Spring Breakthrough

It has been a while. Not because nothing has been happening, but because too much has been happening. (I have a feeling I’ve said that before...)



Half of a capacity crowd, with four of the interviewees and 'TV presenter' Jenni to the fore, with Megan and Talia visible further back.

Two nights ago All Heart was screened for an audience of cast, crew and friends. I’m happy to say it went down extremely well; we had the inevitable cancellations and the obligatory technical problems (and some uninvited snow!), but the problems weren't disastrous and frankly if anyone else had turned up we’d have had to hang them from the ceiling. The room was rammed. After watching it with small test audiences (including my family who sometimes didn’t laugh because they weren't sure double-entendres about lesbian sexual practices were intentional...) it was gratifying to have 60+ people, enough to ensure that some of them would get each joke and prompt the others to enjoy.



The other half of the crowd; interviewee Lucy far left, musicians Luke and Joe red-eyed at the back.

We had, I admit, disappointingly few of the main cast, due to various hitches and glitches, but crucially the three leads were there, and were very pleased with how the film turned out. I also had compliments from several people I consider quite difficult to please. Which was nice.



Talia, Jess & Megan with an example of my prop-making...

So, a success. And I managed to relax for nearly a whole day afterwards – guilt at not working didn’t kick in until fairly late afternoon…

In the interim between this and the previous post, the film has acquired a Facebook page, and I’ve had a third attempt at a trailer, which still doesn't seem to quite encapsulate the film; I suspect starting right from scratch is the best approach.

So, what next? There are still some grading issues to try to resolve, and some minor tweaks to sound. The soundtrack from Luke and Joe was delivered just in time to slap it on the cut, but that needs a little adjustment, too.



Dunno why this guy doesn't sit down so we can get on with it...

A branch of Britain’s oldest cinema, The Duke of York’s Picturehouse, have expressed an interest in the film as a possible part of their proposed new night, Visions of Brighton, so we’ll see what develops there. There are festivals to consider; I might be able to get the whole thing done and dusted for the final Raindance deadline.

For now, I’m at least, oh...0.0001% more relaxed than I have been for a while. The process of editing has been a long one (unsurprisingly) and I have to admit a very lonely one. (That is of course partly my fault, as I could have involved others, but I really felt I wanted see what I could put together on my own before asking for feedback.) I missed the companionship of filming, and in particular my three leads, all so easy to work with – not to mention indispensable production assistant Sophie. On Wednesday night, awash in waves of goodwill, I felt rather less alone.



And a flashback to the beginning; Jess & Talia during our first visit to the main location.

The Way We Were

Three lovely ladies and some middle-aged git

It was January last year that I sat down to write the script for my first feature-length film. After a dozen or so short films and with the prospect of passing the personal half-century mid-year, it seemed time to do something a little more ambitious.

Talia on the very first day of filming - oddly enough, the opening shots!

I’d made films as long as 25 minutes, so in theory a 100-minute film should only be about four times as difficult, right? Wrong. There were times I regretted even starting. There were times when it seemed the project was doomed. But somehow, despite delays, mistakes, equipment problems, unavailable performers, injuries, the British weather, repeat injuries, last minute-allergy discoveries…despite all this and more, it somehow got done. (Well, I say 'done'…almost, almost…)

Jess, almost upstaged by Megan's hair dye

I recently had a chuckle to myself recalling the two weeks I booked off work for July, thinking ‘that’s when I’ll be editing the film’. That was actually when we shot most of it, due to delays in finalising casting. But it’s clear to me now, with the perspective of hindsight, that with ANY other combination of performers in the lead roles, the film would never have been completed at all. After what seemed a calamitous start, we were quite ridiculously fortunate. If Talia had not brought Jess to the first read-through, if another Jess had not had to drop out, necessitating the last minute casting of Megan, if both Megan and Jess had been just a fraction less reliable and considerate, everything would have come unstuck during those two crucial weeks in July.

