So it’s safe to say that we have fallen out of the habit of making blog posts since Banff. Infact, we never even made an in-depth recap of what happened! So here it comes.

Foods

We left the 30-plus degree weather in on the coast early with a care package from my girlfriend, and enjoyed a beautiful drive through the British Columbia back country. However, soon after crossing the border into Alberta, the weather took sudden turn for the worse. The temperature plummeted and the skies clouded over, and as we arrived in Banff around six o’clock that evening, it had started snowing.

Tiny Hostel Room

We had made arrangements to stay in a hostel for the duration of our trip, but soon after checking in we realized that we had made a huge mistake. The hostel was full of fun, interesting  young people who we were eager to get to know,  but it was clear that they were in Banff for one reason alone – to party. We dropped off our luggage in the tiny room we were sharing with four other people and headed out to dinner.

Over dinner we started to talk about the logistics of staying at the hostel. Where would we work on e-mails and go over notes? Where would we iron our clothes before meetings? Would we be able to get a good night’s sleep? We decided that we should just roll with the punches and do our best – “It’s all part of the experience!” We also made a pact – we were going to steer clear of the partying that was so prevelant at the hostel.

Resting Up at the Hotel

As we woke up late the next morning, groggy and hungover, we realized that our pact was meaningless and we quickly checked out of the hostel and into a hotel in downtown Banff. We got settled in and rested up, as the next day was the kickoff of the Banff World Television Festival.

Our first order of business at the Festival was to attend the very informative “Rookies in the Rockies” panel hosted by Joe Novak of Joe Media Group and featuring a great panel of veteran industry proffessionals. Later on we attended the CBC/Radio-Canada Opening Reception where we got our feet wet in the art of networking. We ended up connecting with a couple of other teams from Vancouver: Roy and Graeme from Tigheland Productions who were there promoting their Web-series, and Norm and Kevin of Greenrock Films who were pitching  their Comedy and Reality concepts. We ended our night at the Women in Film & Television Alberta “Martini Madness” party in downtown Banff, where we mingled more and practiced our pitch in preparation for the next day.

The Banff Springs Hotel, host hotel for the Festival

The next day I woke up feeling a bit under the weather, but we got going  and headed back to the Festival site for our first pitch meeting. Any worries that we were under prepared were quickly put to rest, as our pitch flowed well and the Producer was drawn into the concept. We spent the rest of the day going from meeting to meeting pitching our brains out, and by the end of the day I had gone from feeling a little under the weather to feeling like I had gravel in my lungs and a vice on my head. We turned in early to rest up for another day of networking and pitching.

Nathan entertains the crowd

The following day was filled with more great pitch meetings and networking in the various lounges around the hotel and convention centre. It was also the day of the Banff BBQ, an annual event for all the delegates. It was held at Brewster’s MountView Barbecue, a facility on the edge of town that served a great meal with salad, baked potatoes, barbecued salmon, and barbecued hip of beef. We had a fantastic time and met some great people, and headed back to our hotel for another night’s rest before the final day of the festival.

At nine o’clock the next morning we started our final round of pitch meetings, and managed to squeeze in a couple of spontaneous sessions. Our final meeting was with an agent who we had been talking with before heading to Banff. We pitched

Jevan trying to keep it together

her several of our projects and then jumped in the car for the long drive back to Vancouver.

Arriving back home was a great feeling. This was our first time really putting ourselves and our projects “out there,” and we were pleased with the reactions we got. We submitted our Big Dreams documents to a number of Producers and Broadcasters and are now waiting to hear back. In the mean time we have started work on our next project, the Comedy/Thriller Lost Case.

On the home stretch

I hope this recap makes up for the reckless neglect we’ve been paying the blog lately. We’ve been kept busy with our follow up E-mails and phone calls and our work on Lost Case, but I assure you, we will get this Blog going on a regular basis starting NOW!

Tags: 40, Broken Forty

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 28th, 2009 at 3:48 pm and is filed under Broken Forty. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.