For Want Of A Sticky Label

Film making

Latest film update: the editor who’s helping me out called today to let me know the EDL still hasn’t been done. There wasn’t enough storage capacity on the edit suite she’s been using to load up the media. Then the other phone started ringing and I went to grab it and fell over the other phone lead, disconnecting the first call.

The second call rang off without leaving a message. I called the editor back and she says she might be able to find someone to help but doesn’t know when. Result: Fate & Fortune remains in the limbo it’s been in for the past two years. Yep, two years. Ack. Ack ack ack ack ack.

Someone from Whatever Pictures calls. These are the people who are helping me with distributing Last Train to festivals and other screenings. They want a dialogue script for some of the festivals. I email it.

So far I have no idea where the film has been sent except for a few places I’ve sent it myself. That reminds me, I thought the costs were all done with once I’d had the print made and a telecine to video was complete. I forgot about sending everything around the world–stationery, labels, ink, padded envelopes, stamps… Anyway, as soon as it gets some screening dates, I’ll post the information on the website.

Finally, I set up the PC to print out more labels for the new batch of VHS’s I made last week. After 20 minutes of searching through CD-roms I finally find the disc with the label template on. Another 30 minutes later, I discover after much searching that there are no sticky labels left in the house and I need to visit the stationers.

And so it goes on. And on. And on. I sigh and move one foot in front of the other. Whither has gone the spring in my step? Whither has gone my youth? Don’t worry, I’m just kidding. It will all get done.

Cathartic Creative Urge

Fire and Light

I have this urge to write and write and yet the words seem stuck on the thought train going round and around in my head. Sometimes the words drift up and then they’re gone. Lost in the emotional vampire sucking dark gnawing at the edge of my stomach. Perhaps I should write about that. And then it goes, put aside, swallowed for a wallow. Maybe.

And and and. Why so many ands? Who knows. I watched Finding Forrester the other day and analyzed it to death. Poor wee film. I pat it’s head and want so to mend it’s broken story. Yet there were still some good lines about writing in that movie and so I plagiarize and paraphrase a couple here.

Like: “You should never start a sentence with a conjunction. It makes your thoughts seem to run on.” To which the response was something like, “That’s outmoded thinking and some of the best writers do it for emphasis. The danger is doing it too often, then it becomes self-consciously stylistic.” I think I made some of that up.

Then there’s a scene where William Forrester (Sean Connery) puts a blank sheet of paper in a typewriter and instructs Jamal (the hero): “Write!” Jamal protests, “I can’t just write. I have to think about it first.” Forrester: “No. Don’t think. Write. The secret of writing is to write. The first draft comes from the heart. The second draft comes from the head.” I may have made bits of that up too.

Selective memory. Curse. Blessing. All rise for the hymn. Do we really edit so much of our own experience in our heads? Is that why communicating our deepest feelings is so difficult, because it’s a constant creative process as far as our memory is concerned? I want my perfect memory in the sense that I know to hold on to what is important. Let the rest go. Ashes to ashes, funk to funky. Amen.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

Oh, for the serenity!

I try to hang on to the grains of truth. My deepest feelings, my highest hopes. Yet the tide comes in with its relentless chop chop busy busy work work bang bang of career and family and doing this and that and other people’s hopes and dreams and everything and it all washes through the places our thoughts are stored, so precious, so fragile, and tries to suck them all back in the wash. Take me to the river, throw me in the water.

Courage, please, yes.

Yes, this a collection and amalgamation of other people’s expressions and lines and modes of expression. A pastiche. A mosaic. A [blank, damn. the word has gone. i hate that. something like tapestry. no no. can’t think of it now. don’t stop. don’t lose the flow].

To write like this feels liberating, so take it as a tribute to all that has gone before. It’s an inevitable result of the way each of us builds on our own experience to create the unique expression which is ultimately ours. An expression which will wash out into the sea of human existence to join with all the other uniquenesses out there.

Wisdom.

And the word was …collage!

…

Oh, I almost forgot what sparked that off. It was reading this in my horoscope for the month:

We human beings are very sensitive. Once we become too keenly aware of what’s wrong with something, we can no longer see what’s right about it. We lose the desire to repair and fill up with the yearning to replace. The factor under discussion now is most certainly not a candidate for the dump. Use soft words if you’re pointing out a defect. And if you’re being told of one, listen only with half an ear.

– Jonathan Cainer

Incidentally I think he still means listen. Just to hold on to my values and what’s valuable in life at the same time.

