"eyyyy..."

So the first day of the Banff Television Festival has come and gone. We started our day at the “Rookies in the Rockies” seminar hosted by Joe Novak of Joe Media Group, and we absorbed some great advice from the panel of industry veterans from both Canada and the United States.

That evening we attended the CBC/Radio Canada Opening Reception where we mingled with the rest of delegates, and came away with some great new contacts.

"grumble"

After the Opening Reception we headed to the “Martini Madness” party being thrown by Women in Film & Television Alberta at the Saltlik Steakhouse in downtown Banff, where a couple hundred of the delegates partied well into the night. We had a great time there, and managed to leave with a renewed sense of confidence.

Today is the day we begin our first round of meetings with producers and executives. It should be exciting, and we’re confident we are ready. We will let you know how it goes.

"WE ARE!!"

It is official: Broken Forty will be at BANFF in June to pitch our TV comedy series BIG DREAMS.

We’ve got a hell of a lot of work to get done in the weeks to come and you can read about it all here.

We are extremely excited to be attending one of the world’s premiere Television markets and hope to make good use of it. We are hard at work perfecting our Bible and Pilot script, designing and printing promotional materials and constantly practicing our pitch on friends and family. The road to Banff has been rocky thus far, but if we can make it through this without being banished from the industry, we believe Broken Forty will make it’s mark in 2009.

After exhausting all the possible options we could come up with to get to the Banff World Television Festival for free, or even on a 2-for-1 basis, Nathan and I have come to our last resort. We applied for Banff’s “Rookie Rate,” which would give us a substantial savings, but still cost us over a thousand dollars each, which on our salaries will be a tough pill to swallow. It remains to be seen if we even make the cut at that rate, and if not, we will have to try again next year.

In the mean time, we are continuing to prepare as if we will be there in June. We are putting the finishing touches on our site and working on our promo-material, as well as tuning up the script and series bible for Big Dreams.

We will keep you posted on any and ALL new developments…

Stay tuned…

Well the time is quickly approaching when everybody who is anybody goes to Banff to buy and sell TV shows. Jevan and I are trying to get our stuff together to get to Banff this year to pitch our TV show Big Dreams. Problem is: we can’t afford to go.

We are desperately trying to find programs to apply for to get to Banff. Telefilm and Achilles Media have put together a program called TV 360 which allows novice TV developers a way into Banff, as well as an introduction to the aspects of new-media / TV crossover. We figure this would be good for us except there is a requirement of at least one previous production credit. How are we supposed to get our foot in the door if you need to already have one in! Gosh Darnit… It’s starting to stress me out.

Does anybody want to sponsor Broken Forty at the Banff World Television Festival? For the low low price of $2,000 we will proudly sell out to you!

Hopefully we will find a way to get there. If we do, it will be the start of something GLORIOUS!