Well the 'Survivor' project is finally all finished. What an achievement - the worlds 1st interactive 'Choose Your Own Adventure' film in existence. It's brilliant, although its important to note that not a lot of people wanted to support me or the project. Some I'd done favours for who did sod all in return, over 300 people contacted in some way to help design the interactive feature - Although, 90% of students you ask, if it doesn't involve a grade on a piece of paper, only having to turn up for the odd hour per week in late afternoon and having most of the job done for them already - don't waste your time.
I've submitted the project to a few festivals already -a good one that accepted it 'Best Shorts Competition' whilst a couple of others already having shot it down (they never give you the reason). Anyhow, I was more interested in having it return a job to me more than anything. I'm still yet to hear back from 'Ubisoft' & 'Playstation' and a couple of other places but there's already been three companies of interest who've come back to me already.
Machinima -
asked me to become a contributor but have done sod all since when I jumped through all the application hoops - chasing has returned 'zero' results.
Pretty Simple Games - took me through a couple of stages in becoming one of their mission designers for their popular online gaming platform for that game you've probably ignored from that annoying friend on Facebook sending you 'Criminal Case' requests - yep, that's the one. The office is based in Paris, as luxurious as that sounded they didn't leave the salary - I hate it when companies advertise this way, its like walking into one of those restaurants that don't advertise the prices on their menu. Seemed a bit weird they limited me to a 'word count (600 words)' but they demanded 1 detective, 2 suspects, 2 pieces of evidence, a murder weapon, 2 locations, dialogue for all and memorable characters. I honestly delivered the best you could get within the time I had only to receive my rejection 3 weeks later. I would love to meet the person who beat me on that one day - I'd need to see it to believe it.
I got there, the lady who had been in contact with me was lovely as well as her two colleagues. Demystified the film-making process for them and even got asked to storyboard a shoot to hypothetically promote a new product - a bike rack. Totally ALL within my element and despite my mysterious fuck-up of arriving late, which I hate enough from others let alone something I committed myself - I think it went bloody well. They seemed very compatible to work with, I'd be doing what I love and can explain clearly. God, I'd love to do this - BUT even 'this' proved unsuccessful, they rejected me the same day I had to walk on to a set to play a comical character I was no longer in the mood for.
And finally, 'Pretty Simple Games' in Paris as a 'Mission Designer' - I kind of hate myself for having gone through the process as I didn't get it but it didn't stop my girlfriend from her addiction to it. It's her new 'Candy Crush.' Seriously, what is it with the many girls who don't / can't play "proper" video games, rather than just this stuff? They exist... I know they do!
Anyway, yeah - My 2nd stage entry level was to write a script limited to a 4,000 word count... (I know, weird right?) having to include 2 locations, 2 suspects, 2 pieces of evidence, 1 detective & all characters with memorable dialogue.
Here's what I came up with:
Ghost - a film written, directed, produced and to be edited by one of worlds royal class morons who "thinks" he's a filmmaker. Gawd knows how I was convinced I was in capable hands. I had all my 17 lines memorised and geared up ready to go. The guy was over an hour late turning up to his set with 'NO' good reason. Cast himself in his film as protagonist with morbid acting professionalism - but neither he nor anyone else knew their lines. Was mortified - not only were they shooting without a shot list, they were shooting whilst allowing people to read their lines of the script on the table or their phones - WHAT THE FUCK?The list goes on and to finish it all I walked off having caught a bad fever from one of the actresses and a chest infection from the other supporting actor. As my mate Ryan said during a catch up a few days later; "At least you walked away with something!" - Gotta love that guy! :)
This is why I'm not holding my breath on the results: Hope you enjoy it as much as some of the rest of us have... Seriously, get ready for one of the most shocking film experiences of your life... & not in a good way!
Okay... NOW get ready for the follow up 'tribute act' (cheat: go to 2:35 on below video) by two of the most gifted in comedy mates I've got - these guys are superb. If they don't get picked up I'll be very surprised - ENJOY!
Anyway, On the plus side I met a couple of good actors and a costume designer who I liked working with but I'm just tired of this lack of respect for rookie filmmakers NOT getting the right help when they "clearly" need it and disrespecting some of us who give their time and energy for nothing to see it go to waste - Good luck getting us back for the sequel mate!
By the way - Remember the initial Volvo task I was assigned for the interview I mentioned earlier? My girlfriend was working as a 'Marketing Assistant' for the Dorset's 'Superfast Broadband' project, that you probably saw on your TV's in early to mid-2015 whereby someone just planted a shitty camera in her hand and basically said; "Go film someone's experience of their own connection then come back and edit it together." - Guess what, it looked crapp and just alike her employer, had no damn clue!Naturally, it wasn't her fault - what was she gonna do - Say "no" to the people who paid her wages? Nevertheless, it wasn't long before she sought me out for help whilst I'm trying to do other things, annoyed it being something she couldn't grasp in a couple of hours.
A lot of my industry mates including myself ask that ONE simple question:
Why don't they get someone in to do this professionally?
There's this retarded notion I pointed out in my last blog that illustrates the absurdity of this shit in our beloved film-making arena.
We spend money, time and energy training in this stuff yet tight asses like these guys think its something 'anybody can do' then act all surprised it comes out looking like a bag of shit... All we end up doing is do the 'I told you so' whilst they get angry we know more about our own trade than they do... Stupid - Learn to change your thinking or at least 'engage it' or you're going to fail - simple!
