I am another statistic on the list of victims of these trying economic times.

My skills are particularly niche which they weren’t ten years ago. I have my own theories as to why this is so which conflict with that of most of the companies who have moved away from the software I develop. Most of my theories revolve around the central notion that those companies are all a bunch of idiots who are talking out of their arses. It doesn’t help my situation any though. o get another contract doing what I do at the moment, I’d probably have to move to the US. Or Aberdeen.

Or Belgium.

So I’ve been retraining and setting up a small, freelance web development business which has had a steady trickle of work coming in although not quite enough to cover our household expenses. In the meantime, I’ve been applying for all sorts of jobs, both contract and permanent as has Mrs D. Her prospects, it turns out, are far better than mine.

In some ways, now is the perfect time to think about concentrating on other areas like doing more writing or finding a way into film by whatever means necessary. I’ve already applied for a trainee position via the combined might of Skillset and Screen South although I don’t expect it to come to much and, frankly, what they’ll be paying won’t be anywhere near enough to cover our monthly outgoings. But it’s an opportunity and I’d be foolish to pass it up at this stage.

Once again, I’ve neglected this blog. Once again I’m in the middle of deciding what to do with it. The title, Tabula Rasa, has never been more apt as I stand on the threshold of a new, albeit unexpected, adventure. This is a chance to wipe the slate clean. It might mean putting this blog to bed and starting from scratch (possibly rehashing some of the content here) with a new focus, new direction and a new purpose. Part of that purpose will be making money. I hope you understand the reasons why.

So expect a slew of blog posts in the next couple of days – as ever when I say “don’t know if I’m going to blog here”, I know I’ll end up blogging loads. Might also start twitterittering again but baby steps, hey?

I’m not going to introduce myself though.

Anyone out there done any family research or interested in genealogy? Any interesting discoveries?

Gone Fishing
Gone Fishing is, in all honesty, a very good film and I really am not just saying that because it was the focus of the seminar or because Chris Jones is a nice guy. I hadn’t seen it before the seminar (although it is part of the online course) so it was a delight to see it for the first time being presented by its creator. It is an absolute gem of the film and there’s so much I can enthuse about. What struck me most of all was how bright it was. It’s unusual to see short films that have been shot on 35mm for obvious cost reasons, especially with the easy access to cheap digital cameras. Gone Fishing really made the most of it though and was absolutely stunning. There’s a slow motion sequence in the middle of the film which is jaw-droppingly magnificent and so evocative that I sat in awe while watching it. I believe the film is going to be available on iTunes before long so I really do encourage you to pay the $2 or whatever and download it because it’s worth it.

September
Esther May Campbell’s BAFTA winning short, shot on a mix of 16mm and HD, is exactly what comes to mind when you think about short films – arty and experimental. I got the distinct impression that the majority of the people on the seminar didn’t particularly like it because of that reason but personally I really liked it. I thought it was a charming little film and had some really lovely little touches. A few people asked what it was all meant to be about which surprised me because I felt the meaning was clear (albeit very much clouded in symbolism). In a lot of ways I felt that September represented exactly the reason that everyone in the room that day was there – to witness something magical, something that would inspire them to take the next step in whatever direction they were headed in. It’s definitely not going to appeal to everyone but it was right up my street.

Soft
Soft, by Simon Ellis, is a film about “Happy Slapping” and about youth violence. It’s a film that definitely made me feel uncomfortable (the first of three we saw that did) featuring, as it did, some quite violent scenes and raising a few questions about, well, about stuff. It wasn’t perfect by any means but what I did like about it was that it did ask questions and left enough ambiguity that there was something to discuss particularly in relation the actions of the father and why he did what he did. (Yes, sorry, without watching the film that’s going to mean nothing to you. As there’s no website to link to, you’ll have to Google yourself. There are clips on YouTube for a start.) A feelgood film, this most definitely was not.

Leaving
I’m conflicted about “Leaving”. It is a very good, very well acted and well directed film. It is also an extremely powerful film about domestic abuse and, once again, is anything but feelgood. I’m conflicted because as much as I can appreciate it, it feels very much like a docu-drama or a Crimewatch “reconstruction” film which, to be fair, it pretty much is. Leaving one the TCM Classic Shorts competition last year, ahead of Gone Fishing, but because of the terms and conditions of the competition, the film became available for viewing on the TCM website (here – where I think you can see the full version of the film). Because of this, it became ineligible for consideration for Oscar nomination – and it’s a fair bet that Leaving may have done quite well. The lesson here is that as much as winning competitions might be nice, you have to consider your festival strategy and ultimate goals for any short film you make.

