Since we last wrote you, we began prepping for our five day Aesthetica festival in York, as we had applied for a pitching session for two of our films; The Empire of Good Deeds, and Moonwood. Both sessions were with separate production houses and distributers with massive viewerships (we won’t name them here!) We worked hard on creating our pitch decks and proposals that contained shortened documentary treatments including loglines and synopses (information about the documentaries required for pitching a story) but we still had no idea if we would be accepted for pitching.

Weeks came and went, and we received our first email from Aesthetica informing us of the 250 proposals that had come through, and that we would need to wait another week to know if our pitch had enough merit to obtain a space with one of the producers…Eek! Alas, we waited and waited, but nothing came through :(

Then just a week before flying back to the UK (and a week before the festival) we got an email from Aesthetica to a private email address wondering if we attending the pitch session as BOTH our proposals had been accepted!! phew!! Of course we immediately replied ‘ATTENDING’ and quickly printed out business cards and some a4 full colour double sided brochures so that we could look a bit ‘professional’ as I’d never pitched anything in such a formal setting before!

Back to the UK, jet lagged and with four days to wash clothes and prepare, I finally managed a whole nights sleep a day before our pitching session.

Jess was nice, attentive and interested. She told me she hadn’t read much of the synopsis and so three of us sat and ‘pitched’ a slightly confused story about a monk who believed he didn’t exist and then a coup that showed he did and…well…let’s just say Jess was VERY nice.

Finally, she explained that she wanted a shorter logline, despite having really loved the one I had read from the brochure, and that she wanted a narrative arc. And that again, we should try to meet with them again informing them that we had already been seen by her…Apparently a ‘maybe’ or an ‘interested’ is not a ‘no’ so let’s see.

Of course, it was equally incredible to watch our film on the BIG SCREEN which felt soooooo rewarding, and we at Plasm Productions as well as all the other filmmakers we met at the festival just want to say a massive ‘Woop’ and a million thanks to you, ASFF, for putting on yet another stunning festival with love, sweat and yes…plenty of tears during some of the stunningly emotional films that were on display this year!!

As I carried on with my never-ending assembling of various sequences in preparation for the amazing, long-form 20 years experience narrative editor that I’m going to manifest very soon, I decided to go on a trek to a waterfall in the middle of a nowhere (close to Khao Yai national park) to get away from the screen.

Yes, no sooner had I began trekking than the girl who’d invited me informed me of her connection to someone related to the environment in Thailand ‘high up’. I shan’t say more in case nothing comes from it, but let’s just say ANOTHER story began to unfold relating to an incredible product I had been shown during my Japanese filming called BAKTURE (yes everyone should look that up right now if they truly believe in saving the planet)…and I immediately sent an email to one of our extremely hard working ‘behind-the-scenes treatment writers to begin racking their brains for yet another amazing story!

Immediately after we had our second pitching session. Alex was very excited about ‘Moonwood’. In fact, she preferred the ‘woo’ aspect of things, something I had been informed by humans and AI not to include in my narrative. Well, things are looking UP in the industry is all I can say! Unfortunately they are more online distributors and won’t fund initial production, but they will take a look at the cuts once we have them.

If you didn’t get a chance to join us at ASFF this year, but would like to watch our selected film, ‘A Flow of Consciousness: Evanescence’ (part 1), which tells the elusive story of the melting Third Pole and its 3,500 year old villages in the shadows of extinction, just click the private stripe link below, (£6 a ticket with all proceeds going to the next film in the series which follows the journey of water and its changing state).

https://buy.stripe.com/9AQ7sNfoNf9C4QUdQQ

Although we stand a ‘tiny’ chance of getting support for The Empire of Good Deeds and Moonwood (if we play our cards right) not every film is lucky enough for a production house to fund despite being stories we feel need to be shared with the world.

SILENT CURRENTS is both fascinating and essential because it highlights how nearly all the fish in South East Asia is caught off the back of children and adult slavery (human trafficking).

Some of us may already know that impoverished children are tricked into this kind of industry, but few of us realise just how powerful and almost impossible it is to escape from.

That is why we really need your help to tell this story.

We have been given a discounted fee of $3,000 from one of our animators who we support in Columbia (we like to work with artists around the world who may not normally get a chance to show off their incredible talent due to their social situations) to animate a 5 minute interview into a short film, highlighting the plight and emotional anguish of a slave fisher-boy the Thai-Burma borders.

If you are able to help fund this film we promise to share our production journey with you as much as possible!

Our first milestone will be to raise for the storyboard (these cost between £300-500), so if you would like to give us an early Christmas present, please ‘SUPPORT US’ via our direct, private stripe link below, and throw us as much change as you can afford in order to help make this

much needed film a reality!

Finally, here is a bright and shiny interview by Spiritual Creatives Arts Foundation of Thida talking about how she began her InfinEights series with zero experience, by accident!…

(If she can make her creative dreams come true, so you can you!!)

We just want to reiterate our thanks for all your time and support, it really does mean the world to us and makes our job feel easier knowing you are with us!

We hope you have an amazing rest of the year and we will see you again in the New Year for more updates!!!