On with the Show

Been a while since my last blog post. Well, whatever.

Our film didn't win the competition it was entered into but I didn't expect to win anyway. We got some nice positive votes on the competition website, though, and I'm presently sifting through a couple of ideas for our next one. Yep, we intend to carry on. The shoot was great and our crew were a lovely, productive and efficient bunch to work with.

Next time is definitely going to be my own idea and script and longer. My own stuff is pretty far removed from the script we eventually made; I tend to go for sci fi, horror and some pitch black comedy and the two ideas I'm playing with are definitely along those lines. That stuff and they way we can express certain fears and ideas through it is what interests me the most. So on with the next film.

The feature script I recently finished has also had some nice praise from a source I respect and admire so I;m feeling pretty good about that as well. However, I need more under my belt feature-wise if I;m going to seriously think about approaching agents. One or two feature scripts are not enough, in my opinion. I need to make myself look like an attractive proposition to an agent (stop sniggering, you cheeky feckers) and being able to do more than one type of story and having more ideas developed on paper is essential. A new job is taking up my mornings but all the better. Existing in an essentially penniless state doesn't help me get on or boost my confidence one iota.

All in, a productive couple of weeks in October and early November. Good. The prospect of stagnating in a chair, wasting time on the Internet is less and less appealing.

Film Done

Well, we did it. This time last week, our short only existed on paper and now it's all done. We shot it on Tuesday with the help of a lot of brilliant people to whom I am extremely grateful. I spent the last few days editing it together and fixing some of the sound today (I have a few issues with what I did soundwise, but it's done).

So, here it is, Everything You Need from a script written by David Turner:



It looks fabulous thanks to Simon Vickery behind the lens, shooting on a Canon 7D DSLR. I'm amazed at the results we got and any flaws are down to me. It's a constant learning process. I'm also amazed that I simply decided to make a film and then went and did it. What with the new short and completing a feature screenplay recently, this his has been the most productive couple of weeks for about 10 years for me.

And I want to do nothing but make another, longer film now. Got to keep moving.

Plunge Taken.

We're shooting a one minute short film tomorrow. It's weird - I've made films of varying lengths before, fiction, documentaries, even a corporate for the Scottish Government which was to be watched by the then Minister for Education, and yet I'm more apprehensive about shooting one minute tomorrow. I guess that's me taking it seriously. But it has been a while since I've made any films. The last was in 2006 and was a mock version of those old public service films we used to get in the UK. Except that one was about zombies.

I have a great crew, a great actor and a lot of goodwill on my side. It's mine to fuck up.

Here we go again.

Filmmaking again. At last.

And so, I'm finally making a film again. Even if it only supposed to be one page long. I've finished the latest draft of my current feature screenplay and want to take advantage of the time available. I feel I've got loads of energy now I've done the draft which is now sitting with the Powers That Be.

We're entering the Four Days in August competition, being run by the chaps at Living Spirit Pictures and The London Screenwriters Festival (an event I really need to get to but the wallet disallows). The first half of the competition was about entering a one page script and the winner would be selected to be made by entrants to the second half of the competition. The theme is the riots in England a few months ago.

Still with me?

As it turns out, two scripts have been selected and we've gone for one of them (obviously). I've not made a film for quite a while and want this one to be good. Well, you should want every film you make to be good. I've teamed up with an MFA student at Screen Academy Scotland and a few other folks in the Scottish filmmaking community. We've literally no budget but will get the job done.

We're keeping a production blog and also have a Twitter feed dedicated for the film. Twitter still kind of baffles me but you have to take advantage of as much as you can these days, not that this will affect the outcome of the film or the competition but we want the film to have a presence outside of the competition. I've my own tweed feed as well, which I update even less than this blog.

We're shooting next Tuesday, most likely in Glasgow. One location, one character onscreen with no dialogue, another character offscreen with dialogue. It may be only for one minute but there is still a lot of work to do to get it up onscreen and ready for the competition deadline, Friday 21st October. I'm anxious that this goes well and am pretty nervous about it all. I just need to keep on top of it all and make sure our 60 seconds really count.

I want this ball to keep rolling and make more films after this. I've definitely sat on my arse too long in that respect.

