Making a Short Movie

In a summer of almost constant rain, there have been just a couple of dry, bright spots.

First, a family trip to Waterford, Ireland, to attend the Baha'i Summer School there. How come Ireland has a reputation for rain? I almost got sunstroke.

I can't speak about that trip without mentioning the attitude of the people there towards the arts. It seemed as if everyone I spoke to could play an instrument, paint, write poetry, or engage in some other form of creative expression. I find it hugely inspiring that people aren't prepared to leave creativity to an elite class of professional artists. Long may it continue.

The second dry and bright spot was the weekend when director Gav Irons set out to turn one of my short screenplays into a movie. It had been raining more-or-less solidly for months. But on the first day of the shoot the sun came out and shone down on us with such intensity that we had to apply plenty of the factor twenty to stay the same colour through the shoot.

Due to a last-minute cancellation by one of the actors, I had to step in and play the part of a somewhat unpleasant news reporter. Thus, suited and sweating, I found myself saying lines I'd written months before and imagined coming out of another person's mouth. It felt very strange.

The best thing about the weekend was working with such an excellent group of people. There were fourteen of us all-told. Behind the camera and in front of it, everyone did their bit with great skill and good humour. The contrast between novel writing and movie making seems sharpest in this - that novel writing is solitary whilst movie making is superbly collaborative.

The movie is called PIXECILLUS. When there is more news in that, I'll post it here.

Delusion or self-belief?

At what point does self-belief become self-delusion? The simple answer is, when the vision comes to nothing. For example, Columbus sails west, trying to find a way around the world. A difficult and perilous journey - even if the world is round. If it turns out the Americas don't exist and there is just one huge ocean, he runs out of food and fresh water before getting anywhere near landfall. Everyone dies. He was deluded. He was like the man who made a pair of wings and jumped off the battlements of a castle and fell to his death. But if the Americas do exist and he makes it - he's a visionary, full of drive and self-belief.

What about writing a novel? Is anyone out there writing a novel right now without a contract? It could take you a year or two and at the end of it you might not get it published. Anyone out there writing their second after failing to publish the first? Third? Fourth? I had five shots at it before getting my publishing deal with Simon & Schuster. Deluded? Visionary? Probably best not answer that. But it felt the right thing to do at the time.

I'm sure of one thing. I REALLY admire people who decide for themselves the right way to go, and then work towards it, in spite of the fact that other people are walking in the opposite direction, and then achieve what other people would have thought impossible.

Such a person is Chris Jones of Living Spirit Pictures. If you want to know something of his inspirational story, get a copy of the excellent Guerrilla Film Makers Guide. Suffice it to say, he quit from the third year of a film making degree because he felt it wasn't teaching him to make the kind of movie he wanted to make. Then he went out and made one. When that wasn't a commercial success, he made another. Then another, each time to increasing critical acclaim.

Chris is now on the verge of another project, even more exciting than his previous ones. It is all described on his website. And he is looking for people to get involved. I've jumped at the chance.

Memory Tricks and Dyslexia

This is a short post, particularly for anyone who came to my presentation on Dyslexia today. In my talk I mentioned a memory system that has been helpful to me. Several people came up and asked me about it afterwards. For those of you who are interested, it is a version of the loci system. The basic idea and its history is described in an article here

If you'd like more information on the way I use it, feel free to e-mail me or leave a comment below.

Filmic Writing

That was the strangest thing - when someone told me that my writing was filmic. "I can see it all in my head."

Curious, because I can't see any of it.

I'm not sure what the reason is - perhaps it is an aspect of my dyslexia - but I don't see much in my head at all. When I am describing a scene in a novel, I am certainly in that scene. I know exactly where everything is. I could reach out and touch it. I could feel its texture, feel the heat and the cold. I can't see it though.

Here is the alchemy, then. The descriptions someone uses in writing a scene can act on the mind of the reader to produce a visual impression. With each descriptive detail, the mind of the reader is dipping into memories of similar things and assembling an image. Since people's memories are different, it seems reasonable to suppose that each person is "seeing" in their mind's eye a different picture.

Which is why adaptations of books sometimes upset readers. The image projected onto the theatre screen won't be the same as the image they projected in their heads when they first read it.

Maybe that's why they say the pictures are better on radio.

Inside and outside a scene

Yesterday I had the pleasure of spending the evening with the Grace Dieu Writers’ Circle in Coalville. They are enthusiastic, well organised and a joy to be with. I was supposed to be there as a tutor, leading a writing workshop, but as is usual with these events, I ended up learning a load of stuff myself.

