Starting 2014 in Style

We haven't been blogging much, but we've had some great guests over the last year. They've included Development Execs like Nicole Dade of Screen Australia and Sarah Scougal, Head of Development for Vertigo. We had fun chatting with BAFTA winning director Alrick Riley and series creator Roland Moore (Land Girls) and we ended 2013 on a fantastic high when we welcomed multi-award winning star of the TV writing firmament Frank Spotnitz (X-Files).


We took a break from snapping our get togethers, but as 2014 arrived our old pal Jeremiah Quinn dropped in for January's drinks and kindly brought along his camera to capture the scene. A few things have changed for 2014. We tried out a new venue at the end of the year and it's been well received, so the Phoenix Artist Club is our current, new
haunt. At the end of the year, we also, sadly, said goodbye to Hannah Billingham as co-host of the In Development drinks. She and I had fun launching and running the group together but new commitments now call her away. I'm sure she'll still join us for a catch up from time to time, but as we start 2014 I stand alone at the helm, looking to see what new guests we might have on our horizon.


Happily we started 2014 in style and it was great to be able to welcome Will Emsworth as our guest this January. As Head of Development for Academy Award Winning Bedlam Productions (The King's Speech), Will specialises in developing factual drama, as well as documentaries. He joined us to share his experience and chat about this particular area of development. There was a great turn out of members and lively discussion about a variety of projects currently in development. It was fantastic, as ever, to catch up with old friends and meet some new faces.

Our guest for February arose from a discussion that night with Rebecca Winch, Head of Production at The Project Factory. She mentioned producing a new, official Sherlock app that had just gone straight to the top of the app charts and stayed there for three weeks. Its writer David Varela knows a thing or two about interactive storytelling having written and produced many exciting projects across games and live performance. He seemed like a perfect, next guest and I'm pleased to say he'll be joining us for drinks in February to discuss this growing area of story development and the experience of being part of the Sherlock universe. So, another chance to catch up coming soon and how great if our guest for March should emerge from that get together. Let me know if you have someone in mind!

See you soon,
Sarah

Check out: Sherlock: The Network