Jobs

I have never owned a single piece of Apple tech in my life. My wife has an iPhone. She's never far from it and I see how important it is to her.

But what I do know is that I love Pixar. The proper marriage of technology and true, honest storytelling. Something the rest of Hollywood, or even the world, fails to get right time and time again.

Reading Steve Jobs commencement speech to Stanford in 2005, specifically his third story, I feel like I really need to make major changes. Losing a good friend two years ago gave me a kick and I often think of the loss of Neil and what he wasn't able to accomplish. But old lazy habits still prevail. However, Jobs' speech puts it into more concrete terms

So, Mr Jobs, thank you for Pixar.

And I will endeavour to stay hungry and foolish.

Geek Parenting Done Right

I could not let this go by and let other folks miss it. Guys of a certain age will remember the thoughts going through the minds of these kids (and I'm sure some girls too, but it always seemed to be a boy thing when I was young, so no shouting at me, ladies).



So, how cool is their dad?

Amazing. Obviously, their dad has started them with Star Wars (I resisted calling it A New Hope when I was a kid and still do to this day) and then proceeded in production order and not the order Lucas now wants us to see them in - does he not realise the power that this revelation still holds? Obviously not. Well, regardless of the prequels, we can still watch them in the order they were made and see how the story unfurled in its most effective way.

However, when The Empire Strikes Back first came out, a kid in the year above me in primary school, who had all the toys and assumed the position of biggest Star Wars fan in school (seriously, he got fucking snobby about it to other kids, like he was better than us.) saw Empire on its opening day and proceeded to tell everyone in the school dining room about all the big secrets in the movie!

Y'know, just in case...

I believe his smug words went something like, "Yeah, I saw The Empire Strikes Back and Luke Skywalker gets his hand cut off and Darth Vader is really his father and Han Solo gets frozen."

As we say in Scotland, what a bawbag. If that happened today, he'd get a proper slapping about.

I don't have kids and will always be eternally envious of other guys who get to share this moment with their kids in this way.

Still one of the greatest shock scenes in movie history.

Animatronic Kudos Deserved.

Godzilla's pal, Gorosaurus. Man in suit! Man in suit!

I just got finished watching a documentary on BBC4 about the depiction of dinosaurs throughout cinema history. And I have to say I'm pretty pissed at it.

In terms of the modern depictions mentioned, Jurassic Park was obviously the big mention. And well deserved as well as it's still brilliant. I saw it on the big screen at the weekend on re-release with a shiny new digital print and it's lost none of its thrill and wonder.

What has partially pissed me off is the cynical discussion of CGI in the documentary. Jurassic Park gets the lion's share of attention but the 1998 version of Godzilla and Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong are also brought up, mainly to slag off "Hollywood" (completely omitting to mention that 98's Godzilla was written and directed by a German) and also to have various critics appear in the usual head shots to criticise CGI saying that it has given filmmakers too much power. This is a fair argument, as any shiny new tool that brings in audiences will guarantee its overuse and dilution, even if it was as one sided as usual. However, it's not the criticism of CGI that has annoyed me, but the complete lack of any mention of the puppets involved.

Everybody who thinks visual effects in movies today automatically thinks of CGI and nothing else, never talking about people like Stan Winston or the Henson Workshop, making incredible prosthetics and animatronics that should blend seamlessly with CGI. Everything has its place on the screen, all coming together to create the ultimate illusion. An entire industry, a while slew of craftspeople and artists who work their behinds off are ignored because lazy programme writers want to go for the obvious. The T-Rex attack on the cars in Jurassic Park is a great example of the two techniques being combined for the sake of the shot. A full body animatronic T-Rex was built and is seen in its entirety in several shots (one or two shots have the puppet do one thing in the frame, leave the frame and re-enter as CG, doing what puppets cannot) and I've read that Spielberg was adamant that CG be used where animatronics would not would, not filling the screen with CG as so many people like to think. Nor did the programme makers stop to consider that Jurassic Park was the first movie of its kind to attempt to show the anatomy of dinosaurs and how they truly might have moved in a more accurate light (although, paleontology being the science it is, ideas and theories are constantly shifting). It might not have been spot on, but at least they tried.

