Breaking in to your own blog due to memory failure

Got back into the blog at last! New post coming soon!

What, exactly, is there to be scared of?

Around FilmLab Towers there’s a lot of hesitation and questioning. It’s like when you stand on the edge of the big high board with your toes out in space and suddenly go “am I sure I want to do this?” My role at this moment is to be the friend down by the poolside shouting “c’mon you perfumed ponce! Jump!” 

But it’s easy to jump when you have a crafted finished thing that for good or bad you feel ready to put your name to as it is sent out into the world. When the story and project is still unfolding the fear is that the direct light of interrogation might make it all wither away, or dry up. So trepidation is not only natural but sensible.

When my first daughter was born, my wife and I didn’t take her outside of the house for 10 days, we were so scared of what might happen to her when she went out in fresh air. When we finally went outside we wrapped her in so many layers and then then buried her under so many blankets in her pram so that it was a minor miracle she didn’t overheat before we went out the front door. We thought her survival depended on us.

The truth was of course that she had more resources than we allowed ourselves to think. Our own anxiety over-emphasised her frailty. She was stronger than we gave her credit for and we could take more risks with her than we could have dreamed of, risks that would not in fact have been risks at all. Churchill said “we have nothing to fear but fear itself”. Feels funny to be Churchillian at a time like this, in a cause like this, but hey, it’s lo-budget, it’s a different world, where even Winston Churchill trudges alongside us.

Sunday morning wake-up list

As usual it feels strange to be coming to work on a Sunday morning, but that too is part of the intention of the Lab, to take us all to a diferent place, a place where while the world is relaxing we are working away, making something in secret to show later.

Lots to do now. Get the stories into shape, practice recounting them, thinking about how the presentation will be structured, starting to get our thoughts together for the three-dimensional space, finishing the producers’ 90-second lab films. Looking ahead to the longer development process which is to come. Making a Development plan. No time to sit around and fulminate, time to get on, get it done and then look back  at what we have. And trust ourselves and our intuitive choices now.

Incubation over

So now we move from a period of wide open contemplation of our projects to a more concentrated push in order to see where they have got to. Today everyone seemed a little subdued and tired to start with, and we definitely missed the ebullient prescence of Eddie, who was at home resting his thick head. The tenors were thin without him. But he’s back tomorrow, we hope. And as if they knew how we now have to be practical and straightforward, the caterers laid on pie and chips for lunch.

I did make a serious point today which I want to re-emphasise for the labbers. Development is only 50% about getting the story out. The only half is how the team organises itself and works together. Projects that run out of steam – and that’s how 90% of development projects fail, because they run out of steam, not because they collapse suddenly – run out of steam because the relationships between the team members are not functioning properly, so over the remaining days of the FilmLab workshop I am going to be looking at not just what the projects are about but how the teams work together, and encourage the labbers to think about this too. Sometimes reorganising how you work together drives the project forward faster than any individual piece of insight into the story.

There are some new collaborators amongst the labbers who should talk to each other about how they are actually going to work together, rather than expect a perfect working relationship through development to just happen by magic or osmosis. There are other working relationships that have been going on for a long time that might benefit from a re-consideration too. Not that anything will neccessarily change, though it might.

For nearly everyone at the Lab here the move to a lo-budget feature is a new step, and a step up. For them, I question the assumption that all you have to do is do what you did previously and it will work out OK, if that is what anyone is thinking. Don’t be too sure about that. You are going to be writing  longform screenplays and that too for most  is a new or nearly new experience, so everything is up for grabs: story, development processes, working methods. For certain you are going to use new development techniques, explore new kinds of development documents, think about approaching your stories in a different way and find new ways of developing. I know that for sure because I’m the one who is going to be overseeing you while you do it.

So let’s think about our creative relationships and how they work too while we’re about it. To give ourselves and our films the best possible chance.

The Australian coffee nightmare

One other thing. Why do Australians – and Kiwis – have different names for their coffees than anywhere else in the English speaking world? Normally the differences between Australian and other English gives me pleasure. You have great words like “stoush” and “hoon” and “larrikin” and “bogun” here that have been lost elsewhere (or perhaps never were elsewhere), plus your politicians insult each other with much more vigour and colour than those in the UK and France. But I draw the line at this extraordinary coffee nomenclature. When I ask for a white coffee – which isn’t confusing really is it (?) – I’m always asked “flat white?” What? Flat white as opposed to “undulating white”, “hilly white”, “fizzy white”?

When did someone in Australia decide to ditch the universally understood term for coffee with milk in it in favour of a description which not only bore no relation to the actual state of the coffee you were ordering but also was actually inaccurate in its description? And why? Australian language is usually strong, direct and accurately descriptive, but somewhere along the line some effete barista has hijacked your coffee patois for mysterious purposes.

I think I’d better stop now. The caffeine rush is wearing off…

Where have all the bloggers gone?

