Tag Archives: movie

October 25, 2013 · 8:00 am

Ballesteros (the movie)

I have never been a big fan of golf and in fact I have only played a few times starting in 2012 during a trip to Scotland. Thus, the phenomenon of Severiano Ballesteros if not unnoticed never fully touched me.

Earlier this month I spent some days resting in the village of Comillas (Cantabria, Spain). There we witnessed the preparation of the set and the filming of a movie. We heard that the crew had a British accent and then lunching in a terrace we learnt that the movie was about the life of Ballesteros.

I then, searched in the web about the movie project. I found several articles and read a couple from The Independent and Today’s Golfer.

The movie is produced by BAFTA award-winning Stephen Evans. The £5m movie project is running late as it was initially supposed to be already released, and now is expected for 2014, after over  5,000 hours of footage. It will tell the life of the golfer from its youth in Cantabria. While reading about the movie I found some sentences that catched my attention:

“He had one of the most fascinating childhoods I have ever come across. It is almost straight out of Charles Dickens.”

“If you don’t understand Seve’s formative years then you can’t possibly grasp why he became the man he did.”

“Like (Ayrton) Senna, Seve transcends his sport and like Senna, Seve was incredibly handsome and charismatic, but unlike Senna, Seve was not handed everything on a plate.”

“Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson, Lee Westwood and Luke Donald are all wonderful players, but that is all they are. There is no real story, so if you tried to make a movie about them people would fall asleep. Seve is different.“

“I have never seen such a display of triumph and joy in my life. It was incredible, amazing and electric.”

Seve Ballesteros, Spanish golfer (by Peter from Liverpool, UK).

Spanish media tends to elevate sportsmen to the highest quite rapidly after some victories, thus I still wanted to check just a few figures of majors won. Ballesteros won 5: 2 Masters (1980, 1983) and 3 times The Open Championship (1979, 1984, 1988). In the last 50 years, only eight (8) players have won 5 or more majors: Gary Player (9), Jack Nicklaus (18), Arnold Palmer (7), Lee Trevino (6), Tom Watson (8), Nick Faldo (6), Tiger Woods (14) and Phil Mickelson (5).

I obviously missed something. I am now looking forward to see that movie.

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November 26, 2012 · 8:00 am

The Cosmonaut: date of release and update

I became an investor (for 100€) and producer (by buying a T-shirt) of the movie “El Cosmonauta“ (“The Cosmonaut”) about a year ago. I wrote then a post (in Spanish) about it as I had done when I first learnt about the movie in a TEDx conference two years ago.

Last week a received an update of the project via email. The team confirmed that the movie will be released in April 2013 and what it’s more important, it showed the update of “The Plan“ [PDF, 3.9 MB, in Spanish], a revision of the budget and the cash-flows to date. The Plan is 50-page document where the team explains the strategy for the product, which in this case is not just a movie.

My brother uses to remind me “it will only be success if the movie is good, no matter how fancy or novel the project behind is”. It might be true. But the project behind is indeed fancy and novel.

Reading the update of The Plan, one can see the variety of activities that have gone and go with the movie, the breadth of contents, formats, etc., to name a few:

  • The use of crowdfunding: to raise up to nearly 400k€ from over 4,500 investors (equity, almost 500 of them) and producers (buyers of merchandising prior to movie release).
  • Creation of a community: having organized several meet-ups and parties with investors. Planning to organize a big event with them for the release of the movie.
  • The use of Creative Commons: releasing the movie free for the viewer under Creative Commons licence.
  • One single release of the movie: which will be available at the same time in cinemas, TVs, free online, DVD…
  • Awareness: having appeared in dozens of media, hundreds of blogs and several festivals.
  • Case of study: in universities, business schools, subject of PhDs…
  • Prizes: having won several prizes for its innovation, entrepreneurial side, etc.
  • 4 classes of content: free to use, creative commons, under subscription, branded.
  • Webisodes: the movie will be accompanied by 37 short episodes showing secondary pieces, which will not be part of the main movie.
  • Documentaries: about the process of filming the movie from the perspective of a hummingbird and a crude making off.
  • Facebook profiles of the movie characters which will interact with fans at the time of the movie release.
  • Poetry book about cosmonauts.
  • Educational materials: developed for cinema schools and students.
  • Workbook manual of cinema.
  • …

If you want to know more, take a look at The Plan :-).

The project is really fresh and captivating, I wish the movie matches it. I leave you for now with the trailer of the movie:

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