Tuesday, July 11th (shortly after 7 p.m.): I'm standing at the back of the Boat Club looking over the Corrib when it happens. Next to me is the newly appointed director of television at TG4. Always laid-back and approachable, he may be an easy target, but I need the practice, so I make my first blatantly shameless schmooze of this, the 12th Galway Film Fleadh. I give him the outline to Vorsprung, our 90-second movie (synopsis: the roundabout of love) and he digs it. Pity it's in German and not Irish, I think later, but then that would be a whole other movie.
Thursday, July 13th (10 p.m.): Julian Gough (business partner, mate and lender of cash) and I run through our project list and refine our pitches. Tomorrow is a big day for us. Seven meetings with some high-powered television types who can get you actual money for your film. As a company, Big Yes Productions has been trading for about 18 months, and when I checked this morning our bank account still had four figures and a decimal point right in the middle. If anything's gonna shift it's got to be Year Zero, a documentary project that we've been working on for nearly three years. At one time it was pretty much a personal obsession, but now I just want to finish the thing and go on holiday.
Friday, July 14th (10 a.m.): All that separates us and our future fortune is fair co-ordinator Miriam Allen. With the quiet efficiency that characterises the whole event, she opens the door and lets us through. This is it. We're in.
Some people might balk at this raw spectacle of naked capitalism, but in reality, the Galway Film Fair is quite fun. You pay £75 pounds per delegate and in return the fair invites over 50 different financiers and film distributors all looking for "product". From a wish list of 12, you're given eight different 20-minute meetings.
The fair will always try to accommodate your preferences, but inevitably some meetings are over-subscribed. Twenty minutes might not seem like a long time to sell something you may have been working on for two to three years, but if you do your homework right and focus your pitch properly you could probably run through three or four projects in that time.
The pitchee, if he's done his homework, should be able to give you pretty instant feedback on what he likes or doesn't like and give some simple advice on how best to proceed. It might be intense, but on the whole it's a very civilised kind of intensity.
Friday, July 14th (10.01 a.m.): Suddenly 20 minutes seems like a very long time indeed. The man from the BBC has just opened the meeting with the words, "I'm afraid I've got some bad news!" My heart sinks. Year Zero isn't going to fly with them. To give them their due, they have given the project fantastic support and at times its continued development would have been impossible without their help. But as for moving it from development into a full commission, it doesn't fit their requirements at the moment.
It's nothing personal; it's just television. I understand, but can't pretend it doesn't hurt. It also blows most of what we'd planned for the meeting clean out of the water. The man from the BBC is very encouraging about what we do, however, and wants to hear our other ideas.
Trouble is we haven't rehearsed anything. Frantically, I squawk a word in Julian's direction: "Poptarts." Julian picks up the lead immediately and he's off, describing perfectly his plan to ditch indie-music credibility completely and sell out to the world of pop by writing a worldwide number one hit with Declan Collins, the guitarist from his old band Toasted Heretic. "It's not the music," cries Julian, "It's the marketing!" The man from the BBC likes it, wants to know more.
Saturday, July 14th (12.30 p.m.): The rest of yesterday is a bit of a blur at the moment. After the other six meetings, Julian sensibly went home and I went to the Boat Club and debriefed myself with the aid of a large amount of porter. Now, my brain feels a little foolish (and about four times too large for my head).
Our last meeting is with the woman from Film Four. She is cool and charming and probably never loses at poker. She likes the fact that we have lots of ideas and suggests we make contact with the Film Four Lab, their low-budget, high-risk division for emerging talent. The two emerging talents in front of her agree to do just that. "If you did get to make a film," she asks, "What would you do first?" I smile and reach inside my projects folder: "Its called Vorsprung."
Dole Eireann, directed by Mike Casey, will be screened on Thursday at the GPO, Galway at 7 p.m. and at Vicar Street, Dublin, on Sunday at 7 p.m, as part of the film and music club event
