The Production Office #prodoffice

Every Thursday eventing at 7.30pm The Production Office TV Show is not to be missed!

It’s a new internet TV Show by filmmakers for filmmakers hosted by Chris Jones & Judy Goldberg and includes live interviews, web video chats & filmic features all delivered with a professional level of chaos, panic and fun! There’s plenty filmic talk & networking going on in the live chat room during the show, but if you miss it live, never fear because the shows are there for you to catch up on at your leisure. Our lot at OTTfilms sponsor and support the show and think it’s fab! It’s a show filmmakers can really call their own.

For myself, my feedback after this week’s session says it all…

I love eeeeeeeeeeeeverything about the show! Nice relaxed atmos, fun, good info, chat room for 1st time today was good, got to ask a couple of questions and hear the answers direct from the peeps in the studio. FAB! What else could be a more beneficial way to spend an hour on a Thursday night?!

Seriously.. don’t miss it!

The PMD. #dist2010

Though it sounds like an acronym for some sort of pre-menstrual disorder (and possibly carries the same kind of stress level!) the PMD is a term currently being bandied about the indie film world and stands for Producer of Marketing and Distribution, a new concept created by John Reiss for a role that, I believe, will become one of the central necessities of having a sustainable independent film career.

Jon explains in his blog that:

“..every film needs one person devoted to the distribution and marketing of the film from inception, just as they have a line producer, assistant director, or editor. I gave this crew position the official title of PMD since we need to train people to do this task..”

PMD’s will be the lead role in what could become a number of new exiting crew positions as a team is established to fully actualize each film’s journey to it’s desired audience and beyond, handling each step of the process and garnering enough income and/or exposure for independent filmmaking, long struggling with the old school system of festivals and distributors, to become a self sufficient savvy form of business.

It’s a task that needs developing carefully for such a key long term relationship with the project and it’s creators, a task that would begin ideally from inception and continue long into the life of a film. How the role evolves will depend on those who first step into those boots and can successfully walk the distance in them. Much will depend on personalities as well as skills and training, but also I believe on open communication amongst early PMD’s and filmmakers to form a coherence in the concept so that the role has a specific quantifiable identification that is respected.

It’s all new stuff and could seem daunting to some. It won’t be a breeze in these tough times. Existing Producers & Directors will need to learn as much as fledgeling PMD’s in order to be able to work with them to budget and plan for the good of the projects, and a lot of trust is involved, however having a dedicated partner to take the bulk of the work and ongoing time consumption off filmmakers hands and get the monetizing, exposure & other goals happening efficiently, will be worth ten times the effort. John Reiss has already begun the process and there is more about the evolving role of the PMD and modern marketing & distribution to be found at TOTBO.

We live in a changing world my friends. That can sometimes be a good thing.

Hustling with the Homeless: Film for and From the Streets #dist2010

One of the speakers at last weekend’s #dist2010 was Christoph Warrack.

Of all the guest speakers I met, I’d have to say he spoke directly to the artist in me.

Independent filmmaking is a hustle at the best of times, you have to be brilliant to succeed, you have to impress, involve yourself and have enormous gumption to create. But what if you were homeless, vulnerable, disenfranchised, ignored?

Started by filmmaker Christoph from a soup kitchen in London’s West End, Open Cinema is an organisation that brings film to the homeless and the homeless to film. It also brings filmmakers to a place where they can grow their opportunities and expand the depth of their work. Because the homeless & disenfranchised of our streets are, perhaps surprisingly, very film literate. And film is the great equalizer, speaking to our shared humanity no matter what walk of life we are from.

Through a UK network of community cinema projects socially excluded people are able to view classic and contemporary film, programmed by them, for them, but also be brought together with professional filmmakers to create & exhibit their own work. For filmmakers it provides a platform to become involved in the world they represent, to tackle social issues and confront basic humanity to find and uncover the beauty there. For the street hustlers it gives them an opportunity to relax, connect communally and gives them a voice with which to express themselves, to bridge the social gap between them and the rest of society.

Cultural outreach of this nature helps communities understand and come together with those on the edges of their daily grind, to dispel the myths and fear of the social misfit and to bring human connection with those who often feel discarded by a society that they are part of yet often estranged from, Making ordinary people both aware, and less afraid, of those on the edges of their world is part of that. And in the films they create the homeless and socially excluded find they have a lot to say that speaks to our common hearts.