I suppose it is true that the CG work as amazing when it blends so well with live action puppets but I get so annoyed when people generalise about VFX like this. It's lazy, it's cynical and its insulting to the people who create these creatures. A look at the work of Guillermo del Toro is a great example, particularly in Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy 2, where huge creatures are not necessarily CGI but sophisticated puppets featuring more intricate design than most high end computers would be able to render. The full bodied puppet used for the troll, Wink, is amazing. And what's more, light shines off them naturally, which must surely be the bane of a CG modeller and lighter - it's always a give away.

This even goes for virtual sets as well. In The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Star Wars Prequel trilogy, so many shots of wide environments, such as the city of Minas Tirith, Helm's Deep, the Podrace Arena or Chewbacca's home world of Kashyyk, are based around huge miniature sets that are augmented by CG. Model and puppet making are not extinct as people say and are still around. I only wish people would talk about them more instead of insecurely concentrating on shouting about CG. It only feeds the ignorance of the audience.

Which is not to say that I'm anti-CGI. I'm not. In fact I've had a few loud debates where I've wound up defending CGI. But everything has its place and it rarely takes one technique to create the fantastic.

Well, rant over. I'm off to watch scantily clad cave women be harassed by stop motion dinosaurs. Or get a Lemsip and sleep. Whichever first. God bless the BBC, despite my rant.

Banner

Mike Reilly as Baal, DP Dan Starborg in the background, Ben Mawdsley camera assisting and me pretending I know what I'm doing.

I've added a new banner to the top of the page, once again from my old short, Baal and Ben, cut from the picture above.

I know some friends who are likely to say, "Jeez, Brian, this was too long ago! Put it away! Don't wallow in the past!". Well, I agree. In part. But writing is such a lonely and at times horrid activity that it's far too easy to lose sight of things.

I still want to make films as well as sit and write them. Looking at some of the old stills from Baal and Ben, I'm now quite proud of what we pulled off for very little money (shot on 16mm for £1,300), even if I found it hard to watch at the time. And, yes, it was a long time ago. But I look at those stills and remember what I was capable of and feel encouraged. And it reminds me of the reaction it got at it's first screening, which was very good. Head swellingly good. Finding encouragement as a writer can be very difficult and if no one else is around (but people normally are) to keep you going during those black moments then you need to draw upon yourself and what you've achieved.

I've made a few more shorts since then, but this is the one that always sticks with me. I need to know I've done it before and can do it again.

If you feel lost, always think back to what you've achieved, regardless of whether it's a film or not. If no one else is encouraging you, sod 'em and push yourself.

So, there it is. Another unnecessary justification for my actions.

Back to the page.

Reading before Re-Writing

Going through the latest draft of my current project before I start making notes on subsequent revisions. Oh yes, there will be several revisions, each looking at different aspects of the thing. I have to take my normally undisciplined mind and force it to be methodical. But on reading this latest draft...

Good god.

Lots to fix, trim, replace and improve. One of the hardest things is not to try and tinker with it as I'm reading and just absorb the whole thing. Really not easy (I've changed a couple of lines already).

And besides, here I am blogging instead of reading.

After Effects

Well, after a spectacularly horrendous weekend, things have to go on. Even losing an animal member of the household puts things into perspective. Those old thoughts of mortality push you onwards.

So, I'm glad I've finished a third draft of my current project. Very relieved but there is still work to do. I'm going to let it stew on it's own for a week before I set about revising it. I already know I have to lose at least 15 pages (it clocks in at 134 pages right now) so one pretty expendable sub plot is for the chop, some scenes are going to be combined and there is still some character work to do. It's taken me far too long, however, eve if it is a page one re-write. A hell of a lot of re-working. My two lead characters share the same relationship but they are significantly different in their social standing and ages. A few years off someone's age can make a huge difference to them as a character. And I'm hoping that the exposition which dragged the previous draft down is now far more subtle and woven into the story and experienced by the reader/audience as it is by the main character.

But, milestones are milestones and I'm glad this one has finally been reached. Some other ideas which have been floating around my skull and notebooks are going to get some long overdue attention now.

I feel a reward viewing of Aliens on Blu-Ray and the new Anthrax album coming on. After housework.