At the strain of a friend of mine, I've got my website at LONG last so the only thing I'll be keeping on this account is of course the blog you're reading now but otherwise, it just makes things look a hell of a lot more organised now - so a shout to the awesome Rebecca Gaines for doing that:
Concern to express that I'm almost at the end of my joke of a course with Bournemouth University! What a waste of money. At least I met some nice people but for £24,000 you would think that the bullshit they claim on the initial prospectus would have been delivered upon by now.Express all the problems and suggestions you have, they don't care. The vice chancellor receives a 6-figure salary, the lecturers receive around £30,000 for doing less than half the work or hours you see those on £15,000 - £18,000 (who having been one of the many of them before... BUST OUR BLOODY ASSES IN FOR YEARS). I'd had enough recently of this practice taking the piss, seeing how this one lecturer manipulates others into doing everything for him, the graduation show, the script clinic, even his own lectures - the worst, lazy, uninspiring teacher, I've ever met - a bloke called Resh! - £100 if you find one student of courses student's who have anything nice to say about him.
I got out of a pitch session with him recently, after he's already made a mockery out of our writing ambitions and gave me 5 minutes to pitch him my latest feature script in 5 minutes. YEP - the 1st to admit as you know I hate pitching but can't say I was inclined to make the effort for a guy who makes none himself. Knock yourself out and give me an average feedback score, mate - Really couldn't give a shite for your opinion anymore (in case you hadn't guessed!)One of his questions regarding a mate of mine Emma's was "So did you phone up any production companies to get that quote for your budget?"
- yeah, of course she did, you cretin... "No! I'm not kidding" I was there in the room when he said it... Yet a lot of students are still so hung up on what grade he gives them... It's was like asking a monkey to judge at an arts class... Baffling!
The students don't argue of course for sake of feeling threatened of having their latest assignment marked by him. Rather than at school, where your papers are marked by an external examining body, at uni its all in their court for them to mark so you can't look me in the eye and say staying on their sweet side isn't in your interest - Yeah, you know what, 'fuck you, pal' I work 6 times harder than most (ask anyone who knows me!) and speaking of school, it was longer hours, harder work and far more suited to preparing people for the world of work than your propaganda crapp.
Another, lecturer whom I respected a bit more planned a career workshop ('At long fucking last') to give the students an insight into the things they should be considering. My disgustingly helpful nature felt compelled to send him my own LinkedIn page, website, IMDB credits, Stage 32 page, filmography and useful links if they'd assist the planning of the lecture any further + was (stupidly) expecting a bit of feedback for anything I may be missing myself.
What did he do? - ask if I wanted to take half the class talking about them. Sure, you pay me your wages mate, will do. Then again, I don't think that the others would appreciate that none too much nor myself, nor the (false) integrity of the University!
Not interested in getting him sacked though as we're all agreed he's makes a bigger effort with the students. He's even been able to help me with a few things in the past so... Guess thats something.
Readers go Google the following:
'Bournemouth University £2 million grant to study the relationship between humans and chickens' &/OR 'Bournemouth University cost of new Talbot Campus buildings' (One being 2 million, the other twenty million) then ask any of us about the unused flat screen TV's in Weymouth House nobody asked for but being told they didn't have £200 to spare for a grad show to celebrate and support the people who're paying towards their salaries nor even drive them up to where it takes place in London, themselves.
Any wonder why we write fictional stories for how we'd like things to be when we've got shit like this going on under our noses?
Speaking of which, the entire friggin' country had an opportunity to change recently with the elections. There's the opinion of Frankie Boyle: "Just depends on which way you wanna get fucked" which I can't help but support as its true. Neither Conservative or Labour works anymore so why didn't anyone give the Liberal Democrats a chance? A lot of people still stupid enough to vote UKIP who managed to convince the failings of the country are largely to do with immigrants... Yeah, right. Naturally, the ONE party that seems to make any sense is the green party but aren't powerful enough to stand a chance - fuck knows why.People ALWAYS moan about the way things are in this country, despite how bad it is in other places of the world but most just like to moan about he status quo rather than do anything about it - it drives me mad. AGAIN - refuse to change... You fail!
Did I continue my shit life working in shit sales jobs, moaning about living in one shithole to another, being backstabbed by one shit-muncher to the next?"No", I said - enough's enough and got myself into education in order to turn my life around and I've achieved so much in 3 years alone that I never had time nor money to do before.
Its wrong what universities are allowed to get away with. Most people would agree that they don't like being fucked in the ass but suppose the lubricant of a possible high 2:1 or a 1st is just an easy way of buying their silence (which STILL means fuck all in the industry anyway) apart from me. Once again, I seem to be the only person who's got a pair to do anything about it.The only thing we're all stuck in we CAN'T change that must is the indie film-makers being exploited all the time but God knows that there's those of us who will fight against this for the rest of our lives if it kills us - I'm just one of them.
It's still funny seeing some of these graduate kids posting on Facebook on their walls, stuff like: 'No more assignments and essays - Hurray' ...kind of stuff when they're about to learn the 'real' world is actually 5 times harder and they're gonna eat their words. What you gonna do when mummy or daddy can't bail you out and there's no student status to secure your student loans?
I'm sick of the bullshit is all. I don't respect the government anymore than I do the failings of education and the laziness of most students I've met. I've worked my ass off and now all's I want is a job in the field I love working for and a respectable, well-earned salary to prove that change is WORTH fighting for. If nothing else life will finally make sense.
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