Open Cinema is currently piloting a network of 16 venues in four regions of England. From July 2010, the service will be rolled out to further interested social sector organisations. For more information contact them on info@opencinema.net

Distribution in 2010 – #dist2010

There is a quagmire of ‘advice’ out there for filmmakers about how best to market and distribute a film in the current difficult times. It’s often hard for filmmakers wading through this muddy pool of ‘help’ to fathom who’s knowledge is best. Advice is often untested in anything resembling a broad sense of perspective and while there are certainly enthusiastic pioneers out there, plenty territory could turn out to be hostile, if not in general, then certainly for specific projects. Let’s just say that I have therefore always approached marketing and distribution talk with a healthy amount of skepticism. My measure is to always look carefully for sustainability in the options offered.

So it was when Chris Jones suggested I might benefit from attending his Distribution 2010 workshop where Jon Reiss and Sheri Candler would lead a two day step by step exploration of the options available to filmmakers today, I jumped at the opportunity to learn more that would help me plan for the best possible outcomes when marketing and distribution came on the table, and also to put into perspective what was really achievable. So I approached the weekend with an open but cautious mind desiring to glimpse a few sparkles at the end of the tunnel, but not expecting much more that that.

What I found was something quite different to what I’d envisaged. The plethora of options became apparent and though I knew this mindboggling array was there, what I really learned that was astonishingly valuable to me was how to approach that information, not with fear and skepticism but with a very solid sustainable strategy tailor those tools to my projects and a way to work that is right for me.

Over the course of the two days I began to feel more and more free to follow a filmmaking path without feeling that I would end up enslaved to the distribution part of the process. The stunning amount of information I ingested is more than I could possibly repeat in a blog post but I came away feeling I had a pretty good grasp of hybrid distribution, a knowledge of how not to get personally bogged down with things, the nuts and bolts of avoiding comon pitfalls, and a plan to move forward with my current project in order to get the best outcome from it for myself and my crew, while I move on to my next endeavour. I literally felt like I could breath easier having been given back my power as a creator of film and provided with the tools I need to cut a path through the forrest of choices out there and the ability to pick up the right new tools as they become available.

So that was kinda good.

I may have more musings at a later date but I think I’ve just put my foot on the Golden Path to a more holistic way of filmmaking.

I recommend attending the course in person if you can, it was a marvellous relaxed and informal weekend with some of the most lovely people I’ve met in a long time and speaking about distribution and case studies face to face really helps the information to sink in in a more valuable way. However if that’s not possible for you yet most of what you need will be covered in Jon’s book ‘Think Outside The Box Office’ and Sheri’s website along with more information from Chris Jones on his blog.

The Guerilla Film Makers Pocketbook Delight!

Unlike the daunting doorsteps that have, to date, formed the mainstay of the Guerilla Film Makers book series, the new Pocketbook is a far more handy sized but no less informative tool, concentrating all the authors own expertise along with advice from a plethora of filmmaking experts into a book you actually don’t feel you need a spare week to pick up and read.

The book is logically broken down into neat sections dealing with varying aspects of filmmaking that is easy to pull out of a pocket and spend ten minutes at a time reading an entire section on the move, and for me that’s a lot of it’s appeal. I’ve been lo/no budget filmmaking for about four years and during production usually have pockets bulging with ‘idiot lists’ to check over during breaks, because even if you know what you’re doing it’s so easy to forget something vital. From now on this book will replace those lists because not only is it so much more comprehensive but it’s cheery bright red cover makes it far less likely I’ll lose it on set!

The book isn’t just about production alone though, it’s a detailed delve into the wider process of planning, making, marketing and selling a film in the current tough climate through interviews with people who live their own advice and prove it works and some very honest and insightful case studies about hot topic recent films that I was quite honestly touched and inspired by.

Size matters, this pocket sized filmmaking bible really is the bees knees and worth 100 times it’s (solid but light) weight in value! I love it and I’m really delighted to own, and recommend it.

Buy it here!

When all is said and done…

On 7th April 2010 I buried my beautiful brave mother under a tree and accepted that my life had changed irrevocably. I knew that I would have to, at least temporarily, and probably permanently, retire from acting and filmmaking to find work that would allow me to afford to keep living in my home. The industry as a whole is in trouble and I’m not the only one feeling the pinch. I knew things had to change for me.

That was on 7th April. Since then, I realise I know nothing.. the aftermath has hit and in the awfulness of what happened to my mother, I have indeed changed irrevocably.. in a way I hadn’t expected at all.

