closer2
MatthewFiled under: Closer Productions | Tags: Closer Productions, elephantiasis, equipment, FilmLab, matt cormack, sophie hyde
so Mr Cormack is on some small island in the Phillipines, detoxing, getting massaged, doing Yoga, not eating but basically having an experience. This marks the one year of working with us here at Closer Productions, hmm telling. I think Soph and I could do with similar treatment.!
we have finished a rough cut of our next short film Elephantiasis. its coming along well, weighing in at the just under 11 min mark. look forward to polishing it up soon.
blogging, bloggin, blog. its been a while, i think us Labmob should stay in contact and Pressing a few Words out is a good way to do it no.?
hey heres a request, we seem to have misplaced a medium sized camera battery, did anyone come across one in their FL pack ups.!? a Sony number, not one of the big chunky buggers but not the ultra thin useless ones either..
oki doki i am off to read to Audrey.
more soon.
b.
Filed under: Closer Productions, FilmLab workshops 1 | Tags: elephantiasis, FilmLab, matt bate, MIFF, Necessary Games, neon electric, restless dance theatre, sophie hyde, Stephen cleary
well here we are then, 3 days passed the end of the beginning..
the much anticipated and faught for 3 weeks have come and gone. but they will be remembered.
since then, Matt B and I have shot a days worth of green screen Gangsta shit to populate an animation for his sneakers on the wire film, Flying Kicks. Including a cheesy jogging cameo by me, a shoot out, Viron making a remarkably believable appearance as a bearded, alcoholic, bum, Matt Bate tossing… (oh sneakers that is) and some young shopping ladies come hookers, all in a days work.
then Soph and i have been running around Filming the Adelaide Festival of Ideas, which has been really rather fascinating and engaging, check SlowTV in a few days for some interesting sessions. We picked up the Elephantiasis rushes and are launching into that edit on Monday, then there is another dance show from the amazing Restless Dance Theatre to cut, a film clip to shoot and edit for Neon Electric (the same talented peeps that did the music for closers 90 FilmLab vid), a week of filming the incredible dance show ‘construct’ as it hits Adelaide and then off to Melbourne and MIFF for a screening of Necessary Games and then on the 2nd August launching into a 10 week edit of a one hour SBS doco. Sheesh when you put it like that there certainly are a lot of things to do.!
there is a general wash of FilmLabness still bangin around inside me noggin, maybe this is what Stephen was on about ‘needing to settle’, although with our schedule i am not sure anything really has a chance to settle. ahh i am tired, but optimistic and excited. i am not ready to do the big sign off blog wrap up of FilmLab so i will leave that for a more lucid moment.
b.
Filed under: FilmLab workshops 1 | Tags: FilmLab, matt bate, safc, sophie hyde
I’m getting good at driving to the SAFC. Even Sophie has lessened her whispers, her gentle reminders that I need to drive in just one of the lanes and that the turn off was only five minutes back the other way. Just when I’m getting used to this, just when Matt B is less scared of getting in the car with me, it will be over. Such is the life of a simple driver.
Presentations to market happened today. What can I say… by the end I felt like one of the farmer villagers in Seven Samurai. With the help of our hungry samurai we will fight back! Who knows what tomorrow will bring: op shopping? Bach in St Peters Cathedral? All I hope is that I get my ronin in the car one more time and we scare the shit out of all those pesky drivers and their one lane policy.
M
today felt hard. hard to keep going, to define, to sing in german, to lock myself in a room…
went back to character and found the path again…off to grandma’s house.
nervous about tomorrow. this is a very revealing process. i feel like we only just met our baby and now we are going to put it up at a baby beauty contest for judgment. maybe the baby’s not the prettiest one on the pedestal, but she can certainly shimmy!
need air, need sun. just found out we are op shopping on Wednesday – nearly as good as the elements.
soph
Must blog. Now is the time when we condense all our work, all who we are, what we have brought to FilmLab, understand our journey through these three weeks. We are now concentrating on pulling it all together for a presentation to an outside world. We are clarifying, finding the essential truths, our pithy premises, our dramatic questions; we go deeper as time becomes more valuable. Onto it.