Just Two More Stops

Film making

I saw this poster on the London Underground today with a picture of a worried looking woman sitting next to someone wearing a giant rabbit costume. I’ve no idea what it was selling (so it failed on advertising grounds) but the caption over their heads read, ‘Just two more stops!’ Implying that the woman could escape from the bunny in two stations.

This week feels very much like that. Just two more stops, and we’ll be there. Just let me get through the week, get to the end of the film making. Why does the bunny keep following me? What do you mean there’s no bunny there? Oooo-kay.

Here’s another thing. I’ve never understood people who want to have a party with music so loud you have to scream into the ear of the person standing next to you in order to be heard. No, it’s not that I’m getting old. I’ve always thought like this. It’s partly why I enjoy dancing. Because there’s no way you can have any kind of conversation with people in that environment and so what else can you do?

Saturday, I was at a party just like this. The music was excellent but I wanted to talk to people and there was no dance floor so I left thinking, ‘What was all that about?’ It was actually a 30th birthday party for one of the people who helped make my films and it was at this really trendy bar in a very seedy part of London. There were no less than three big burly tuxedo-clad characters guarding the door and no less than half a dozen scrawny characters sleeping rough on the streets nearby.

None of it made any sense.

Fortunately, the film making thing is proceeding, although in a way that’s probably just chaotic to look at as a heaving mass of well-dressed drunk people shouting at each other in a bassbeat driven crowded plexiglass bar outside which a parade of badly dressed drunk people drifts by.

Last week I had a meeting with the guys at Whatever Pictures and they’re sending out copies of the Last Train video to festivals. It was a pretty productive meeting actually. They’ve sent it off to something called The British Council who help out with getting British made films into festivals around the world, apparently, and also can contribute a little hard cash.

I’ve pulled together my own diary of festivals from that website, together with some suggestions from my buddy Mark out in LA and elsewhere, to get a list of deadlines and have started sending out a few videos myself this week. Meanwhile, I await news of Fate & Fortune. Still no sign of the elusive EDL…

A slightly worrying thing was when I phoned the neg cutters to check the negative is still safe and sound on their shelf, where it’s been for the past few months. “Oh, yes. I expect it’s fine,” said the cheery voice on the end of the line. Expect? Expect? I wanted to hear, “Yes, it’s right here. Don’t worry about it.” Good grief, Charlie Brown! I guess I should be reassured by the fact that they at least remembered my name. Or maybe they were bluffing? Maybe the giant bunny has it? Err…

And so it goes on, around and around.

Just a few more stops.

one by one the penguins steal my sanity

It's life, Jim...

I bought a pumpkin yesterday. Nothing huge. Just an ittle biddy pumpkin so I can carve a grin into it and light a candle and have that Hallowe’en experience.

While I’m driving home I have to avoid two guys who think it’s better to walk in the street than on the pavement/sidewalk. Why do people do this, I think to myself? Where’s the excitement? Lucky for them I’ve just had my brakes fixed and can slow down or they’d be street pizza.

Oh, yes. The brakes. I bit the bullet after using my car as little as possible for a month and had them done. I’ve got to say, it’s quite pleasant to slow down without a squeaking grating noise. It’s also a bonus to pull away from the drive without a back wheel sticking to a wornout brake, not turning and in the process pulling a chunk of gravel along. Very pleasant indeed.

So I think about the guys in the street. And I think, what’s wrong with this bloody country where people think they can walk in the street? And then I think, hang on, at least we don’t have shell-shocked army vets on every street corner begging. Although we do have beggars. Whatever. I conclude it’s not the country.

My mind wanders and I think about communication and how we live our lives trying to get our messages across and struggling to understand what’s said to us and to make sense of it all. I installed some cheap video editing software on my PC the other day. The idea was to upload some title sequences and other material I’ve made in the past from my video recorder on to the web. It hasn’t quite worked. The software is full of bugs.

Next thing, I got this free webcam so I installed that as well. Now the webcam and the video editing stuff don’t talk to each other properly at all. The result is that instead of showing a jerky poorly lit picture of my unshaven face working at my computer, I actually transmit jerky live TV via my video recorder through the webcam. I have no idea why or how.

I think about uninstalling the whole lot and know that it will take hours. I think through the linear steps of linear logic I’ll have to go through to achieve this and wonder if anyone else would bother. Do men think differently from women about these things? Is that comparison valid? Aren’t we just simply all unique individuals?

While I’m thinking of all that, I think about what it is that builds our characters and give us a sense of self. I’ve been having a conversation with a close friend about this and my mind is wandering, thinking about role models and suchlike. The guys walking in the street remind me of something.

