Images Festival - 5e Grand prix européen des Premiers Films The Marionette unit appeared at the 5th Annual Images Festival in Vevey, Switzerland for the month of Sept. We were invited along to the opening of the festival on the 4th Sept to take part in the ceremony and attend the first official screening of our Inception Trailer. While we were at the ceremony, we were awarded "1st Grand Prize" for our work so far on the film. It is an amazing honour to be recognised for the film - even more so seeing as we haven't shot the film yet! It was a great honour to win the award, we hope the first of many. Merci Beaucoup Images Festival Asylum Steampunk Festival, Lincoln, England The Marionette Unit appeared at the UKs biggest Steampunk festival called "Asylum" Over 900 people attended the weekends events. The film's producer James Boyle held a special presentation to the visitors and community members. James got to meet a wide range of people from authors, illustrators and performers. During the presentation he talked about the films inception, its current state during the writing process, and also showed the teaser trailer and exclusive concept artwork. The response was amazing. Everyone loved it! The best part ...

Hello everyone, It has been a while since Azhur and I wrote on the blog. As our previous post mentioned, we haven't forgotten about the project or our amazing fans. We have been working very hard on the feature script for The Marionette Unit. Azhur, Paul and myself cannot wait to tell the story and make the film, so look forward to lots of exciting news very soon.... In the meantime, we have some exciting news to tell now. The Marionette Unit is going to be appearing at two festivals in Sept! On the 4th of Sept, The Marionette Unit will be appearing at the Festival Des Arts Visuels De Vevey – Images 10 in Switzerland These were the guys who supported the film during the very early stages. We will be screening the trailer along with brand new concept artwork that hasn’t been revealed online. We will also get a chance to talk on stage to the festival goers about the film. www.images.ch/2010/ Then on the 11th Sept, we will be at The Asylum, the Premier UK Steampunk gathering run by the Victorian Steampunk Society in the historic city of Lincoln. We will have a specific booth there to promote the film and to talk to people ...

What is it that they did? Last night at the O-Bar in Hollywood starting at 8 pm, a real buzz started to arise. People from all over the world were coming to see a trailer for a film that had not even been made. What right did these young filmmakers have to make a film backwards, and why by 9:30 were over a hundred people fixated on a 200 inch projection screen to watch a 2 min trailer, which many had already seen? My name is Jett Dunlap and I am an Executive Producer on this film. I saw this same little teaser trailer in October. My girlfriend had gotten home late and asked me to look at a preview to a film. She tells the story better, but needless to say I was not excited to see another "help me make my movie" pitch, though I watched it anyway to humor her. Then I saw IT. IT is something I looked for in movies, in women, and in products I represented. IT is the indescribable quality which separates greatness from oblivion that we too rarely see. This little glimpse, presented through the eyes of James Boyle and Azhur Saleem, hooked me. I ...

James, Paul and I are heading off to LA this week to promote The Marionette Unit and help secure funding for the short film. We're aiming to meet a lot of industry people who could be interested in helping on the film. It'll also be the first time in almost a year that we'll all be in the same room together, as myself and James are in London and Paul is in Vancouver. The long-distance writing has created its own set of challenges, but we've managed to soldier through with emails and late night/early morning video chats. Now to have the chance to talk across a table is going to be great. It'll give us the much-needed time to nail down the feature script. It's exciting and pretty nerve-wracking at the same time as we're going to be road-testing the trailer with a lot of people who do this purely for a living! Keep up with all the news as it happens either on this blog. Hopefully there'll be some pretty good news coming out of the next two weeks here!

Hey everyone, just a small update this time. Azhur and I wanted to say a huge thank you! You really have made our new year one of the best. From my previous message on the 2nd Jan, The Marionette Unit Inception trailer then had been watched over 10,000 times! No small feat I hear you say. I would totally agree with you. However after checking the stats and numbers this morning, I was floored! In 5 days since then, the trailer has been watched another 10,000 times. To quote the exact figures, it is 10,340 views in 5 days! That is incredible, I cannot believe it. A total of 20,350 views of the trailer. We wouldn't be in this position without every single one of those views. Also everyone who has sent it to their work colleagues, friends and family. I cannot wait to see what happens next, and as I've mentioned Azhur and I have lots of great things planned and some exciting news coming up. I will just close on this, if you like the trailer and the idea of the film, then help support us even more. Just by sending it out to someone else you know is a great help. The ...

Happy New Year everyone. Azhur and I hope you had a great holiday break So we have come to a new year and already it is looking good for The Marionette Unit. As most of you know 2009 was a great year of development for our film. Launching the website and film making blog in April, gaining fans over the summer, shooting then releasing the Inception Trailer in Sept and a very successful trip to LA in Oct. Some of our recent highlights: Azhur posted this yesterday, but it is worth mentioning again. The Marionette Unit on IMDB News: Brit Steampunk The Marionette Unit Impresses. http://www.imdb.com/news/ni1355497/ Promising teaser for Victorian steam-punk drama The Marionette Unit http://www.imdb.com/news/ni1355607/ Inception Trailer viewer figures: YouTube : 5376 Vimeo : 4490 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDn9TDz6D3Y http://www.vimeo.com/6792930 Some comments from YouTube "Beautiful Cinematography. Was it shot in HD or film?? Looking forward to it." "Looks very interesting - please get more footage up! Nice period feel." "What a tease!!! Awesome work here! What camera did you use?" "This looks sick!!!" The thought that our trailer has been watched almost 10,000 times is very exciting and makes us very happy, and its only a teaser as well! The Marionette Unit : Internet response. Over the holiday and new year period amazingly and to our excitement The Marionette Unit started to spread ...

The proof of concept trailer for The Marionette Unit has been spreading across various blog sites in the last few days and has also been featured on two news articles on IMDB which is fantastic. This is great exposure for us and hopefully bodes well for 2010. Check out the links below: http://www.imdb.com/news/ni1355497/ http://www.imdb.com/news/ni1355607/

Well what a day it's been. After two screenings over the weekend which went down a storm, the trailer went live online this morning, 7am GMT for the rest of the world to see. And what a response we had! Within minutes our site crashed, due to the surge of unexpected demand. 10,000 hits in less than 15 minutes, including 300 downloads of the iPhone version of the trailer. As of end of day Monday GMT we stand at 37694 hits and 517 unique visitors. Thank you!! What an amazing response and we can't thank everyone enough for their huge interest - so much of a response that the site crashed again later in the afternoon! Whereas some would find this frustrating, James and I felt that this was testament on the strength of our idea and the huge support we get from everyone who has an interest in our work. The site is up now and running smoothly with a few tweaks so feel free to pass on the website link to as many people you know. The more fans we have for the project will make it all the more easier to gain funding and make this film a reality. Finally I would ...