New Boy
New Boy is the only film on this list to make the final five films that were nominated for an Oscar. (It didn’t win – that honor went to “Toyland”, a film about the Holocaust. ). I believe it’s based on a short story by Roddy Doyle and bears all the usual hallmarks of his: witty, poignant and warm-hearted. The story is about, unsurprisingly, a new boy in a class in an Irish school but this new boy happens to be a refugee from a war torn African country. It is a charming little film and was a fine end to the day, especially after the more than downbeat films we’d been subjected to. I belive it may be online to view (as are the other nominees) but I can’t find a link – it should definitely be available on iTunes.

Side Effect
Right, here’s your heads up. I’m going to be delving into spoilers for this film because it’s the only way I can explain it. If you want to watch it and see it blind, don’t carry on reading.

I didn’t like this film a bit which, considering it’s a horror film, is actually quite surprising. I’m well aware that I was watching it towards the end of a long day and on the back of four hours sleep so my emotional state was questionable. The film is about a teenage student who is babysitting for a couple and doing some household chores for them including preparing and cooking a turkey. She’s studying to get into college (I assume) and to help her, she’s popping some new pills that are meant to assist her concentration and focus. Queue unforseen consequences. Except that they aren’t that unforseen at all and that’s one of the problems with the film – it pretty much telegraphs what’s going to happen right from the outset.

After a few scenes showing the “side effects” of the pills, the couple return home to find that the babysitter has managed to drown their infant son while giving him a bath and has also managed to swap their baby for the turkey and put the baby in the oven. It was all highly predictable. Where it crossed the line for me, however, was showing the baby cooking in the oven. I’ll admit that it could be argued that the film achieved its purpose in disturbing and shocking the audience but quite frankly, the last reveal was un-fucking-necessary. We knew what had happened when the turkey was shown to be wrapped up in the baby’s blanket so showing the contents of the oven was nothing less than gratuitous. Up to that point, I just thought it wasn’t a particular well written film but after that, it moved into the Like? Definitely Do Not. (Disclaimer – it didn’t help that the baby in the film appeared to be a similar age to my daughter so yes, I had was always going to have a particular emotional response. Your mileage may vary.)

As a side note, there was sketch in the BBC3 comedy show “Man Stroke Woman” that had a similar premise. That did actually tickle me. Funny old world isn’t it.

Watch it here

If you pick through the fetid archives of this blog, you’ll find circumstantial evidence that I am a big fan of the Half-Life series of games produced by Valve Software. Recently a short film got released onto the intertubes called “Escape From City 17” (and my thanks to Matt for making me aware of it). The film is a live action fan film inspired by the adventures of Gordon Freeman. Within days, it got a huge amount of publicity all over the ‘net and met with a rave reception.

The thing is I don’t actually think it’s that good.

The reason I’ve held back from writing this post is because I felt it was a little disingenuous of me to criticise a film that is obviously created by fans of Half-Life. However, there’s always a “but” and it’s this: a lot of the praise stemmed from the fact that they made this film for a mere $500, guerilla style, with no money, no crew and – this is the kicker – no script.

Before I go on, I have to say this: there are some good things about it. The CGI is, on consideration, pretty good. The atmosphere is, for the most part, spot on. The wardrobe design is excellent (and I’m guessing that’s down to finding some committed cosplayers but nevertheless, the costumes and gun props were really accurate). That it’s lacking a script, however, is painfully obvious. The film starts very well with establishing shots of a City 17 that is in the throes of revolution and the Citadel in meltdown. Then it gets to the main action of the story (a word I shall use in its loosest sense here) and it all slows down, constrained by unimaginative photography and too much (possibly improvised) dialogue.

The directors, The Purchase Brothers, do specify in the write up to this video that this film was originally envisioned as a project to test out “numerous post production techniques” and as far as that goes, it’s very good. I took time to watch the other videos on their website and I liked what I saw (although I also assumed it wasn’t professionally commissioned material) so the guys obviously have talent. But it’s this lack of script thing that really bothers me. I mean come on, seriously: a script doesn’t cost anything (sorry writers but you know what I mean). If you’re going to do something, do it properly – get a script!

