closer2
MatthewFiled under: development
This idea is meant to be life affirming – freeing us of the weight of moments, forcing us to understand that life just happens and our preconceptions of how things should occur just get in the way. And this is affirming, for most of the time. Unless you are already weighted down so much you’re on your knees and these knees are beginning to crack the concrete they rest on. I guess those cracks can be puttied up or something.
The dilemma – the exciting thing – about the film we are writing is the very dilemma the characters are facing. When you only have one day a week, one moment in a whole life of a week, in a relationship (to tell a story of a relationship) how do you construct a meaningful experience (narrative), which has the natural ebb and flow of something that allows us to deeply connect . We all seek to understand the story of our lives. We all want to understand it as a story, as a narrative that flows from one event to another. What if it is all a game for them? What if it is a desperate game of trying to connect and build these dispirate, controlled, segregated moments into something meaningful? It would be so easy to connect and disconnect and then connect and then disconnect, if what we only saw was only one day a week, every Tuesday. What kind of story is this?
In a podcast I listened to recently, John Patrick Shanley was talking about his play and film ‘Doubt’ with the lovely folks from Creative Screenwriting magazine:
“I had a recurring fantasy about a guy on a raft in the ocean who was shipwrecked and could find his way by the stars and then the clouds came in and obscured that and he had to go on faith that he was going in the right direction in the hope that he remembered correctly the insight that he once had when the stars were visible. And I had that fantasy over and over again for a few years…. Which I think was sort of my feeling about insights that I’ve had in my life where there’s been moments when the path became very clear to me and I knew which way to go and I started down that path. And then the feeling of certainty evaporated. And yet I was going to go down that path and I just hoped that that insight that I had was correct. And that’s still very compelling to me – just the human experience.”
Shanley talks about doubt as a necessity, as a necessary part of being human, and to name it in us brings us strength. As we have set this thing off – the raft, if you like – a year is a long time to keep the stars clear in the sky, and as I write this film and as we make this film and as the characters live out their lives over year in the film, there is no doubt all will lose sight of the stars.
Anyway, I guess I’m just reminding the story that what we have set out to do will always change. The control we place on life and our relationships will always waver. Is it just a matter of how well we deal with all our wrong moments, if there is no right moment? Make the most of our eternal, infernal Tuesdays…
Pity it’s not Tuesday today. We should start blogging every Tuesday. Tuesday 13/10: “Tried to write film but made pasta instead. Too doughy. Try more egg next time.” Tuesday 20/10: “Pasta was perfect.”
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
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
Being a part of and watching today’s tasks with the actors was great. I furiously wrote away trying to keep up with what was happening between the two. I discovered a few truths for myself. We are now honing on our individual roles, on what needs to be done during the filming for tomorrow. There is definitely some relief. Interesting, huh?
The battles of what needs to be told of the experience these two actors will have tomorrow, what their tasks mean, what our rules mean, now make way for the decisions made, for the unknown to be played out in those decisions. What will be seen, what will we discover about these two people, what rules and tasks will surface in the audience? We surrender, we give up, we lay down our arms, we hand in our guns at the bar. We just have time, and two people, and a camera. Hang on, we always did!
M
Filed under: FilmLab workshops 1
The play’s the thing.
I tell you, holding a paintbrush (or three as it ended up being) and playing with simple ideas of shape and size and colour was the best way in to thinking about our film: What conflicts interest me? What ideas of relationships do I keep returning to?
We shift from this to part two of Stephen’s thoughts on lo-budget. Amongst other things, what remains with me is an idea of distinction, an authenticity achieved by necessity and by the extremely personal vision of the filmmaker.
The rest of today flew; an hour and a half meeting with Stephen in the afternoon felt like it lasted as long as a quick catch-up and our minds were just beginning to buzz along in our little office, our home away from homes, when we were called for the end of day warm-down.
Now? The rules. The rules of the film. The rules’re the thing. Oh, and for the moment, tone.
M