Quiet times on the lab blogs these last couple of days – come on guys, don’t ease off now! But I’m guilty too. Went out for lunch at the Star of Greece which was excellent. We dined well as the storm lashed at the windows, it felt like we were in a ship at sea. Then the rain dropped away as we walked down onto the beach and the wind lashed us and the foam spumed around our feet. Just terrific, and particularly impressive weather from a city where it never rains except, apparently, every time I come here, when it gives a great impression of Manchester. What with the rain and Eddie in his hoodie lurching about the place like Liam Gallager, I am feeling nostalgic for my youth.  

Then we stayed up until the early hours discussing the projects and the teams and thinking some stuff through. Real hard work coming up this week, no excuses and no avoiding hitting at the big questions head on. It’s now my job to make everyone participating in this lab work harder than they already have been in order to progress faster than they have been, I’m going to start introducing hard deadlines intothe process too. And I’m going to be more direct on the stories too, kicking them on. A lot of the projects are just on the cusp of making big movements, so I hope we can get that done this week.

There’s no success like failure

Presentations today of where the projects are at and what the labbers are investigating. Just great. Ashlee has done no writing at all yet her story is forming up at a rate of knots. Matt and Julie are really turning over the complex questions that Shut Up Little Man throws up and refining their approach in a way that makes their film soind more and more fascinating. Matt V was a star today, really coming on strong with his character work and authoritative, unfussy presentation. Eddie and Hugh are a real creative team now and Eddie has a kind of relaxed excitement about the work that I think means he’ll have the stamina to chase the story all the way down the line, and it will be a hard chase. Sarah does her presentation on Sayurday but she’s already looking the part today.

But for me the presentation which stood out was Matt, Bryan and Sophie’s. The mood in the room was that it wasn’t an entirely successful film, but for me it succeeded absolutely in what it was devised to do, which was clarify the central issues the project needs to focus on. For me at least, the clouds of complexity that have surrounded this project for two weeks have been blown away. They only have one simple question to answer, it’s a hard question to answer, but it’s not hard to understand. If they answer it successfully the film will work, if they don’t, it won’t. So that means that if Matt, Sophie and Bryan work hard and are smart they’ll get there. They are both of those things, so now, from my perspective, it’s just a matter of time. The three of them are exhausted and feel down tonight, but that will pass.

All of the presentations were terrific, but Matt, Sophie and Bryan made the biggest leap forward. By falling off the log.

O well…..

Saw a lo-budget film that was dull and unambitious, which proved nothing except that it’s possible to make a crummy film at any budget level. The problem with lo-bo is that if the film isn’t good in script or performance there’s no compensatory consolation – no big effects, no great score, no production design – to ease the pain. There’s just no safety net. And the scary thing is that when you think you’ve made it past all the pitfalls of lo-bo the worst one is waiting for you, the fact that with all your efforts to successfully overcome the practical problems you end up making a technically successful but fundamentally dull film.

What both Microwave films show is how hard it is to do what we’re looking to do at FilmLab, but I think we’re starting with a higher level of projects and, certainly, talent. Can South Australia make better lo-budget films than London? The answer is Yes, I know that already.

Presentations

Paddy, Peter and myself have decided to make a presentation of our own. We’re not sure if we can get the technical resources together in time to have it finished by tomorrow, but with the addition of a few beers tonight maybe our creative juices will really get flowing. Wheneve it’s finished, it won’t be a patch on the labbers work, but it will most definitely obey the low-budget ethos of being lo-tech and probably offensive to some.

I brought up the figure of the Antagonist today, not before time I think ,and I hope it helped to clear some of the fog – and fear of jumping blind – that I think is around at the minute. I am really looking forward to the presentations tomorrow: I think they will come across a bit like despatches from the front lines, a bit shot up and adrenalin-filled but exciting.  Once we have a story, however rough, that shakes us from the inside then we have something to work with. Be brave guys, don’t chicken it now, after all you’ve done!

Unfocused is wrong

A lot of confusion and uncertainty around at the minute, which means that we are exactly where we should be.

Look at it this way, all of the projects are in the process of changing their identity. Moving from initial idea to a more complex, worked through place where they will be more robust and stronger. They won’t quite stand on their own two feet this week, but they will certainly be trying to stand up. This process involves falling over, picking yourself up and falling over again. To a baby, the act of standing up is defined, initially at least, as the thing you do when you’ve learned how not to fall over.

So at first, it’s tentative. And inbetween your losing your old identity and knowing your new identity there is a transitional phase where you don’t know who the hell you are. From the inside you call this confusion and doubt, from the outside you call it creative flux.

Or think of butterflies. When they go from caterpillar to butterfly in the chrysalis stage, they don’t slowly evolve from caterpillar into butterfly in a neat way, the caterpillar degenerates into a sticky goo from which reconstitutes the extraordinary shape of the butterfly. So that’s where you are today labbers, in the sticky mess that is the natural phase of the evolution of beauty. So roll around in the mess and enjoy it while you can. You’ll miss it later.