Megan as Faith, in hunting gear

And now here we are, a year on from the first tentative notes I jotted down – How to break up the filming so I wouldn’t be scheduling loads of people together? How to give as many people as possible an opportunity to appear? How to get a head start before I could afford to buy a DSLR? (all of which questions were answered by the same idea) – and I have just one character still to film. (Ok, I’ve been in that position for nearly 2 months, but I’ve been waiting for an actress to get better. I’m nice like that. (Should vegetarians be film directors, do you think…?))

Lizzie in place (but not in character) for Jill's interview scenes

So now seems a good time to look back and thank everyone involved; too many to name individually (30+ speaking parts, for a start!), but from the top: Talia for her enthusiasm and (mostly!) unflagging energy, as well as for all the people she brought to the project, and for her amazing, almost machine-like ability to perform in the most trying circumstances; Jess, for rescuing the entire production and for being always cheerful and reliable despite giving up two weeks of her life at a time when she was also moving house – and of course for giving a perfect performance in a role I thought I couldn’t re-cast; Megan for stepping into the breach and also rescuing the production, and for being steadfast, thoughtful and adaptable (being far more used to theatre performance) throughout; Caron for agreeing to take part before even finishing the script, and sticking with us through all the subsequent delays; Sharon, for mastering by far the most involved dialogue of any character, and for cheerfully winging it when she hadn’t had time to master it – and for AD’ing one evening and saving me from a breakdown; Miranda for braving unimaginable pain to make sure we got shots of her and Jess together, and for giving a great performance whether in agony or pushed for time; Chloe for her patience with scheduling and for coming all the way from London and helping to make sure Thea’s scene had the right impact; Lana and Lizzie for personifying their characters perfectly and for making the trip up the Devil’s Dyke twice so we could get it right; and Jo Maultby for her amazing musical contribution and her acting debut as the busker.

Chloe (a doubtful attendee for the premiere, as she's now based in New York)

Others who deserve a mention; Chris Andrew for great stills and other duties, Jenni, for a perfect location and another acting debut; all the interviewees, Literary Ladies and party extras; Hulya for the use of her spacious flat; Joe and Luke for the score, still developing excitingly as I write – and a special last thank you to Sophie Groome, production assistant extraordinaire (script prompter, boom operator, camera operator, and briefly onscreen as ‘begging student’) without whom so many shoots would have been much more difficult.

Interviewees. Left to right: Leah, Sam, Vanessa, Veronica

The film is currently on schedule for a showing around Easter 2013. No doubt there will be more problems to wrestle with along the way, but for now, it doesn’t seem too indulgent to sit back and say – Thank you everyone, and well done.

Everyone likes the sea shots. Shame they're only in it for about three minutes...

The Road Goes Ever On (to give me an excuse to tag this with 'Tolkien')

Lots of interesting thoughts have occurred to me in the last few weeks - but damned if I can remember any of them now...

Editing is a lot less stressful than organising people to get together and shoot.

Sometimes the above statement is true.

Most times it's true. But just occasionally I would cheerfully swap 30 minutes at the computer for six months of production hell.

However, I am not here to complain. Since my last post, 6 or so weeks ago, I have managed to shoot the final two interviewees who had remained uncast (thanks to the unexpected drama backgrounds of supermarket employees!), and am now waiting for one actress to recover from a fairly serious bout of illness in order to shoot the last half page of script. Mayan Calendar notwithstanding, I feel reasonably confident of finishing the film. I've even remembered to back up the the editing project as well as the footage...

Faith (Megan Bay Dorman) in pensive mood

Editing is a curious, absorbing business, and it has one thing in common with filming; with every scene I work on, I find myself losing sight of the rest of the film. The characters who are not in that particular scene leave my mind, and the whole story, the whole film, seems to be what is depicted in those few minutes of screen time.

The scene(s) I'm working on at the moment feature a total of nine characters, but there are four other significant speaking parts that have not entered my mind since I began this sequence (three weeks ago - it's a complex scene).