When I am writing, I try to put myself into the scene. In other words, I imagine I am there, standing in the place the protagonist is standing, feeling what they are feeling. When the protagonist moves, I sometimes find myself acting out the movement – perhaps reaching my hand as if I was going to pick something up. When in this state – really in the scene – I find the words come naturally and the writing tends to be more vivid. If I feel the things the protagonist is feeling, hopefully my readers will too.

The thought that came to me yesterday, when preparing the workshop, was that perhaps I am doing this because I don’t have a very visual mind. I do find it difficult to picture scenes in my head. Therefore I place myself inside the scene, relying more on tactile and emotional senses than visual ones. Could it be that other writers are so visually able that they are seeing the scenes they describe from the outside – watching it on the cinema screen of their minds?

And then comes the follow-up question. It is a thought experiment. If two writers, similar in most respects, were to describe the same scene, but one imagined herself in it and the other imagined viewing it from outside, would the two descriptions feel different? Or perhaps it would be more helpful to ask whether the writing of people who habitually place themselves inside scenes will have noticeable differences from the writing of people who habitually look in on scenes from outside.

Any thoughts on this would be warmly welcomed.

Pirates of the Caribbean - at world's end

If someone tells me there’s going to be a firework display just down the road and that the organisers have blown $200 million on the thing, I’m definitely going to go along and have a look. With that philosophy in mind I went with the family to see the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie – At World’s End.

We sat there dazed by moments of brilliance from the legions special effects teams, stunt performers, martial arts choreographers, set designers, and actors. I couldn’t see anything wrong with the little bits that made up the film. But saying that is as meaningless as admiring all the individual pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The question is, did it work as a whole?

When I walked out of the cinema some three hours later, I found myself relieved that it was over.

‘That was kind of fun,’ someone said, ‘but there wasn’t really a story.’

I begged to differ. There was too much story – none of which I found myself caring about. Every character was double-crossing everyone else. No one said or showed what they really felt. None of the many heroes of the film had a discernable inner journey. Sure they were in danger. But did I or any of the other members of the audience really give a damn? We were just waiting for more explosions and cameo performances.

The next day, my daughter, as keen a Pirates of the Caribbean fan as ever you are likely to meet, confessed to me that she couldn’t really remember any of the scenes. But it was fun, she said. And that about sums it up for me. If movies were only measured by the weight of gunpowder ignited, this would be a classic.

The Dyslexia Debate Rumbles on

When a story leaps into the news without any obvious event to kick it off, one has to ask the question - who has been working so very hard behind the scenes to put it there? So it is with the recent dyslexia debate. The shocking story has slammed into the news, again, that some people believe dyslexia is a myth.

I'm sorry? Did I miss something? How did this story get taken up? I know it came just after a bank holiday, but was it really THAT quiet a news day? Someone must have been sending out reams of press releases and talking to influential friends in the media.

Taking a wild guess, I'd say that the way the Special Educational Needs budget is divided up could a motivating factor. Not that I'm any fan of conspiracy theories.

On the other hand, how to teach children to read and write is a good question for debate. How the resources are divided up is important. For myself, I am sceptical of one-size-fits-all teaching methods. But that's just me. I'd only point out that the history of educational theory is littered with discarded methods that were once going to banish illiteracy forever.

I'm more concerned that in this narrow debate, the general public might become confused about the obvious and undeniable truth - there were dyslexics around long before writing was invented. And dyslexia isn't 'cured' once a student has achieved a 'C' grade or above in their GCSE English exam. It is a life-long condition, a difference in the hard wiring of the brain that conveys some advantages as well as disadvantages.

Please, let's not lose sight of that.

Not Blogging but Teaching

Instead of writing a blog entry this time, I thought I'd try a video podcast. This was supposed to save time. Ha! It took me far longer - and now I am writing a blog entry as well to explain myself.



If you are having trouble viewing the above video, you could try watching it at YouTube

Real life and blogging

The ironic thing about keeping a blog is that the more stuff there is actually happening in one's life, the less time there is left to write about it. And so it is with me at the moment. I am teaching three writing courses in different places and am busy working on three different pieces of writing (more of those in a later posting).

I've also had the pleasure of visiting several readers' groups recently as part of the Writers2Readers project. The project has taken me to various venues around the East Midlands (including a room above a bar where the lighting was low, the heating was high and my audience did extremely well to stay awake - thank you all for that:-)

But please keep looking in on the blog, as new entries will be following soon.

