Reflections on becoming a stronger Reflector

Yesterday I reviewed my learning styles outcomes and went to work on beefing up the Reflector style of learning as per the recommendations on the website (accessible via PPD Moodle page). One of the issues with low reflectors is that they (we) don't like re-writing. We tend to think we've got to do it (whatever the task is) in one hit. The trouble is that for academic and film work alike it requires lots of hits, revisions and re-workings.

There was a real echo with Jeremy Barr's feedback from Identifying and Designing a Research Strategy, which I'll write more about another time.

So I took on the challenges laid out on the website and have to say I'm pretty excited about how it's going so far.

It’s nice to have removed the need to have to do everything, and to do it fast. The truth is that things take time. Especially good things. I know I can turn on the activist part of me when I need to to rev it up, and the pragmatist part will ensure that I’m doing stuff that’s relevant.

The theorist I’m still not very well acquainted with. It’s true that I like to understand what’s going on behind the scenes, to understand the model. I guess that’s what I’m thinking my MA will be about, about understanding what’s happening to my industry, partly in terms of business models. But the truth is I’m a ways off of being able to do that right now, simply because I’m not focused on it, and I’m too busy doing other stuff.

The things I want to do around the MA are:

• Make a documentary called The Director’s Journey, which means interviewing at least one film maker per fortnight for a year, so I’ve got 24 pieces.
• Make a short drama in Spring 10, for submission to NFTS and winning the Oscar
• Make a short drama in Spring 11, for submission to NFTS and winning the Oscar
• Develop a quality feature script

Anyway, there’s what I want to do. I’ve got my year planner upstairs, so I should get that up on the wall and put it to good use.

I know I’m good at getting on with stuff and finding great resources… The trick is to develop my planning side, my overview side, so I know what I’m doing and why I’m doing it, over time ie ensuring it’s all part of the bigger picture, the uber plan.

I should do some exploration into a whole year’s worth of funding opportunities for filmmakers ie spend a day sourcing all the competitions and putting them into a calendar.

For the Director’s Journey, I should make list of all the people I want to interview and why.

Blimey, so much to do, but that, as I say, exemplifies why I need to do it in an organised and methodical fashion.

30% - Sounds like I could use Histoires du Cinema for my Individual Research Text. So I’ll watch that sometime over the weekend. That’ll be cool. A filmmaker making a film about films, I guess. Not unlike what I want to do with The Director’s Journey.

50% - My Research Strategy Presentation is coming together in that I’ve got a framework for it, so now I need to name the texts and resources, saying a bit more about how I intend to use them.

I think I need to get myself a decent little HD camera. I’m not sure the one I’ve already got is up to the task, but there’s one way to find out. Shoot some stuff and see how it mixes in with the HD interview I’ve already shot. If I had a good camera I could really start charting my journey. And as it says in my filmmaking schedule I could shoot at least one hour a week, so start getting some material under my belt, for editing in the summer of 2011.

It’s all about keeping the overview. Staying creative. Applying for funding opportunities. Getting students to help me with the work, as work experience for them, and showreel material for us all. Karl on editing, the two camera/sound guys who will hopefully help me recording interviews starting next term. I could really do with a good producer. Someone who’ll sort out the boring stuff and stay on top of things.

20% - That’s for my Learning Blog. Right I’m going to crack that now. I’ve got no trouble writing stuff, it’s just the issue of being able to post it to my blog which is what I’m finding difficult.

And clearly, dear reader, after 40 minutes persistence, overcoming the Activist part which gets bored and wants to move on to something new all the time, you can see I cracked it.

Sam Taylor-Wood masterclass

I went to the London Film Festival’s masterclass with Sam Taylor-Wood. She was very uncomfortable being in front of everyone. The guy who interviewed her was great. He mentioned that he’s known her for years, and the effect was of someone who a. knew his subject really well, and sounded like he’d been there with her along her journey, and b. she felt comfortable as he drilled her for information during the interview.

The amazing thing is that she’s only made two narrative films. The first was Love You More, which I’d seen at BAFTA a few months ago. Produced by Anthony Mingella, written by Patrick Marber. Bloody hell, what a great start! The way she told the story Minghella had approached her to direct a feature film. I wish she’d given more detail on how this came about.

I guess when you’re a renowned artist then for an imaginative producer it’s not such a leap to envisage the next step for you. I wonder who the current Minghella is? Who are the successful directors and producers who’ll help out up and coming talent?