Louise (Christabel Cossins) and Kimberley (Tessa Cushan)

If you've visited the blog before you may recall me talking about the shoot that nearly went awry at the last minute due to a cast member injuring her back. This is the one. We ended up having to shoot on two different days.

Happily the vastly different light on the two days has turned out to be possible to match using the editing software, and the various I'd-tear-my-hair-out-if-I-had-any problems that have surfaced due to lack of coverage (we shot about six minutes of screen time in about four hours) or continuity blunders seem to have resolved themselves satisfactorily. And I haven't screamed too often.

Bizarrely, in regard to some aspects of the scene the problem has been that I have too much choice - many lovely shots of the cast that I've had to discard. There may still be shots in the edit that I should be cutting. It's not easy to throw away beauty.

Philippa (Philippa Hammond)

The other thing I've done is to put together a second trailer, this time a little more focused on Hazel and her dilemma, as some people felt the first trailer was a little...diffuse, shall we say.

I've also shown some more or less completed scenes to a select audience and had a generally favourable reaction, which is heartening considering the scenes were from the middle of the film and therefore apt to be confusing...

One thought I had gave me pause. I recalled that I booked two weeks off work in July, thinking that was most likely when I'd be editing the film. Well...do I need to tell you how that worked out..? Just as well I booked a lot off time off around Christmas, too...

Tuesdays With More Actresses

More interviews under the belt, a few more to follow…

Ruta Kackauskaite in the hot seat

Editing was supposed to start this week. And it did – sort of. Part of the problem with a job this big is where to start. One could just begin at the opening shot of the film and work on through, but that just seems to make the whole thing more daunting. Plus I have musicians poised to compose and the parts of the film that would be most useful to them are the sequences without dialogue. So, so far, all I’ve done is nibble at the edges.

Performance poet Alice Walker branching out into acting

So, for now, a stocktake of sorts. What have I learnt from this experience?

There was a point when I thought I’d learnt that you simply don’t do this sort of thing, but I seem to have forgotten that lesson. It will no doubt come back to me with some force when I embark on the next one.

Well, after watching the light change during a brief shot I realise why professional films always use artificial lighting, but I still don’t regret my decision to use natural light 90% of the time. We barely got some of the scenes shot as it was; time spent fiddling with lights would have meant rushing even more. (Plus, I had no money for them, and using someone else’s would have meant factoring yet another person into the scheduling. NO.)

Often there was quite a lot going on on set...

I’m not sure what I learnt about issuing call sheets – except maybe I should have had some. I did find that certain members of the cast got easily confused about what we were shooting and when, and if I ever made the mistake of explaining why something had to be done at a certain time or in a certain way because of something to do with another scene, that compounded the confusion. This of course was where having a producer or some sort of assistant would have been really handy, although the one member of the cast who most strongly suggested that then immediately realised: ‘but of course you’d have to tell them everything to start with’. Realistically, no one was ever going to have even a fraction of the time needed to really support me on this. Since I was re-casting right up to the wire, I was really the only person who could deal with cast liaison.

One thing I learnt was to keep an eye on the bigger picture, script-wise. Several times during shooting I was challenged about particular lines or actions, and on one or two occasions I gave in to suggestions, only to realise that there was a good reason for what I’d done based on the preceding scene or the subsequent one. I simply didn’t have the time to keep going over the script to remind myself how it all fitted together, and that’s something I should have made time for. Fortunately I don’t think any real damage was done.

We rehearsed this one, and then Caron couldn't make it...

To say I would have liked a lot more rehearsal time with the cast is an obvious one; the circumstances of the shoot simply didn’t allow for it. We were fantastically lucky to get Jess’s scenes shot in the two weeks we had available (to add to everything else she was moving house at the time) and we couldn’t have done so had Megan not been so flexible about her other work. Jess was cast about a week before we shot, Megan a day or two later.

