Perhaps now the vanilla version of the NPA has crumbled something more vocal and useful could rise from its ashes? After all, whilst so much has changed in the way we make and watch films the real change in our cinematic landscape remains about to happen, as it has done for years. It is a landslide that has been threatened for a decade or more so I’m cautious to shout now but spring is in the air and change is on the wind. The launch of 24/25p for the Canon 5D is not that change – but it is doubtlessly part of it.

The 5D Mk II was quietly released last year as an expected upgrade to one of Canon’s top end Digital SLRs. For stills photographers it included a bunch of improvements and the quirky add on of being able to shoot full HD movies. A year on and this feature has become the film industry buzz to beat all. With the release of the firmware update that enables the camera to shoot in film industry standard time rates of 24 and 25 frames per second (where previously it only shot at 30 for reasons a geek will explain to you if are desperate to know) the 5D takes another step towards being the weapon of choice for every independent filmmaker and a complete revolution in the way we make films.

This sounds like hyperbole but we really are on the brink of something. A wave of digital cameras that emulate film better than ever before is already breaking all around us. Of these the 5D is certainly not the best. The Red, the groundbreaking camera in this field has stolen a march on its competitors and it was clear from the directors and producers I spoke to at Ecu over the weekend that it has become the digital camera that 35mm snobs can finally fall in love with. My brother spent the weekend at the British Cinematographers Road Show which put all the new digital cameras through their paces and he says that the Arri and the Panasonic both look damn fine too, in fact, anything that offers you 35mm depth of field is basically sex in a box.

However to buy full Red package you’ll need to pay £70k, the rest are that price just for the body. This is still no comparison to the cost of owning and running a 35mm film camera but it is still beyond the budget of anyone who is not already a dedicated, experienced and well remunerated professional. The 5D gives you better than 35mm depth of field for £2k. You can go to town on lenses and other goodies and still have change from £6k and a package that can give you genuinely astounding results. You may not have the flexibility of the Red and you certainly don’t get a 4k image out of it but with careful handling you can still get an image of real beauty.

For a very long time people have heralded digital technology as a new age in cinema. For a long time this has meant James Cameron spending billions to make things exactly as he wanted them to be, whilst billions of filmmakers churn out ugly looking sketches as to what their films might have been. The clever people have used the dirty dv look to their stories advantage, the less clever have just seen their budget image fall short of their vision.

The result was that even whilst talking about empowering “new visions”, digital technology really did little more than underline the gap between rich and poor. Previously, back in the days when the NPA was founded, you had to have serious money to make films and if you didn’t you got a different job. Now digital technology has enabled everyone to make a film but in order for it to be a commercial proposition you still need to be seriously funded, you still need to be part of the club. As with so much else in the digital age, we can all now be seen and heard but getting listened to and noticed is just as hard as ever it was.

Could the 5D be about to change this? By enabling passionate people to make beautiful pictures for significantly less money than ever before, could this device finally be the one that actually changes the way we make a living from making films?

Proof that times are indeed changing… not only is my brother about to cut his hair, he is going to do so in HD thanks to the Canon 5D… if you can’t see this video click here… http://shootingpeople.org/bensblog/2010/03/load-the-canon/

Tuesday marked the release by Canon of a firmware update enabling the 5D Mark II to shoot in both 24 and 25 frames per second and it also saw the announcement of the bankruptcy and closure of the New Producers Alliance.

The NPA was founded in 1992 but it is a sign of how much the world of filmmaking has changed that the challenges facing producers in ‘92 were infinitely closer to those faced in ‘82 or ‘72 than those we faced in ‘02 or 2010. In 1992 James Cameron had just astonished everyone with the revolutionary effects work of Terminator 2 but digital filmmaking was certainly not a cheaper option to celluloid and there was no online community for wannabe filmmakers, hell there wasn’t even a Film Council. Like our coastline, the landscape of British cinema had withstood decades without change, save a little gradual erosion. Filmmaking was a cabal, a gentleman’s club, the lazy, underachieving older brother of television.

The NPA was an attempt to empower people to make films, a support group to help people navigate and master the byzantine intricacies of an extortionately expensive commercial art form. I was a member for a few years when I first started making films, back when they’d publish a yearly directory of members. These were squat blue books full of typos but which still smelt of authority and my brief listing therein gave my 18 year-old self an entirely false sense of achievement. As time and technology marched on the NPA went the way of all flesh, it stopped publishing on paper and became a website instead; however it always remained rooted in the real world. It was built around physical events, networking nights, educational sessions, things you had to travel to, like films in cinemas. As it began to lose touch with the pace of events it slowly lost its way. What began as a campaigning group, meeting in pubs and plotting the seditious overthrow of the cinematic status quo, ended up as just another organisation offering training.

I will probably offend and annoy many people when I say I will not mourn the passing of the NPA but the cold truth is that its closure neither surprises nor especially saddens me. It’s not that the training offered wasn’t of high quality nor that the people involved were not passionate and dedicated nor individually well aware of the problems faced by contemporary filmmakers at the start of the millennium’s second decade. However as an organisation it seemed determined to give the right answer to what had become the wrong question.

Crucially, some years ago it turned its back on the power of the internet and pulled out its own teeth as a body capable of arguing a case for independent British filmmakers. We did not need another body organising training sessions, we needed an independent voice for producers that could shout loud enough to be heard. In 2010 this voice was never going to have strength without a vigorous online presence the like of which the NPA never had.

If you can’t see the video – click here: http://video.uk.msn.com/watch/video/four-lions-trailer/2trpus57

A couple of years ago we lived here and did up a flat for a friend and Mamie was the nearest cake shop we could find. It was also easily the best. Half French, half Japanese it is a tiny bit kitsch and I’ll admit that some of the charm lies in a cutesy evocation of a Paris that has passed. However most of the attraction is just the sheer deliciousness of the cake. And nine types of tea.

Once when we were here before there were a pair of japanese girls sat at a table by the window. They didn’t have much to say to each other but one had a her handbag open on her lap and perched inside it was an apricot coloured poodle whose beady black eyes clearly indicated that he was the brains of the group. Watching them sip tea in silence it was hard not to imagine that the handbag concealed levers and dog was using them to control his owner’s movements. Paris is full of little dogs but the thing about little dogs is that they never know they are little. To them, they are just dogs and therefore the most important thing in the street.

I’m not actually in Paris to sample the cake and assess the puppies, I’m here, as promised, for Ecu, the European International Film Festival. I got the chance of a free trip so I jumped at it, even though I have to admit to some confusion about the festival. Living in London it’s not something that has really registered on my filmmaking radar, despite being in its fifth year. Nor could I understand why it was called Ecu. After a night here I’m pleased to say that things are starting to make more sense.

What was always clear was the festival’s commitment to independent filmmaking. Glancing at the website before I came I didn’t recognise many names but I did see that they’ve selected Thomas Browne’s – how shall I put this – difficult film – Spunkbubble, which is, if I’m honest, the most obscene thing I’ve not been an active participant in. I’m interested to see it playing in a cinema, not least because I watched it previously on my laptop, in the dark, with headphones – a disturbing experience as the soundtrack seemed to have been mixed to be directly behind me.

This championing of the fiercely independent voice was clear in tonight’s opening programme which included Konvex-T a darkly realised and distressingly beautiful Swedish film about a man who finds a massive boil on his buttock. Quite how a scene in which a woman in rubber gloves gouges something misshapen and living from his arse with a fork can be beautiful and moving I’ve no idea but Johan Lundh has managed it and if he’s at the festival I will hopefully be able to track him down and ask him how and why.

Other highlights so far include the sexiest birthday card in history in Lost Paradise by Mihal Brezis et Oded Binnum, a german comedy about hitmen at a traffic light called The Package and Curtains by Dan Jemmett and Julian Barratt.

There was also, naturally enough, a great party this evening where I got chatting with festival co-ordinator and general font of all knowledge Rhiannon Hobbins who, like the festival founder and president Scott Hillier, is an ex-pat Aussie. She was raving about how lucky my girlfriend and I were to live in London and have grown up so close to Paris, Berlin, Rome and all the other culturally rich and diverse cities that litter Europe. “I’m from Sydney and for us going to Melbourne is like a big deal”. This rang true with something an American filmmaker had said to me this morning, she’s currently working with the son of a high profile DP who was “just over here for the BAFTAs, I think that’s here isn’t it, it’s either here or London…”

These are people who don’t come from countries, they come from continents. Their scale is very different to ours. Which explains why this is firmly a European Film Festival. 28 Countries are represented here and everything in French has to be translated into English, everything English into French and everything in neither has to be in English. This is not a French Festival of European film but a Festival of European Film that is based in Paris. Which is why it is known as Ecu, apparently Mr.Hillier has one of the original mock-up Ecu coins from when the European Single Currency was first proposed and he founded the festival in the same spirit of cultural union. I guess you have to come from somewhere else to see Europe as a single place, not just a bunch of small dogs.

Plus here are four recommendations from our GLP back pocket:

7. One Aldwych Hotel – Covent Garden
This little number got quite a lot of attention on our wall/twitter. If you really want to impress your special someone, take them here to ‘Moet on the menu’ at the weekend. Champagne + Three Course Meal + Movie = Gold Dust.
http://bit.ly/d3Gyld

8. Soho Hotel – Soho
There’s a small sumptuous screening room that snuggly fits 45 (i.e. 22 couples and 1 gooseberry I’m afraid) downstairs at the Soho Hotel. The cow skin seats are a sight to be seen.
Their Film Club takes place every Sunday, and includes a Champagne Afternoon Tea or a three course lunch or dinner, and the movie (which starts at 3.30pm). The damage: £35.00 per special someone.
http://bit.ly/b6e8WY

9. The Exhibit – Balham
This little gem is a filmic concoction of cinema, restaurant and bar. The cinema room seats 56 on leather sofas for two. What more could you want?
http://bit.ly/aDPPt7

10. It was going to be the Rex Cinema – Westminster, but it’s closed down. Boo. Thanks to Jas and Anne for pointing that out. So instead, by popular demand, it’s… Screen on the Green in Islington. Go go go!
http://bit.ly/cNmecp

Which is great but can you really miss out the Curzon? The Soho Curzon is still the cinema I’m most likely to be found in and still strikes me as the best balance between art house hang-out and cared for screening room and the Mayfair branch is posh enough to be impressive for high class nights without teetering over into being more about the interior design and bar facilities. But that’s just my opinion…

I took this picture in cafe of the Curzon soho one night…

Can’t see the video? Click here – http://shootingpeople.org/bensblog/2010/03/scott-hillier/

Can’t see the video – click here: http://shootingpeople.org/bensblog/2010/03/rupert-murray/

Can’t see the video? Click here – http://shootingpeople.org/bensblog/2010/03/andy-mcleod/

His main joy about using digital is that because it’s faster to get to the end product, there’s more time to reflect before you have to go back to it and make it better… It doesn’t have to be about squeezing edit times just about giving yourself more time to think. It’s good stuff…

Che and the Digital Cinema Revolution from high rez on Vimeo.

Whilst we’re on such themes, avid readers (no pun intended) will know that next week I’m off to the ÉCU festival in Paris and one of the many delights I’ll be blogging about is a work flow workshop being held by festival sponsor G-Technology.

This may sound dry and if you didn’t get the awful pun in the previous paragraph then you probably shouldn’t sign up for the workshop but really it’s about “…reducing cost, speeding up production and giving filmmakers more time to spend on their creative process…” so hopefully, after watching Mr.Soderbergh you’re not all shaking your heads and saying “But Ben, you’ll be in Paris… why are you going to workshop on hard drives when you could be eating cake?” Though if you are saying that then I’ll just point you to the last historical figure who blabbed about eating cake in Paris, let us not forget that the sticky end she came to had nothing to do with the business end of an eclair…

Anyway the workshop is also going to include tips on shooting on RED and how to manage this footage most effectively with external storage and software configurations. So yes Guy, I will take notes.

Further more…
“The workshops will feature the real life case scenario of ÉCU shortlisted filmmaker, Preston Reed, sharing the workflow set-up he recently used in the making of the low budget production Travelling Salesman, which employed both RED camera capture and G-Technology drives.

The hour-long workshops will be held at 2pm on both Saturday, March 13 and Sunday, March 14, at the Cinema Le Grand (La Salle Club).”

Pre-register now by emailing workshops@ecufilmfestival.com and if you are going to ÉCU then drop me a line and let me know because it’d be lovely to see you there. Especially because there’s this amazing cake shop…

Sorry if that’s a little brusque but I’m fed up of the way the media constantly hollers at me that I should ‘have my say’ on the matters of the day as if my angrily hammering out an email to the Today programme is going to achieve anything except a momentary continuation of the pre-existing tedium in the daily working routine of whoever it is that reads the emails that come into the Today programme (which, by the way, for those Academy members currently reading this in LA, is a thing on British Radio that exists purely to make middle class english people feel like they are still in school and the headmaster is still cross…)

However, whilst I detest the entirely fallacious sense of democracy created by this constant summons to pointless spouting off, I love gambling – so therefore I’m urging you to click on the link below and try and second guess the Academy on the off chance that in so doing you’ll win dollar bills. Unless of course you are one my new readers from the Academy in which case I don’t think it’d be ethical for you to enter this competition.

http://shootingpeople.org/poll/oscars2010/

Remember though folks, it’s a gambling quiz not a chance to influence the voting for the real an Oscars Awards TM. So whichever planks out there have voted for District 9 for best picture – you really need to sort yourself out. It’s not going to win. You’ve just wasted like 80 seconds of your life having that thought and clicking the button. Did you imagine that my readers from the Academy would glance at the pie charts and see the way you’d angled the voting and change their minds? These guys are intelligent, free thinking, cineliterate types – they’re not going to be swayed by 1.7% of the Shooting People population voting for a film. They’re clearly only going to vote for the film that offers them the best goodies or for Jeff Bridges because he hasn’t won one yet and it’s legally his go. That said District 9 is by the guy who invented that dancing citroen robot (which is why all the aliens look like dancing citroen robots). Now I always thought that carbot was too realistic to just be CG. Perhaps he’s actually made a whole bunch of them and he’s giving them away to members of the Academy. Sound unlikey? Well – THAT IS THE ONLY REASON WHY DISTRICT 9 COULD WIN BEST PICTURE. So don’t click on it because then you can’t win the money. OK?

THIS IS NOT REAL.

Developed following feedback from photographers and cinematographers, Firmware 2.0.3 further enhances the EOS 5D Mark II’s excellent video performance. The addition of new frame rates expands the camera’s video potential, providing filmmakers with the ability to shoot 1080p Full HD footage at 24fps (actual 23.976fps)—the optimum frame rate for cinematic video. 25fps support at both 1920×1080 and 640×480 resolutions will allow users to film at the frame rate required for the PAL broadcast standard, while the new firmware will also change the 30fps option to the NTSC video standard of 29.97fps.

My original question was whether anyone chose to self-distribute their film or whether in truth it was always something forced on them but the disinterest of the established system. Hammad clearly answers that with the case of Lance Hammer who did indeed turn down a distribution deal for his film “Ballast” to do it himself.

According to IMDB “Ballast” has grossed $80.2k, which sadly doesn’t seem that positive when he’s quoted as turning down the distribution deal because “…conventional distribution advances for a small film like “Ballast” range between $25,000-$50,000. “If you made a $50,000 project, that makes sense,” Hammer said. “If you happen to spend more money than that, it becomes difficult to justify giving up creative control.”

I can completely see Hammer’s argument but you have to ask if the time and energy he committed to self-distribution was worth that extra $30k. Seems unlikely when it is suggested that he raised an additional $250k for the P&A.

As is generally the case in discussions about distribution, these numbers are all annoyingly flimsy. I can’t find any quotes for the original budget and I wouldn’t remortgage anything based on IMDB figures. Neither have I seen “Ballast” but it’s a highly praised, award winning film, listed among the Guardian’s “Top 10 Films of 2009 you probably won’t have seen”, which is surely not the best advert for self distribution…

This isn’t my preferred creative process. Ever since I glumly admitted that the insanely productive author figure in Vargas Llosa’s novel “Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter” was a fiction to which I could not usefully aspire, I have tried to limit my creative focus to one thing at a time. However since January opportunities for all three projects have come like hungry visitors and now all must share the dinner.

In addition to this, March seems to me like it’s going to be a month for europe. Firstly the 10th is the deadline for the interesting new scheme being run by The Bureau. SOS – Save Our Scripts – is a europe wide development programme that seeks to bring together writers and producers. There’s loads of information here – http://www.saveourscripts.com but safe to say that The Bureau ran Cinema Extreme so entering a feature-focused european wide programme from them should be near the top of your list of things to do.

I’m also going to be at the European Independent Film Festival in Paris in a couple of week’s time. Now it’s 5th year the festival claims to be “committed to being at the centre of the discovery, promotion, and projection of the very best European independent filmmaking talent.” It has the prestigious sponsorship of G-Technology by Hitachi who seem very excited to be “aligning with today’s premiere filmmakers and creative professionals to celebrate and support their efforts in the art, craft and business of independent filmmaking.”It has a programme of 67 films from 26 countries and I’ve never heard of it.