Hot Fuzz

What happens when a pumped-up urban uber-cop is relocated to a sleepy rural village with a zero crime rate? The answer is the distinctly British crime comedy, Hot Fuzz. No other country could have given birth to a movie like this. Will audiences in any other country understand it? Do the producers even care? They’ve made a movie that is true to itself and its origins and been rewarded with a huge domestic commercial success.

I’m lucky enough to be able to go to the movies in the early afternoon on weekdays when the theatres are largely empty. Viewing Hot Fuzz with me in the Leicester Odeon were two elderly couples. Unlike me, they didn’t seem to notice that low notes were causing the speaker system to rattle like a china shop in a small earthquake. To be fair the manager eventually offered me a couple of free tickets in compensation, but only after I’d talker my way past a couple his rather defensive staff members.

Notwithstanding the situation, I found plenty of laugh-out loud moments and was grinning through a good part of the rest of the movie. The slapstick nature of a lot of the gags did make it hard to get emotionally involved with the story and two hours was starting to feel like a long haul on the jokes alone. But who knows, given a working speaker system and a load of people around me laughing, I might not have noticed. The editing is certainly tight through out. I only wish that during the final fight sequence in the model village, one of the characters had said, ‘This town ain’t big enough for the both of us.’

Why are movies so expensive to make?

Last year I decided I didn't know enough about the movie industry, so I signed up for a course in film making with Line Out in Leicester. We learned about lighting and sound and cameras and scene structure and how movies are put together. But the highlight of the course was the final weekend when we went out to make our own five minute movie.

Five minutes is a difficult length to write a story for. It is too long for a single punchline gag and too short to easily develop characters and relationships that the audience will want to follow. With those limitations in mind, I set out to write a five page screenplay. I was delighted when my story, Pictures of Andy, was selected for production.

Then came the filming weekend. Such an exhausting two days of sweat and effort! But the production team, including Gav, Bav and Alex (I'll write more about them in a later post) was excellent. The actors, including Haresh Sood and Claudia Wilson were superb. All the days of writing, storyboarding and planning bore fruit. When we sat down for our final 2 days of work on the film - in the editing suite - we were amazed to see the result taking shape.

All that for five minutes of film? Now I start to understand why movies are so expensive to make. But was it worth it? All I can say is, I can't wait to do it again.

Our film, Pictures of Andy, has just been put up on YouTube. Unfortunately our attractive widescreen format film has been squashed to get it to fit YouTube. But it will give you an idea of what we were doing.

No Star on the Door

Last night I had the hugely enjoyable experience of visiting Derby's Guildhall theatre, seeing Michael Marshall talk and read from his soon to be published novel, and performing the story Blood Mother, alongside Clare Littleford and Sally Spedding.

I've lost count of the number of venues where I've given readings, talks or storytelling performances. Usually they are libraries or community centres or village halls. Each has been enjoyable in its own way - for me, at least. But last night was the first time in a good few years that I've had the pleasure of performing in a real theatre, complete with black drapes, stage lighting and a dressing room. (I can report that there were no stars on the dressing room door.)

And Michael's reading was spellbinding. I don't want to spoil it for anyone so I can't say much - except that it was a masterclass in pace and impact.

Virtual spring cleaning

It is spring - according to the flowers and animals in the garden. No use telling them to hold back till March 21st - the official first day of spring. What better time of year to clear out the clutter with a physical, spiritual and virtual spring clean?

My physical spring clean has been hauling barrow loads of stuff (stuff that I can't compost) from the back of the garden to a skip at the front of the house. The spiritual spring clean is the Baha'i fast (a period of nineteen days leading up to the Baha'i new year, March 21st). And then to the real subject of this posting - the virtual spring clean - which has been a re-design of my website.

http://www.rodduncan.co.uk/

Please do visit it and let me know how it looks on your computer. The input would be much appreciated.

Are you a character in someone else's fiction?

Following a number of discussions on fiction, metafiction and films such as Stranger Than Fiction, Annie Hall etc, I thought it might be useful to provide the following practical checklist. If you suspect you may be a character in someone else’s novel or movie, here are a few signs to look out for:

If you are able to find a parking space outside any building you happen to want to visit, you are certainly in a movie not in real life.

Similarly, if you book into a cheap hotel room in Paris and find your window looks out on the Eiffel Tower.

If every time you turn the TV on it happens to be a news bulletin on an issue directly relevant to your present situation, then you are definitely in a work of fiction.

If you are still in doubt you could always try this: go into the city centre and start dancing. If everyone you bump into knows the steps to your dance, you are definitely in a movie.