And I was also supremely lucky that the two weeks I booked off from work when I thought (falls off chair laughing) I’d be editing turned out to be that same fortnight when we had to get a full third of the film shot. It was an absolute nightmare and probably my favourite two-week period of the whole year. And I would be remiss not to mention the other two stalwarts of the production, my leading lady, Talia, and the nearest thing we had to a production assistant, Sophie, who filled in wherever and whenever needed. That fun-filled fortnight would not have worked out without their whole-hearted cooperation.

Left to right: Jess, Talia, Sophie, Megan

But probably the most important lesson I learnt was about myself. I started off as a writer. I have written eight or nine novels, but I’ve abandoned many, many more. Once I’ve begun to shoot a film, I’ve never failed to finish it. This one was so nearly the exception. SO MANY times during this process I would happily have walked away without a backward glance – if I had been the only one to be affected. But I couldn’t, I simply couldn’t, let the work of so many other people go to waste. So I now know that it’s easier for me to let myself down than disappoint others. In this case, that was a good thing, because it forced me to keep going and the film got made. For other areas of my life, though…I shall need to watch that.

In the meantime, you can watch this: music by the über-talented Emily Baker, a little mash-up of shots from the film.



That will do, won’t it? I don’t need to edit the entire thing, do I…?

The Lives of Others

Want to hear about more hassles? No?

Thought not.

Tough.

How about the rehearsal for a crucial and complex scene for which I could not possibly procure all the cast involved so I had to make a choice between two dates and as soon as I did and told everyone, two of the people who could make that date suddenly couldn’t? How about…

But no.

I have been reminded lately how remarkably precious life is, not least by the extraordinary blog entry of Jessica Ghawi (writing as Jessica Redfield), killed at the Dark Knight Rises shooting in Aurora. I urge you to read it; if it doesn’t make you acutely aware of the life in you right this moment and how fragile it is, then I can only assume that you are some kind of alien. Or that I am.

It is too easy to forget how lucky we are, simply being comparatively free and not lacking for warmth or nourishment. And those of us who have the opportunity to breathe life into a new creation - whether paid for it or not – are thrice blest. I must remember to be grateful.

Although… I do wonder how many filmmakers are pondering their vocation at the moment, and suddenly feeling doubts about it. Not because entertainment may deprave or corrupt or send signals to a sick mind, but simply because something like the Aurora shooting, and in particular the intensely personal angle on it provided by Jessica Ghawi's writing would surely make anyone wonder about what they’re doing with their life.

Martin Amis said that the writing of fiction seemed redundant – trivial - after 9-11. He recovered his perspective, but now, with this, with this indelible link between a film and an atrocity, the contrast between the absolute preciousness of life and the utter triviality of a blockbuster film could not be starker. In a world where such things can happen, what are we doing – what am I doing – to make them less likely?

Regret calamities, Emerson wrote, if thereby you can help the sufferer. If not, attend your own work and already the evil begins to be repaired. I can spend time asking unanswerable questions or I can get on.

Perhaps the best a film (or a book, or a play) can hope to achieve is to open the heart of one or more members of its audience (or, indeed, one or more of its makers). If, by presenting fictional people, a story can facilitate understanding of some aspect of real behaviour or make a previously misunderstood or unappreciated state of mind more real and more graspable to someone, then perhaps it is not quite a waste of time. If it can make other people more real to us, then in some ways it is not fiction at all, but something truer than reality. That would seem to be reason enough for it to exist.

I make no such grand claims for my own film. I merely hope it looks at life and human beings compassionately, without judgement. There are no villains in this film. There are only misunderstandings and fears. And I hope that every character in the story ends with greater understanding and little less fear. That seems a passage worth charting.



Sorry - this was not what I intended to write. Have a little production diary to wash away the seriousness. Some of Chris Andrew’s pictures of our party shoot:

Nine Days In July

'Some people are in charge of pens that shouldn't be in charge of brooms.' Graham Parker

And some people are in charge of cameras...

I know every creative industry today is about selling yourself, about persuading everyone (including yourself) that you have the greatest product since human beings started to dream...but I prefer to try to be honest. Which is no doubt one of the reasons I'm still doing things with no money.