Consequently when the chance of a free trip turned up it was another hungry guest I couldn’t turn down. Living about 30 minutes from St.Pancras means Paris and Norwich are roughly equidistant yet whilst I’m regularly turning to Screen East for money and support, the European film scene remains something of a distant beast. But I’ve been asked to go over and interview some of the Directors, Producers and judges who are taking part as well as sniffing around the seminar programme which is all built around how new technology is changing the face of independent film. I’m also on a personal mission to try and find out why this festival has never been on my radar before, why so many British filmmakers seem blinkered to the opportunities offered by Europe and, most of all, why the European Independent Film Festival gets abbreviated to ECU.

However the other issue that came up last week was that of the self-distribution of feature films. I flippantly wrote that “…No one considers a self-distribution strategy. You are forced to accept a self-distribution strategy because distributors don’t yet trust you to back you…” and understandably some people leapt to the defence of their projects.

The brilliant Zahra Zomorrodian wrote “…yes it can mean one hasn’t yet garnered the trust or support of the industry – BUT – it could also be because the filmmaker has decided upfront that that is the best way to get their film in front of an audience…”

Now I have to be honest, this struck me as an odd thing to say. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that self-distribution is a mistake or even a bad thing. Nor am I implying that films that don’t get picked up by a distributor are necessarily bad. Distributors make a commercial decision, not a creative one. There are huge numbers of films that do “get distribution” which are utterly abysmal and many that don’t which never the less deserve to be seen. I’m not even saying that self-distribution is an uncommercial option, even making a purely financial call on a film is a very hard job and clearly Distributors do sometimes just get it wrong.

What struck me as odd about Zahra’s comment though was the idea that a filmmaker would chose self-distribution over having the job handled by someone more experienced and much better connected. However Zahra was not the only one to take issue with my throw-away remark. Seb Smith wrote “…my first no- budget film was picked up by Lionsgate but considering self-dist for my next one as don’t want to sign all my rights away for 20 years…”

Zahra closed her response with this…

“I think the industry is on the cusp of a whole new way of working at the moment and a lot of that revolves around distribution and exhibition. One of the films we currently have on our slate is a definite self distribution case, whereas with the rest we will be looking at a more traditional model.”

This fascinates me. Like I say, I completely see the value in self-distribution but turning to it as a definite preference over using an established Distributor? Who else is planning this? Is it genuinely a preference or just a good alternative? What are the benefits?

A few years back a corporate job for St.Pancras Station turned me into a bit of a train geek so I was childishly excited to have a reason to travel on the new high speed line that goes from St.Pancras to Ebbsfleet, sadly still one of the least glamorous names ever given to a place. It’s genuinely only about fifteen minutes from Kings Cross to Stratford. Obviously the downside of this is that then you’re in Stratford but Phil’ll be running the East End Film Festival there soon so at least all that rail infrastructure investment wasn’t a total waste.

Once we got to Gillingham though our journey became a little harder. We decided to walk from the station to the college but, guided by an iPhone, we seemed to take a strange zig zagging course through the town. However this sign suggested that it might not have been entirely the fault of the computer…

That’s right, Gillingham Town centre is one and a quarter miles to our left and also one and a quarter miles to our right. I think that means Gillingham is a sphere roughly two and a half miles in circumference, which explains a lot.

I wrote a couple of days ago about what I saw to be a classic example of the bad casting call. I think my post was pretty clear that I did this not out of any desire to blacken the name of the director responsible, but rather to highlight the importance of wording these posts correctly.

There has been a lot of anger about the unpaid work that gets advertised on Shooting People and a lot of hot air spouted about exploitation. This post seemed a classic example of why the actors who use Shooting People often feel so hard done by, why they feel that there is so little good work available to them on the site. Actors wrote in support of my post both on the site and to me in person.

However Mark McDermott’s eloquent defence of his project (which you can read here http://shootingpeople.org/bensblog/2010/02/not-a-good-casting/) proves my real point. I made it plain in my original post that I didn’t believe Mark was trying to exploit anyone and his reply makes it clear that he is an intelligent, thoughtful, dedicated professional who is trying to make a challenging and complex film. In short, Mark is actually precisely the sort of director that the actors who use SP should want to work with.

I’ve not set out to attack him personally and I’m sorry if anyone felt that it was unfair of me to name him, I was simply quoting from a public posting not divulging any private conversations. However I am glad that his reply has given me this chance to publicly praise him – and also given him a chance to set straight a few of the confusions about his project that his posting created. I am far from alone in seeing the underscoring of the importance of female nudity in a project as a worrying sign and it’s great to read that far from insisting on it, the matter is entirely open to discussion.

However, the crucial point remains – through some bad choices of wording this talented director has made his project look much less appealing than it actually is. Not only that but in so doing he has added to false perception that the SP Casting list is full of men desperate to cast naked women and that it doesn’t contain gem jobs that will open up an actor to some new and brilliant creative partnerships.

The biggest problem with an online service like Shooting People is that contributors often forget who they are actually writing to. In your room, at your computer, the delight is how personal and chatty a service like SP can be. But don’t forget that it is read by thousands of people. Advertising a job on Shooters is not something you should do in a hurry because, as we have seen, it is all too easy to create a very false impression as to the nature of the project you are embarking on.

Equally, I have long thought that many of the actors who attack the jobs on SP do so without a full understanding of what is going on. The fact that Mark has turned out to be such a genuine and thoughtful person rather proves that point.

It was a fascinating, enjoyable and really useful night for us and you can, of course, read how it worked out here:
http://shootingpeople.org/bensblog/2009/12/oh-so-thats-how-it-works/

Better still the doors are now open for your script to go through the same rigorous but vital gruelling… your script, brought alive by an amazing cast, at BAFTA, in front of one of your all time film making heroes? Why are you not clicking on the link below already…?

MAY 2000 to MAY 2010 – 10 YEARS OF ROCLIFFE FORUMS – CALL FOR SCRIPTS

The BAFTA Rocliffe New Writing Forum invites submissions for its forthcoming 10th anniversary events in Nottingham and London. Over the last 10 years our BAFTA-supported initiative has connected scores of aspiring British writers and filmmakers with BAFTA Award-winning talent including Mike Newell, John Madden and David Parfitt. Deadline for submissions for the 10th Anniversary forums is 17:00 on 8 March 2010. For an application form and more information log on to www.rocliffe.com/scriptappl.php

There are caveats to this of course. No one supports productions that don’t share their resources equitably and with respect for the work of all involved. No one is suggesting that actors shouldn’t be paid – only that sometimes no one earning any money is not a reason for a film not to get made.

However the biggest problem I find with repeating this argument is the postings that then come in from directors looking for actors to collaborate with. My girlfriend is an actress and so I generally skim over the casting bulletin each day and recommend to her anything I think she’d be amazing in. She is definitely castable as “…late 20’s/early 30’s – well spoken – attractive – height between 5′6″ and 5′10″…” so my fingers hesitated over yesterday’s casting call from Mark McDermott about his feature film project “Silent Terror”.

I’ve never met Mark and I don’t think I’ve seen any of his previous work, I have no personal vendetta against him and I am definitely not accusing him of any short practice, unfairness or anything other than crass stupidity. Equally I am in no way intending to attack his feature project, just the way in which he is pitching it to his would-be collaborators. This is not the worst casting call I’ve read on Shooting People but it does contain some of the regular flash points that always stop me forwarding things to my girlfriend so I thought I’d take a moment to explain why, expressed like this, actors have good reason for feeling like we’re treating them like idiots.

“Hi, I am currently casting for my second low-budget feature film Silent Terror, a suspense driven psychological thriller….”

Mark’s opening sentence at least sets out a clear genre and he goes on to give useful and concise information about shooting dates, location and format. However whilst “second low-budget feature” may sound like a step up from your “first” low-budget feature just have a think about what message this is actually sending. Of course it is good to let your prospective cast know that you have experience and we all know how hard it is to make films so no one will hold it against you that your first low-budget feature clearly vanished without a trace. But is this the first thing you want to tell people?

Because the simple fact is that if this is your “second low-budget feature” that generally means the first didn’t enable you to secure a better budget for this film. Again I must stress that I’m not trying to say Mark is a bad filmmaker, I’ve not seen his first film and I have no idea what he was trying to achieve with it. Neither does the average reader of this casting call. All they have is the information he has given them, so, like me, their first thought should be that rather than promoting his credentials, a man directing his “second low-budget feature” is not actually showing a glowing track record. This is probably an unfair assumption – but there is nothing to stop us leaping to it – especially when we later read:

“We are evaluating distribution opportunities at present and are considering a self-distribution strategy, along with film festival submissions.”

Come on, we are all grown ups here. No one considers a self-distribution strategy. You are forced to accept a self-distribution strategy because distributors don’t yet trust you to back you. This is fine. This is your second low-budget feature after the first one did nothing – of course you’re “considering a self-distribution strategy”. No one will think you’re a failure for this state of affairs, what erks the reader is the attempt at spinning it.

Mark is clearly an ambitious young filmmaker who has yet to receive any real support from within the industry. He is getting off his arse and defying their lethargy by making a film to prove that he has a talent with story telling. He is exactly the sort of person that Shooting People was set up to support and exactly the sort of person that actors should want to meet and possibly work with. Yet because of the way he has presented his past record and place within the industry he makes himself look like a conceited fool who doesn’t yet realise that his films suck.

However the real problem with this casting call comes when he pitches the story and the involvement he hopes his actors will have.

“The film is far reaching in its scope, with a large meandering story. Therefore, the parts we are looking for are significant and pivotal, but will only be required for a limited time in production.”

This blew me away. Who pitches a film with the word “meandering”? I mean I find a lot of Robert Altman’s work to often be meandering but I bet he didn’t try and raise the finance like that. Meandering means dull. Meandering means listless, directionless, rambling tedium. You don’t mean meandering you mean, I don’t know, far reaching or complex or many layered or multi-faceted. OK it’s a mistake and we all make mistakes but a pitch is a pitch and it should be cared about and if you say your film is “meandering” then even if I’m being charitable I’m thinking you’re going into this project without a clear idea of what you’re doing – an idea backed up by the next sentence…

“There will be opportunities for improvisation of performance and dialogue, so you have the potential to bring your own elements to the roles.”

Doesn’t that just mean that you’ve not written a good script yet?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m neither being purely sarcastic or anti-impro. Trust me, my girlfriend is a gifted and experienced improvisor and thanks to her I’ve been lucky enough to see some of the best practitioners of the craft in the world (genuinely). I love impro. Which is why it makes me cross when filmmakers reach for it unknowingly, when they assume that it’s a simple case of letting the actors say the gist of the script rather than being word perfect. Again I’m not accusing Mark of this, rather I’m hoping to point out that expressions like “opportunities for improvisation” are meaningless, foggy and suggest that he is not being rigorous in his approach. Perhaps improvisation is a key creative tool in his production, if so, say so. This reads like you’re hoping your actors will save you from the still unresolved problems in your script.

“All travel and food expenses will be covered. A DVD of the finished film will be provided, along with a digital file of your scenes if required for your showreel.”

Hooray for this, the bare minimum requirements of getting strangers to work on your project. But lets just skim over the story to the character breakdown…

“Jane – late 20’s/early 30’s – well spoken – attractive – height between 5′6″ and 5′10″ – partial nudity required. She has dark hidden secrets.”

And there it is. The ever present bugbear of the Shooting People Casting forum. “Partial nudity required”. How come nudity is “required” yet everything else has “opportunities for improvisation”? I mean, what if, using her impro skills, the actress decides to leave her clothes on? Is that ok? As a piece of impro?

Again, don’t get me wrong, as a filmmaker I’m all in favour of nudity in films. Story telling is about drama and I can think of plenty of dramatic situations that are heightened by everyone being actually physically naked. Not a problem. However that’s a general point about cinema. Let’s just think what you are asking your actress to do in this post. You want her to improve your script with her impro skills and get her tits out. For this you will pay her bus fare, buy her a bacon sandwich and send her a DVD of another low-budget film which you will then send to film festivals because no distributor will touch it.
This is why actors get pissed off.

Again, don’t get me wrong – I am merely talking about how Mark has sold this project, not the project and not Mark. I can think of many situations when a gifted young director will inspire his cast to give astonishing performances because they believe totally in his creative vision. This could turn out to be one of those situations… but you can’t introduce yourself to people like this – you can’t just expect people to get naked for the price of a train ticket because you’ve already made one low budget film that has flopped.

I fully support the right of people to seek collaborators for low and unpaid films – but if you are forced into taking this route think about how collaboration actually works before you start demanding your cast get naked.

Eating chocolates has been slightly ruined for me by everyone who has ever quoted Forrest Gump’s mum at me. I’ve not seen the film because everything about it made me want to kick a window but there was a short time following its release when you couldn’t turn for people quoting Ma Gump’s sage wisdom that “life is like a box of chocolates – you never know what you’re gonna get next”.

This has stuck in to my brain like anti-climb paint and consequently every time I open a box of chocolates and am faced with the small guide which clearly tells you what each glossy brown surface conceals, I am struck with a twinge of needless rage. Life is not like a box of chocolates. Unlike life, with chocolates you do know what you are going to get next and you generally get to choose. Had she said “Life is like a box of chocolates because it’s generally over too quickly and contains too much marzipan” I’d probably have gone to see the film but as it is I’m just left bitter and angry.

Apart from that I had a lovely Valentine’s day.

Come to http://shootingpeople.org/bensblog if you can’t see this video…

My friend’s film is only two minutes long, and for that I thank him. He also had the good sense to upload to the Shooting People Watch Film site meaning all I had to do was click a link and I could watch it. It also features a brilliant use of shadow from a large fan which adds a great layer of visual interest and character. I make no bones about the fact that I intend to someday steal or “homage” this trick – that, after all, is the joy of filmmaking. The whole beauty is not to work in isolation but to take ruthlessly from all other films that have ever been made – reusing what works and abandoning what doesn’t. And in most cases what doesn’t work in a short film is a twist.

This is quite a bold statement since most short films are little else. However it makes more sense if you think about feature films and all other forms of story telling. Twists are, of course, an integral part of the story teller’s armoury, but whilst there are many great twists in the history of story telling there are very few great stories that don’t exist beyond their twists. In feature films I can only think of one and it’s not Fight Club.

Fight Club is the story of a man falling apart. The great big jaw dropping twist is a sublime coup de cinema but it is just a very elegant way of letting you experience the world in the same way that the main character does. Fight Club is not about the twist, it’s about the consequences of it.

This is the problem with twists in short films; by dint of being short it is far harder to make the audience care enough about what they are seeing that they are sufficiently affected by the surprise when it comes and harder still to say anything of meaning about the consequences of that surprise. The film becomes about nothing but the surprise and that is very unsatisfactory.

My friend’s film is a good example. Here it is:

And don’t worry, I checked with Paul first that he was OK with me ripping into this in public. He is far from being either the only or the worst offender; I wanted to write this blog because I see this device backfire time after time and I just want it to end.

And like I say – that fan is brilliant.

Anyway, my problem with this film is that the twist structure hides the active dramatic question of ‘why’. The point of the piece is that you are drawn into believing she is reliving her own childhood trauma, only to find that she is in fact reenacting it. But that means for most of the film you think she is just reliving her own childhood trauma which is quite a passive situation. Without knowing more about her as a character what can we feel except sympathy? With no dramatic question the poor actress has to do all the work, the ratio of sympathy to apathy that you feel is entirely down to how affecting you find her performance is – stuck in the dark, on her own in a virtually empty, characterless hotel bedroom – she has her work cut out and I think she does a sterling job but it’s all up hill.

By revealing that abuse is actually happening in this scene and not just in her memory, all the director does is show that he can surprise the audience – an easy task since as director he holds all the cards. To create this easy surprise he’s had to rob us of any reason to keep watching in the first place.

Imagine this film the other way round, without a twist. Because whilst watching an unknown woman apparently relive her childhood trauma is not dramatically interesting – watching a woman abuse her child is (horrible but) inherently dramatic as it forces you to ask “Why is she doing this?” To then reveal that what we don’t know is the truth about her own abuse is much more powerful because rather than being a twist for twisting’s sake, it is answering a question that has already been asked.

Rather than leaving the actress to emote in an empty room she would be an active character, actively doing something, albeit something awful. And the resolution, rather than being merely a twist that leaves you feeling “Oh I see, so she’s actually evil”, would be a revelation that answered the dramatic question of ‘why’ whilst leaving open the moral issue of ‘how’.