Life is about risk. Risk is what gives us our inner strength, builds our characters and gives us a feel for what we are capable of. I remember I used to walk down the white lines in the centre of the road when I was a kid doing a paper round in the early winter mornings. I’d try to see how far I could get before a car came then move at the last minute.

Has this made me a better person? Who knows. I know that there are other risks I’ve taken which definitely have been for the best. Risks which have given me deep inner strength and taught me that there are all kinds of situations I can not only survive but learn and grow from. I can’t blame those guys for wanting to walk down the street and take that risk. In a limited way, they’re doing what is necessary to assert and strengthen themselves.

In a society where so much is legislated, frowned upon and tutted at, it’s good to be able walk in the traffic sometimes. By walking in the traffic, of course I mean that as a metaphor for challenging our own inner demons. I carve my pumpkin and challenge the ghosts, goblins and ghouls to get me.

Dancing Without Choreography

Fire and Light

The only thing that I know for certain is that today, right here and right now, I don’t know anything for certain. Life is flux, knowledge is fluid and relationships at any point are always a snapshot taken of a complex dance. I spin Matrix-like around the frozen people in all their many shades of gray and their bright beautiful spectrum natures. And I realize that I can draw all kinds of conclusions from the way they’re standing and their expressions and body language in that still frame. Yet in the real world as opposed to the movie world, I cannot know where they will go in a few frames time when movement begins again. Because everything changes and without the process there is no meaning.

I know people who can’t understand the attraction of dancing with a partner. Oh, they say, I have danced very happily on my own up to this point. I feel the music. I express my feelings. Yes and this is good. Yet it is more involving and very different to act and react with a partner to that music. How can I be led? I’m not a good follower, I have my own rhythm, my female friends say. Yet this looks like fear. Fear of letting go and embracing the unknown. Fear of moving away from… of letting go of… of perhaps losing the dance that is already known and knowable. I remember a dance instructor once telling me that the hardest thing of all was to get people to face their fear and take the step through the door into the class. Once they were there and inside, everything else was possible.

And it doesn’t really work that one person simply leads and the other simply follows. It is process and change and flowing with the music. Push me pull you, pull me push you. As one partner moves, the other has to be in the right place to be where they will arrive when they get there. In that sense, there is more anticipating than leading. The leading is to provide some form, some structure. But really it is all give and take. Energy and feeling. Fire and light. It is feeling and connection and flow in an endless now. Just as life flows with the music that we each create. Our symphony where any of us can pick up the harmony or the melody or the rhythm or sometimes remain silent and still. Life is its own music. A powerful song and a complex dance. And each of us has our own solo dances that will always be there, unique and brilliant.

It’s one way of looking at it. Shades of gray, bright spectrum people dancing gently then wildly then formally then letting the body go where the music takes it and sometimes making mistakes and laughing in the process. All valid. Look up and don’t forget to smile as you fall over your own feet.

Imagine that Matrix-like still frame with two people facing each other and how the camera angle determines how we feel about them. Looking down on them makes them look weak. Look from a low angle and they look powerful. Looking over one’s shoulder and including that shoulder, framing both people together, might indicate a relationship. The expression on the face of the person we see might indicate what the relationship is at that moment. Yet a choreographer will want to see how those people move together, how they flow through the continuum of life, how they react to the music they hear, to understand comprehend feel grok the relationship in a richer truer way.

We are heart and soul, mind and spirit, beings that cannot be simply broken down into uncomplicated elements for some kind of eureka insight. We are all psychologists, trying to understand ourselves and others on so many levels and it is a subtle layered thing. Just as a photon can be understood as both particle and wave, so we can be understood as complex and paradoxical notions. None of them is the whole truth. And again I realise that the only thing I know for certain is today’s uncertainties. I embrace them, the uncertainties in those I love, my own inability to know everything and the constant flowing dance song symphony of life.

What’s Inspiring

Fire and Light

There’s this urge in me to write… to write something… something inspiring. Brain fog. The words get jumbled and the thoughts confused. Here are my jumbled thoughts of today. How do we go forwards? We can’t go backwards. Yet there’s so much over-reaction. What we really need is to step sideways and look from the outside.

Yet there is an over-abundance of rhetorical analysis and anything I have to say, anything I might have thought, will have been thought of and said already. Serendipity and plagiarism and inspiration from peers and sources. These are the tools of today’s creative outburst.

Is GWB the best leader to take the world to peace? The guy who wanted Star Wars and wanted to dismantle nuclear treaties and build nuclear power plants and shunned the Kyoto summit and being part of a unified world? Maybe he’s just on a fast learning curve is all. Maybe he’s the leader who’s needed right now to fight a fight.

