A big happy new year to everyone who has supported us in the last decade and all of our members. Here's to a new beginning in 2010, we have a few things up our sleeves, we have a new distributor for Diary of a Bad Lad, Bar Stewards will appear at some point and hopefully before Wiggy disappears from our shores we can make something else to make an increasingly larger mark on the independent film scene.

It's the night of the Future Artists event at Urbis in Manchester which is now sold out. Pleased Sheep films will be there in force. Jonathan Williams (producer/writer/actor Diary of a Bad Lad) will be providing the keynote speech. And later on there will be a panel discussion which will include Jon, Paul Coppack (producer Bar Stewards), Michael Booth (dir Bad Lad & Bar Stewards) & Bad Lad actor Joe O'Byrne (also writer Lookin' For Lucky). Simeon Halligan (dir: Splintered) will also be on the panel. Also at the event will be a short films compilation courtesy of Kinofilm, an actors masterclass and much more. For full programme details go here: http://www.futureartists.co.uk/notpartof.php

"Asha Media" & “Future Artists” present: A RADICAL NEW APPROACH FOR WATCHING AND MAKING FILMS... This is quite probably the most important independent film event to be held in Manchester so far this century. The old models for making, distributing and watching independent films are crumbling.

Check out a special June 2009 podcast with Paul Coppack, Michael Booth, Chris Finch and for the first time Ian Wiggins.

The Pleased Sheep team have arrived at the Cannes film festival where it's been very hot and sunny. After sharing a flight with Blackburn Rovers manager Sam Allardyce they travelled from Nice airport to Cannes.

As I'm helping run it this year, I thought I would give a shout out to the Pennine Film Festival. The Pennine Film Festival is formerly known as the East Lancashire Film Festival.

Just in! The Panasonic HVX200 DVCProHD camera is now ours (PAL). It's one of the first in the UK. We'll try to post up some footage from the camera as soon as we get the Firestore to record to. Unfortunately the Firestore FS100 release has been delayed, and you need this to record 1080p high-definition footage. Hopefully the Firestore will be with us next week.