Startling people is easy, making them think about something is far harder. The twist may leave your audience reeling but it evaporates quickly on the tongue. The only feature film I can think of that is built entirely around a twist (in the way that so many short films are) is “The Usual Suspects”. Here the whole point of the story is that it’s being made up by Kevin Spacey. As the credits roll you realise that pretty much everything you’ve seen has been a lie. It’s a cheap trick, a smug trick, and, as Kevin shakes off the limp and straightens his posture you are supposed to feel utterly cheated but be warned – this is the only emotion that a twist without a story can provoke.

Can’t see the picture? Come to http://shootingpeople.org/bensblog

I don’t think anyone guessed that was going to happen. No one at all. Anywhere.

Still, surprises are overrated and I for one am well chuffed. Long live the Queen.

But anyway, the Viking’s supporting half of the Blaines found this and it made us both laugh so I hope it has the same effect for you (the first one’s not up to much and the Lynch makes more sense apparently if you follow the sport but the Wes Anderson is one of the most perfect pastiche’s I’ve seen… hell it brought a lump to my throat…)

Can’t see this video? You’re probably reading this on Facebook then aren’t you? Come here: http://shootingpeople.org/bensblog.

And with perfect timing, just as it comes to the quiet bit at the end, the unnervingly loud voices of two middle-aged women broke through the theatrical gloom:

“Oh that’s that book isn’t it? Have you read it?”
“No. I started it but in the end I couldn’t be bothered.”

Coming so balloon burstingly soon after the bombast of the trailer with its heaviest of heavy bread voice overs, this brief conversation gave me an oddly giddy sensation of pure joy. Though actually I think I was just reacting against the increasingly naggy pre-movie sequence of commercials and trailers.

Preparing to watch a film in the cinema used to be a relatively painless process of being sold at, something that generally acted as a helpful way of tuning out reality in preparation for the movie. Like milling around in the departure lounge before a flight, the ads and trailers were at worst bland but at best felt like the start of a holiday, the commonplace commercialism made strangely exotic.

However, rather like trying to get onboard an aeroplane, the lead up to a film is now bogged down with dire warnings and security checks. I was ordered three times to turn off my mobile – once by Nanny McPhee and once by yet another iteration of the Orange advert, plumbing new depths of tedium in what seems to have strayed even from their grim determination to kill a once funny joke and now seems to be a one brand campaign to make me pull out my own teeth in bitter irritation.

I was then given a brief, uplifting lecture on how watching a film anywhere other than a cinema was a rubbish thing that only an idiot would do. It was then further pointed out to me that this particular cinema chain was probably the best and that, in case I hadn’t noticed, going to the cinema was, by the way, the best thing I could ever do and much better than watching stinky old tv.

I was warned that if I was found to filming this movie I’d be fined or jailed or both (and please would I turn off my damn phone so I don’t use it for this purpose) and then to cap it all, someone actually came on and begged for the lives and jobs of the entire British Film Industry, like we’re all inmates in asylum and these are the baskets we’ve spent the past month weaving. As I left I half expected to stumble over Tim Bevan slumped in the doorway rattling coins in a cup.

As you can imagine I’m a fan of the cinema. I like going. I like watching films with other people. Hell – I was even in this movie on my own because I enjoy the experience so much I have no shame or dignity. But rather than celebrating Cinema, these ads feel like they’re all telling me off. As if Cinema were a grumpy wife furious with me because I’d spent all my time down the pub with my mates the laptop and iTunes. “Where the hell have you been?” She shouts, angrily slamming the door much louder and in 3D. “And the least you could do is turn your bloody phone off now you’re here!”

Firstly what is the point of advertising the concept of cinema to people who have already paid to come and sit in a cinema? It’s like buying a pint and having the barman shout in your ear as your drink it “Wow – a pint of beer, have you forgotten how good a pint of beer tastes? I hope you’re not one of those idiots who sit at home drinking tea and then having to urinate in a normal household toilet. Why are you doing that when you could be sat here on this stool like you are doing drinking beer exactly like you are doing and then you can go and piss next to a whole load of other people who understand the great taste of actual beer in a pub! Wow, I bet you wish you were drinking beer in this pub right now just like you are.”

But actually what annoys me is the idea that we have to “thank everyone who helps make this possible” (other than by paying them a wage) tacitly creates the idea that cinema is basically already dying and needs to be protected. Worse these adverts perpetuate the myth that cinema is merely “a great experience”, as if all it offers is spectacle and 3D specs. Sure a cinema can deliver the kinds of bangs and crashes that only a lunatic would wish to have access to in their own home but that’s a pretty hollow trick. If that really is all the reason for watching a film in a theatre then they might as well turn the lot of them into bingo halls right away.

After all the begging and lecturing was over I watched “Up In The Air” a well crafted and compassionate film that is absolutely at its best when dealing with the minutiae of American corporate life. I can’t believe I’m even bothering to write this down but the obvious fact is that on the big screen the tiny takes on a power and importance that it lacks when watched on your phone. George Clooney – and even more so Vera Farmiga – build their performances around tiny delicious details and half glances that help to raise this above some pretty obvious stuff about the importance of family life.

You don’t need 3D glasses to see it and you probably don’t need to see it in a cinema – but if you do you will appreciate it more and find it easier to enjoy it. You don’t need to beg for cinema – cinema rocks. And you shouldn’t beg for it either because it just makes people question why you’re bothering. Like selling a film by saying the book it’s based on is “an international publishing phenomenon” when everyone can see it’s just another airport novel…

Can’t see the picture? Come to http://shootingpeople.org/bensblog

Brilliantly my mate Cath has been awarded the Sundance/Alfred P. Sloan Commissioning Grant to fund her to write a film called Beds about five strangers who come together in a ‘bed-rest’ experiment to aid astronauts in space.

Equally brilliant my mate Jim was not only the director of the only British short to play at the festival this year but he got a Mention, which is Sundance for shortlisted, which is filmmaker for awesome because it effectively makes his film “Can We Talk”, a past Shooting People film of the month, one of the 7 best in the world.

Look at it here:

Or for those of you not reading this on the Shooters site, look at it here: http://www.shootingpeople.org/watch/film.php?film_id=76689

Oh and, if you are new, then I’m one of the people in the picture at the top of this page and the other is my brother Chris. Unless of course you’re reading this item via an RSS feed in some other location like Facebook, in which case, you know, like, get with the programme and do like all the cool kids by visiting http://shootingpeople.org/bensblog.

I generally find January to the be slowest, longest, coldest month of the year. Whilst technically no longer than most others it usually seems to persist for half a year before finally succumbing to February. However this year it seems to have trotted past in a twinkle of snow storms and sleeplessness and already the Oscar nominations have been announced to my usual utter indifference.

It’s all proof that I’m as busy as a monk in a plague. My brother and I are about to embark on the first draft of a new feature script, not merely a new draft but a new idea – the first time we’ve done this for over a year. This story, provisionally entitled “I’m Going To Kill You” is also the quickest that a thing has ever gone from an initial conversation between us to a serious effort to sit down and write it out in best. Could be that the draft will serve to show why we normally let things simmer but again it seems proof that for once we’ve started the year on a thaw rather than a freeze.

We’re also quietly developing something funny for a tv company as well as starting to put flesh on the bones of a film we want to make with a friend who’s a stand-up. Add into this the new recordings on my band’s myspace and an upcoming reading of a play I wrote and I can only see that it’s going to be March before the end of the week.

All of which is by way of a slight apology if I blog a bit less as this place tends to have the odd reverse life of being mainly written on when I have less to write about…

In 2006 we shot a music video for the sublime and deeply missed indie band “Special Needs”. They were newly signed, we were newly inspired to make music videos and we were all the best of friends. The result was this gorgeously silly Monkees-ish chase video. The coffin is lost in the loft of the Brixton house where my brother used to live (God knows what the current occupants think of that), the Spitfires are back in Duxford but the free-wheeling, battery-powered Dodgems are still in my garage.

Well, not for long – a need for space means I’m finally forced into selling them – http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130362281897&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT#ht_793wt_1167 – c’mon, trust me, when it comes to simple pleasures none is simpler nor more pleasurable than Off-Fairground/On-Road Dodgem racing…

Go to their site for more…

All the information you need is here http://shootingpeople.org/mofilm.

International, serious names attached and offering a seriously career changing prize… if you’re entering one competition this month or next then it has to be MO FILM. Doesn’t it?

Well how about cutting together a teaser for your feature debut and sending it to The Trailer Festival?

Styling itself bluntly as “an event for the entertainment industry” this has a deliciously unflirty approach to attracting your submissive dollar. (thirty if you do this before the end of the month…) Here’s the pitch:

The Trailer Festival will take place on April 29th, 2010 at the ICM Screening Room in the MGM Tower, Century City, Los Angeles. Only trailers will be screened and the audience will be exclusively entertainment professionals.

This is an opportunity to get your work seen by companies like HBO, Universal and producers who have made hits such as ‘40 Year Old Virgin’ and ‘Lost’. A complete list of attendees is on The Industry page.

You can submit your sizzle reel whether you have just the script or if you have produced your entire film. Projects will be selected on merit alone and we will not ask for this information until after the selection process.

There will be a promotional DVD of the selected trailers which will be marketed for a year.

For more information and guidelines, professionals should click on this link: http://www.thetrailerfestival.com/

Well, in that case, why don’t you send your short films to a competition run by Aesthetica magazine?

Founded in 2002, Aesthetica Magazine is one of Britain’s leading art publications. Exploring the varied nature of the arts and recognising the dynamics of contemporary culture, Aesthetica pushes the boundaries and evokes debate around today’s most important topics. Bringing a fresh perspective to the national forum, Aesthetica is at the forefront of contemporary arts by critically engaging with visual art, film, music, literature and theatre.

Better yet it is widely distributed throughout the UK and Ireland in WH Smith, Borders, galleries, and independent newsagents… that’s a lot of intelligent beauty loving people who will hear about your film when you win their Short Film Competition about which more here…

Aesthetica is looking for filmmakers who are driving the genre of short film forward through inspirational and innovative works. Whether you are fresh out of film school or have been making films for years, we want to hear from you. Accepting films in all genres: drama, documentary, music video, satire, comedy and artists’ film.

This award offers the winner and runners-up a fantastic prize package, which will bring your films to a wider audience.

Winner – £500 first prize.
Screenings of your film at: The National Media Museum (Bradford), Rushes Soho Shorts Film Festival (London), Glasgow Film Festival, Kerry Film Festival (Ireland) and on the Aesthetica website.
12 months membership with Shooting People.
Collection of film books from Wallflower Press.
Inclusion on a DVD that will go to all Aesthetica readers (45,000 viewers).

£250 for the runner-up and all the finalists will be included on a DVD that will go to all Aesthetica readers (45,000 viewers).

The deadline for submissions is 30 April 2010. For eligibility, guidelines and entry just click on this link… http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/film_submissions.htm

Or to lazily assemble the rest of this post by hacking about their press release…

YARN is a brand new festival celebrating story and storytelling – showcasing film, theatre, music and literature and providing a platform for mixing them all up! It’s all about fun and exploration, devoted to letting the imagination run wild.

The first YARN festival will take place 20 – 24 Feb 2010, across The Book Club and The Queen of Hoxton venues in East London.

YARN will include Literary Death Match – The Paper Cinema – Short Film Programmes and most interestingly for YOU sat there reading this – 4 Stories High.

4 Stories High is one of the key events for YARN.

Take Homer’s Odyssey, divide the story into 12 sections; 3 x filmmakers, 3 x theatre groups, 3 x novelists/storytellers and 3 x musicians to take one section each and tell that section of the story in their medium.

Put them all back together in story order, and let a terrific evening’s viewing unfold.

What’s in it for participants?

You get to champion your medium, pitting it against other storytelling forms. You get to tell a section of one of the greatest stories ever written, but in your own voice and style.

At the end of the night the audience will be asked to vote for their favourite section. The makers of that section will walk away with the door money for the event, a guaranteed minimum of £200.

How does it work?
• We will give you a one sheet which will give you a brief synopsis of the story that we’d like you to cover; indicate the section of the original story your section will cover (so that you can bug up on the original and find any elements that you’d like to bring back into your own retelling!); and the beginning and ending that will need to be covered so that it will slot in perfectly with the sections that come before and after!
• You make your section any way you see fit! It needs to be between 30secs and 8 minutes but that’s pretty much it! You can bring more story elements to it, or keep it very simple and to the point; you can set it now or way back when; you can make it with just one person or thousands! The only thing we asked is stay focused on the story, that’s the important bit. YARN would like to keep in touch with you during the process, but the creative is your bit, not ours, so we promise not to interfere.
• Sections ready by Friday 12th February.
• Be around to see it all come together on Tuesday 23rd February at the Queen of Hoxton, and hopefully walk away with some tasty prize money!

More information here: http://www.yarnfest.com

Tomorrow I will turn my attention to Yarn but first in my inbox is Remix which promotes itself as, frankly, the coolest thing a hipster can do beyond actually hanging outside a brownstone and waiting for Lou Reed’s man. So if you’ve ever drawn a triangle on your wrist or actually own a tumblr then here is the Remix press release and contact details…

Are you a poet/novelist/songwriter? Maybe you’re in a band? What about a fashion designer? Are you a graphic artist? A filmmaker? A photographer?

Yes? Pull up a chair. Let’s talk.

REMIX is fascinated with the idea of adaptation: in how content transfers but also how forms and skills translate. Why do we, as practitioners, choose the mediums we do to tell the stories we tell?

REMIX is looking to bring together a creative team of exciting emerging practitioners who have asserted themselves as innovators in film, theatre, fashion, music and the digital arts but who have never created a piece of theatre before. We’ll collaborate and communicate, creating a live performance with an ensemble of actors. It doesn’t stop there. Each creative will be tasked with adapting the play into a bespoke adaptation for their own specialism. The REMIXes – the play in its five incarnations – will be launched at a live event on 29 and 30 April 2010 – alchemizing the theatre, visual art, virtual media, fashion, music and literary industries.

REMIX will steal all the best bits of all the mediums whilst leaving behind the constraints/rules. Where do you sign up?

If you want to play your part in creating 21st century multi-disciplinary performance for the iPod-listening, Vogue-reading, blog-writing, YouTube-watching generation then email Natalie Ibu : Artistic Director at natalieremix@googlemail.com

In your email, detail
• Who you are and what you do.
• What you’ve done and what you want to do.
• What and who you like.
• Attach an up to date CV and portfolio.
• Include details of where and when we can see you doing your thing – whatever it may be.

… And we’ll take it from there.

STALK US here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=202734921019 and here: http://www.ideastap.com/groupdetail.aspx?groupid=504. Don’t forget here: www.myspace.com/remixication and here: www.remixication.wordpress.com Oh and here: www.twitter.com/remixproject

January seems to be submission time. Clever competition and event organisers must have twigged we’re all waking up from our festive slumbers and starting to panic about where the hell our lives are going… making us vulnerable to submissaphilia.

I’ve been a victim of this cruel complex myself in the past, it drives the weary artist to reach out at any deadline they see advertised in the hopes that if they enter everything then they will at least get something. I am here to counsel you against this. Like taking pointless, creatively barren unpaid jobs, entering film competitions or multi-media showcase events which do not actually suit your style or workable ideas is a fruitless and thankless task.

However the myriad beauty of existence hinges on precisely the fact that what for one person is a pointless, desperate, self-indulgent waste of a stamp is, to another, the opening of a doorway to a paradise of excitement, fulfilment and delight. Consequently over the next few days I’m going to bring to your attention some of the cool sounding competitions that I’ve heard about recently. Don’t try and enter them all – but perhaps do try and enter some of them.

More in a moment…

(just in case the Carry On stamp wasn’t geeky enough for you…)

I’ve played this night before at previous LSFFs and it was a joy to do so again with my current musical squeeze, the Glue Ensemble (of whom there is more here http://www.myspace.com/theglueensemble).

In order to keep life simple you tend to introduce yourself as one thing or another. There are times when even saying I’m a writer/director feels like I’m giving the impression of being horribly unfocused. The truth is that, with my brother, I write, direct, edit and where necessary he’ll also shoot, grade and even handle all the tricky encoding and uploading that comes with most modern filmmaking. That’s a horrible bundle of ideas to throw at someone so we generally say that we’re filmmakers. It feels like somewhat of a treat then to be allowed to out myself as a filmmaker who also plays instruments and writes songs…

Likewise my friend and cohort the filmmaker Lee Kern has recently outed himself as filmmaker who is also a stand-up comedian.

For proof of this come with me to a gig Lee’s playing this Tuesday at the Green Man, Riding House Street, Fitzrovia. He’s sharing the bill with the brilliant Robin Ince, Nick Helm and Richard Sandling and, just in case you’re reading this and thinking “but Ben, I have no life outside of filmmaking, unlike you and Lee I’m totally dedicated to the one true craft”, well, to you I point out that all the comedy will be themed around films and the film industry.

It’s £6 to get in and the show starts at 8 and doors open at 7.30 so get there early to get a seat.

