Bad/disappointing news folks... got a call tonight from the warehouse owner guy to inform me that he had double booked me and as I was last to confirm then the other group were going to get access to the warehouse. I tried a couple of times to try and get the other group to move. Turns out that they are a group of college art students who are putting on an exhibition for their final year and won't pass without running this week on this particular week.
Supposedly that holds more weight than an independent film maker who is chasing his dream and has spent the last few months of his time staying up till one in the morning working on putting a film together. Arrrghhhh.
I think I felt gutted when he first told me and didn't really respond as annoyed as I do now. He caught me with a real sucker punch when I wasn't watching. He offered me another week at the beginning of July but that feels to late really. One month after that I will be off work and having to crap myself about making a film happen in four weeks time. The whole point of the warehouse was to raise money and the profile of the film so that the ball starts rolling early enough for me to jump on top and ride it through all the obstacles that are going to get in my way.
Anyway.... I feel that I should go before this turns into a forty page rant about how crap being double booked is. It also donned on me that this is just the first of many set backs that are going to come my way and I need to steel my nerve for the long fight ahead to film completion land.
I received an email today that has fired me up (even more!) to get on and make this the best film that I can make. In a previous blog I wrote about sending Jeffrey Brown an email and him replying. After that I sent him my screenplay and asked him to read it.
Today he replied after reading it and provided me with some useful comments. Below are two of my favourite comments from him. Note I have obviously chosen the overall views rather than the areas he suggested I look at!
"I liked it, it's sweet and straightforward, with lots of humor."
"Overall the story is sweet and cozy, without being too sappy."
So I am over the moon just now and I am going to go and get stuck into my ever increasing task list!
Finally managed to rearrange the warehouse dates today to be the 1st to 7th June. Quite pleased that we have this for these dates. Also Andy managed to negotiate to keep his comedy night on the Tuesday night at the warehouse as the arts students agreed to let us in for the night. That just leaves four bands and about 70 expected fans with nowhere to play a gig at.
Think I should get Andy onto that after seeing his performance as he fumed at the warehouse owner for screwing us over. I think he would have ran his comedy night there even if we had to take the place by force. That's an idea for a film... a comedian who is convinced that he has hired certain venues and demands to play there even though there is no audience and the people have no idea who he is. Or perhaps a series called "Andy plays...." where he plays a different venue each week and "madness ensues". hmmm, maybe not!
Kudos go out to Alastair for finding a replacement venue for the gig in the Elixir Bar in Camden. Jonny at the Elixir was delighted to host our event and I think we can officially put the mini trauma behind us.
Sure this will just be the first of many. Now I actually have to get ready to play my first gig ever. Argghhh.
Today I attended a course run by Initialize Films which covered practical questions on how to produce a micro budget film.
It was held at Conway Hall in Holborn which was this rather odd building. I am not sure what it was but I believe it was an old church or something. I always find these random places quite interesting as they always seem to have their own eco-system and way of life that probably hasn't changed for years as the rest of the world pushes the boundaries of consumerism.
Anyway... the course! It was split into two sections where producers who had made a film for under £100k came along to tell you their war stories and to answer any questions that we had. We were provided the scripts to both films in advance so that we had some context.
First up were Christopher Granier-Deferre and John Schwab who had produced The Hide as part of their production company Poisson Rouge Pictures. The film is set within a bird hide and centres around the relationship between an OCD birdwatcher and a wanderer who is roaming the grasslands and enters the hide for some shelter.
On reading the script I wasn't really interested to be honest but we were shown the first twenty minutes of the film and it was a lot more compelling than I thought it would be. The look and camera work was excellent and the acting was top notch.
Christoper and John then talked us through how they made the film. The most interesting things that I took from their talk were:
The importance of attracting as high quality crew members to your production as you possibly can.
Timing of marketing your film is key to generating and sustaining interest.
Thinking of creative ways of raising funding is essential.
Be up front and honest with everyone you come in contact with if you want the best results.
Their talk was really incisive but I kept having to try and relate their information into my context. They had been working in the film industry for twenty years and decided to make this film to be able to make the step up to getting producer credits so a lot of their money saving techniques involved contacts that they had through their time in the industry which doesn't really apply to my situation.
