November/December Round Up – Shakespeare Republic Awards, Speaking Daggers Awards and new project launched!

So. Much. Going. On!!

I know I start nearly every update with those words, but it really is true!!

Happy New Year!!

I’m going to start the year by rewinding back to November last year (which was, in reality, a couple of months ago) to explain the header image of this post. So, I was in New York in November … I love that I can just casually throw that around … and not only was I in NYC, but I was also there to pick up the CINE Golden Eagle Award for Best Digital Series for Shakespeare Republic! I know! Amazing!!

While I was there, I also attended (with Billy Smedley) the NYC WebFest where Shakespeare Republic was nominated for two awards, and somehow ended up moderating the International Creators’ Panel on about 10 minutes notice. I exaggerate on the not knowing how I ended up doing that … it was pretty simple, the moderator who was supposed to be there had been taken suddenly ill and fab Festival Director, Lauren Atkins was rushing around trying to work out how to fix the problem when I found myself saying “Well, I could do it. I’m now GM of Melbourne WebFest, so I have some credibility, I guess?”. And so, 10 minutes later on no prep, I was hosting a fascinating discussion with filmmakers from South Africa, Australia, Brazil, Portugal and Canada on the challenges of making web series in their respective countries. Apparently we have some of it on tape, as Billy decided to record some of it for posterity, so when I find it on his phone, I’ll share it here.

But then, the main event for the week was looming … the CINE Celebrates Award Ceremony! As you can see from the above photo after receiving the award I was somewhat overwhelmed and so delighted with the win! And as you can see from the video below, Phoebe Anne Taylor joined Billy and I at the ceremony and we were all a little bit excited to be there …

And then even more excited after the win …

Yes, we found the wonder of live video on Facebook during the trip … in case you hadn’t worked that out 😉

After all this excitement, Billy and I headed off to North Carolina to attend the Gala Awards Night for the Peak City International Film Festival … where Speaking Daggers ended up winning Best Short Film!! It was crazy!! Such a surprise and so fantastic. Here’s a photo of myself and Mayor of Apex (where the festival is held), Lance Olive after the Awards where we were discussing screenwriting in between selfies (true story).

By now, jetlag had started to catch up with me big time, but we had a day of rest in Apex, where we shared another live video …

And then it was off to LA to hang out by a pool. Yep, I know, probably should have been hustling, but as it was only a couple of days out from Thanksgiving, most people had left town anyway, so we felt that was excuse enough not to do anything much. All the trip is available in all it’s gory detail (including the win at Rio WebFest that happened while we were in LA) over on the Shakespeare Republic website in the following order – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5.

So that was November! Amazing, exciting, exhausting, but awesome.

December was supposed to be a quiet month, but as is always the way, that didn’t go to plan. Because we had a new project to launch! Well, the teaser concept for a new project. Yes, Till The Boys Come Home is fast becoming a reality and we launched the concept pitch teaser only 12 days ago!

To pre-empt your questions – no, it’s not yet ready to stage – that will be happening possibly around 2019, yes, that is Nadine Garner (and Christopher Kirby and Sarah Hallam and yours truly) and no, I don’t know that we’ll be touring it, but hey, you never know!

So that’s my round up for November/December. I’m slowly getting around to sorting out and updating all the websites with all this info, but it’s only just the New Year, so … it might take a little longer than usual.

Hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and New Year and see you soon!

Sal 🙂