Never the less last night at the London Short Film Festival screening of the Vauxhall Branchage 48hr Challenge films at the Roxy Bar and Screen, I was in the mood for celebrating. Not because the film Chris and I made, “Truth In The Valley” was the ultimate winner of the generous £1,000 prize, because it wasn’t. We were soundly beaten into second place by the magnificent Gaelle Denis and her film “Morning Mist”. However to be back amongst such a beautiful crowd of passionate, creative people was reason enough to feel like I’d won whatever happened.

To see each other, and each others films once more was a joy. A 48hr Challenge is always a risk and this was made more of one by the fact that most of the participants had to first get themselves to Jersey. These films were quick to make but they were not cheap – by taking part all of us were risking not only our reputation but also our own hard cash. This is one thing for the directors but quite another for cast and crew who don’t have any real sense of what they’re buying into until it’s far too late to back out. No script to read over, no synopsis, not even a vague idea of what will happen until long after the flights are booked. The same is very much true of the sponsors, of which more later.

I raise this point because of the huge and angry debate that is once again crashing over the Shooting People bulletins about working in film for less than the National Minimum Wage. Of course I would expect a commercial project with a budget to strike a fair payment rate in line with accepted industry standards but events like the 48hr Challenge are proof positive that a creative industry needs leeway for the creative aspect to flourish.

We all had a great time in Jersey but for a great many of the participants the event has turned into a personal marker. The freedom of the event gave us all a chance to try something we wouldn’t normally try. It has given people an insight into a new way of working, a different aspect of their performing ability that they hadn’t previously been able to express or just a sharp wake-up call that you can never rest on your laurels. I don’t think we quite changed anyone’s life completely but we certainly all ended up spinning off in new and exciting directions and with a large number of new and exciting potential creative collaborators.

Thanks for this are in no small part due to Vauxhall. As an industry we all tend to be hugely cynical about commercial companies sponsoring our work. As soon as Vauxhall got involved with the 48hr Challenge I think, in some part of our minds, we all expected that we’d need to draw their branding into our films in someway. Perhaps not as crass as having a character turn to camera and shout “C’mon!” but we all expected that in some sense they would want to shape our work in return for the money they were giving the competition.

However, for the second time on this blog a filmmaker called Ben is writing about how beautifully hands-off Vauxhall are once they are committed to an idea. If you’ve not yet read my interview with Ben River’s about his Vauxhall funded film “I Know Where I’m Going” then scroll down the page and have a look because it’s fascinating. It’s also surprising that such a difficult piece of filmmaking was given such full blooded support by a company with no reason to have anything but a purely commercial interest in investing in it.

I’m not just singing the praises of an organisation which has indirectly sponsored my work. Vauxhall have no creative agenda, they exist purely with the commercial aim of selling cars (that, as it goes, I can neither afford nor drive because, I can’t drive). They see a commercial gain in putting money into films that in no way trumpet, discuss or even briefly feature their cars in anyway. This is obviously just a tiny aspect of their business model, a small part of their advertising budget, but clearly it works for them to be associated with helping creative people to create.

I’m not saying that actors should never get paid. I’m certainly not saying that directors should fund their own work and I’m sick of how as a I writer this whole edifice is almost entirely constructed upon the months and years of necessarily unpaid effort that I put into a script before it’s ready to be sold or even read. However I am saying that sometimes working for free on a project that enables you do something different, sometimes sinking a small amount of your cash into a ticket to Jersey so that you can grasp a unique creative challenge, sometimes this financial risk is better business than a stubborn insistence on your legal rights.

To vote in Shooting People’s poll on the National Minimum Wage please click here:
http://shootingpeople.org/poll/minimumwage/

To argue with me in person about this please either come to my talk this afternoon at 4pm at the Curzon or come to Branchage Surgery at the Hospital Club in Covent Garden tomorrow night from six thirty.

So it is with some reticence that I post this little film I found on youtube, for fear that it starts all over again. However, I have to say, this is just the loveliest thing I’ve seen perhaps ever.

So eloquent and voluble were the guests who turned up for the Q&A that sadly we ran out of time and I had to shelve my plan of reading out my electronic interview with director Ben Rivers, who made “I Know Where I’m Going” the last film we screened.

There’s a strong stream of voice over in Ben’s film so I was quite keen on the idea of presenting his Q&A session in a similarly abstracted fashion but alas the clock was against us… so instead I promised to reprint it here for all to enjoy.

So I have, it goes like this:

Ben Rivers is the director of "I Know Where I'm Going"

Hi Ben

Thanks for writing – very glad you liked the film.

i’m in Auckland library, waiting to be picked up by someone to take me away for weekend, before i leave for Tuvalu on monday morning – so not much time but i’ll try and answer these questions below right now…

What inspired the film? The film came about through a very unexpected commission – i was contacted while travelling in the antipodes with my friend and ace US filmmaker Ben Russell, and asked if i’d be interested in making a film for a Vauxhall commission – under the premise of The Great British Road Trip – i was kind of skeptical and emailed a vague pitch about travelling up to the Isle of Mull because one of my favourite british films was made there – and then i could use the same title – knowing where i was going but not knowing what would happen on the way there – to try and make as film without any real planning, other than a few contacts of people i could possibly meet. Amazingly they went for it, even after i said i wouldn’t be making anything that necessarily promoted cars, and it definitely wouldn’t show their own car or their logo at the end. In fact, they remained totally hands-off which was great.

How did you find your subjects? It was a mix of a few numbers me and george had to try along the way – and these usually led to other folk – eg. i wanted to meet a great ethologist called Thelma Rowell, who lives in Yorkshire and looks after her sheep after retiring from years of studying apes. She was great to talk to but didn’t want to be in film – but she suggested we visit Charlie Parker – he’s the guy who does the ’snigging’ – felling trees and taking them out of the forest by horse. We called him and he turned out to be very lovely and very accommodating in letting me film. So it was often down to chance like this. Jake Manglewurzel, the guy with the orange beard, is sort of famous around where George’s parents live – we passed his house near the road and just called in, camera at the ready. The other Jake, at the end in the snow, is the subject of a film i made a few years back called This Is My Land. It was nice to go back and see how things hadn’t changed (i’m thinking of going back for a third visit to make a feature about him). Jan – the voice you hear talking – he was the only person i contacted before leaving – he had written this book about the earth in one-hundred million years time and i thought that would make a good back-bone to the mood of the film. He made geology sound way more exciting than i had previously thought!

How long did it take to make? with a short break in the middle i think we were on the road about 5 weeks, then about 6 months edit – i tend to have intense flurries and then leave for a couple weeks to get some space, then have another go.

What medium did you shoot on and why? 16mm cinemascope – i’m afraid i seem to be stuck on film, still yet to make a video. This is for many reasons which i might not have time to go into now, suffice to say i’m very comfortable with it and its restrictions. Scope because i thought that would suit a post-apocalyptic road movie.

Why did you choose to let the film be this length? i tend not to think much about length until the edit – let films become the length they feel right to me – some of that is of course determined by how much i shoot – this film was the most generous ratio i’ve ever shot, about 6:1 – mainly because i didn’t really know what i was making. For the film i’m making next i’ve said i’d make a feature, so i guess i know it has to be more than 70 mins

Has the length caused you problems in getting it shown? not so far – its hsown in both galleries and festivals. It seems there’s more longer short films being made which i think is a good thing – feeling like festivals will show something that feels more substantial. I think it can be a problem showing things which are more like an hour, because it falls between worlds, which is a shame because i think an hour is a really nice length.

What are the benefits of a longer film? How does it effect the pace of the edit? this is something i’m looking forward to with working on a feature, maybe simply allowing more space in a film, difficult to pin down exactly. I have to say, this film was one of the most difficult edits, mainly because i had trouble moving from one place to the next, tying it all together – i then broke it down into ‘days’ each with separate title card – this really helped get the shape, then i decided to take out all the titles and put everything back to back and it seemed to work. I guess i like fragmentation in films and i was glad that this didn’t change making something longer.

What inspires you as a filmmaker? too many things, i get distracted and go off into daydreams alot

What are you working on next? a feature film of someone living off in the wilderness, and a four part film installation about four different islands around the world, with fictional accounts of future utopias narrated – this is what i’m doing right now, filming in Japan and Tuvalu.

How did you start? art school, making super-8 films (first was jeckyl and hyde horror) and showing films there and then later in Brighton

Who do you trust to see your work before it’s finished? my girlfriend, a few friends who know my work really well

Do you actually listen to their opinions? yes

Any regrets? no

What are you most proud of? hmm, that i’m very happy with my life, i feel totally lucky i get to make the films i want to make, and that my family continue to be very supportive and excited about what i’m doing. Each film offers new joys and pains and insights, i’m proud of a number of them in different ways (i’ve made about 20, there are some real duds in there of course). This Is My Land is the film which i’m most proud of in some ways, because it marked a breakthrough for me in the way i work, much freer, less worked out beforehand.

ok – hope that helps – i haven’t read back sorry if some of it doesn’t make sense. Hope its a fun screening on sunday – would be great to hear how it goes…

cheers
Ben

Oddly though people don’t tend to talk about rejection that much, at least not much beyond a plaintive moan or a sort of blitz spirit camaraderie. And that’s why you keep being rejected! And by you, I do mean you.

Not that I don’t still get my fair share of it. I’ve been rejected by the best, and often the worst that this industry has to offer. I’ve also been accepted, nominated, selected, chosen, honourably mentioned and generally marked out as a good thing and as someone who can deliver on his craziest promises. Not only have I seen both sides of rejection and acceptance, I’ve handed out my fair share of yes and no – as a filmmaker, as a film programmer and recently (wearing a mask and using a false name) as an assessor for a funding scheme.

Consequently when Phil and Carla from the London Short Film Festival asked if I wanted to do some sort of Ben’s Blog Live for the festival, I decided that rejection would be a good thing to talk about.

Not to moan about, nor neither to commiserate. This is not a self help group and I will not stop you ever being rejected again. Nor will I spend too much time telling you to learn from it. I will though show you why you get rejected and hopefully help you understand how you can avoid going through it unnecessarily…

Thanks to the London Short Film Festival and Shooting People I will be doing this for Free in the bar of the Curzon Soho this Tuesday from 4pm. More information here:

http://lsff.bside.com/2010/films/howlingfeedbackindustrysession2dealingwithrejectionpresentedbybenblaine_lsff2010;jsessionid=E2B0160A6B228E27A28A956ED3F8CC22

And if none of you turn up then I will sit in silence and call it an art installation.

The five films made in the competition have been available to watch online for the past month or so at Mishorts and you have until tomorrow to watch them and vote for them.

This deadline is looming above us because next Monday night, January 11th, all the films will be shown at the Roxy Bar and Screen in London Bridge and the winner will be announced and forcibly awarded a thousand pounds of actual money.

Mishorts have done a tremendous job of spreading the films into people’s minds and they’ll remain online long after the LSFF has packed up for the year. But, trust me, the joy of the Branchage Challenge was that these films were made by filmmakers and they deserve to be seen in a cinema. Startlingly original, compelling, beautiful, odd and utterly breathless it’s a programme curated by good fortune alone and you won’t regret coming down.

More info here:
http://lsff.bside.com/2010/films/mishortspresentsbranchage48hourroadmoviechallenge_lsff2010

The event is at the Shortwave Cinema in Bermondsey this coming Sunday, 10th January, at 1.30pm. Philip has selected four short films which jeer in the face of the word short.

THE GLOAMING by John Bradburn & Andy Paton sees nature test the limits of love.

I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING by Ben Rivers is a series of meetings with those who live at the edge of civilisation.

KINGS OF LONDON by Sean Conway is oddly even harder to summerise despite being, in someways, the most conventional narrative drama in the programme but it involves urban horse racing, two brothers both called Aristotle and a child gangster.

RED SANDS by David Procter is a documentary about bullfighting which is as violent as it is beautiful.

What really strikes me about the programme is not only that the films are all exceptionally long, exceptionally beautiful and I struggled to not describe all four as “poetic” but that they all revel in their length. Previously I wrote that often long shorts come about through people aping the pacing of a feature film. However with these it is more that they have their own unique pace, a long short pace.

For instance, The Gloaming, which will be getting it’s theatrical premiere at the event, has no dialogue. I Know Where I’m Going has no synchronised dialogue and takes a special care to hold its shots for far longer than a feature director would dare. These are not features that lack a second act, they are films that could only ever have been this long. Shorter they’d lack their peculiar, but so intense are they that any longer and they’d leave you utterly exhausted.

Sadly not all the directors are able to attend but I will be discussing each film with someone from the project and I’ll also be hoping to delve a little deeper into the demands and dangers of the longer duration.

Do come.

More information here http://lsff.bside.com/2010/films/newshorts7howlongisshort_lsff2010 but for tickets please ring the Shortwave Cinema on 0207 357 6845

I think we have a new good way to spend a monday…

And so here we all are in crisp cold blueness of the future, struggling to re-engage brains still fuzzy with festive coziness and ticking off our list of resolutions as they shatter around us like writing deadlines.

I thought I’d kick off the new decade with the following little film about why the Phantom Menace is rubbish. If you’ve not seen this video review of the first Star Wars prequel then it’s worth watching for its warped hilarity alone. However I’m offering it to you less because it’s funny to laugh at how bad the Menace was and more because beneath a layer of Family Guyish comedy schtick this is actually a rather fine little seminar on the narrative role of the protagonist and the basic rules of the “Heroes Quest”.

Or at least part is 1. By part 7 it has gone quite odd. But yeah, laugh and learn…

Skywalker to San Francisco Airport: GoPro HERO HD from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

This clip was shot in 720p 60p and converted to 30p and, to be honest, though impressive for its size it is not the most astonishing piece of HD footage you’ll ever see. However Phil Bloom has married it to a brilliant piece of music by Philip Glass and the whole effect is quite hypnotic.

And it looks warm out there doesn’t it?

Mmmm.

I thought Rage Against The Machine had split up and become Audioslave. Even if they’ve got back together the idea that a song from ten years ago going “head to head” with the X-Factor winner represents anything other than the height of banality leaves me baffled. As far as pop culture goes this is about as incendiary as Jon Lydon’s butter adverts.

What does pain me though is the suggestion that the reality TV show the X-Factor has anything to do with filmmaking. Just because they make it using cameras doesn’t mean it falls within our world. Granted if it stopped being made then camera hire companies would lose revenue, in the same way that if no one got married for a year the slump in the wedding video market would lead to a glut in the Z1 category on eBay, but please don’t imagine either impossible event would cripple the British film industry. We may not be in the rudest of health at the moment but we do not live on Simon Cowell’s table scraps.

Even more horrifying was the attempt to draw a parallel between aspiring filmmakers and the programme’s contestants. True, at first glance, both wannabe filmmakers and wannabe singers are chasing what for most will be impossible dreams. But the dream on offer in the X-Factor is always the same dream. The hopefuls compete not for their chance to share their unique gift but for their chance to have their unique gift homogenised into something that sells. Is that really all we’re trying to do? If it’s fame you want then making films seems like a funny way of going about it, at least not without first moving to LA and getting your teeth fixed.

Shocking as it may seem but some of the people I know still do things for reasons other than fame and money. For instance, tonight one of my bands, The Glue Ensemble, are rehearsing and we’ll be playing the closing night of the LSFF in a few weeks time. None of us are being paid for tonight’s rehearsal, nor for that gig (though we do get paid money at times…) and yet none of us seem to mind because we’re all doing it for… what’s the word… love.

Similarly when my friends and I went to Jersey a few months ago to make a film we didn’t do so for profit but for the sheer crazy pleasure of doing something difficult and beautiful. We didn’t sleep, we froze, we climbed hills, we made a film that tried to capture some thought about forgiveness and all just to make our lives both harder and more enjoyable. This is what the past ten years of my life has been about. Telling stories with pictures because me and a bunch of other people I like wanted to and slowly finding out that a bunch of other people want to watch those stories, often time and again.

So as a final sprig of holly on your christmas puddin’, can I respectfully suggest that you shut the fuck up about the national minimum wage.

The decade long campaign to grind Shooting People into the dust for its support of creative work where no one gets paid comes from a good hearted place but is fundamentally wrong headed. I am completely in favour of being paid and completely against people engaged in someone else’s commercial activity not getting a fair recompense for their work. However a great deal of the work that is created through Shooting People is not a genuine commercial activity because, no matter how much the creators may wish otherwise, there is no market for it. Does that mean they should be banned from making it?

In a world driven entirely by commerce it is right that we protect jobs and wages. A world driven entirely by commerce gives us the X-Factor and a constant repackaging of the same tired idea. Thankfully, even at Christmas, we don’t have to live in that world.

