Its a matter of picking up the phone and asking - THAT'S IT!
I have been attached to a short film, where a 1st time writer / director expected me to sleep with two people in a shared hotel room, I have worked on a £10k budget film without receiving any pay doing some of my best work to see the edit come out ungraded and poorly pieced together, I've been on a shoot where a 50+ year-old claimed to be better than Guy Ritchie - recruited a bunch of students at last minute, calling it a professional film when the script was written like a piss poor novel and led people down a cliff with no barriers with heavy equipment and somehow took all day... Sorry... TWO days to film an actor walking up and down a beach then talking to himself in a cave... Well to 'him' it was a cave... To everyone else it was a tiny alcove in the side of a cliff.
On the other hand I've been in front of more employers. I had an interview making 12 out of 127 candidates to make it so far... Luck would have it, I was also recovering from an awful cold, which didn't help. One of the questions was: "Have you got any case studies?"EVERY FILMMAKER RESPONSE: "I'm sorry, a what?"
It turned out he was asking about interviews in relation to the feedback a customer gives from one of the services and/or product he/she has bought from the company you're working for. One look on anyone's showreel it begs the question, why are they asking me about simple interview shoots when they've seen the FAR more complicated stuff I can do? Fair enough it wasn't my best interview but for God sake... I just got nominated for a Royal Television Society Award for an indie comedy I shot. Do you think with my track record or with that kind of recognition, I'd fret over a sodding interview?
What was funny is that the guy who interviewed me said he used to work at ITV (yeah, the assholes who got me in a cab at 3:30AM for a 2nd interview, shadowing both their morning shows then never called me back!). Maybe this interview guy had been breathing the air of corporate affairs too long its now affected his communication.So here we've got communication at the front line to make ANYTHING come together. Why do people struggle with this? A lot of it is down to manners, surely.
Language I catch is: "I'm busy, I can't do those dates, I'll get back to you, I wasn't sure what you meant"
Solution: Use productive language: When are you NOT busy? Which dates CAN you do? WHEN will you get back to me? If you weren't sure what I meant, what was stopping you from asking?
If the answer isn't something along the lines of perhaps: "Sorry Dan, I was going to call you but there was a hippo with the head of a snake that raced out the water and knocked me over, bit my arse, swallowed my phone and left me for dead. I woke up in a hospital 3 days later and had to wait until I was discharged to be able to nip out, buy myself a new phone, return to my computer to see if I could reacquire all my previous contacts before I could respond"- THAT - I would fucking understand!
"Oh Dan, surely you get busy!"
TOO BLOODY RIGHT I DO MATE! But I'm usually back to "everyone" within 24 hours, whether I'm being paid or not. If I can do it, anyone can!
And so we move on to my most anticipated project of 'Jenna The Great' - I wrote the script with the lovely, efficient KT Parker, got it consulted on by Phil Clarke, assigned a lovely guy; Stefano Petroni as the cinematographer who's wanted to work with me for ages, my Hollywood musician friend; Michael O'Neill as our composer. I brought in my lovely mate; Marta Batinic as our editor and the loyal Page Jones as my sound designer again & even the lovely Will Pattenden & Laura Harvey whilst I'd set up a cracking squad of actors like Charlotte Dunnico, Felix Trench, Jamie-Lee Hill, Luisa Gurreiro, Parisa Shahmir, Bhasker Patel and even the lovely Olivia Stelling. I put together a promotional shoot to get the word out there at my expense! I EVEN got graphic design company Diguru to do the project posters! What bloody more can you ask for?Out of £7,000 in just over a month you know how much I raised?
£710!
As if the cast & crew didn't speak for itself - The story was a superb comedy with loads of laughs about a student in the east midlands who happened to bring philosopher Aristotle into our time from Ancient Greece trying to coax him into doing her essay whilst interesting sub-characters like a shitty teacher kept resurfacing to put her down and a single mother who was on her last legs trying to support her... Bit different and more exciting than your bloody zombie apocalypses and an everlasting avalanche of superheroes, is it not? Again... What more can you ask for?
The cast and crew I didn't have a problem with! In fact there were those that got in touch to implicitly ask what more they can do. EXACTLY another reason why I just didn't want to see them let down.
I had a company called PR Kick that did sod all for us - WATCH OUT CROWDFUNDERS, it turns out these are just another one of the clueless morons you can put in your junk email folders. I attracted a producer from Scotland with U.S ties that insisted on a phone call that wanted to work with me, who told me how much she loved the project and said she wanted to work to help me. Next thing I know she's asking for free tickets to the London premiere of 'Wonder Woman' like we're best mates or something...?! Did she 'do' anything? Hell, did she! I also had two AP's that NEVER used their initiative to post things up on the projects Facebook or Twitter, even with several emails and phone calls instructing them on their course of action 'very' clearly whom made every excuse or just never bothered. No emails written to help get more people involved, no tweets, posted videos, photos - nothing. It ALL fell to my editor & I, otherwise we'd have nothing. This has now resulted in my 1st EVER project I have now had to put off. How on Earth do I keep unearthing these kinds of people?So yeah - There you go. Communication! It would seem its not for everyone out there.
After all these years - It's finally 'Jenna The Great' has left me feeling 'Not So Great.' I've been interviewed by more employers than I can count & I cannot help but be aware of the sacrifices I have made over the years to pursue film the way I have and its reached a point where the reward of something like my Royal Television Society Nomination may have just come too late. Some people say I need a break, my parents say I should go on anti-depressants or get counselling. Yep, it's now that ridiculous!
Recently, I completed a CELTA course that allows me to teach English to foreign language students. It was an ABSOLUTE gauntlet. I know about 90% of the students I've met, this would have melted their brains!!! I'd never felt so stupid having to reprogram my brain towards teaching and acknowledging how MUCH I take English for granted as a native speaker. Funnily enough, I also met other like-minded people like me there who'd had enough of their career paths making mugs of them so had also decided to give it a whirl. BLOODY DIFFICULT! - Be warned... You will have NO time. Especially if you're as dumb as me to try and facilitate pre-production of an indie film whilst you're there!THEN you can tell me: "I'm too busy"
Anyway, so as I try to wind down on my film, hopeful towards postponing as opposed to cancelling, as well as my film life in general because my tolerance for bullshit has begun to thin out lately. My thoughts are knowing how much stress I felt during my teacher training and if I'm using petrol to put out a bonfire whilst I have this unshakable feeling that I feel as though I'm giving up on film. I know one thing. If I found a way to disappear in either field and just be happy again. I'd pick and go tomorrow.Teaching gives me the option to leave the country already so whether I get to do one last film or not, let's just say it's going to take some serious convincing to get me to stay.
No comments:
Post a Comment