Leading ladies in every sense: Jess, Talia and Megan

It is not hype, however, to say that I've been blessed with three gifts in the leading roles. Jess and Megan were not even part of this project three weeks ago, but in the last two weeks of intensive shooting they have been everything a producer/director could desire in terms of commitment and attention to detail. And Talia (quite apart from bringing Jess on board) has battled with the loss of her phone and her home internet and bouts of illness to complete the vital Gypsy scenes before Jess escapes to Dubai. And I would be most remiss not to mention Miranda, who injured her back quite seriously but still struggled up several flights of stairs to film some vital wide shots with Jess.

Miranda Morris as 'Emily' - accessories not the actress' own

A filmmaking friend, Dan Harding of 23 1/2 Films was adamant that a large project needed a producer. It wasn't that I thought he was wrong, but where would I find anyone who was able to give the time and energy that was required? So, I've done it all myself. And inevitably I've made mistakes, the most serious of which was a moment of tech-blindness that led to me mis-setting the mic for two days' worth of filming. I have yet to finally confirm whether the sound recordings are usable or whether I will have to resort to my personal bête noire, ADR. (I have never done it except for one carefully planned shot, and swore I never would). I made the same mistake weeks back but it was caught by another member of the crew, and in this case too I was put on the scent by Sophie, who insisted that the sound in her headphones was different. And I had so much on my mind that even after I checked the mic settings I didn't actually see the problem.

I've never had a fortnight like this. It will quite literally be a case of 'going back to work for a rest'. (And on that subject, it was pleasant to hear Megan saying today that her work has seemed decidedly uninviting compared to the time she's spent on set)

Braving the British summer - picture by Crystal Rodrigues

Of course there were times when we all wished we were elsewhere - dodging the rain and being buffetted by the wind in the Devil's Dyke area, for example. We may even have to reshoot a small portion of the film due to the conditions, and I have prepared a line about the British summer to cover the difference in the weath- oh, except that no one will require an explanation...

Lizzie Cornall ('Jill'). Could that be faint sunlight behind her? In July? Surely not!

A word, too, in praise of Sharon Salazar, actress and filmmaker, who became my ever first assistant director, organising the guests for the party scene and enabling me to concentrate on getting the shots I needed. This was on the same day we went out into the wilds, and I had two hours in the afternoon to recharge batteries (my own and the cameras') before launching into a crucial dialogue scene while Sharon and others created the necessary party atmosphere (photos to follow).

Sharon Salazar

We have done good work in the last fortnight, and have some lovely moments captured. It's too early to tell yet whether the whole film will hang together as it should (and of course with the right editing it may yet hang together as it shouldn't), but all the cast have a right to feel proud of themselves. There are continuity issues, and I take sole responsibility for those, with the small caveat that I never dreamed I would have to shoot so much in such a short time. I will know better, and plan better, next time.

Which is an encouraging thing to find myself thinking, because there have been too many times in the last month or so when I felt like giving up filmmaking altogether. If I am in a more optimistic place now, it is because of the support and dedication of others in helping me to realise this story - and collaboration is what this work is all about.

Talia, Jess, Megan, Sophie, Sharon, Miranda, Jenni, Hülya, Robert, Jo, Michael, Lana, Lizzie, Crystal, Gemma, Chloe (and not forgetting Caron when she gets to do a scene!) - thank you all.

Talia and Lana have not yet mastered the first lesson in Monty Python's 'How Not To Be Seen' (picture by Crystal)

Three Little Words...

...Ahead of schedule. I am savouring them, as I don't expect to write them again...

Sharon Salazar as 'Isabella'

Jenni Davidson as the interviewer

Isabella tells all (with thanks to Latest Music Bar)

Megan Bay Dorman as 'Faith'

Jess Barton with the pages for the day

Megan adding to her CV...

My hopes for tomorrow? Simply that it doesn't rain. Gonna go wild in the country...