UKP600. As you know from a previous post, I already slashed UKP260 off my costs by getting free festival accreditation instead of stupidly paying for a market badge like I used to, but how could I save another UKP140, especially when booking relatively late?
The first task was to find a flight, and I was surprised to see that the prices hadn’t changed since I looked at them around Christmas. There’s a temptation to just book the cheapest one, but you have to consider all the ramifications to make sure you’re not falling into a false economy trap. For example, last year I was lured in by a cheap flight and arrived a full day before the festival started, but that was probably cancelled out by the cost of an extra night in the hotel. The flight was also late in the day, which is risky because you have to think about how you’re getting from Nice airport to your hotel at the other end. If you read my blog last year, you’ll know that I ended up having to get an expensive taxi to my hotel after my flight was delayed and the train was cancelled.
So this year, before booking the flight, I worked through all the consequences that the flight would have for the cost of airport transfers at both ends. You can actually fly to Nice from Bristol, which is much closer to Hereford than the London airports, but the slightly reduced cost of getting to the airport is outweighed by the higher cost of the flights. In the end I plumped for an Easyjet 7am departure from Luton on the morning of Sunday May 15th. “Aha!” you’re thinking. “That was stupid. How are you going to get to the airport at that time in the morning?” Well, my plan was to get the last train from Hereford on the Saturday night, which (after multiple changes) would get me to the airport for 1:30am. I could then try to get a few hours’ kip in a chair before check-in opened at 5am. At the other end of the flight, I would arrive at a very reasonable time in the morning and have no trouble getting in to Cannes.
In the past I’ve paid at least UKP90+ for my plane fare, but this flight was just UKP76, so my budget-cutting was going almost as well as George Osborne’s, and with considerably fewer protests.
Next it was time to book a hotel. The closer to Cannes you stay, the more your hotel costs. I quickly found that, at this late stage in the game, there was no availability anywhere less than three miles from the town within my price range. Again, you have to beware of false economies. A cheap hotel a long way from Cannes may seem attractive, but when you miss the last bus back at night and have to fork out for an over-priced taxi, you suddenly realise it wasn’t such a great saving after all.
Last year I stayed about two miles west of Cannes in La Bocca, conveniently situated on the Ligne 1 bus route and a railway line running both to Cannes and Nice. I was keen to have easy access to both those transportation lines this year as well; I knew their timetables; I knew their costs. Using hotels.com, I found Les Residences du Soleil (Le Chateau des Artistes), a few stops further out along the Ligne 1 and railway line. At UKP288 for four nights, it was considerably cheaper than last year’s hotel. I’m very lucky that such a good deal was still available with less than two months to go until the festival. It even has one more star than 2010’s Hotel Neptune. And hopefully won’t have sounds of people listening to porn seeping through the walls. At three miles from Cannes, it’s further out than I’d ideally like, but it’s still walkable if I really have to.
Again, I carefully checked the transport options before booking, particularly how I was going to get from the hotel to Nice airport for my homeward flight departing at 11:25am. Fortunately the trains start running early in France, and with Ranguin Station a few minutes’ walk from Les Residences du Soleil I shouldn’t have any problems.
Totting up the money spent so far, and estimating how much I would spend whilst in France, I realised I had saved so much cash that I could afford to stay at the glamorous Luton Ibis the night before my outbound flight, thus removing the need to kip on some airport seats. Sweet.
So, to recap, the costs were: UKP76 for the flight, UKP288 for the French hotel and UKP28 for the Luton hotel, making a total of UKP392 so far.

It’s that time of year again – Cannes is on the horizon. If I’m going to go this year, I need to do it for less money than it’s cost me in the past. If you saw my Cannes vlogs last year, you may recall I said it costs about UKP1,000 to attend the festival: UKP100 for your flight, UKP400 for your hotel, UKP250 for your Market Pass and the rest goes on food, transfers and incidentals. So how can I get these numbers down?
Well, the first thing I can do is not be an idiot and misunderstand the differences between market and festival passes, like I did last year. There are several ways to get into the Cannes Film Festival – and I mean ways that you, as a person, can get into the festival, not your film – but the main two are the Market Pass and Festival Accreditation. (I’ll try and go into the others at some point in the future.)
Before I go any further, let me remind you of a key point in understanding Cannes – it is actually two separate events that happen in the same place at the same time: the Cannes Film Festival and the Film Market, or Marche Du Film. The first is the one you will see in TV coverage – the red carpet, the stars – but it’s also a film festival like any other, to which you can submit your film and if you’re extremely lucky it will be selected and screened, and if you’re preternaturally lucky you’ll win an award. The second event, the market, is just like a trade fair or a convention for films. It’s where most of the world’s sales agents and distributors go to buy and sell movies – most of them really, really terrible, as indicated by the thousands of appalling posters which assault your eyeballs when you enter the Riveria building at the heart of the market.
So back to accreditation. I always thought that Festival Accreditation would only get you into the festival areas, not the markets areas, but I was wrong. It gets you into both, just like the Market Pass does. So what’s the difference? Well, one difference is that with the Market Pass you get the Guide – a massive and very useful book containing contact details for all the companies attending.
But the most important distinction is HOW you get these two types of accreditation. For a Market Pass, you cough up your 286 Euros and – bingo! – it’s yours. For Festival Accreditation, you fill in an on-line form, attaching evidence that you are a working filmmaker, and if the panel is convinced by this evidence, and if they have not used up the limited number of passes they are able to give each year, you get accreditation – completely FREE. This shouldn’t be a revelation to anyone who’s been to Cannes before, but somehow I’d got it into my head that it cost about 150 Euros for Festival Accreditation, plus of course the erroneous belief that it wouldn’t get me into all the necessary areas, so I was very pleased when I finally got the facts straight.
I’ve heard a lot about how picky the panel can be when deciding whether to give Festival Accreditation or not. I know that your IMDb page is quite important, and that your credits have to be recent, so I applied in the film technician category, since I have plenty of recent DOP credits. I applied on Tuesday morning – the first day registration was open – and received an email a few hours later saying I had been accepted. And there was me thinking it would be weeks before I got a decision and that they would ring up and interrogate all my referees and I would have to supply more evidence. But no, it was easy peasy. I think this was largely due to me probably being one of the first people to apply, so my advice is to get in there on the first day registration is open.
So that’s UKP250 slashed off my Cannes budget already. We’ll see what else I can squeeze as the festival approaches.