One world, global unity, seems like the inevitable and right answer to all the questions meanwhile.

Doubts flicker, Tony Blair talks sense, refugees stand up and shout in the streets where they have freedom to do so and we are all somehow guilty for crimes we didn’t commit but crossed the road to avoid. Confucious: ‘The definition of cowardice is to see what is right and to not do it.’ Yet what of the risk to personal safety? No answers.

So, what’s inspiring? What moves us forward into the new dawn? It is to see the sun, our star, set red gold purple crimson down on another day. It is to look at our short short history and see how far we have come in such a short time. The last minute of the last hour of the first day of Earth’s history. This is but a second and we move on.

Step sideways, know that the over-reaction and anxiety and paralysing fear will continue for but a moment and then we will continue to breathe, place one foot in front of the other and end the paralysis. This will become the past. Another country. They do things differently there.

Update

Film making

Last Train is now finished and I have a huge pile of VHS tapes, at least ten of which are in the USA TV format (NTSC)…

I’ve sent most of them off to members of the cast and crew, plus one copy has gone to Intensity TV at KQED in California and one copy to the BBC (in the UK–yes, that little island where I live). Everyone who’s watched so far has said good things so that’s nice.

Fate & Fortune I’m still waiting for the edit decision list (EDL) to be redone. Re-cap: that’s the computer output that tells the neg cutters where to cut. I had a phone call last week from the editor who’s helping me out to apologise for not getting it done yet but hopefully she’ll be able to sort it out in the next couple of weeks.

Lastly (well, not quite–there’s more in the pipeline–but lastly for now), I’ve made a website for publicity purposes.

Cool By Association

Film making

I have been busy getting 50 VHS copies of my film made to send out to the cast and crew–and 50 tapes make you realise how far you really live from the station when you walk home with half of them in a big bag.

I’ve also been finding out all about webhosting and preparing publicity material. I got in touch with KQED in San Francisco because they accept films from around the world and I can send them a video and I look for similar stations. I contact Whatever Pictures, the co-producers and talk to them about arranging screenings and distribution–their end of the deal as far as I’m concerned.

Plus I installed Photoshop 6.0 on my PC the other day and spent several hours last night playing around with it to make a video cover. So many new effects, so little time. Eventually I acheived something satisfactory at about 1.30am. And that means I’ve only had about three hours sleep. But…

But I discovered a really cool thing that will be of interest to practically nobody. The typeface (Blur) we used for the graphics on Last Train is a new design by cutting edge British typographer Neville Brody. Neville Brody is the ‘bad boy’ of graphic design who came to fame with his lettering work on a magazine called The Face in the eighties…

This is probably more information than anyone needs except what does it mean? Well, it means Last Train is even cooler than I thought and therefore I am cool by association. Possibly.

What Gives?

Film making

Okay, well here’s the latest in the film saga and life in general. In last month’s episode our friendly lab guys and girls lost the DAT containing the soundtrack for Last Train. This meant the film couldn’t be sent out to festivals or distributors as the video was mute. Our story begins this week with me returning home after a weekend away to find the following messages on the answer machine…

[beeeeep]

Pete (friend): “It’s half past five on Sunday. Elusive character aren’t you? What’ve you been up to? Been busy? Give us a call…” [I resist urge to reply with comment along the lines of ‘I’m compiling a bootleg CD made up of sampled messages but no, not really busy other than that.’]

[beeeeep]

Lucy (friend): “…I’ve just been to see A.I. and I’m in a state of shock because it’s probably one of the worst films I’ve ever seen in my life. The whole audience were in tears at the end and it was tears of pain…” [a few more minutes of ranting follows and make mental note to put her straight about why A.I. is important]

[beeeeep]

Matt the Grader [the audience cheers]: “Just calling to let you know we’ve done your sound layback [hooray!]… Do you want any VHS’s? [cries of yes! yes!]… the invoice cost is �496.16 including VAT…”

Woah there!

The invoice cost is how much? We agreed on a price of �185 plus �22.60 tape stock plus �40 for the sound layback plus tax (VAT). How, pray tell, did the final price double? I phone the lab. Of course, Matt’s at lunch. I ask for the nice Ted character who initially quoted for the project. He’s off sick. I twiddle my thumbs.

Some time later, I call back. “Oh,” says Matt, “apparently they’ve charged you for two hours telecine grading instead of one.” I reply, “It was maybe an hour ten at the most.” He responds, “Well there is set up time outside that… When can you come in?” I interject: “Er, I don’t think you understand. I don’t have �496 [lie]. I have budgetted for no more than �300. We need to discuss this.” Matt: “Oh, okay. I’ll get the person responsible to call you back.”