I think their film is amazing and the only thing I’d like point out is that it was intended to be screened at the last night of Drive-In at the Branchage Festival. Sadly the last night was cancelled due to high winds and so no audience has ever fully appreciated the film’s sublimely iterative punchline…

Watch and Vote for Occupied by clicking on this picture…

Emma Rozanski is an Australian filmmaker who joined Shooting People earlier this year. As a lot of people do when they first nose round the site, she found my page and saw the bold claim that I’ll watch anything anyone cares to send me. So she sent me a link to her film Whisper Stop. This was easily one of the nicest surprises of the past 160 days of my life and the film clearly showed that she’s got buckets of talent. So I asked her to come to Jersey and take part in the challenge…

However she seemed a bit reluctant to be a director and she mentioned her willingness to work as part of someone else’s team and her laptop and camera (in a way I think I misunderstood) and so I sort of had her down as coming more in this capacity than any other.

Chris and I arrived in Jersey the day before the challenge started and by lunchtime I’d heard from my last confirmed director that due to circumstances beyond his control he was not going to be able to make it. This was a real blow as four teams didn’t quite feel like either a competition or a full programme. Luckily, I hung up the phone, went back into Branchage office and found Chris in conversation with Jersey born filmmaker Michael Pearce.

James Wilkinson, Emma Rozanski and Michael Pearce

We’d met Michael at the festival the previous year when he’d won the Islanders Award with his, frankly jaw droppingly awesome NFTS graduation film Madrugada. Two twists of his arm later and he’d agreed to take part but he had no camera and no editing equipment… no problem, say the Blaines, you can team up with Emma.

Jersey is a small island with a rich and surprisingly talented community but in the lead up to the event we were naturally concerned to do our best to make sure our directors had a good pool of talented actors to work with. We’d invited a whole bunch over and, realising that most people would’t know each other, we’d decided to pick teams at the start of the event. Just as with school football this is fun but does mean that at the end of the day there’s always someone slightly left over and whilst the other teams all ended up with at least two actors Emma and Michael ended up with just James Wilkinson, a young local actor and one of the few men in the room. James was an unknown quantity and I have to admit feeling a tad guilty watching these three strangers set out so seemingly unprepared on this challenge…

I mean, be fair, James looks very unprepared here...

I needn’t have worried. The full challenge, which is something you may not have guessed from watching the other films, was the write, shoot and edit a Road Movie in 48hrs that worked to a specific title and genre and also included some sort of reference to a Jersey Cow. By my checklist only Michael, Emma and James really tick all these boxes, not least because, damn their eyes, they finished three hours early and that includes time to render out a PAL version from the NTSC camera.

Emma and the camera they shot the film with

Emma filming James getting a beating. Off some kids.

I am speechless in my admiration for them. James throws himself into the chaos with a big hearted abandon which is not only hilarious but massively endearing. For a tall guy he is a wonderful puppy dog and it shows delicious cold-heartedness from Michael and Emma that they just saw this as good reason to be utterly merciless to him. I also love the fact that Michael has the balls to Vincent Gallo it up and play his cameo role not as the usual director-geek but as the coolest man on Jersey.

James Wilkinson and Michael Pearce.

As I’ve said before, Chris and I kicked this whole thing off because we wanted to use our posh new camera. We also wanted to do a filmmaking challenge with actual filmmakers and I think the aesthetic quality of many of these films is massively impressive. But I have to say what Michael and Emma achieve with almost nothing is an achievement in the true Jonny Oddball spirit of the original 48hr Challenges. With nothing but what they had in their pockets they’ve made a cracking little film that engages you through inch perfect visual story telling. My hat is off.

May be you need to have been on Jersey to fully appreciate all the jokes here but when a room full of filmmakers saw the coach train pulling into view there was a heartfelt cheer. I think none of us had seen that vehicle touring the streets without thinking “Ooh, I want that in my film” but only one film got it…

Watch and Vote for Michael and Emma’s Occupied here…
http://www.mishorts.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&category_id=14&flypage=flypage-comp.tpl&product_id=899&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=13

Click below to watch Morning Mist…

My brother and me first met Gaelle through Cinema Extreme. Her film “After The Rain” was part of the same slate as “Hallo Panda”. One of the eventual frustrations of that programme, one of the inspirations behind the Branchage Challenge, was that the further we progressed the less we saw of the other filmmakers. Our film had been one of three selected from a Nottingham workshop where we met, among others, Miranda Bowen, Simon Ellis and KICKS director Lindy Heymann. It was a brilliant, creative melting pot, exciting and jealousafying all at once. However once the commissions came through we didn’t see the others again until a party following a screening of the finished films in Bristol. It was only here that we actually met Gaelle and that gap seemed like such a waste, especially since I still feel that if she’d had a bit of our thoughts and we a chunk of hers then we’d both have made better films that year.

Talk of in someway working together or, at least, close by, again sparked up when she and we were all selected for Think Shoot Distribute last year. A brilliant scheme which again captured some of that hothouse atmosphere. With time to hang out together it was clear again quite how brilliant Gaelle was; I remember watching Simon Potts when she screened her film “City Paradise”, all the way through and for sometime after all he could do was shake his head and say “Well it’s a masterpiece. A master piece. A masterpiece”, and he’s not far wrong. Consequently when the idea of organising the Branchage 48hr Challenge developed, getting Gaelle to take part was always high on our list of priorities.

Used to working in commercials, Gaelle arrived on the island fully kitted out and mob handed. She brought with her a cast, Lydia Outhwaite and Stephen Hope-Wynn, cinematographer Anne-Marie Lean-Vercoe, editor Fabrice Gerardi, script editor Marina Brackenbury and script writer Katie McCullough. They had more kit than everyone else combined, but of course this just meant more technical problems too. Also their title kinda bound them into a couple of very early starts and a lot of room for confusion…

With such a large team, and a genre that lends itself to twists and complexity, I soon got the impression that things were running away from them. Which story were Steve and Lydia playing? The one their characters think is happening or what is really happening? Is that still what’s really happening?

Steve and Lydia are clearly startled to be in a 48hr Challenge with a script...

Camera Card problems robbed them of crucial shots and suddenly poor Fabrice had the weight of the whole team’s expectations on his shoulders. Could he and Gaelle find a way to make it all make sense after all? It was around this point that I started stretching the entente cordial by giving him hassle to finish the film so we could create a screening master for that night…

But then, like the sun burning through the mist, the end came upon them and the film was finished. And it’s everything I expected from Gaelle. Beautiful, cunning, delicious and delicate, it’s hard to remember that it was made in such a sort space of time.

I remember both Fabrice and Gaelle staring at me with blank incomprehension when I told them how good it was. They were exhausted and so close to the piece they could barely see it. But putting together the screener, Chris and I were the first people outside their team to watch the finished piece. Thanks to Anne-Marie it is jaw droppingly beautiful with a start so bristling with atmosphere and tension you can feel it on your skin. Katie’s script is slick, complicated, twisty and yet, as it should be, very simple. Lydia and Steve are the perfect foils for one another, one big and lumbering, the other flimsy and flexible, the essence of butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Missing shots? Pah. This film is class class class.

But don’t take my word for it. Gaelle and her team are each asking of you less than a minute per team member. So please click on the link below to watch and vote and don’t forget to return here tomorrow where I shall end my run down of the competitors in the Branchage Vauxhall 48hr Road Movie Challenge by going to the other extreme with Occupied, a film made by three complete strangers with nothing more than a digital stills camera.

Watch and vote for Morning Mist here:
http://www.mishorts.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&category_id=14&flypage=flypage-comp.tpl&product_id=898&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=13

Click below to watch and vote for Overtaken…

Rob is someone who’s work I had previously admired from afar. There is photographic proof that we were previously in the same room because we were both part of Screen International’s Stars of Tomorrow an increasingly long time in the past. We are also both graduates of Film4 and the Film Council’s now defunct Cinema Extreme scheme, through which Rob made the sublime “Monsters”, one of my favourite films made through the programme.

However we’d never really spoken and so I was especially delighted, and frankly rather honoured, when he agreed to take part in the Vauxhall Branchage 48hr Road Movie Challenge… ah yes, Road Movie Challenge. The other part of the genre that Rob was given was Road Movie. A Western Road Movie. Only Rob can get away with being asked to make a Western Road Movie and create instead an intrinsically filthy film about a heartbroken thing from the sea.

Rob came to Jersey with his Director of Photography Marcus Waterloo an experienced and brilliant man who shot most of this film using a handbuilt periscope camera which records the reflection of the image from a piece of dirty glass, which is how he makes the digital picture quite so edible and dirty. I say “most” because apparently the underwater sequences were shot using an iPhone and a plastic bag…

Getting people of the calibre of Rob and Marcus to take part in the Challenge was one of the most exciting things about the event. Since 2002 Jonny Oddball’s original cannonball-run style concept has been much copied and often repeated and though it does throw up gems, more often than not it just shows how very hard it is to make a truly compelling film in 48hrs (or less). It’s also often been been seen as something than appeals more to first-timers than seasoned pros. Our intention with the Branchage event was always to invite people who we knew would bring something special. For us it was not enough that five films were completed, they had to be good films.

Rachel Kirkland and Juliet Valdez

Before they met I had a feeling that actress Nathalie Pownall and director Alex Jacob would click. I had a similar feeling with Rob and Juliet Valdez. Like Rachel, the other actress in both Rob and Alex’s films, I first saw Juliet in the Edinburgh show that my girlfriend directed this summer. On the surface she’s a delightful and capable actress but bubbling beneath is a delicious lunacy which Rob brings out to the full.

Rob and Juliet. Neither look capable of it do they?

They shot this film without any sense of story, Rob just encouraging Juliet and later Rachel to do whatever odd and beautiful thing happened to come into his mind. His claim that the whole thing didn’t really come together until the last few hours of the edit is almost more hysterically terrifying than the film itself, almost. My only memory is of editing in a nearby tent, the wind buffeting the canvas like we were at sea, and my sleep deprived brain being rocked by Rob’s high pitched scream as he tried in vain to record the voice over without laughing too much…

Dark crazy shit is happening in this tent.

That same wind saved us from a slightly tricky situation. The original plan was that all five finished films would be given a premiere at the Branchage Drive-In before a screening of the Wizard of Oz. Due to the nature of the Wizard of Oz, event organiser Carla had insisted that, as well as being Road Movies that made reference to Jersey Cows, each film had to be strictly PG rated. Rob has pointed out that, not only does he mention Jersey Cows much more than we did in our film, but as far as he is concerned, Overtaken is no more terrifying and hallucinatory than the Wizard of Oz and that nothing really bad is actually on screen. However this films oozes sexy wrongness from every frame and it was a relief to me when the high winds forced the closure of Drive-In and saved us from having to veto this sublimely surreal gem.

Can you tell that I like it? I think so. Give Rob six minutes of your time by following the link below and watching this film which is safe for work but possibly not safe for your soul. And tomorrow things will take on an altogether classier air when we turn to Parisian Princess of perfection Gaelle Denis and her film “Morning Mist”.

Watch and Vote for Overtaken here:
http://www.mishorts.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage-comp.tpl&product_id=860&category_id=14&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=13

However Alex and his team rose to the challenge, click on the picture to see their response…

Chris and I came up with idea for the Branchage 48hr Challenge because we wanted to do something with our new camera, the Canon 5d Mk II (that’s right, our film was shot on a souped stills camera). Xanthe agreed that it was just the sort of thing Branchage would enjoy but Phil was worried as to the quality of filmmakers, especially those who could be convinced to come out to Jersey. So it fell to us to invite the directors and most of the actors who would make these films.

A lot of people wimped out, many hesitated until it was impossible, but the first person to get straight back to me with an unwavering “Yes!” was Alex Jacob. This was appropriate because I’d first met Alex at the first Branchage festival the year previously. His first short film “Ruby”, later a Shooting People Film Of The Month, was showing at the festival and he and his lead actress Ellie had come along to see the reaction. More of this here.

We ended up stuck in Jersey airport together and he impressed me as a man who’d taken a considered and clever approach to his career but who was ready for something more (something I’m pleased to say he’s now getting as he starts to direct for proper actual tv). As a result he was one of the first people I asked to take part, so it was nice he was first to say yes.

At the start his team was just him and his friend and camera operator Sean Mackay. However before the competition had even officially kicked off he’d secured the assistance of actresses Nathalie Pownall and Rachel Kirkland and the team was finally complimented by Jersey native, student Patrick Casey.

Alex, Nathalie, Rachel, Sean and Patrick

Realising that our guest directors were unlikely to be able to guarantee their own casts, we’d taken steps to invite a wide and diverse group of actors to take part in the competition too. For directors the challenge is daunting, but at least it feels like your destiny is in your own hands. For actors, asked to fly to an island and work on a film with someone they’ve never met when they don’t know what it is or what role they’ll be playing… it’s bravery on the borderline of insanity. This fact alone though does not quite explain why, out of the 30 or so actors and actresses we invited, it was only women who said yes.

Both Nat and Rachel were from mine and Chris’ guest list and had never met Alex before. Rachel’s main focus is comedy and I’d seen her earlier in the year when she was in the Edinburgh show that my girlfriend directed. There, amongst other things, she was taking the piss out of the role of Puck – a part not dissimilar to her role in “Dashes Of Yellow” as she leads Nat on a magical journey of self discovery.

I first met Nat when I turned out to be too expensive to cut her showreel together. However this did at least give me the chance to watch everything she’d done and I’ve been keen to work with her ever since. She has a great physicality and a natural pixie-ness that suits Alex’s film tremendously. Alex will admit that the process of making “Dashes Of Yellow” was tougher than he’d expected and, as is often the case, the more they filmed the more the story began to slip from their grasp. In the end though I think Nat’s performance holds the piece together and gives it a surprisingly emotional resolution.

All of which shows what can happen when actors trust their director. Thrown together by fate and Blaines, Alex, Nat and Rachel could have been cautious or tentative with each other. Instead by the end of the first day the girls were naked and in the sea. This could have been a disaster on many levels but I think it comes together simply because of the whole hearted approach; the director and his cast throw themselves into this film with an abandon that heartening to watch.

At least that’s my opinion – why don’t you give Alex six minutes of your day to find out what you think by clicking on the link below?

When I first heard that both Nat and Rachel had been running naked into the waves I worried because festival organiser Carla MacKinnon had stipulated that all the films had to be “suitable for a family audience”. However in the end it was Rob Morgan’s film “Overtaken” that she had to ban… and that’s what I’ll be looking at tomorrow…

Vote for Dashes Of Yellow here…
http://www.mishorts.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&category_id=14&flypage=flypage-comp.tpl&product_id=895&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=13

Keen readers will know that at the start of October, Chris and I lead a fearless guerrilla unit into the hills of Jersey and made a short film called “Truth In The Valley” as part of the Vauxhall Branchage 48hr Filmmaking Challenge.

Keener readers and those with their fingers on the pulse will already be aware that all five completed films are now online at MiShorts.com. We made them not as competitors or rivals but as allies and friends, however the online world is harsh and now we’re in bitter competition for a cash prize.

“Truth In The Valley” is available to vote for here:

Whilst I do want to win, I also have to admit to a strange sense of pride for all five films. Each one is 6 minutes long and all were made over the course of 48hrs with titles and genres drawn at random at the start of the competition. Most were also made by filmmakers who’d never been to Jersey before, many using actors they’d only just met.

They range from Alex Jacob’s beguiling “Dashes Of Yellow” (I think the cruellest title draw), Gaelle Denis’ richly atmospheric “Morning Mist”, Rob Morgan’s astonishing “Overtaken”, Emma Rozanski and Michael Pearce’s hilarious “Occupied” and our own largely historically accurate “Truth In The Valley”. All five have something unique and brilliant to offer. Which is why this blog is going to focus on one film a day for the next week, giving you a little background on it’s creators, how they got involved and how they worked.

I have already told a great deal of the behind the scenes story of “Truth In The Valley” on this blog… here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and most of all here and here. However I don’t think I’ve properly expressed my gratitude towards our amazing cast and crew.

We had some much valued support from a couple of locals including Reuben our Nazi trooper but our core team was fellow filmmaker Laura Brocken, old time teammate Alex Mayover and actresses Rebecca Eve and Jessica Fostekew. Alex used to work with Chris but I first met him on the first day of the first ever 48hr Filmmaking Challenge held by Jonny Oddball back in 2002. We’ve been friends ever since and he has worked on all four of the 48hr films that we’ve made, though never before with a beard.

Alex Mayover with beard and industry standard 416 microphone...

Chris mentored Laura as part of the Branchage Bootcamp the year previously and we both fell in love the short film “Tell” which she made with him. “Tell” picked up the prestigious Islander award at the festival this year, one of many it’s won. So she is a real talent in her own right, however on “Truth In The Valley” she was part of our team and was astonishingly willing to take up the vital but unglamorous jobs.

Laura Brocken forgives me for being a ponce.

We met Rebecca earlier in the year when she auditioned for us and later did a series of promotional stills for a film we’re working on. All of which merely whetted our appetite for working with her, so when she admitted she actually came from Jersey we did all we could to encourage her to come home whilst the festival was on. I love the unexpected strength she brings to the role she plays. The vulnerability you expect, but it’s the flashes of steel that really give the performance it’s strength.

Rebecca Eve freezing to the bone...