In the afternoon we had Lisa Trnovski who had produced Mum and Dad which is a "shock" horror film.
I didn't like this script either. For me it set up a decent situation (a girl gets captured and made to be part of a strange family where the parents mutilate their children) but then didn't fulfil my hopes. It basically tried to shock and scare by different set pieces as the girl tried to escape. I would have preferred if they had explored the physiological state of the situation a bit more and in particular the relationships between the different characters.
Anyway, Lisa made the film with funding from the Film London Microwave programme. A lot of the information that we received didn't really seem relevant to me as it was about the Microwave programme and I feel that if I applied to Mircowave my application wouldn't get past the first stage as I haven't worked in the industry or made numerous short films.
Overall I think the course was useful as it reminded me that I have to keep striving to make my film how I want to make it and that I can't expect any money from the UK funding associations in the timescales that I am aiming for. It also made me believe that it is time to get a producer on board for the film!
We kicked off the fundraising nights with a marathon of comedy from some of London's up and coming new comedians. This event you was held at the Ada Street Gallery in Hackney and was organised entirely by one of the comedians, Andy Aminian. Before I start to describe what an amazing night was had I just want to thank Andy for such an enormous effort in setting up the event. Perhaps I should persuade him to make the film for me as he had everything running like clockwork for this night.
Andy Aminian: Organiser and Comic Genius - Photography by Ellie Atkins
The crowd milled into the warehouse which was filled with images from art students that had agreed to share the warehouse for the night due to the double booking non-sense. Don't get me started on that again. I think the installation of a blanket hanging from the roof had a few people perplexed.
There are some excerpts of their exploits coming soon but in the meantime you can view photos from the night here.
All in all 12 comics performed in the venue and the whole night was compared by Luke Benson. I don't go to comedy nights a lot but they all made me laugh and the crowd certainly seemed to agree with me.
Luc Benson gets the crowd warmed up - Photography by Ellie Atkins
My job for the night was to try and remember to convince people to give me money for the film and to serve them beer with the help of my bands awesome guitarist, Del.
The night wrapped up at about 11:30... comedy marathon if ever I saw one but the laughs kept up all the way through.
Grainne Maguire: Headliner and genuine class act - Photography by Ellie Atkins
Thanks to all the comedians who performed in support of the film. They are listed below. If you ever get the chance to see any of them live then I guarantee you will not be disappointed.
MC - Luke Benson Jason Patterson Matt Highton Andrew Aminian Toby French Christian Ancliff Alex Kiely Keif Gwinn Will Howells Sarah Bowlas Grainne Maguire
The Elixir Bar in Camden was the host of the second fundraising event for the film and also the debut performance from the film's writer and director's band, Kat Kampf.
Three other wonderful bands took part on behalf of the film and performed memorable sets. The crowd certainly enjoyed all of the performances and thanks to everyone who came and supported the film.
Full photographs of the evening are given here. Thanks to Ellie Atkins for taking the wonderful pictures.
The highlights of the night are shown in the video put together by Alastair Paterson below.
The Clearing
Myspace: The Clearing Players: Prashant Majmudar, Hannah Wilson
The Clearing were on first and warmed the crowd up with some beautiful duets and acoustic magic that ensured that the night went of with a bang.
The Clearing
The Lost Cavalry
Myspace: The Lost Cavalry Players: Mark West, David Roberts, Oliver Whitehead, Nicholas Goold
The lost Cavalry were also playing their debut gig and were recently formed by Mark West. You couldn't tell it was their first performance as they blended folky tunes with some sublime and truly wonderful moments. Mark again demonstrated that he can play more instruments than everyone in the pub combined. Not sure if this was the first run out for his tiny Ukulele but everyone enjoyed it.
Myspace: Belter Players: James Chappell, Angelo Kyriakides, Rob Eijkman, Odette Dillon, Francesco Bettoni
Next up were Belter who decided to raise the roof with their adrenaline filled punk epics. They had the crowd in the palm of their hand throughout the set and left the stage to rapturous applause.