M
So, we have all decided to blog today. Back into it. Only when we were ready, it seems. Last week was a result, no, the result of last week was a hunkering down, a refocusing, re-evaluation, a reminder, a repositioning, a repossession, a repulsion, a rectification; all those re words. But for a blog to continue we must blog so we broke the two rules of blogging: the first rule of blogging, you do not stop blogging; the second rule of blogging, you do not stop blogging. Ah, rules suck, anyway.
I keep returning to Mr Burns and his room full of chained-up monkeys on typewriters. The greatest near-greatest first line of the almost great American novel: “It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times.” Slap the monkey, take the cigarette out of its furry mouth, and ask it what blurst means. I don’t even know what I’m writing but at least I’m blogging…
M
Filed under: FilmLab workshops 1 | Tags: blogging, character, development, excitement, FilmLab
i haven’t blogged for some time. A muddle of confusion? a lack of desire to reveal?
we are now deep into a task that is exciting and i love it. we are discovering and defining our characters and from within them the themes, tone, settings and plot are walking out, surprising us all – and yet, they are so natural to us that they are hardly surprising at all.
so i must admit that we have found something we may never have found. and what we have found is practically so much more challenging. it is also, so much more connected to us and is flowing so easily.
ah characters. you have revealed to us so much.
did we need to fall off said log to get there. i don’t think so. and i’m not sure we did fall off. but we certainly scurried off somewhere.
but we did get there…so….mmmm
much to do. so much to do.
following our instinct and it’s showing us paths for our analytical brains to follow. i like this version. emotion first, then reason. always held up by our intellectual responses. always questioned, but always the starting point and always the right path to follow. something exciting brews….
Filed under: FilmLab workshops 1 | Tags: character, excitement, FilmLab, matt cormack, rebecca summerton, sophie hyde
ok so now there seems to be some dramatic movement in everyone to define, write and discuss their story, characters, settings, plot, themes, etc. etc.. and you know what, it feels great..
we are still singing in the mornings and being encouraged to keep the creative juices bubbling, however we are in a bit more of a nuts and bolts phase of the lab. We have two days-ish to prepare ourselves to present to the panel, which happens on tuesday. ha tuesday, gold.
last night Soph Matt and I, with a little help and discussion from Bec managed to lock a few things into the film. 52 Tuesdays woke up today with things it didn’t have yesterday, characters, real challenging, messy, full characters, a sense of journey, some settings and a very real reason for our production methodology. time will pass and it needs to.
there is much to be done still but there is a genuine excitement which only comes with movement. yesterday and today, things moved!
Filed under: FilmLab workshops 1 | Tags: FilmLab, matt bate, matt vesley, shut up little man, sophie hyde, Stephen cleary
you know it was an interesting experiment, the film we made.
however the problem was and is, that presenting a film to a group of talented film makers makes the issues or problems inherent in the project stand up and slap you in the balls.
it was not, as i was suspecting yesterday, a complete waste of time and energy as it has, as Stephen suggested help redefine and refocus our energy onto the fundamental question of 52 tuesdays.
however i believe there were some triumphs in the film we showed, the blindfolded scene where Joey revealed an unguarded truth to Adam, who wasn’t there, was magic. and really for Soph to pull that moment out of a 2 hour filming session was really quite amazing. i mean overall it felt a bit like watching rushes presented as a finished film, but we were exploring a concept, it was an experiment.
anywho the main question is now afoot, the scenario must be defined or this film is not going to work.
happy days off Labsters.
b.
also. just wanted to mention the Matts, i thought Matt V and Matt B’s work was great yesterday, totally engaging piece filled with great writing Vesley and the debate and interest in Shut Up Little Man is still live, the journey of that film seems clearer and clearer which is great.
imagine if you set up a process in which two actors who barely know each other have to spend 2 intensive hours running tasks. now a task is a set of guide lines in which to operate. for example; ask a question using no words, the other person must answer the question you are actually asking before you move on and swap roles.
now imagine during this two hour journey through 20 different tasks a camera was capturing 2 minutes of the tasking every 11 minutes. these 2 minute chunks are not allowed to be edited or tampered with. In the interim 11 minutes in between shooting tasks the camera must film ‘life’ and convey a passing of time. This footage will be assembled in chronological order to create a film.
this is what we have spent our time devising and creating in the last three days, the resultant film experiment is called Tuesday and will premiere in two hours here at FilmLab. stay tuned we may post a chunk or two soon.
b.