Jess is an old friend of ours who we’ve been longing to work with properly for years. Her performance is the anchor of the whole film and once we’d fixed the idea in our heads we knew that the whole thing would live or die by the long silent take of her walking across the sand. Jess, like us, is best known for making people laugh. She’s most regularly employed as a stand-up where she is filthy, smart and hysterically funny. Her joke about the names of colours is still one of my favourite things in the entire world. We always knew that there was much more to Jess than silliness, as we hope is true of ourselves. However all three of us were aware that we were entering unfamiliar territory with no time to change our minds… The glowing praise that people have given her for her performance in this film is something I am totally delighted by. She’s very brilliant and I’m very proud of her. This a picture of her with a Nazi:

So there we go, that’s my directorial love-in for the people who made this brilliant brilliant film with me and Chris. You will now either be desperate to see and celebrate its shining wonder or you will want to revel in the schadenfreude of hating it and marking low. Whatever floats your bloat give me six minutes of your life by clicking on the link below and tomorrow I will tell you everything I know about Alex Jacob’s “Dashes Of Yellow”…

“Truth In The Valley” is available to vote for here:
http://www.mishorts.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&category_id=14&flypage=flypage-comp.tpl&product_id=911&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=13

Regeneration sobered me up and blew my mind. It was beautiful beyond compare. The horror of the situation was realised with a simple humanity that breathed new life into poems I had studied into meaninglessness at school. A world I had not understood suddenly made sense to me.

Jonny Lee Miller in Regeneration

As you may have gathered our script “Hallo Panda” was recently given the once over by the BAFTA Rocliffe New Writer’s Forum and it’s toughest and fairest critic was Gillies MacKinnon who directed Regeneration. This was, I’m glad to say, not our first encounter with this passionate and, though it may sound odd in the context of filmmaking, honourable man.

Gillies MacKinnon helping us out once again at BAFTA last Monday.

This was the year that we made the short version of Hallo Panda so we were very much under the kosh and whilst Gillies had hoped to give us a chance to shadow him on set, instead we got to see the slow and frustrating side of the industry as various projects stalled. As a result we didn’t see as much of him as other mentees did of their mentors, one of the many mistakes we made that year. However we did meet up and get drunk and learnt a great deal more from him than he’d probably imagine.

At BAFTA on Monday he repeated something he said to us once. He’s lectured at the NFTS in the past and has often said something along the lines of “I can’t teach you to be a director, I can’t teach you to be me, I can only help you think about what you need to do in order to make the films you have to make”. This is precisely what he did for us and it is precisely what Guiding Lights is set up for.

The deadline for this year’s scheme is 1pm on Wednesday 23rd December and I strongly recommend that you apply, it is one of the most positive things I’ve been involved with in the film industry.

You can apply for it here http://www.guiding-lights.org.uk/

Anyway, on Monday night excerpts of our feature length version of “Hallo Panda” were featured as part of the BAFTA Rocliffe New Writer’s Forum. I’d heard from my mate Claire that the event was brilliant and something that was worth our time submitting stuff to, but I have to admit I did so with a degree of trepidation. Now I’ve been through the process I understand it and it’s smarter and harder than you think…

Photograph by Mat Ricardo

The basic set-up is quite straightforward. Ten minute extracts from three scripts are given a rehearsed reading in front of an audience and an industry figure who then gets to question the author.

Naturally a great deal of attention goes on the reading. Each script is given a director used to working in the Rocliffe way, each is also given a composer, an expert casting director and an artist to create a mood-setting back drop. Though the actors are not expected to be off the page, the extracts are not merely read but acted out. In our case, director Paul Cavanagh also used a couple of chairs as a very flexible piece of scenery which morphed seamlessly from the back of a bus to a tree branch as the story progressed.

TOM WU as Panda and CHRISTIAN CONTRERAS as Mark
Photographs by Mat Ricardo

But despite all the effort and energy going into the reading I still had my concerns. Could ten pages really give a full insight into the script? Would this semi-theatrical approach obscure the cinematic element of the script? Paul had convinced us to change the extract and though I trusted him, I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that in giving the audience the start of the story we were really just repeating what we’d done with the short and not quite showing off the real depth of the story.

However I had overlooked the impact of the Q&A session with the industry chair. In our case this was the magnificent Gillies MacKinnon who, after all three projects had been given their turn, gave a brilliant and concise run down not only of the twists of his career to date but also of his creative philosophy which feels something like “never the mind the bollocks, what’s it about?”

Having read our extract before the evening started, Gillies had, not being a man to mince his words, crossed out large sections of our dialogue which he felt were redundant. He’d even, apparently, toyed with the idea of bringing along his own version of the script to give to the cast instead… however, after watching it performed he was magnanimous enough to admit on stage that he’d happily eat his words. It worked. It was funny. It has a natural rhythm and flow that the cast really got hold of and, thanks to Paul, the piece leapt off the page.

Gillies did have concerns though and asked us (as usual) a series of painfully searching and accurate questions that got to the heart of what will make this film work or fail. And this was when I realised how Rocliffe really works. Of course the extract is not enough. Of course performing it on a stage with a couple of chairs does not paint the fullest picture. Instead it gives you no hiding place. It forces the audience not to enjoy it but to question it.

It’s ordeal by fire, especially as this court marshall is taking place in front of an audience and at BAFTA. However if you have a clear sense of what your story really is, the questions soon stop feeling difficult and just become opportunities to get the film across.

Chris, Me and Gillies

On stage Q&A kept in check by Farah Abushwesha

We submitted to Rocliffe a first draft we finished a few months back and we’ve been working on the second ever since. Already the story has progressed and our thinking about it has clarified. Besides, in one form or another this film has been in our lives for four years or more. We know this story. The rehearsed reading grabbed everyone’s attention, made them laugh, made them engage, but it was the Q&A session that then enabled us to really explain the film. Which just shows we were right to trust Paul, not only was direction smart and sympathetic but most of all, his choice of extract set up the Q&A perfectly.

Paul asks us a helpful question, cheers Paul!

I couldn’t recommend it highly enough. Their next submission deadline is Spring 2010. It’s a great platform… just remember that it’s the Q&A that really counts. The extract should engage but it should also create questions for the audience. What matters is that you can answer those.

Submission information here http://www.rocliffe.com/scriptappl.php

Hallo Panda Trailer from Blaine Brothers on Vimeo.

Tonight’s your first chance to hear how Panda is shaping up as a feature script… please come.

In the end this didn’t really work for us. I’m delighted to say that the film has found fans, even its irregular 3am screenings on Channel 4 have been enough to encourage an unofficial fan site on facebook not to mention a regular stream of people finding Chris and me through the internet as part of a quest to prove that they hadn’t dreamt the whole thing. However, as great as it feels that other people love our film, the honest truth is that Chris and I still have unfinished business in the Panda enclosure.

There is a tired maxim about the mistakes of translating a short into a feature but whether you think we’re barking up the tree or are just interested to see how we’re approaching the task of enlarging without padding, tomorrow you have your first chance.

We are over the moon that a section of our first draft has been selected for the BAFTA Rocliffe New Writer’s Forum and will be performed live at BAFTA from 6.30pm tomorrow. Tickets are five pounds and are available at the end of this link: http://www.bafta.org/public-calendar-event.html?btype=day&Gday=20091130000000

The event will be chaired by the brilliant Gillies MacKinnon and two other projects will be showcased alongside ours. All three are works in progress and it’s a rare privilege to be able to share something at such an early stage so I’m excited and terrified in roughly measure and both Chris and I would be really grateful for anyone who can come down and give us some thoughts on what they hear.

More information…

Rocliffe – http://www.rocliffe.com
Rocliffe at BAFTA – http://www.bafta.org/whats-on/bafta-rocliffe-new-writing-forum,380,BA.html
Our Event – http://www.bafta.org/public-calendar-event.html?btype=day&Gday=20091130000000
Hallo Panda Short Film – http://www.charlieproductions.co.uk/films/hallopanda/index.asp
Hallo Panda Fanpage - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hallo-Panda/160488370696?ref=search&sid=598966706.4224794191..1

> Hi What are the 6 top festivels in the opinion of the SP
> readers are the ones that REALLY count and what is THE ideal
> length for a short? Coould we have some views please? Best
> Charlie Salem

And in tomorrow’s bulletin my reply will be this…

The ideal length for a short film is exactly as long as the story needs to be.

The six best film festivals are these…

1 – The one in which you see someone else’s film which suddenly makes you realise what you’ve been doing wrong and inspires you to do better.

2 – The one in which you find someone who loves your work so much they want to help fund your next film.

3 – The one in which you find someone who loves your work so much they want you to work on their next project.

4 – The one where you meet people, directors, writers, actors, producers or industry executives who really get you and suddenly a world of new unpaid possibilities opens up.

5 – The one where you get laid.

6 – The one where you very drunk and have a great time without embarrassing yourself.

Sadly, or happily depending upon your viewpoint, these events have no basis in geography.

Or, to answer the question in another way, somewhere in this world is a director who has just screened a 28 minute film in a tiny festival where, quite by chance, it was seen by a rich old man who has given her a blank cheque and the keys to his wine cellar and she’s currently nursing a hangover in bed with his beautiful daughter who’s amazing screenplay lies waiting to explode her mind on the bedside table.

There’s no right answer in life and you make your own luck.

Hope that’s clear.

So if thoughts of Art and Survival are weighing as heavily on your mind as they are on mine – take a moment to read this:

http://shootingpeople.org/fromthehip/2009/11/25/what-is-independent-film-worth/

A nice upshot of these events are the people you meet at them. In the pub afterwards I met Allan Gichigi who’s cracking short documentary about the illegal Kenyan public transport system can be found here: http://shootingpeople.org/watch/film.php?film_id=78264

I also met a guy called Andrew who has since emailed me to say “…I’m busy in pre-production on a 10ish minute [film] which is to be filmed in January so hopefully by Spring I will have a lovely little film and lots more raring to go. Actually – that was something I meant to ask you on the night; how big a benchmark is 10 minutes do you think? By going over that are you severely restricting the exposure you can get from festivals? I know you and Chris have made shorts of varying lengths, so thought you might have some interesting things to say on the matter.

All the very best,

Andrew”

Being always happy to talk at length about the things I think I wrote him a reply and since it was actually about film I thought it might be of interest to you my dear Shooting reader.

Hallo Andrew!

The significance of the duration of a short film is relatively simple… the shorter something is the easier it is to programme and the less daunting it is to watch.

So as far as programmers, broadcasters, sales agents and distributors go under five minutes is golden because it’s far easier to slip it in to a tight schedule. It means that rather than agonising over whether film A is better than film B, they can just show both. Since their job is entirely about agonising over which films to show anything that helps lessen the load is always welcomed with open arms. This is especially the case where the screen time is expensive.

As far as the audience goes, well, increasingly I’d say that most shorts are watched singularly and online. They are browsing material. They’re not something you settle down in front of at the end of a long day, but something you grab a glance at when you have five minutes and you should be doing something else. The phrase “when you have five minutes” is apt, it’s not so often that people find themselves with ten, or fifteen, or twenty minutes because that’s more like a proper amount of time they could spend doing something else.

Also, and perhaps more importantly, most people are surprisingly polite when it comes to film – or at least they are when they press play. Very few people actively start a film of any length thinking “well if it’s shit I’ll turn it off”. Which is odd because most people probably do turn it off when it is. However on the whole the majority assume that they’re comitting to the full run time. Equally though most people assume that a short film probably isn’t that good. This is partly because most shorts don’t come with the sort of comforting fanfare that features get but mainly because most short films aren’t that good. Most short films are actively awful.

The upshot of which is that if I see a film is five minutes long I think “OK, why not, I can bare five minutes of awfulness”, but when I see it is ten minutes I start to doubt it’s worth pressing play… does it sound interesting? Is there a good image that draws me in? Is there someone in it I recognise? Is the director a friend? Do I actually have to…? By the time it’s hitting fifteen to twenty minutes I pretty much have to be, I don’t know, sat on a chair in front of a room full of strangers who have all turned up to hear my thoughts on it, like a weird and twisted nightmare in which I haven’t done my homework and I now have to give a presentation about it. Which is why I often look so pale during the Surgery.

Obviously if a film is a good, or dare I say it, brilliant, you can get away with it. Over the years I’ve heard a great many prescriptions for how long a short should be but the only one that really stands up is that it should be as long as it deserves to be. As long as the story can sustain. One thing that I have noticed is that there are too many shorts made by people who are aping feature pacing without understanding why this pace is requried. A good example is the last film in last week’s surgery. Much of the best stuff in the film was creating a mood and atmosphere, a sense of the character. Some of the most delicious passages in cinema history are sections where the story appears to stop and you just hang out with the main character and many short film makers attempt to get this atmosphere into their films. However the key thing in the last sentence is ‘appears’ to stop. In any well made film you never ever see or hear anything that isn’t giving the audience something which propels the ideas of the film toward their conclusion. All too often short filmmakers don’t know what their story actually is, as was clearly the case with the last film in the surgery. Consequently the mood and atmosphere that they mirror from a feature film is telling the audience nothing they need to know about this short story. So the film looks lovely, but bores.

All of which is a round the houses way of trying to explain the other maxim about duration in shorts – whatever length your film is, it is too long. Obviously this doesn’t hold true for everybody but it’s a damn good thought to hold onto because in most cases you can shave ten percent of what you think is the perfect length and you’ll end up with a film which is far more enjoyable for audiences.

I met an old friend of mine and conversation turned to a mutual acquaintance we both still held in some passing contempt. Though nothing but a decent human being, our acquaintance was also, the last time I saw him, the sort of smugly high achieving young go-getter that brings out the worst in me. He was, once upon a time, going to be a major brain surgeon and I had since heard conflicting rumours that he had either failed completely or succeeded almost to the point of revolutionising brain care.

My dear old friend was able to tell me what had actually happened. It turns out that our past acquaintance has not ended up specialising in brain surgery. (And no he’s not a rocket scientist either, don’t run ahead). He is a doctor and a specialist of, apparently, no small accomplishment. He is an arse doctor. A bum doctor. A successful man whose triumph is built upon bottoms.

I find great humour in this. Both as I write this and when my friend told me, at which point I laughed uncontrollably for roughly four minutes. Speechless and convulsing I temporarily forgot all of my mundane troubles and just shook from side to side with filthy, ruthless guffawing.

I take no great pleasure or pride in this fact. My laughter is in part, utterly puerile. I’m laughing about the phrase “bum doctor” which is funny only because it includes the word “bum”. My laughter is also cruel and bitter. I am laughing at the fact that someone who doubtlessly leads a more comfortable, more respectable, more successful and more useful life than mine never the less does so via the medium of arses.

Wiping away the tears from my eyes it strikes me that, though I don’t make short films anymore, this story would make a good one. It would depend upon the vicarious enjoyment of watching someone else laugh uncontrollably for four minutes and you’d need a very good performer to pull that off, but were you able to find someone to do that then it would be both funny and oddly compelling. Especially if you were able to convey the pathos of the situation, the laughing man is only laughing because he knows the butt of the joke is a better person than he is. The depth of the laughter is a bitter acknowledgement of his own hopelessness.

Then my friend told me that, oddly, now he is a successful doctor our old acquaintance is “actually a really nice guy, apparently he’s no longer such an arse.”

And in an instance I saw an entire perfect feature film pitch. A man is an arse. He is an irritating, self assured, annoyance who thinks too much of himself and is going to be a brain surgeon. However when instead he finds his career drawn to the study of arses he becomes a nicer human being. By studying arses he stops being one. Ricky Gervais could play him. Or Simon Pegg. “The Arse Doctor”. “Dr.Bum”. “Top to Bottom”.

I’m not going to write it, but as I say, I thought it an interesting working example of the difference between short and feature length narrative. Paralysed by laughter a man is never the less confronted by a realisation of his own short comings – short film. A man who used to be an arse finds redemption through his study of arses – feature film.

Here endeth some sort of lesson.

However recently we took a break to venture forth into the real world and ended up in Elstree studios, the oldest purpose built film studios in the UK. Though sadly half the original site has since been sold and redeveloped. That’s right, studios 1-4, where, amongst other things Stanley Kubrick shot “The Shining” is now a branch of Tesco.

That must be the most terrifying supermarket in the world. Can you imagine doing a night shift in there? Wrong.

Would Jack Torrence please come to the biscuit aisle, would Jack Torrence please come to the biscuit aisle. Thank you.

Not only will it be full of gems of filmmaking advice it’s also good fun, especially if it’s not your film that’s dying on the slab. So put on your best Branchage brogues and come…

No, I’d not heard of it either but apparently in the Golden Age of Hollywood, before TV, the Lux Soap company fostered and unlikely alliance with the studios and sponsored a radio show which staged new productions of big screen hits. The most amazing thing is that as well as bringing in a dose of red curtain theatricality which would have made Baz Lurhman whoop with delight, they also tended to recast the classics with whichever stars were available…

This radio programme contains absolutely delicious clips from these shows including Alan Ladd and Heddy Lamar in Casablanca, Vivienne Leigh in Rebecca, Edward G Robinson as Sam Spade and Orson Welles in A Tale Of Two Cities… it’s dizzying and delicious, a glimpse into an alternate universe and well worth you listening to it right now. If only for the 1940s soap adverts.