Belter
Kat Kampf
Myspace: Kat Kampf Players: Cat, Del, A Pat, Matt, Bryan
Kat Kampf were up last and were the band that everyone came to see (we bribed them to be there you see!). There were no signs of nerves as they delivered their indie disco classics to the ever vocal crowd. The finished with screams for an encore and even when the audience were repeatedly informed that they had ran out of material another song was dammed. I think "first song again" were the shouts. They duly obliged and rounded off a very memorable night.
Oh yeah... and to prove that I (writer/director) was actually playing there is some proof below. Mental note to self - staging a picture of myself with a guitar would probably suffice next time!
Proof that I was playing the bass - Photography by Ellie Atkins
With the warehouse week only a couple of days ago and a long list of things still to do I got up early and got stuck into my task list. Updating Facebook events for the gig and the party. Working on the website content which you are reading now and generally making more lists of tasks that needed to be ticked off.
Once the week starts I will basically be spending my life waking up, going to work, finishing work, going to the warehouse, coming home, going to sleep. For seven days straight so with my lists in order I went out to find the pieces of my fancy dress costume. I am going as the same outfit as one of the characters in the film dresses up as which is a Bearwawa - a panda bear with Chiwawa ears and tail.
I didn’t realise how excited I was till I was in Primark buying a white pair of linen trousers for £3. The kind that you would see Peter Andre or some other hideously toned "celebrity" wearing on the beach and that I would never be seen dead in. I hate Primark as well normally. Their clothing is so full of chemical crap that just being in the shop for five minutes gives me an itchy nose. It is itching just at the thought of it!
Anyway I queued in their queue for twenty minutes with my itchy nose buying my £3 Peter Andre linen trousers feeling really excited about the week ahead. After that I found 3 for 2 t-shirts in Gap which I can cut up and join together to make a panda top half.
The most expensive item was a pair of thigh length socks that I bought to put over my linen specials to make the panda feet. I already have a tail from a tiger based fancy dress costumes and I bought a sheet of brown foam to make into Chiwawa ears.
For the Fancy Dress Party that we have scheduled for next Saturday (6th June) I decided to do a drawing of one of the costumes that the character of Jacob dresses up as in the film. The Fancy Dress Party has a theme of "animals that don't exist" and Jacob attends the party as a bearwawa... half panda bear... half chiwawa.
I have done a drawing of these characters before on an A4 scale but I decided to go all out and go for an A1 size! Check out the Art Attack-esque style video where I get my pastels out.
Tomorrow I pick up the keys to the warehouse and I still only have about 8 actors booked in for auditions. After spending all yesterday sorting out buying things that I wouldn’t be able to pick up during the week today’s tasks were all about getting everything in place for the week.
First of all I was planning on having a friend run an experimental theatre show on Friday night but events conspired against us and he was unable to make it so I re-jigged the plan for the week into the following:
Monday - pick up keys and drop off equipment
Tuesday - Auditions
Wednesday - Music Video and Gig Sound Check
Thursday - Gig
Friday - Auditions
Saturday Morning - Auditions
Saturday Evening - Fancy Dress Party
Sunday - Auditions
The gig and fancy dress party where arranged but just needed a few confirmation emails sent round to the performers who had kindly agreed to help out.
The auditions though... that is another story. I have no one for Tuesday night and have about seven or eight spread across Saturday and Sunday next week. All of these I had found by searching on casting call and emailing the actresses directly.
I am not sure why I have left it this late and I wouldn’t advise anyone else to but I finally got my act together and I sent out casting notices on casting call and Mandy. Unfortunately they have a system where the casting notices are manually verified before they go live so you have to wait up to 24 hours for your casting notice to go live. Hopefully they will get sent out on Monday so I can get some auditions arranged for Tuesday night!
I also tried to send out a casting notice on Spotlight but unfortunately the section of the site that it states you can do it in doesn’t seem to be working. I have emailed them about it but feels a bit annoying seen as I had to pay for a subscription to them and I can’t do the one thing that I want to do.
I also had a shortlist of actors that I had searched for and pulled together on Spotlight that I wanted to ask to auditions. Spotlight only provides their agents details though so I had to send the agencies emails rather than the actors themselves.
I think if I did this full time and didn’t have to worry about my day job then I would just have called them up on Monday morning but I can’t spend all of my time at work on the phone not doing my actual job so I plan to do as much on email as possible.
