My favourite festival in the entire world - obviously the 'London Screenwriters Festival' ran by the fantastic Chris Jones have opened up a new 'Create50' project called 'The Impact', which involves the unsung voices of the scriptwriting community to converge and script a 2 page story that plays with the concept of 'The World Is About To End' and writers are allowed to write a short story for any stage of the event they desire; here are mine.
Naturally, I hope at least one gets picked but even if they don't, it's bloody terrific seeing the work of the underdogs having their work up there for all the world to see. The last LSF project '50 Kisses' has become one of my favourite films of all time and I know whatever result comes from 'The Impact' will probably be my next.
The really interesting part was when I received a tweet notification from one of my most respected writers KT Parker mentioned me in a comment about being listed alongside her in 'Screencraft's Bahamas International Film Festival Screenwriters Residency Program' (... a mouthful I know but) if you're a writer, you know how HUGE of a deal that is. Currently, we've reached the quarter-finals, so here's to hoping.
The project (you can find a 10 page sample of on my website) is called 'Realm' and takes some of the best movies from my time, such as 'Star Wars', 'Game Of Thrones' & video game franchise 'Final Fantasy' - basically guns, swords & magic together and a hero's journey (non-writer geeks, I refer you to the great Christopher Vogler book... "A Hero's Journey" - how tentative!) of an unlikely anti-hero soldier trying to follow in the footsteps of his mothers legacy until he discovers it to be a complete lie and is forced to confront his inner demons to save the world.
Another big name I had to drop was slightly bizarre how it came to be but 'Shore Scripts' got in touch with regards to an essay I wrote at (*cough) Bournemouth University regarding Pentagon Film Script Approval and have since publicised it online, which has invited some nice compliments from inquisitive readers and certainly makes use out the time I had to put into it some time ago... Lets face it, how useful is an essay ever going to be to you outside the walls of education - especially if its the media industry? Maybe something in copywriting if you're lucky!
Some superb job offers have started to come through. CHS Creative had responded to an application I had completely forgotten about and brought me in to 2 long interviews for a 'Senior Creative' Position. Wouldn't luck have it? - the company had worked out they couldn't support me on the salary I was after at the last minute but thats not to say I didn't enjoy myself and the guys I would have worked for seemed lovely and even followed up with a reassuring phone call to thank me for the extra effort I had taken for my presentation and at least some future commissioned work for shooting their adverts is now on the cards.
Getting through the storm of absurd underpaid callings out there for someone like myself who can offer so much towards a role, has been draining but I'm starting to receive the better producer offers at long last with some highly protective job recruitment agencies.
You know, whilst I understand where independent filmmakers are coming from, I can't forgive the established companies that wish to enlist professional filmmakers & actors for 'zero' pay or minimum wage. It's absolutely incredible how much they want a standard videographer to know... The job titles come in various forms but it seems they all want;
- a scriptwriter
- a storyboard artist
- a producer
- a production manager
- a cinematographer (with their own kit & simultaneous focus pull abilities)
- a video editor (fluent in, photoshop, adobe premier pro, after effects, final cut and / or avid)
- 1 - 5 years worth of experience (usually with another firm)
- previous broadcast credits
... the list goes on!
ALL in one! - for £6.50 per hour to perhaps £20k per year...?!
We're talking about 7 jobs in this example at £6.50 per hour, so if you put that into a salary, you're looking at £98,000 upwards!!!
Naturally, there are "always" going to be extra duties that go with "any" job you sign up for but in light of this, why is it so unreasonable when all we'd likely to be asking for is probably less than half this amount? It's that look they give you... "Oh, thats way too much..." Well then realise what you're asking.
We filmmakers invest a lot of time, energy, sacrifices and Gawd knows what else over the course of many years to know and perform what we do. I was watching 'Question Time' last night, over some of the country's latest cuts in the NHS and a GP said that most in her profession are resigning and taking off to New Zealand as a result. She stated, it takes "12 YEARS" to train a GP, so... Well, just think about what I'm getting at.
... Just another reason why the raising of student fees amongst other things is so insane because not only will half of them be without a job to pay it back, young adults are free to change their mind about their career choice(s) and even if not, they're without a decent enough job to start making the repayments, correct?
Before this becomes boring and political, what stands is that after all I've been through I'm not prepared to under sell myself anymore than I have in the past and as for my fellow filmmaker family out there;I "know" sometimes you'll have no choice but its down to you to figure out how much you're worth (being honest with yourself) then go and don't stop until you get it! - You owe it yourself!