Anyway, he’d approached her to direct a feature and strategically they realised she should direct a short film first. And with Seamus McGarvey as long-time collaborator and DOP… Presumably Minghella already new Marber, and was able to get funding, and the rest as they say…

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it was all about the contacts and nothing else. I can see from her work that it has a really strong energy. I don’t know how else to put it. It just vibrates with such a strong emotion. So much tension. Stuff just about to happen. The first play of Love You More (the song) and they’re not even facing each other. And effectively nothing happens except she takes her tie off, and her foot touches his leg.

“Gob on me” she says. Brilliant line. Specifically from that era. Pure punk. Probably lost on most viewers, but great because it’s so totally of its time. Once that line’s been said you realise there’s nothing else that could ever have been said instead. Superb.

Anyway, the lessons I take from this are:

a. Get a brilliant script. Nothing less than a brilliant script.

b. Work with an experienced and well-connected producer.

c. Get a great cast.

d. Work with an excellent DOP

e. Work with an excellent Editor

There you go: Great source material and superb cast and crew. I guess the skill there is in making those selections. Knowing what/who’s out there. Aspiring to something great. If I followed that recipe I’d get the Palme D’or at Cannes and then funding to make a feature film.

There was something that struck me in the way she engaged with the interview, in her willingness to really engage with the questions he asked her. Since I’ve been studying at Ravensbourne I’ve noticed a certain way of being with certain people. It shouldn’t surprise me but it does. Simply put, it’s that people engage with the questions. In the production world it’s much more about getting stuff done, and often things aren’t explained very well. In the university there’s a whole value placed on clarity, which I guess is a natural outflow of the educational environment.

The long and short of it is that now I’m in that environment where great value is placed on proper thinking, I can see how STW was operating in the style of ‘an educated person’, as someone who thinks about things.

I’m not sure I’ve managed to convey my observation that well. What’s happening with me, to me, is that I’m changing quite rapidly in my new environment, particularly as an MA student. I’m loving that chance to think, to explore my own art form of filmmaking, if you like.

Previously I’ve been all about how to make films, how to become a director. But a massive key component to my success is in the subjects I choose and the way I engage with those subjects ie story and directing.

I can really see the MA shaping up as my “track to run on”. Simply carving out that time each week to be there and engage is wonderful. I feel like Educating Rita. I think my fellow students must be really intelligent, and then there’s the whole language of education which can act as a barrier to engagement.

I’m loving it. Loving being engaged in ideas, and in discussing how I can exemplify and explore these ideas using my chosen art form of filmmaking. And guess what, this then gives me a whole bunch of material and practice at making films. The benefits are enormous, in developing my mind and expanding my showreel. It’s a win-win situation!

It’s amazing that there are now two women directors I know of who are new to the scene and both in their 40’s – Andrea Arnold and Sam Taylor-Wood. I want to interview both of them.

I’m really enjoying engaging with my MA at a filmmaker level. What I like right now though is that I’m starting to find my feet at Ravensbourne, and I could get access to all sorts of kit and crew. And the track I’ve built for myself to run on could look like directing 2 dramas (designed to win major awards) and 1 feature-length documentary over the next 2 years.

The thing I got yesterday, amongst other things, is that STW approaches the whole game as an artist. I need to do that too. To start using my camera as my brush. To move away from words on a screen, and instead practice on a daily basis, the putting of ideas onto camera, thru editing, and onto the screen.

To tweet or not to tweet

I got going on Twitter yesterday. I've finally become a bone fide Twitterer. I've had an account for agest but never known what I was supposed to do with it. I mean, do I really want more inane interruptions? Am I not already sufficiently distracted in a typical working day?

It all started to make sense a couple of weeks ago. 4 of my nephews and 6 of their friends cycled from London to the Alps to raise money for two charities; The Shooting Star Hospice for children, and a men’s cancer charity. The boys had been training throughout the year and although only 2 of them had ever cycled more than 100 miles in a day they rose magnificently to the challenge of pedalling 700 miles in a week and raised over £20,000. Quite a brilliant result!

I got involved with the trip as a support vehicle driver. Meeting them in lay-bys every hour or so, topping up water bottles, and handing out tracker bars as the boys paced around and pissed at the roadside. When you’re drinking a litre of water an hour for 10 hours a day there’s a whole lot of pissing to be done!

When I got home I phoned my friend Tim who’s a keen cyclist himself, and told him about the trip. He coolly replied that he’d been following it all on Twitter. The penny dropped. I finally got it.

