The Launch Party

Hi all, Maddy here blogging about the Big Book Media Launch Party. We had our launch party on Tuesday night in London at St Matthew's Church, Westminster.
The photo on the left shows Diane Louise Jordan with Hannah at the party and on the right David doing his speech with Hannah and Tim at the side.

The whole Big Book Media team traveled up for the day to arrive at the church at midday to help with setting up and all the preparations for the evening function. I traveled up with Hannah's sister Jill from Sussex, Charlie, Robbie & Tim drove up with cars loaded with drinks, screens, glasses etc! We also had David, Hannah, Alec, Amory, Katy (photographer from shoot one), Kathy (photographer from shoot two), James (Pro Asst from shoot two), Peggy (Hannah's Mum!) all there to help out with the many jobs setting up and making sure the night went smoothly.
We made up canapes from some lovely Moroccan food bought in Goldborne Road London and from a couple of other places - we had little kofta skewers and chicken kebab skewers, stuffed vine leaves, spicy Moroccan pastries and also olives, stuffed apricots, salted almonds etc.. The food must have been good as a few people asked who the catering company was! We had champagne for guests and a pomegranate and sparking water drink as the non alcoholic option!
The photo on the left is Charlie working hard at the launch but smiling as ever!
The photo on the right is Hannah, Trevor and guest at the party.

We took display screens to the church and put up stills photos from our two film shoots, examples of Guy's 3 Wise Camels Sunday School materials, information about Big Book Media and Hannah and David. So that people could see and read about the background behind the company.
We also had TVs showing our filmed footage on a loop and a large projector and screen to show the main filmed clips on. Amory had put the music he created for the film onto disc so that was playing when the films weren't showing.
Robbie was doorman with his guest list which he knows by heart! It's going to be his specialist subject on Mastermind!!
Then when the evening started we had drinks and canapes at 6pm while people arrived and mingled. Then at 7pm we had three short speeches from Hannah (Producer), David (Director) and Trevor (Consultant) giving information on Big Book Media, the filming of the productions in Morocco and the use of the films in churches, Sunday schools etc..Then the films were shown we showed the Annunciation, The Blind Man, The Magi, plus our promo film which is on our website www.bigbookmedia.com.
Then more of our films were showing on the smaller TV screens on a loop - eg The Nativity.
The last photo below shows Selva our actor who plays Jesus in the films with another guest, Selva has our Big Book Media folder with company information and DVD of the promo on his lap!
After a successful night it was back to Sussex to get some sleep. Maddy

From Dusk Till Dawn (Production!)

We are currently finishing up our pre-production for Big Book Media's second shoot - the production team are flying out this Friday leaving the non production people here! Charlie our Production Manager and James our Production Assistant for this shoot have been working really hard with the planning of the shoot organising everything needed from our end, equipment, team, shipping, hotels, flights etc and liasing with Hamid in Morocco who is our Line Producer out there and is organising the Moroccan things needed for the shoot from his end. They have just a couple more days then they are off back to Ouzazate to start filming our next script.

I will be staying in the office again to manage anything that needs doing from here - hopefully a lot less than needed doing last time! Also in the office will be Tim who is completing some final post work on our filmed footage from Shoot One with Amory, they'll be spending most of their time up in London with Halo who are doing the final post stuff for us. Then Alec our Sales and Marketing Manager who has the building of the website to oversee, launch events for the first lot of films in Nov and about 100 other tasks to do. He will be here in the office with me and also Robbie who has just started working for us as Sales & Marketing Assistant - thank heavens he's here to help Alec there's a lot to do (there will be blogs to cover all of it)!

Shoot Two is going to last two weeks (the last two weeks of October) and we'll be back shooting in Ouzazate in the desert and a couple of nearby locations.
Deane, DTI came down in the week to bring over red camera equipment and accessories to be taken out via a shipping agent going out ahead of us to Morocco - Dynamic International Shipping. Left is Charlie's map of Morocco which is stuck up by her desk!

It has been the usual busy busy Production time in the office but James has been amazing and has made a huge difference to the production work load. I haven't had to get involved with shipping, lens orders, flights etc etc.. this time which has been wonderful! There are so many phone calls, e-mails and admin involved in getting a production off the ground, for the last shoot there were days I was on the phone arranging things from when I arrived in the morning to when I left at the end of the day!

The first thing I will be doing once the Production Team set off for Morocco is finalising our Launch event which is going to be at the beginning of November up in London. I'll blog about plans, plus more on 3 Wise Camels and Christmas Cards shortly.