Character is story/Making the unperfect film

Just over a week to go before we start shooting on 'Deliver Me' and I'm feeling tired, crabby and stressed - probably about par for the course as far as working on funded shorts goes (especially those where they neglect to actually give you the funding...). The main concern over the past couple of weeks has been casting. Luckily, we've got a really good casting agent, Ali Fearnley, on board, who is really into the project and has been working hard to get us to see as many possibles as we can. I've said before how I find casting a bit weird, and after thinking about it a bit more, I think I know why. I don't really have people in my head when I start writing a story - that is, of course there are 'people' in it, (rather than just, I dunno, broccoli or something), but the character isn't normally the starting point of my stories. In fact, I'm much more likely to think of a story first and then work backwards from there - creating a character to fit what I need them to do in the story. Back story comes into it as and when I need to think of it - I don't normally create an extensive character bible or anything - a lot of that stuff develops as I work on the project as a whole.

One of the things you hear a lot when you're writing is this idea that 'story is character' - which seems to suggest that in really nailing down who your characters are you will figure out what their story is. And while I think that is totally valid, and makes complete sense, I also think the inverse is true - 'character is story' - you create interesting characters by thinking of stories which require them to act in certain ways, so you mould them to fit the story. Maybe it's just the way my mind works - maybe its tied into my distrust of the idea of 'truth' onscreen - or maybe I just don't have the same interest in people that other writers do. My characters are very rarely based on people I know or have met - they're not people I grew up with or hang around with. Maybe that's why I've veered towards horror - not because you don't get realistic characters, but because it gives you an opportunity to create twisted worldviews - to imagine a person's brain and personality, rather than try to imitate or replicate one.

It was good during the casting sessions to have a chance to direct the actors in certain selected scenes - it started to help me think about how the film's going to work in terms of performance. I think we've got some good people involved and I'm hoping that they're going to enjoy it...

The other thing I've been doing is storyboarding and shotlisting some more, with the aid of Chris Cooke. Chris is great to work with because not only has he got an encyclopeadic knowledge of every horror film ever made (he spent the 80s locked in a room watching video nasties) but he's got great enthusiasm and is willing to take risks and improvise stuff.

I've been trying to remind myself that this is an opportunity to take some risks and not to play it safe just because it's a funded film and it's going to be 'seen by people'. I mean, I'm not planning to make some experimental oddity, but there are certain things that I'm not sure are going to work, and I figure the only way I'll ever find out is if I try. I guess if people watch the film and end up saying 'what the HELL was that?' I won't really mind - I'm not setting out to make a perfect film - as if you ever could - in fact, it'd be closer to the truth to say I'm setting out to make an unperfect film - something with weird edges and strange features that'll hopefully find an audience, but isn't self-consciously trying to make itself seem 'great'.

Or maybe I'm just covering my arse in case the whole thing turns out to be terrible. Who knows? I guess we'll find out soon enough...

Parenting Issues

After what has seemed like an age - but is only actually about six weeks – Film London have announced the greenlit projects for the Microwave scheme. And ‘Mum and Dad’ is one of them.

Which is great and scary news.

Myself and Lisa have known for a while now, but we were asked to hold off telling anyone until Film London could put out a press release. We’ve started, tentatively, putting out feelers in terms of cast, crew and effects, and I’ve written a whole load of notes for the second draft of the script, which I’m hoping to write over Christmas. Em-media are on board as the co-financiers, which is also really good news, because it means we don’t have to go out and find the rest of the finance.

I’m trying to split my head in two at the moment – half of it is dealing with the mounting number of things to get done for ‘Deliver Me’, while the other half is preparing to think about all the other things I need to get done for ‘Mum and Dad’. At the moment we’ve got the shoot planned for 18 days, hopefully starting in March next year, which means a frightening number of pages of script to do each day, plus a significant amount of effects work to fit in. At the end of it, I’ll hopefully be a better and tighter filmmaker.

Or I’ll be dead. One of the two…

Laboratories, sex shops and toffs

Three weeks today we start shooting on “Deliver Me”. We’ve been in official pre-production for a couple of weeks now – and it looks as though we might actually get our first invoice paid by Em-media sometime next week, which is good because it'll mean that we no longer have to be relying on the Bank of Pawlik to cashflow everything.

We’ve got two main locations already, with one still to find, all of our crew are in place, but none of our cast – which is quite scary at this stage. I was planning to go through casting tapes today, but they haven’t arrived yet, which has left me at a bit of a loose end. I was also supposed to be seeing Cooke to talk about the storyboard, but he’s at home dosed up on Strepsils. So I’m trying to get my mind back on three of four of the other 1000 things I’ve got to get my head around, but I’m finding it difficult to prioritize what I’m supposed to be thinking about.

There are a few things that I’ve scripted which I’m unsure about – either in terms of their story function or the way I’ve planned to shoot them and much as I want to use this opportunity – having a budget, having a large-ish crew – to experiment, I also don’t want to waste time on things that don’t end up in the film. I guess it’s about balancing risk against return.

Yesterday we were investigating a couple of the risky elements, which meant spending the morning in a laboratory and the afternoon in a sex shop. The lab visit was to explore a lighting technique I’m interested in trying out which sounds as though might be feasible – it basically involves using flat, flexible, luminescent sheets – but may not give us the amount of light we would need. The scientist we spoke to about it was really helpful, but when he was explaining how to rig up the device – “it’s really simple ..” - I got lost in a maze of resistors, capacitors and alternating current. If we go ahead with it, it’ll mean getting somebody in who isn’t a complete dolt when it comes to electronics.

As for the sex-shop - well, without going into too much detail, we were looking for some latex parts to use as props for a particularly ambitious (and potentially appalling) shot which I’ve put into the script. This is the difficult one – I don’t want to spend too long thinking about how to do this – because it’s technically very difficult – in relation to the likelihood of it being in the finished cut. Also I don’t want to get told off again by a sex-shop worker for removing sex aids from their boxes and analyzing them closely while Cooke looks on, scratching his chin like he’s on a particularly filthy edition of Antiques Roadshow.

As I’ve said, I’ve also started storyboarding. I am quite possibly the worst artist in the world, which makes this difficult – a fact bought home to me when I was teaching this week and illustrated a point on shot listing with this.



Absolute rubbish.

I really envy people who can draw (and people who can sing – another thing I’m absolutely appalling at). But as I tell my students, as long as you can communicate what you need to, to the people who need to know it, don’t worry about your artistic skills, or lack of them. (Even if it looks like you’ve held the pencil in your mouth. While chewing a large and violent wasp. With someone else’s lips….) As long as the message gets across, that’s what matters.

And at least with a story board this bad, it’ll make the actual shots seem that much better – as long as they’re not filled with weird clown-eyed toffs...