I now have Twitterfon on my iphone and am following all manner of amusing TV personalities. I almost feel as if I know Wossy (Jonathan Ross), Stephen Fry, they’re so damn prolific!

Every day, pretty much, for the last 18 years I’ve sat myself down and written for 20-40 minutes. Just stuff. Thoughts. Random. Observations. I’ve never known what to do with it all. I’ve got a shed full of boxes full of full notebooks, gradually taking on the musty odour of dampness. Will they ever be useful? Are the seeds of genius contained therein? I doubt it… I’ll probably never read them again, and yet I keep on writing.

Why? I just love writing. That’s it. It’s great to put my thoughts down on paper. I get a buzz out of it. I never read it again. And yet if I don’t write I feel there’s something missing. Weird yet true. So, dear reader, I’m going to experiment with blogging. I’m going to put these thoughts out into the ether, at least they won’t get damp there. Is ether damp?

As a producer/director I’m really in the business of creativity and ideas, and yet I’ve always been shy to share mine. Well, this is it, this is the moment that I’m manning-up. I’m going public. I’m coming out of the closet. Who the hell’s going to read it? I don’t know. What the hell are they going to think of it? I don’t know. But everyone else is doing it so why shouldn’t I?

I do interesting stuff, I meet inspiring people, so why shouldn’t I share that with the world?

Last night I met one of my heroes – Nick Hornby. His new book “Juliet, Naked” came out on Monday and last night he was reading excerpts, answering questions from the audience and signing books.

About 12-15 years ago, when Fever Pitch came out as a film I went to see it randomly one day in Leicester Square. I knew nothing about the film, it just happened to be starting at the time I decided I wanted to see a film, so in I went. I was really taken by it, and in fact it turned out that as I was living in Arsenal at the time I’d seen the lights out of my bedroom window when they lit for the closing crane shot of Colin Firth and his girlfriend walking down Gillespie Road to the tube.

I was so impressed by the film that I wrote to Nick Hornby. Just a standard sort of fan letter. Blow me down with a feather if a couple of weeks later he didn’t send me a postcard thanking me for my letter and telling me what he was up to next with books and films etc. I’ve treasured that postcard and I’ve read everything he’s ever written since, except 31 Songs which I couldn’t really get on with. I think songs are for listening to, not for writing about. But the rest, well I’ve lapped it all up, every word.

Earlier this summer I made a short film called The Gift. It was my application to the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield. I co-wrote, produced and directed it. I had to pull in many favours, it cost me money, and it consumed me for a good 3 months. I didn’t even get an interview at the NFTS but I’m very proud of the film anyway.As I designed the cover for it I began to think how great it would be to have a review like “Brilliant writing from an up and coming star” by Nick Hornby, or something similar nestling subtly below the film’s title. If he thought it was good so would other people and then my career would be off like a shot.

I scoured the internet but couldn’t get contact details for him. So anyway, back to last night. After the Q&A the interviewer announced that Nick would be signing books, and he piped up that he was going out for a cigarette first. Instantly a queue formed towards a table where the great man was to sit and sign, every queuer clutching their brand new hardback novel.

As I sat there contemplating joining the queue my intuition told me to go outside and if I was destined to meet him I would. I imagined he might be in a private courtyard puffing on his cigarette, surrounded by bouncers and Penguin literati.

I had a drinks evening to attend with the Directors Guild of Great Britain, so I upped and left. Imagine my surprise when I saw him right there in the hotel foyer. No bouncers and a mere two or three literati chatting gently. I walked purposely towards him. He looked over and I smiled as if I knew him. The truth is that I felt I did! As he left following a cameraman to do a quick TV interview I shook his hand, thanked him for the postcard and asked if I could send him my film. All over in 30 seconds, but the beauty of it is that I got what I wanted. I met my literary hero and he agreed that I could send him my film. Wow!

I spoke to a nice Penguin lady and got her card so I could email the film to Nick via her, then I left the hotel floating on air. I didn’t know how to contain my happiness, what to do, who to tell. I just paced up and down the road feeling great. Then it hit me. This was an ideal Twitter moment!

I reached for my phone and announced to the world, well, to my 15 followers that I’d just met the great man. Who knows if my followers are even following me? But I had to tell someone, and it seemed like the right sort of thing to put on Twitter.

140 characters only gets you so far, so now I’m blogging. Will anyone read it? Will anyone care?

Well, I enjoyed writing it, so once I’ve worked out how to actually post a blog then off it’ll go, into the ether, and will forever be my first blog.