When I’ve had this discussion with people so far, the argument that comes back is always “but it only cost $500″. This attempt at a justification really annoys me. Perhaps it’s a sign of my age but have people really forgotten about Kevin Rubio’s fantastic fan film Troops? Okay, so it wasn’t shot as Guerilla style but even so, it only cost a tad over $1000 to make (which in today’s money is probably similar) but the difference in professionalism and quality is immeasurable. For a start, most of the time and effort went into the pre-production and developing a script and storyboarding it all before the shoot. Considering that it was made back in 1997 (before the release of the original Half-Life even) long before easily accessible non-linear editing systems and digital (let alone HD) cameras were available, I believe it must still be considered the yard-stick by which all other fan-films should be compared. Especially if they have the pretensions of grandeur that are accredited to Escape from City 17 if not by the filmmakers themselves then by the fans who are acclaiming it.

I come to write this post now because of something that Chris Jones said on his seminar about the way he approached the production of Gone Fishing and that was that in all aspects of making that film, he aimed for excellence. It’s an admirable goal and worth considering. Once again, I point out that a script doesn’t have to cost anything if you write it yourself and scribbling some storyboards down on some A4 also costs nothing but the preparation in itself is priceless.

With the nature of the internet being as it is, I am anticipating the potential for some traffic coming this way having no linked and discussed this film. Subscribing to the John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Dickwad theory, I expect to be challenged to “do something better yourself then, fuckwit!”. As a precaution, I have written a 6 page draft of a script set in the world of Half-Life 2 that, I believe, would be pretty fucking cool. To get it made, all I now need is

• an HD camera (I have a mini-dv HD would be better)
• someone who is capable at CGI using 3DS Max or Blender or whatever
• Combine Soldier outfits (and Resistance fighter, City 17 civilian jumpsuits)
• Actors (obviously)
• Crew (also obviously)
• A suitable location or two

I’m more than prepared to do it so if you want to want to lay on the smackdown then please, feel free. That’s what I need and if I get that, we’re ready to rock. Bring it on. (If, in the meantime, you fancy looking over the script to offer constructive criticism, let me know although be warned that if I don’t know you, the answer might involve rearranging the words “off” and “fuck”.)

By the way, I should point out that I don’t have even $500 to spend on this so volunteers only please – it’ll have to be done for the love of it.

(The title of this post, incidentally, is vaguely inspired by the notion of the Emperor’s New Clothes. You’re probably sorry you asked now.)

The biggest fear I have, however, is money. It’s a problem a lot of people are facing and frankly I should be thankful at the chance for any role given the current economic climate. But my main consideration is having two hatchlings and a mortgage and it worries me that we might not have enough to live on each month – the sort of worry that makes me feel sick and shakey. Yet I know, deep down, it’s not going to be a problem because there are things we can do to mitigate things if we really, really try. It’s just one of those things we’re not very good at. Definitely time to find all those tips and websites about how to feed your family on 50p a day! Probably time to do something with the allotment too.

I’m certain this is the right thing to do but it absolutely terrifies me.

The seminar mostly focussed on what happened after Gone Fishing had been completed and had it’s premiere at BAFTA last January. Chris Jones’ original goal was to win the Best Live Action Short Film Oscar so as the end point, the steps back from that are quite apparent – enter the appropriate festivals and/or get the film screened to make it eligible. So they took the film to the festival circuit. Chris went through many of the steps he took in order to make the film stand out from a marketing/PR point of view when he sent in a submission as well as covering practical points like what format media is generally required.

All in all, it was a very illuminating seminar. Several years ago we submitted the short film we made to some festivals but in retrospect, we didn’t really make any effort. I think we sent them to maybe 10 or 20 festivals, mostly UK based, without much in the way of supporting material and didn’t get accepted into anything which was disheartening and probably led us to give up. Chris, on the other hand, has submitted Gone Fishing to ~120 festivals to date and has more lined up this year. Bearing in mind that “Gone Fishing” was the only UK short film to make the shortlisted 10 films for the Oscar nominations and you’ll be surprised to find out that it didn’t get selected for any UK festivals either. I will say more about that later.

The five short films that we watched during the day were all short films that Gone Fishing came up against in competition over the year and were all award winners in their own way. The films were September (BAFTA winner), Soft (BIFA winner), Leaving (Turner Classic Shorts winner), Side Effect (Oldenburg IFF winner) and New Boy (Oscar nominee). Although I want to discuss the films seperately later, what was interesting about all of these is how different they are to each other and to Gone Fishing in terms of feel, shooting style, subject matter and so on. It makes you realise that if you make a short film and enter it into competitions or festivals, unless it’s a particular genre festival, you could be up against anything.

