ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

9 years, 5 months ago - Andrew Morgan

Hi Ross - I've got a few stories - you can get in touch at survivorfilms@protonmail.com or alternatively on 07724 522551

Best,

Andrew.

9 years, 5 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin

These should almost certainly be anonymous - it's a small industry and nothing is going to hose your future in it like bad-mouthing someone in a durable medium!

9 years, 5 months ago - patrick astwood

Ditto Paddy. The 'Worst shoots you've ever worked on' is a recipe for disaster. You might want to modify that title Ross. Good luck with your blog.

9 years, 4 months ago - Alève Mine

Ross did you get my message in this regard? I haven't heard back from you.

9 years, 4 months ago - Alève Mine

Ross, man, you don't make sense.

9 years, 4 months ago - Alève Mine

(Assuming you're all right)

9 years, 4 months ago - Dan Selakovich

Aleve, you might want to be extremely careful here and read Paddy's post. I wrote an article on editing, and included some very common mistakes that directors make. I got a call from a director I haven't seen in more than a decade asking "Is this me you're talking about here?" I honestly hadn't thought of this guy in years, and certainly didn't use him as an example--not consciously, anyway. It's a small industry. Really small. Even if you're not talking about someone specifically, they might wrongly assume you are.

9 years, 4 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin

Indeed, I'll tell any number of true tales face to face that I would never commit to an email/forum/blog!

9 years, 4 months ago - Alève Mine

Dan, Paddy, thanks. There was nothing to worry about in my story to respond to the "How you got into the industry" question: here it is for you guys:

So, this singer songwriter is a microengineering graduate and a martial arts freak feeling underchallenged. An incident during training leads, two years later, to surgery near the vocal chords. The sheer fear and unavoidability of this operation is followed by a few months of coping, where music is not mentioned, a couple of suitcases full of books and articles about physics, medicine and philosophy are read – yes, suitcases can be read - and any moment away from that activity is populated by taking pictures – a good number of them each single minute.

Learning while alive and documenting the lived.

Rehabilitation is greatly helped by training with a group of taiji people from Hong Kong met at a show where the act had performed pieces in Chinese and the group had performed taiji two years earlier. The act was asked to join their training, but was never on the right day in the area where the trainings took place - until that time. Aiming for a next goal in the business after this phase, a CD is given to a local artist and businessman, the singer of Yello, who declares he'll produce this act's show. A small step here, a smaller step there, this drags on for two years. The music being reserved for this show, time needs to be spent in other productive ways. Based on the things learned while reading the suitcases, a scifi novella gets written and published, and art is successfully exhibited, developed from the pictures taken and further works, in a solo show at the birth place of the dadaist movement. After these are done, one more small step for the music show, then again nothing. Readers say they want to see the novella as a movie.

Meanwhile, the building where the act lives is set to get destroyed. Probably too low-priced a housing to remain standing in the Zurich area. Looking for another flat, the act learns that as an artist, the probability of getting a flat is... zero. Rationally, the act packs a suitcase, puts all other belongings in storage and heads off to London, where people really speak English, to look for a screenwriter for the scifi adaptation and get a music video done, maybe some more airplay and gigs. The Hollywood of Europe for all you can tell. Having made of taiji a habit, the act packs a sword and trains - in a park once, with any risks involved in displaying a sword in public in London, and - mainly in staircases, but also locker rooms, breakfast areas and toilets of the many hostels that are home for the most part of subsequent two years.

Finding a sceenwriter without having prior whatever turns out to be too hard, so the act trains in screenwriting at NFTS where the first draft of the scifi feature is born. The act performs at The Dublin Castle, gets airplay with a couple of local radio stations. The music video project pre-exists this in the form of a shotsheet. To fund both films, the act goes to Cannes. While there, the act is informed that the director of American History X wants to direct the music video. That's pitched and it turns out that funding only happens to features, no matter how famous the director. Staying in an isolated location that summer, the act writes the action feature that phagocytizes the music video. As suggested by the taiji master as a development while in that location, the act learns more about the internal aspects of taiji. Which leads to an idea for a fantasy series, which gets immediately written down.

Back in civilisation, it turns out that funding a famous director requires getting an agent, and getting an agent requires prior whatever. The following Berlinale uses up any resources left. It takes a month to figure out how to get back to Switzerland, ending two years on the road. There, the act gets trained in method acting and is now, after two years of presence back in Zurich again, at the fifth festival selection as a writer-director-actor-editor-composer, and just about beginning to feel the presence of some community.

The main takeaway? Things tend to take two years each.

Erratum: the publishing of the scifi novella only happened some time after I left Zurich. Incidentally, two years after the diversification outside of music became a fact.