Innovations

This is definitely a new world. I was contacted over the internet by Karl Kraft in the UK. He is a graphic designer with a bit of time on his hands so he offered to help me blag the film to martial arts schools and where ever martial arts is being practiced.

Here is an accounting from him of his trip to London.

London trip was good, got to pretty much everywhere I had planned for the days (and added many more as I came accross them en-route). Slightly held back by my train ticket times which had me arriving at 6:30pm on the Monday and going back at 2:30pm on the Thursday, so was really more like two and a half days than four, but can't complain about these discounted tickets.

Still I got round about 35 to 40 places total. As expected, the small grass roots type places were always really cool, and the big chain gyms etc required a bit of cajoling.

Luckily got breaks in a lot of the corporate chain places because one of the staff was 'a martial arts guy' and was intriuged to hear about the Count. Response is always positive as soon as people start to hear just a few of the exploits and sides of the man, sure you know that from your own experience :)

Always pushed a bit to 'save them the trouble' by putting up the poster while I was there as I'd 'brought my own sticky stuff', as I know there is about an 80% chance that it'll never make it off someones desk, especialy if its 'passed on'.

That's why I want to keep doing visits in person, rather than just sending a the poster with a covering letter via 2nd class mail (which I'm also gonna do for some other big UK cities that I cant visit, like Manchester etc..).

I got it put up in two of the biggest comic shops in London too. Next visit, really want to get in some arts/alt cinemas too. I know your not eligible for say UK arts council grants or anything, but people always know people, especialy in this Web2.0 world.

I'm gonna do a little online journal about the places I visit, which will focus on the actual physical spaces rather than clubs or people etc. Works out quite nicely since I'd always wanted to write something about these places (and have taken many pics over the years) but never had a way into it.

Hoping future visits will also yield some meetings with some real characters, the only guy I came accross in my planning was this guy who teaches a VERY ancient Egyptian martial art called Sebek-Kha, to quote ' Sebek-Kha is the oldest martial art in history. It was founded in Egypt by Heru-Ur (Heracles) in 45,000 BC' check out his pics too: http://www.siaacademy.com/html/Classes.html Wow!!

Unfortunately I didnt get to meet Dr.Ramses Saleem, the Sai Academy is a church hall nursery from Mon to Fri, but did leave him a copy of the poster and covering letter.

Great to see there are a few of these real characters out there in the martial world :) Anyway, gotta shoot for now Floyd, included a little collage of the poster in-situ.

Massive luck everyday Floyd in everthing your doing. We really must speak one of these days on Skype :) Props & Love from this side of the Atlantic, keep safe, speak soon Karl.

ps. I have a friend with a camcorder so I'll send you the little clip of me hawking round you'd asked for, please let me know when is the latest you'll need it by as I'm tring to get in shape over the summer for my 15mins :)

Karl Kraft

THIS is COOL. He even found a place on WEBB St. in SW1. If the creative process does nothing else, it should be procreative. Thanks Karl. This will be a great extra for the DVD.