A while back I was asked to submit Maud & Leo to the online film festival We Speak Here. Now it’s finally up on their website, be sure to check it out and help us win the viral price by sharing the movie.
So far well over 20 000 people has downloaded the movie from Clearbits. If you’d like to download the movie you can do so here.
I recently got the fantastic news that I will get funding for the development of a documentary that I’m working on. It’s great news that give me the possibility to focus on finishing the first stage of the project this fall. I’m going to do the last couple of interviews and then edit the movie together. After that I will be applying for more funding to finish off the project. For now that’s all I’m going to say 
.
We recently opened up our Facebook page for Maud & Leo. It’s the first step towards spreading the movie across the Internet. We’ve licensed the movie as a Creative Common. Which mean that we will be spreading it for free all over the place. Our wish is that everybody who like the movie will be spreading the movie to their dear friends and lovers.
All download links are available on our Facebook page.
Today we open the doors to our Facebook page for Maud & Leo. We have been developing the page for some time now, it’s a great way for us to share a little bit more than just the movie.
On the 28:e of January we’re going to be pre-screening Maud & Leo at Hot Spot, a venue for young filmmakers in Stockholm. It’s a nice opportunity to screen the movie for a young audience which aren’t the obvious audience for the movie.
We’re working at releasing the movie for real in the first quarter of 2010. There’s a couple of really interesting distribution opportunities that we’re going to try out for this film. If all goes well we will probably be using ourselfs of this way of distributing on future projects.
Read more about Hot Spot here: http://bit.ly/77GwaD
2010 has started with a bang as I started the year by doing a campaign for MTV and Nordea. As soon as I got back to Stockholm from the beautiful northern Sweden I had 13h shooting-day at MTV in Stockholm. The campaign will be coming out soon and I will be posting it here.
Now I’m all up in two documentary projects. This weekend I’m off to do some more interview’s with Lena, a former drug addict that I’m doing an animated documentary about. The story is starting to take form, and during the spring I should have my first edit of the movie. Read more about the project here: http://blog.vonwallstrom.com/?p=485
Exciting times! We are working hard on the release of Maud & Leo. I recently registered the film for a Creative Commons license, which mean that we will be distributing the movie freely on the Internet.
Since it’s an independent production that we own the total rights of, it’s really a perfect chance to try new ways of distributing our movies. With that said we won’t forget about the traditional ways of watching movies. It will be distributed through theater, mobile devices, DVD and the Internet for download and streaming.
Today I got the mobile streaming to work for the iPhone, the stream is based on a h.264 codec so a lot of devices should work with it. It looks great! The movie is 26 minutes so it’s not the kind of movie you put on while traveling two stops on the metro, but still I think it will be a great platform for viewing the movie. It will be available both as Podcast and as a Quicktime-stream.
We’re also going to try out some new ways of marketing and financing. Today I got a text messaging feature to work that we will be using for swedish viewers, they will be able to make donations with their mobile phones. Other ways to donate will be Paypal and swedish Bankgiro, these are the ones that we feel is simple enough for viewers to want to use.
As for the cinema we’re working on a few cities to screen the movie in. We’re hoping to be able to screen it in a couple of selected cities in Sweden and some abroad. More news to come in the future…
I’ve been busy researching a documentary that has been in my mind for a couple of years now. It all started with a lecture film a couple of years ago. I was documenting a workshop called relationship week, it addressed how to get out of a destructive relationship. It’s an all women’s group and I was privileged enough to be filming in the discussions of about 20-30 women with different destructive pasts. Most of them had been addicted to narcotics or alcohol for many years and was both trying to change their habits of addiction and destructive relations.
The woman that holds the responsibility for the relationship week is called Lena. She has come clean of an 17 year old drug addiction. In six years she lived with a man that abused her. She was close to taking her life when no one took the violence in her relationship seriously. Finally she was admitted to the psyche and came into contact with a therapist.
The documentary is about Lena and her life story. It’s a really interestning story about a woman who has lived outside society’s norms in many years. Her life experience of poverty is enormous. Despite this, she managed to turn her life into something positive and today she’s trying to improve substance abuse treatment in Sweden.
Next week I will do my first days of shooting with Lena. The project will become an animated documentary. It will be really interesting to see a life story with a lot of authenticity combined with animated storytelling. More information about the project will be posted regularly.
Today we made the last changes to Maud & Leo. Now we’re planning our trip to Cannes. The movie will be screened at the Short Film Corner at the Cannes Film Festival.
This week I’ve been busy color-grading Maud & Leo. Cinepost Studios (www.cinepost.se) is helping us out with the post-production and we’re happy to say that Michael Cosola is doing our grading. He is ranked top five of colorists in Hollywood, and now living in Stockholm.