Or for the bit where John Wayne starts randomly SHOUTING his diaLOGUE as IF ITs the first TIME he’s seen it WRITTEN DOWN and he doesn’t KNOW what IT MEANS?

Genius.

The London Underground, like most of the rest of the world, is currently plastered in adverts for the forthcoming Twilight sequel, New Moon. One such poster, common on the tube, pictures all of the main players in a line staring with moody beauty at the passing commuters.

If you are travelling North through Euston tube station on the Victoria Line then you should find a poster similar to the one above (I don’t think it’s quite this one though) upon which someone has very carefully drawn the number two in black marker on the foreheads of everyone involved.

What I love about this is that whilst clearly not being exactly complimentary it’s also not actually offensive. In fact, as this is the second of the four books to be released as a film it’s nothing but factual. It’s also neat and whilst it is defacing the poster it’s not making the people look ugly it’s, well, it’s just the number two.

It’s just the number two.

It’s quite unanswerable.

I absolutely love it.

It’s just the number two.

Whether by natural justice, inherent irony, mercury in retrograde or sheer dumb clumsiness I have lost my bank card which obviously means I’ve just had to call my bank and apologise to them. Brilliantly they seem to employ a gruff History Teacher to take these calls.

“Hallo, yes? Are you ringing to report a missing card? Is it lost or stolen?” he said with an audible twitch of his bushy moustache.
“Erm, it was lost,” I say, realising that this makes me a time waster.
“I see,” says Mr.Cardrecovery, making it plain that he sees me as a time waster. “And do you have a record of the number?”
“No” I say, which probably isn’t completely true. I don’t have a record of the number to hand but I imagine it must be one of the many strings of digits I pay little or no real attention to on the electronic card statements that the bank allows me to download each month, you know, like the ones that say how much I’ve spent. I haven’t thought to fish out one of these electronic card statements, I’ve just gone online, found the number I should ring to say my card has been lost and dialled that.
“No?” says Mr.Cardrecovery a distinct edge coming into his voice. Were this the staff room this would have been the point where he put his coffee cup back down. “Yes I see, you’ve lost the card,” it’s fine, I’m not in trouble, he does understand “but do you not have a card statement to hand?” Oh, I am in trouble.
Before I can defend myself he plunges straight on with “Nevermind, I’ll see if I can find you, name…?” and there we go, he’s marching down the corridors leafing through his massive leather bound ledger and I’m racing to catch up, my embarrassed trainers squeaking on the polished floor beneath us.
“…and the post code of the business…?” I tell him “Ah yes, good, and the day and month of your birth?” I tell him this also, remembering to say the 8th of October which is the only way I can remember it correctly. Years ago I got into awful trouble failing to remember my own date of birth whilst trying to prove to a ticket inspector that was I was still eligible for cheap train travel. I blame the Romans. Once upon a time October was the quite sensible name for the 8th month of the year. Then Julius wanted a month and because he’d done it Augustus had to have a go as well and suddenly I’m being born on the 8th day of the 10th month but it’s called October despite being the 10th month. This has troubled me all of my life. It’s not just me, my girlfriend contends, perversely, that I don’t suit the 8th and she always thinks my birthday should be the 10th. 10th of the 10th would work ok but, frankly, I still think I should be the 8th of the 8th and I always want to say that but least this time, I don’t.
“And do you have a middle name?” Says the teacher in that perfect teacher way which says “I know you do have a middle name, I’m now asking you a question and the whole class is listening to see if you were paying attention or were actually asleep like I think you were.”
“Timothy” I say.
“Yes, that’s right,” he says as if he thought I’d get it wrong. See, I think, I wasn’t sleeping and if I was it’s only because this lesson is really dull. Not that it is a lesson, I remind myself, this is a perfectly normal business transaction that is being oddly skewed by his tone of voice… get a grip, you’re a customer not a pupil, you have rights…
“And what are the first two letters of the password?”
“I’m sorry sir? I mean, sorry?”
“The password you gave when you first set up this account?”
“Is there…? Is there one?”
“Yes. You set it up when you first created the account.” I can just see the chalk dancing irritably through his fingers. “It’s you’re own time you’re wasting…” he didn’t say that, he said “It could be your mother’s maiden name.”
“Oh right.”
“Or a country.”
“Oh right.” Now I’m completely lost. Trying to keep this circumspect in case you ever happen to want to try and steal my identity (though frankly, should you, good luck to you, you’re bound to do better as me than I am…) but my mother’s maiden name is not a country. I have no recollection of setting up this password and am struggling to imagine what word could be on the screen in front of him that he thinks could be both a maiden name and a country. I find myself thinking how it must be tough for anyone going through life with a geographical maiden name because it must constantly create in people about to meet them the expectation of the winner of a beauty contest. “Who’s the next candidate for the job?” “Oh it’s Ms.Brazil” “Oh really?” “Hallo, sorry, I’m not late am I, I’m Ms.Brazil” “Oh.” Thinks, wow, must have been a bad year when they gave out that prize…
“OK, right, well, you’ve given me the correct name and postcode I’m sure that’ll have to do” says Mr.Cardrecovery in a tone that suggests that quite frankly it won’t do but he’s got no intention of wasting anymore of his lunch break on the matter. “I have a last transaction here on the 9th of November for £42 does that sound right?”
“Um, when was the 9th?”
A strained silence “Two days ago Mr.Blaine.”
“And who was it to?”
“Let me see…” and he starts to leaf through the ledger just as I remember “.. it just says HAMBURGER. £42. HAMBURGER. Does that sound right to you?”
“Yes,” I say, limply, aware that the whole class is laughing at me. Again. “It’s hamburger union.” I add pointlessly “there were three of us.”
“Sit down boy.” he doesn’t say.

For instance, up until recently, I had never actually seen either “Pretty Woman” or “Dirty Dancing”. My reasoning was clear, both films were obviously awful. One of them stars both Richard Gere and Julia Roberts and the other features that song. Besides, clearly, neither of them were aimed at me so surely, even if they were good for what they were, they were designed to be films I hate. However circumstances have lately conspired against me and I have now watched both films from start to end. Both surprised me.

In concept at least “Dirty Dancing” always made more sense to me. Before watching it my understanding of the thing was that it was a film about two people doing dancing together who find the whole sweaty hands on throwy about nature of the process leads them to have sex and fall in love and then sing that song. Musically horrific but otherwise understandable. I had always assumed that my idea of what “Pretty Woman” was had to be in some way mistaken. Before watching it all I knew was that she played a hooker, he played a rich man and there was the bit when he snaps the box shut on her fingers and she laughs and this apparently signifies romance. But I also knew that this was nominated for four BAFTAs, four Golden Globes, winning one and also nominated for an Oscar. Julia Roberts was nominated for an Oscar for this role. On top of this I had heard it regularly cited as one of the classic romantic films. As much as I’d mentally written it off as trash I had also accepted that I was being unfair and obviously there was much more to it than the bit when Richard Gere snaps a box shut on her fingers and she giggles apparently signifying romance.

Astonishingly, I was completely wrong. There is nothing more to it than the bit when Richard Gere snaps a box shut on her fingers and she giggles apparently signifying romance. It is entirely vacuous, astonishingly miscast, patronising and tedious. Apart from the box moment I struggle to remember a single actual event. There’s something about her driving his car which I presume indicates his emotional problems. There’s the bit when the lady in the shop is a bit offish. And there’s the frankly terrifying bit where they finally do get it on, in which Gere’s waxy hairless chest and her waxy expressionless face makes it all seem like a pair of shop dummies getting fruity after hours. I expected this scene to end with the pair of them looking confused and lost as they strip off to reveal, instead of sexual organs, a rounded nub with a trade mark stamped on it.

Oh and there’s the annoying bit about spoons. This bit is especially bollocks because let’s face facts here, the rules of posh cutlery are only terrifyingly complex if you have a severe learning disorder. As the man says in the film, you start at the outside and work in. That’s not hard! That’s surely what you’d expect to do. At the very most you could only possibly have imagined you went the other way because there might be a spoon at either end of your meal but your man in the wig has just pointed out that it’s outside to inside so surely that’s the subject done? Why are you still looking worried about your cutlery? You start at the outside and work your way in! How is that complex? Why is this being presented to me as a turning point in the drama! OH MY GOD WILL SHE USE THE RIGHT SPOON? Probably yes.

However, the really odious thing about “Pretty Woman” was that the story hinges on the idea that Julia Roberts deserves not to be a prostitute because she likes opera. Her friend doubtlessly finds opera dull so is therefore trash and it’s basically ok for her to stay on the streets. I mean, she probably couldn’t cope with the complexities of life as a rich person, what with all those spoons to work out. You see, it’s not that all people are equal and deserving of respect. No, the message of “Pretty Woman” is that if you like opera you should also get spoons and bubble baths and big shoes and white gloves and the hairless, expressionless Richard Gere and if you don’t dig opera then frankly you should just be grateful for whatever venereal disease eventually kills you off.

Much to my surprise “Dirty Dancing” is also entirely focused around class. I suppose this is because the structure of a romance requires the central love affair to be placed in peril by some larger social conflict. Warring family’s, warring nations and previous marriages had all been done to death and race and religion tend to stop things being light and frothy. Never-the-less these films do give the impression of Americans as utterly obsessed with class in a way they tend to loudly deny at any given opportunity.

Anyway, more surprising was that I found “Dirty Dancing” was not only frighteningly engrossing but at times rather beautifully shot. The best surprise was that the bulk of the soundtrack was not that song or anything like it, but a fantastic bunch of tracks from the sixties, which apparently is when the first ten or fifteen minutes of the film are set before everyone stops bothering to pretend. Of course that song does creep in around the corners, like someone passing wind at a wedding, the queasy sense of it occasionally snaking into the sound mix every time Patrick Swayze shakes his locks and looks moodily into the middle distance. However for the most part I forgot it was there in much the same way one forgets about Richard Gere when he’s on camera.

What I really liked about “Dirty Dancing” though was the way in which it was quite unable to control its own weirdness. Oh sure, on the surface its a frothy piece of nonsense about a child with a big nose falling in love with a man in his late thirties who can dance on his knees and is oddly massive compared with everyone else in the world. But this is a film with a disturbed id screaming beneath it. A film in which, rarely for a movie romance, it is apparent that almost every character is almost constantly turned on, or, in the case of the mother, stoned off her tits. Is it just me or is her husband medicating her into a stupor? Then there’s the odd threesome dance sequence where what should be an ordinary piece of teacher/student romance is made weird by having his skeletal ex-girlfriend hanging about, her eyes fixed on him, her hands glued to the hips of the new girl. Or the bit when the sisters make up and hug in a way which frankly just feels inappropriate. It’s like David Lynch’s remake of Greece.

What is particularly enjoyable is the sense it shares with “Casablanca” that the whole shoddy edifice is basically being made up as they go along. Both films are full of edits that work despite not really working, edits of salvation which were surely a desperate attempt to remove stuff that really didn’t work. Both are riddled with subplots that are astonishingly dark and yet are treated with a carefree shrug. Best of all, both films are built around romantic figures who, by the standards of film, frankly aren’t all that pretty. Humphrey Bogart is one of my favourite actors of all time and he has a screen presence that remains utterly mesmerising, but he still looks like a crumpled paper bag in a hat. Jennifer Grey spends most of “Dirty Dancing” looking disquietingly like Snoopy and Woodstock’s lovechild and yet in both films it is their emotional life that forms the heart of the narrative. Both carry a romantic charge that just shows up the Gere/Roberts coupling as the freakish plasticised nightmare that it is.

Best of all, despite an avowedly ludicrous ending “Dirty Dancing” doesn’t leave you with the sense that the characters are embarking on any sort of happily-ever-after. Again, like “Casablanca” and unlike “Pretty Woman”, this is romance as a passing, fleeting spark that disappears but remains forever in the memory.

I still hate the song though.

I’m not sure if I caught it in the autumnal draft of Cheltenham or earlier during a weekend crawling around London but the source is immaterial – I’m ill. Properly head spinning, bone aching, sleep all day, fry-an-egg-on-my-forehead ill.

Or least I was yesterday. I’m feeling slightly more compos mentis after clocking up an impressive fifteen or sixteen hours sleep. I’m still exhausted but at least I’m now slipping into the enjoyable part of flu where the discomfort is offset but the excuse for sitting around and doing nothing but watch the classics. That’s right, to “aid recovery” I’m spending a day in the company of the genius of Yuri Gadyukin.

My afternoon is laid out before me on a pair of battered and deeply treasured VHS cassettes which date back to the late 1980s when my Mum taped two of Gadyukin’s films which were screening very late one night on BBC 2. The first tape is incorrectly labelled “Godot” though this is in fact “Waiting…” Gadyukin’s retelling of Beckett’s play which according to Wikipedia was done without the author’s permission. It’s an astonishing film and it’s hard to believe that it was made in the 1950s. Sadly not only has this tape not worn well over the years, but, thanks to my Dad, the last twenty minutes or so were lost to the 1989 World Snooker Final. One minute the heroes are arguing over the bottle in the wreckage of the factory the next, with a ghastly flicker, Steve Davis is licking his lips like a pensive fox and preparing to pot. It is a narrative leap that the Master might have enjoyed and, if I’m honest, I think I find it strangely comforting that I’ve never actually seen the end of this sublimely dark and disconcerting film.

Next though is my favourite, thankfully far better preserved. “The October Wedding”, Gadyukin’s other completed “London” film has to be the overlooked classic of British cinema. Moving away from the narrative experimentation of “Waiting…” towards what I suppose is a sort of “kitchen sink” drama, Gadyukin never the less loses none of the poetry or compositional elegance that marks out his previous film. Ian Hendry just eats up the screen as Kirk and if Molly Hewitt is at times a bit irritating with her wide-eyed broken doll schtick, I can forgive her anything for the scene on the beach. The doomy sea side resort where the two families gather for titular wedding has to be one of the most beautifully decrepit film locations in history and the whole film is such a powerful conjuration of late 50’s Britain that it seems astonishing that it was made by a Russian.

The chance to watch these two films yet again and not feel guilty about it is a rare treat. As Kirk himself says “It’s a sickness, but I welcome it. Dear God, do I welcome it.”

Now get back to work.

x

This is a personal opinion. It was not physically possible for me to attend every session and I spoke to many people who had spent their time differently and come away with a very different attitude. However it was a delight for me to start Tuesday morning listening to Tessa Ross talking about her continuing work with Film 4. At last, someone who doesn’t see a challenge as a financial faux pas.

Film 4, like the Film Council and the BBC is one of the great bastions of British cultural life and our film industry. You can spit out your tea all you like, I mean that. Twenty-seven years after the birth of Chanel 4 it is still at the forefront of innovation and quality in film and television drama and is one of the key sources of support and funding for creative minds working with moving pictures.

Consequently most people seem to either quietly resent or openly hate it.

This is a typically English response and though perverse it is not completely bad. There is a defiance and clarity forged by opposition to opposition which often marks out the truly great work that the organisation has supported. Tessa Ross was not only the first person I heard at Cheltenham who had courage to encourage writers to not simply bow to the demands of the market, but she also scythed down a disgruntled voice from the floor which began to lead the discussion down the tired old path of “well why don’t you support me…?”

She sees her remit in clear terms. To use money from future TV broadcasts to support the work that the market does not yet know it wants. To do this effectively she can only back projects that mean something to her and her team. She defended her right to make mistakes and pointed out the depth of support for the projects she has believed in (like fourteen years trying to get “The Devil’s Whore” on television).

In recent years the Film 4 reel speaks for itself, however the terrifying truth is that the astonishing success of “Slumdog Millionaire” rather than opening the door, has merely prevented it from slamming shut.

Cheltenham in autumn is a very beautiful place but stood at the bar of the screenwriter’s festival it is easy to hear that winter is coming and it is going to be long and very cold. Come April we could well have a Tory government again, one that already is making contemptuous mutterings about the BBC and its license fee monopoly. With the UKFC starting to restructure and C4 still struggling to secure a place in the multi-platform digital future, things could get very cold indeed.

People love to knock these institutions but we will miss them if they go… wrap up warm.

