Over the last week I was very excited to be one of the filmmakers selected for the Edinburgh Talent Lab and this wasn't just as they fed me Italian food for five days and put me and Rob up in a flat bigger than where we live now.
The lab picks emerging UK Directors, screenwriters and producers all with a feature film project to attend a talent lab that runs alongside the film festival for four days of lectures, screenings and tailored 1-2-1s.
Some of the speakers included director Rachel Tunnard (How I Lived Mine, Creative England), producer Tristan Golighter (The Bureau), Head of Indie Go Go Miranda Fleming and producer Allon Reich (Dredd, Sunshine on Leith).
They kicked off the lab with an intense speed dating session in which we all had to introduce ourselves to each other within 3 minutes. I am now fully practiced in reeling off my biography to anyone in the space of 90 seconds.
The rest of the week was fantastic and I can't really recommend the lab enough. I met some lovely filmmakers whose features I'm excited to see and the 121s really helped me work out the next step in my career and the right route for the two feature projects I took to the lab. Absolute highlight of my 121's was meeting the wickedly talented Kyle Patrick Alvarez who was up there with the fantastic Stanford Prison Project, which won the Alfred P.Sloan Prize and Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance this year.
I've walked away with meetings already lined up with production companies and agents when I get back to London and also got to meet festival programmers including Sundance but most importantly I got to cement my reputation of not to be messed with when it comes to film quizzes with our quiz team, The People Under The Stairs. Here is our team below during the drawing round for Trainspotting, in which you had to draw as much you could about Trainspotting for 1 minute and I basically yelled "BABY ON THE CEILING" for a minute. I am also very good at yelling "Baby on the ceiling" now.
I also managed to catch quite a few films at the festival. Highlights would be COP CAR, DOPE and my favourite DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL by Marielle Heller, which is one of the most honest, funny and brilliant deceptions of female coming-of-age I've ever seen.
ARTICLE "EDINBURGH UNVEILS INDUSTRY LINE-UP" ABOUT THE LAB IN SCREEN DAILY
ARTICLE "EIFF TALENT LAB 2015" ON EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL WEBSITE