During the afternoon session, we learnt a lot about how Chris had approached selling the distribution rights for Gone Fishing and what avenues were open. Predictably, there aren’t many – especially in this country. I personally love short films but there is such little market for them that unless you regularly go to film festivals or buy DVDs, you won’t get to see many. It’s also worth noting that even with the increase in quality online video sites like Vimeo and Crackle (and yes, even YouTube are sorting their shit out with HD presentation), you won’t see many – if any – of these films online because of competition rules. “Leaving”, for example, won the TCS competition but because part of the prize was that Turner would show the film both online and on TV, the film automatically became ineligible for Oscar nomination which has stringent rules about that sort of thing. If you are making a short film then you will need to make yourself aware of some of these rules and plan your festival/competition strategy appropriately.

I was surprised at how much time and money was spent sorting out the festival entries and similar although I don’t know why because it’s readily apparent how much work it would take. Even my own limited experience suggested that entering festivals was a costly business (another reason why we didn’t do very well at it – didn’t allow for it in the budget). However, relative time and cost will be another post too.

The recent furore regarding Facebook’s ever changing TOS and whether or not they own data you upload to that site coupled with shocked outcry about the story regarding last.fm’s alleged handing over of user listening data to RIAA has got me thinking. All this happened in the same week as much publicised case against The Pirate Bay for matters relating to copyright infringement in which (so I am unreliably informed so feel free to correct me) we are supposed to be supporting those who make a stand against the media conglomerates.

I haven’t got the time (or, to be honest, the energy or inclination) to really research this fully at the moment but there seems to be a mixed message appearing here. Do I gather that it’s okay to share any data as long as it’s not mine? Is it alright to infringe copyrights as long as mine are not?

Or is it simply a case, once again, that people have no fucking idea what they are talking about?

After going to the IMAX to see a midnight screening of Blade Runner and subsequenly getting about four hours sleep, I spent Saturday at Ealing Studios attending the second Gone Fishing Masterclass seminar given by Chris Jones (author of “Guerilla Filmmaker’s Handbook”). Chris was the writer, director and creative force behind the short film “Gone Fishing” and was the only British film to make the shortlist of the final ten films in the running for this years Oscars. Unfortunately the film didn’t make the final five which is a shame.

There have been two seminars to date with the first concentrating on the production of the film and the second, last saturday, concentrating on everything that has happened since then – namely festivals and distribution and so on. Some of the content was very practical and some was very anecdotal. We also got a chance to view 5 other short films which were all films that Gone Fishing came up against in Festivals and competitions during the last year (including BAFTA winning “September” and Oscar nominated “New Boy“).

There are a few posts that will come out of this but it’s taking me a while to get my head around it all and consider how everything will apply to my future as a filmmaker. Serious questions have been raised and I’m the only one that can answer them.

Incidentally, Blade Runner was still as glorious and visually magnificent as it’s ever been. It’s over twenty five years since I first saw it and I saw new things that I don’t think I’d ever seen before. Despite portraying a future (that is only 10 years away – where’s my spinner?) where computers still have a 1980’s IBM green screen display, the film has, in many ways, not aged at all.

How was your weekend?

Joined Channel: [1. General - Dagobah]
[Luke_S] yells: Need hlp wit teh Raise X-Wing q plzzzz
[1. General] [MasterYoda]: It’s a solo quest
[Luke_S] says: I need help plzzz
[1. General] [MasterYoda]: You can solo it. It’s not hard.
[Luke_S] whispers: hlp plz. I tryed but cant doit
To [Luke_S]: It’s a low-level quest – you can do it without trying
[ObiwansGhost] has come online
[Luke_S] whispers: i dunno how. I pay u 1g to hlep me.
To [Luke_S]: Alright. Just this once.
You invite [Luke_S] to join your party
[Luke_S] whispers: thx. Can u gief me weps for Dark Side Cave q too plz?
[Luke_S] has joined your party
[Party] [MasterYoda]: You don’t need weapons for that quest. Just need to talk to mob
[Luke_S] says: I heard u ned to kill mob in Dark Side cav
[Party] [MasterYoda]: No – just need to talk to it.
Luke_S has joined the guild
[Guild] [ObiwansGhost]: Welcome to the guild. Please read all the guild rules at http://www.lastofthejedi.guildhosting.com
To [ObiwansGhost]: WTF? Dude, did you just invite him to the guild?
[ObiwansGhost] whispers: y
To [ObiwansGhost]: He’s a total noob. Doesn’t even know how to raise the X-Wing
[Guild] [Luke_S]: How do i get 2 Bespin?
To [ObiwansGhost]: ./facepalm
[Guild] [ObiwansGhost]: Bespin is a 40-50 zone. You need to level first.
[Guild] [Luke_S]: i ned 2 get 2 Bespin. My mates r there.
To [ObiwansGhost]: gkick him?