The rest of the day passes uneventfully. Certainly not interrupted by the phone ringing. I have enough time to reflect that the telecine grade probably took an hour and a quarter tops–not two hours. They kept me waiting so it started five minutes late anyway. The set up happened while I was there. And the telecine grader spent at least ten minutes trying to get a colour channel to work that just wouldn’t. Plus that’s on top of them losing the DAT and wasting a month. So I figure the two hour invoice is a leetle teensy bit cheeky.

I call the lab back the next day. Without a hint of irony, Matt asks, “Didn’t they call you back? Hang on, I’ll put you through…” [time passes, continents form, life evolves, the deadlines for the European Film Festival and Sundance pass into history] Matt returns: “They don’t seem to be around at the moment. I’ll get them to give you a ring this morning.” And of course they don’t.

And that brings us to today.

So, in short, I am an elusive character who doesn’t return all his messages, opinions vary on A.I. and I *still* don’t have Last Train on video. Which means I can’t get it shown anywhere. Which means I am no further forward. And the lab wants more money for the part of the job where *they* caused the most problems.

Meanwhile, a large chunk of Manhattan lies buried under a pile of smouldering rubble brought about by an incomprehensible form of hatred for life and freedom and the world has very definitely changed. Is Last Train anything anyone needs or wants or desires in the context of that? Maybe it says something about life and hatred too. Maybe it doesn’t. I don’t really know the answers to any of these things.

I guess I just keep putting one foot in front of the other so yesterday I also phoned the editor who’s helping out with Fate & Fortune. They’re re-doing the EDL–the only thing needed before finalising the graphics and getting the negative cut. They tell me that it could be–possibly, perhaps–done this coming weekend.

Yeah, right. Fat chance. I know, I know–it’s all favours favours favours. Still, somehow the prospect of finishing actually does buoy my spirits a little and I think of changing the end credits to read ‘copyright 2002’ which will mean I can enter it into next year’s festivals. In other words, I keep going. And that is always enough.

…

Woah. Never mind all that. I just came off the phone to the lab and explained to them about the telecine costs and that I’d only had an hour and ten minutes at the most and blah blah blah. So they gave me the story of the operator filling in the timesheet and “it’s always right” and “we’ve never had a problem before”. I argue. Of course.

Eventually the person on the end of the phone (the accountant, I think) gets bored. She suggests we call it an hour and a quarter and will adjust the invoice accordingly. I breathe a sigh of relief. And I continue to regale her with tales of the lost DAT and why I’m feeling like their company is not the wonderful experience–except for the nice operational staff–that I thought it might be.

I listen patiently and understandingly while she tells me this has never happened before. I only mention once that the rerecording mixer had the same problem with the same lab only a couple of months ago. I don’t repeat that again but do add that I’ve missed the European Film Festival and Sundance. Eventually she decides to give in and adjust the invoice so it’s back to the rate for one hour. Total: �279.18. Result.

I’ll be picking the DigiBeta up tomorrow.

They Were Just Going To Work

It's life, Jim...

Oh, God. I just remembered that back in March I was standing in the bookshop on the ground floor of one of the Trade Center towers and I think of those people there, the people behind the counter and shopping for a book and today someone wants to kill them. Because they are different. Because they have something they don’t. For whatever reason, someone wants to take their lives.

Someone hates them so much that they would knowingly kill themselves in a fireball rather than allow those ordinary men and women to go on living their lives. And I hear the word ‘cowardly’ bandied about as though this wasn’t some coldly calculated attack. Maybe there are cowards, people who sent the hijackers out to their deaths. Maybe they held the hijackers’ families and children hostages to make them comply. Whatever. The cold immorality is numbing. Beyond comprehension.

I can only wrap my mind around it in an abstract ‘is this war?’ way and a ‘what will happen next?’ way. I cannot deal with those abstracts though–they are beyond my influence. The only reality I can touch is in my heart when I think of my friends, real people–Pat and Danielle, out there in Manhattan. I worry for them and their wellbeing and am glad to find they have both been online. I send a prayer for their families and friends and loved ones and hope they are safe.

And I think too of all my friends in the USA and I touch base with some of them and share this time, this impossible reality, these feelings of shock and nausea with them. I also try to share that they are loved and cared about…

And then I remember that I ordered another couple of books via the internet from the nice bookshop in the World Trade Center and I think of them. I go to my email and I find the receipt and think of those books… those wonderful books which gave me so much pleasure. I open up the email and go to send a reply so I can say… something… and I look at it… blank… and words won’t come… and I just start crying…