Saturday 26 April 2008

Espresso. Update.

I pitched the idea with a treatment. She said she liked some bits and wasn't so keen on others - which was in fact more than i had hoped for. I i sent it on the off chance she'd have time to read it and maybe like it or for it to spark off a separate idea.

So the story, has one major element missing now, which in fact is all the better for it and i'm glad she was honest about what she didn't like. I was also upfront about her honesty and made it clear i wouldn't take it personally. I just said 'I want you to pick out what you like and then we can adapt it to what you want.' After all, it is her film and ultimately i'm just working towards helping her to achieve it and in the best possible way.

What's gone is the 'case of mistaken identity' part, which is more suitable for a longer film. Its more simpler now and works a lot better for this type of story and its length.

Originally, I liked the idea of it being filmed in the French language, as its what inspired it. So it was a nice coincidence when it was suggested about filming it in a foreign language. In the end, Spanish was agreed as the most suitable, as it fits the characters and the story better. Overall, its much sexier than French or any other language.

The producer/director is looking for outside funding as her ambition is to shoot it in abroad, which would give the film a real authenticity and be pretty amazing.

I'm really happy that i'm getting to write this and that the gamble paid off - it's going to be really cool and its a big challenge as romance in cafes isn't my usual gig; in both senses of the word.

Wednesday 23 April 2008

Captain Malcolm Reynolds.

I researched many role models for my Media Theory Essay but one has stuck with me ever since and especially one piece of advice a fan wrote about him. The person in question is Captain Malcolm Reynolds from television series Firefly. Subconsciously he’s always been a role model to me. But I didn’t realise how much until I started reading what fans were saying about him. And one in particular got to me and I don’t think I’ll ever shake the influence:

‘Mal’s real strength is emotional, not physical … You keep going, and you don’t let the horrendous, soul-crushing things of the past get to you.’

The same can be said for Zoe Washbourne. I never consciously thought how much of a female role model she really is. Its insane. The same goes for all Joss Whedon’s characters.

Something that I realised even more from another fan message was that people like characters with flaws. They like characters with good and bad attributes. This then forces them to identify the positive and negative in characters and adapt the positive to their own lives.

So from now on every character I create with have at least one obvious flaw and setback to their personality.

Monday 14 April 2008

Mulholland Drive. Presentation. A Reflection.

The presentation went very well and the project as a whole resulted in a major change in my development and confidence. It goes back to the summer project last year where nerves and fear almost got the better of me when pitching an idea. The idea then turned out to be our project and it got made. And again, I overcame that fear of pitching through confidence and a passion in what I’m talking about. My idea and brief campaign to use Mulholland Drive paid off, and somehow I also got over my phobia of presentations and didn’t do a bad job. The fact that we were presenting something new (an explanation of what some say is an indecipherable narrative) that people hadn’t figured out or fully understood, helped to give me confidence because I knew people would be interested.

At first I was really anxious about bringing Mulholland Drive up as at the time I didn’t have a clear grasp on the story and what it was actually about. But it was a challenged and so I was determined to deliver what we had set out to do; and that was to explain the narratives that run through the film and essentially explain what the story actually is. And so I watched the film twice before the presentation; once the evening of pitching MD and again the next morning. And it started to become clear. I did a little research on the Internet to see what people were saying about the film and what it meant to them. I wrote down a narratives timeline as they run through the film and a chronological order of events, as I saw them. I then watched the film the night before the presentation just to clarify my conclusion and to spot any missed information.

Overall, I’m really chuffed with how it happened and somehow managing to keep it together during the presentation, which even now feels surreal that its happened and went well. It just goes to show that anything is possible and that the fear of something is far greater than actually doing it.