Through nothing but my own stupidity and laziness I misread the registration information I was emailed and consequently missed my slots, though in the end I was not too upset at having made this mistake. A tweak to the format, presumably to allow more people to pass through the room, meant that rather than having a chance to talk to all the producers and agents who had turned up, each writer was instead given three five minute appointments. I think it might have been possible to express a preference for who you wanted to grab in these slots but in my overly relaxed manner I had left my meetings to chance, or at least to festival to organise as they saw fit. This turned out to be a mistake since I had been given two appointments with different people from the same organisation. Granted it was shoddy of me not to turn up on time but this doubling up of a supposedly precious meeting does make me wonder if I’m the only person not quite putting my heart into it…

However I tagged along with my brother and sat in the corner whilst he flitted bee like between his three appointed blooms. It was a grim spectator sport. Such events must be complicated to manage, especially when a proportion of your participants are, like me, idiots who can’t read a time printed in bold letters. I’m sure that many of those who did remember to take their seats will have arrived with clear goals and gained much. However as I watched the writers nervously jitter their introductions as they stumbled into their seats I couldn’t help but daydream about an event run in the opposite direction.

Of course it could never work. The producers in the room were a good handful of some of the best in the country. Even putting aside their own often impressive creative credentials, they were all gatekeepers of real money to make real films. This puts them in a massive minority compared to the row upon row of unfunded, unrepresented writers, drying their nervous palms on the backs of their legs. However it is a truth not universally acknowledged that the real strength of a creative industry lies in the creative minds that fuel it. Without the thoughts in the heads of the nervous and hopeful this industry has no future. So I sit in the autumn sunshine and daydream for a moment about an Alice Through The Looking Glass session in which it is the writers who remain seated whilst the agents and producers scrape back the chairs to sit and smile and repeat their over practised pitch. A bell rings and my brother the march hare shouts “Move Round! Move Round!” and onwards we roll…

If any theme emerged from the first day of the festival then it was that the market for screenplays is exceptionally hard and as a result we should all do our level best to please it. The overall impression was not unlike sharing a bench with a massive brass minotaur, who, whilst clearly trying to engage with the romance of the moment was never the less making clear his plans for later… He means well, he even likes you, but don’t be confused, the night is only ever going to end one way.

Things are tough, though I do think that too many speakers today were confusing the problems of the industry with the problems of writers. Looking around at my fellow delegates I can only feel that, great as this event is, it is over subscribed when you think about the number of paid writing jobs going in film and television. The real reason is not that we’re all writing the wrong thing for the current economy, nor that too few writers read the trade press and know the twists and turns of industry opinion. It’s just that mostly what we write isn’t good enough.

Three of these were the usual suggestions of places on the internet we could all visit in order to see naked photographs of people I presume someone else has heard of. However one was a link to this website about pianos: http://www.en.Grand-Pianos.org/ and don’t worry those of you reading this at work or not wishing to pollute your browser history with filth, that genuinely is just a website about pianos.

Normal spam is irritating but I can roughly understand the logic that it tends to advertise those under-the-counter services (porn, erectile drugs, knocked off prescription happy pills) that many people want but wouldn’t want to ask for. How has the pianoforte fallen among such company?

Meanwhile, team Blaine is finally ready to return to the 1940’s…

As usual the urges of the ticking clock had led us to go galloping off half cocked in pursuit of an idea that seemed less worth the effort with every mile of island we covered in our search for convincing Nazi uniforms.

Feeling rather beaten, Laura took Chris and I to lunch at a great little restaurant on the beach near St.Ouens where he had this amazing fish and I had steak. Sat in the sunshine we finally drew breath and relaxed, afterall, if we were going to fail horribly then we might as well enjoy the process.

Laura started talking about what her family had told her of life on Jersey under the German occupation and finally some useful thoughts began to flow between the three of us…

Chris Blaine and actress and stand-up Jessica Fostekew.

Actress Rebecca Eve and Alex Mayover who has been our anchor in every 48hr challenge we've taken part in. He can do anything, and regularly does.

Me and Laura Brocken, Jersey based filmmaker who's short film "Tell", which she made with Chris last year at the festival, would later win this year's Islander's prize of £2,000.

We failed to achieve this.

WMD is a British political thriller written and directed by David Holroyd set during the lead up to the Iraq war. It is being released this Thursday simultaneously via iTunes and theatrically at the Shortwave Cinema in Bermondsey, where David and producer Christine Hartland will be giving a Q&A.

I’ve not seen it yet but it’s high time someone in this country made use of the natural drama of the past decade and the thought of a film that’s both dramatically compelling and politically turned on leaves me itching to get hold of it. Tasty tasty tasty.

Rob Morgan shakes hands with a local recruit to his team, Ruben Martins Silva, who will later play a Nazi for me.

Alex Jacob and his team, Sean Mackay, Nathalie Pownall and islander Patrick Casey start to wonder what the hell they're going to do with the title "Dashes Of Yellow"...

Filmmaker's Michael Pearce and Emma Rozanski team up for a comedy called "Occupied"... despite having never met before, having only a lumix digital stills camera and a cast of one, they will make a brilliant film and finish three hours before the deadline.

Michael Pearce and Katie McCullough

Rebecca Eve & Sean Mackay

Gaelle Denis

Last year's winner of the festival's top prize, filmmaker Michael Pearce.

After much planning and other people’s hard work the 2nd Branchage Jersey International Film Festival exploded across the channel islands last week. As part of the parade of brilliance Vauxhall kindly sponsored a 48hr Road Movie Challenge, an addition to the festival that my brother and I had more than a hand in.

Unlike other such events this challenge was open by invitation only to five teams. The results are five really quite brilliant six minute films, all of which show just quite how much can be achieved in two days if you know what you’re about. More about those later, in the meantime, here’s us making ours…



In these pictures are my brother Chris, our friend and regular conspirator the writer Ms.Katie McCullough and stepping into our tent at the end there the immaculate Mr.Phil Clyde-Smith who acted as co-ordinator or Games Master for the Vauxhall 48hr Road-Movie Challenge.

Dry and so laid back as to be almost horizontal, Phil was the perfect man in the middle. Rather than adding to the ever present sense of chaos and disaster that follows you when you’re trying to make a film in two days flat, Phil was the calm at the eye of the storm, always ready to suggest a location or dig out an extra pair of hands to help us all.

More photographic stories of our recent Jersey based antics will shuffle forth over the next few days… and soon the finished films will also be coming to a computer screen near you.

Watch Death to the Tinman in Entertainment  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

“We had so much fun at this summer’s Reblog This Concert in New York City that we’ve decided to take the party to the West Coast. In five weeks we’ll descend upon Los Angeles to showcase some of our community’s amazing creative work that inspires us every day.

We’ll announce the films we’d like to feature a few days before the big night, which will include filmmaker interviews, a panel of industry insiders, and of course, a big party after to celebrate with the Tumblr community that has brought all of this magic to life.”

Because there’s no prize money, no award even, little in the way of kudos or bragging rights I imagine a lot of people are going to treat this with suspicion. Typical of all tumblr stuff it’s also shockingly easy to use – there’s no other rules and no entry form beyond a webpage where you enter your tumblr ID, an email and a web address where the film is.

No rules, no named list of judges, no tech specs… dear me, what are they playing at? It’s like they just want to make it simple… it’s like they just want to share good films with people…

Obviously it’s no news that filmmakers can use the internet to promote their work but I have to say that this website to promote Jane Campion’s John Keats film “Bright Star” is one of the nicest I’ve yet come across. As is only fitting to such a romantic subject, the site eschews modernity for a hand written, pencil and paper vibe which is pleasingly tactile for something merely virtual. Have a look http://www.brightstarthemovie.com.

I can understand why people worry about the state of the “British” film industry. For a whole myriad of reasons I love living in this country and I love making films and I love the idea of continuing to do both for the foreseeable future. Consequently it is my dearest wish to live in a place where it is not only possible for me to make the films I want to make but where my work fits into a larger and creatively alive film culture. However, further than that I don’t think I give flying fuck whether a film is “british” or not.

All the way through the debate upon which I’m no longer commenting, there has been a quieter argument about what defines a film as “British”. For tax reasons the government and the Film Council operate a clear set of guidelines of how a film qualifies for this distinction. However these include a bunch of successful films like “Harry Potter” and “Mamma Mia” and that, it seems, won’t do.

To an extent I can understand why. These films, funded by the big American studios, feel American. Even though both the examples I’ve given are adapted from the work of British authors (the Book for the original stage version of Mamma Mia is by Catherine Johnson, I’m not claiming Abba though I doubt the makers of my matches would have any qualms about that) and have largely British casts, these and many of the other bigger names on the British list feel transatlantic. They are not us but us sold back to us.

However, “Harry Potter” may not be an accurate representation of boarding school, it may be that the distortions inherent in all story telling are now nuanced for America not Britain, but does this really mean we’re sinking below the waves? I feel quite secure in my cultural identity and a collection of glossy films about a wizard don’t feel like a threat to that. I accept that even though it makes no real sense, national pride is powerful and important but I would rather live in a country where these films were being made than one where they were not.

So the more persuasive argument I can see for grumbling Nationalism is that films funded on American money produce profits in dollars. “Harry Potter” may be a triumph of British imagination, British craftsmanship and British performance but the real magic has been performed by American accountants who build these astonishingly successful films here yet keep the lion’s share of the money on the other side of the sea.

However, who does this really affect? It’s not the cream of British actors who regularly take the best roles. Nor is it our best technicians who are in high demand. Neither is it the masses of eager runners and assistants who get to work on projects vastly bigger than anything they’d otherwise get a chance to see. Nor is it actually british writers, directors or producers because there are plenty involved in all of these qualifying British films. They’re not ’special’ either, Potter’s David Yates is a classic example of a man working his way through the ranks of British TV and film and reaching a position of fantastic success through dedication and hard work.

No, it strikes me that the only people who really feel like they’re suffering are those who secretly don’t think they’re good enough to get a job. I think Mr.Yates has the rest of the Potters sewn up but big American films will continue to be made here after that. They underpin our industry, they mean we have an industry rather than a back room. They bring opportunity, resources and experience. The only thing that stops you from getting a piece of that is yourself.

What matters is that a diverse list of good and great films are regularly in production on this island, after that it’s all details and the sort of bogus nationalism that we really should have grown out of when the Empire splintered into matches.

“Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos, from your browser, phone, desktop, email, or wherever you happen to be. You can customize everything, from colors, to your theme’s HTML.”

In effect Tumblr is just another blog cum social network but it’s super simple interface and superb ability to easily lift content from the rest of the internet (as well as your own uploads) make it the perfect online scrapbook. Obviously if you wish you can just use it to post pictures of “Panic! At The Disco” and at the moment most of tumblr seems to consist of fashionista photography of girls in fields generally not wearing much and often holding old school 35mm stills cameras or of psychedelic kittens eating cake and macaroons.

However, Chris and I have been using it for a few months now as an online look book for our most developed feature film script. In putting together a package to accompany the script we took the not unusual step of gathering a couple of actors and taking some stills that we thought represented some of the key visuals from the story. We were greatly helped when bringing this photo shoot together by being able to send our stylist, make-up artist, photographer and cast to our Tumblog, where they could simply browse through (and add to) a collection of similar images.

Look books are nothing new but having one so easily accessible online and so easy to put together and share is proving very useful, especially as the service is entirely free. And of course it can include music and movies as well as text and pictures.

There is an added benefit too, in that Tumblr is a social networking/micro blogging site in the vein of Twitter (and yes you can tweet your tumbles…) As a result we’re hoping that we’re already starting to reach out to our prospective audience. Without us doing anything our tumblog has already gathered a handful of followers, who check our feed simply because they like our style. They have no idea that one day it’ll be a film, but when they find out they’ll hopefully be desperate to see it…

“SoundCloud lets you move music fast & easy. The platform takes the daily hassle out of receiving, sending & distributing music for artists, record labels & other music professionals.”

And just to prove its up to the moment ecommunity credentials, the site then better explains its self in a flash video voiced by one of the early users. However, to get to brass taks its basically just an online storage depot designed for users to upload audio files. It then offers two ways of sharing these files, one via a social-network friendly embeddable player of the sort myspace or ilike users will be well familiar with, the other via streaming direct from the soundcloud site. This last option is what caught my eye because it enables you to send a file privately to a specific email address, that user can then not only log in and either stream or download the file (in either full quality or as an mp3) but they can leave comments on the track directly in a timeline.

SoundCloud: The Tour from SoundCloud on Vimeo.

This instantly struck me as a massive boon for working remotely with a composer or sound designer. It’s long been possible for the composers that Chris and I work with to send us tracks either via email or ftp. This generally means waiting for the file to download, listening through and then calling or emailing back with notes, usually emailing if Chris and I aren’t in the same place. A three way conversation of this kind is unwieldy and prone to confusion.

With Soundcloud there’s only one upload. The listeners just log into the site and track plays instantly. Then we can mark the exact points we either love or doubt and those comments don’t get lost in a slew of emails. Working this way can, if necessary, much more easily accommodate the sharing of mixes and ideas between a wider group (producers, execs, other musicians) as well as working perfectly as portal for delivering high quality final mixes.

Chris and I tested the system on a recent job we did where, whilst Chris did the final fx work, I ended up doing the soundmixes for a series of twelve short videos we’d shot for a charity. I was able to mix the films and upload them, so he could quickly listen through and give me feedback linked to the specific moments he wasn’t happy with. In a fraught 48hrs with a deadline upon us and two machines eating up render time, overall I thought this was a great way of working… though there were problems.

Firstly, one of the big bonuses for me is that having streaming audio can effectively cut out half the download time. However to be honest there is only so much you can do without hearing the track in sync with the pictures and obviously at the moment this means downloading the mix and syncing it up.

The site is also surprisingly expensive in a world increasingly used to seeing everything available for free. There is a free entry-level stage but it doesn’t offer much. The service is then in three price bands raging from €9 a month for 15 uploads to a rather off putting €59 a month for a limitless upload service. Since Chris and I were working on twelve different films I rapidly had to purchase the middle option of €29 a month for 50 uploads which if I’m honest was expensive for the value I got for this one particular project.

Also, a minor but important thing, the player on the site doesn’t respond to the editor’s universal play/pause spacebar… so swapping between editing software and Soundcloud left me endlessly missing the point I wanted to comment about by hitting the spacebar to pause the track only to find I had instead just jumped to a different part of the page. Like I say it was a fraught 48hr session and with no sleep this became quite a problem.

Never the less I remain a fan of this service which does seem like it can really enable easy and effective communication between a composer and the many interested parties that exist in a film project.

I remember, at primary school, a day of lessons was once put aside so that the whole school could witness the demonstration of a new educational computer device which had recently been purchased at the cost of thousands. It had been on Blue Peter the previous week and almost as much fuss was made as when the Queen Mother drove past our school. The device was called “The Turtle” and it was hailed as “a robot artist” that would teach us maths, computer science and probably art. Naturally I’d seen Blue Peter and so I knew that it wasn’t going to quite live up to my ideal of a robot turtle artist, which would be green and eight foot tall and have a jet pack and lazer eyes with which it could carve statues out of meteorites. However even though I lowered my expectations to what I thought was a realistic level, life still managed to let me down.

The Turtle was a clear plastic dome containing a few bits of circuit board, all mounted on a little car. Through the middle of the dome was placed a big red biro. Using the BBC Micro Computer that the school bought at the same time, an expert could control the Turtle by programming in Basic code and hitting return. It only took about five to ten minutes to get the Turtle to slowly draw a straight line using the biro. I think that with skilled programming it could even do curved lines.

The scars of childhood disappointment run deep. We spent an entire week making little union jack flags to wave as the Queen Mother drove past and the three slick black limos didn’t even slow down; I’ve been staunchly anti-monarchy and suspicious of new technology ever since I was seven.

However the other day I shared a packet of “Lemon Thyme Roast Chicken” crisps with Chris and our friend Zee and astonishingly they tasted exactly like eating a lemony roast chicken. With the slightly pathetic wonderment of savages round a fire, the three of us stopped drinking beer and for a short while just ate crisps, nodding to each other “wow, they, they don’t taste like roast chicken flavour crisps, they really do taste like chicken.”

Of course most meat that’s neither beef or bacon basically tastes like chicken, so perhaps they’ve finally cracked this culinary quiz by making the crisps out of snake or frogs legs or something. That doesn’t matter, what surprises the technological cynic in me is that finally that sixties and seventies sci-fi staple the ‘food pill’ is surely nearly upon us. All they need do now is bring out ‘roast potato’ flavour crisps and you could have an entire Sunday lunch in a crunchy bag. We have wasabi peas – why not lemonandthymechicken peas?

This is just one of an ever growing number of things that are finally getting close to being as good as we used to imagine they would be. Like handheld video-communicators or as they ended up being called “iPhones”, or perhaps most notably the internet. For years gits jumped up and down pointing at the internet and getting excited, even though it was just teletext with tits. But finally it’s changed and is now nearly almost as good as I thought it was going to be before it let me down.

In a mere four months time we breach yet another decade and finally it’ll start sounding right to pronounce the date as twenty-ten rather than two thousand and ten. In honour of this almost entirely meaningless event, which never the less does gently mark our transformation into true citizens of the 21st century, I thought I’d just mention a few of the technologies that Chris and I now use (or plan to use) to make films.

For those of you (me) who care about this it’s now down to 99 and a half pages and has taken us about twenty actual days to write. Now I’m too wired to sleep…