Because when all is said and done I find that acting, filmmaking, writing was never just something I do, it is something I am. I understand for the first time the utter core and fragility of the human condition.. and it can only be expressed through art. So if there is no current way to make a living in my craft, then I must forge a new way for myself. We all must!

I am what I am. I am an actor, a writer, a filmmaker. You can prize those things out of my cold dead hands.

"There is something I must do."

My beautiful mother died on Friday (26th March) after a furious but futile battle with cancer. She was incredibly brave.

In organising her funeral today I happened across the grave of my old friend and mentor, Director Ken Campbell (I’m burying mum in the same place) and though I am still in the raw freshness of my grief I grinned when I saw it and realised that those who die leave all their good bits behind with us.

I just couldn’t resist taking a photo of his resting place where it appears that despite being dead two years he is still smiling..

The Basement Corridor to Ideas

On my recent hospital vigils, I have passed in and out through the grim basement corridors where this creepy mural abides outside a childrens treatment unit.

The picture’s inhabitants all portray something beyond the usual menace that toys can sometimes appear to have and the painting has an otherwordly presence.

A truly affecting piece of art I feel it doesn’t belong anywhere near kiddies as it’s really quite sinister. I begin to wonder what sort of person thought it would be a good idea to put such a thing where sick children would see it right before they go through traumatic treatments…

… and despite the distractions of many other more pressing and traumatic things in my own life, the beginnings of a film idea begin to coagulate at the back of my mind.

And that is largely how my ideas tend to come.. they pick me, and not the other way around.

And just like that! Your whole life can change..

Life isn’t easy when you’re a jobbing actor. Truly, no actor expects it to be, and we all know it requires a level of commitment that often comes ahead of our personal lives.. and most of the time that is rightly so, because in a very real way, our craft is our personal life. It becomes over time an integral function of our being so that sometimes it feels we can’t do without it any more than we could do without our liver or kidneys. And if what we do is that important to us, then all the more important to chose the right people to do it with. They will over time come to define our lives.

Because sometimes events in our personal lives get so big that it becomes hard to commit to being an actor, a performer, a filmmaker, a writer.. this has happened to me recently. My mother became very sick and needs full time care as in the not too distant future, she is going to die of cancer. A blunt way for me to put it, especially in a blog, but this reality is a huge event in my life right now and I can think of no nice way to express it or the catastrophic effect it’s had on me.

Apart from the emotional shock of learning this blunt fact, there are practical things that need taking care of, and my life has turned upside down and everything I had planned for my immediate and long term future has had to be abandoned or put into question in order to accommodate the more pressing practicalities.

It’s heartbreaking though, I have to say. Not only am I going through what is probably one of the most emotional times of any person’s life, losing a parent, but at the same time my own lifeline, the thing that sustains me emotionally has been taken out of my reach for the time being. I can’t commit to acting work. I can’t disappear at short notice to go to auditions, I can’t do long hours on a film set. I no longer have any regular financial income of any significance. My plans are abandoned and I am struggling to write or make films. I’m finishing my latest short film now and starting my new screenplay, both at a painstakingly slow pace, and when I can manage to squeeze such things into my new schedule of hospital visits, drugs regimes, and grief counselling it’s hard to concentrate. And I don’t know what the future holds or how I’m going to manage from now on because living this uncertain life is a hard thing to do over decades without a very solid rock to anchor oneself to, and my mother has always been mine.

And yet.. within the heart of all this ‘giving up’ going on in my life, being divided from my profession, I feel closer to my craft than ever before. Because the people I’ve met through my acting life have begun to come forward, unasked and unselfishly, and have gone out of their way to give me support and kindness and whatever strength they have been able to offer. Each one of them are people I’ve worked or trained with, or met through my work, some of them only briefly, and yet this community, this camaraderie of craftspeople that I am part of, who’s work and lives are all about communicating the human experience, have sensed or understood what’s going on in my life and have put themselves into my sphere to share it with me. And as I’ve come loose from my anchor and become lost in deep waters this coral reef of support I’ve discovered has helped me keep my footing and not drown. And in that I am finding a new type of strength.

And whatever the future holds for me, I can tell you this.. that the people I have learned from and worked with have become as much a part of my DNA as my mother is. The people we choose to work with define us. Right now, I am very glad I chose so well.

Julie & Julia

As the daughter of a chef, I’ve been brought up to believe that a dollop of butter can improve anything (except perhaps one’s cholesterol level) and there’s certainly no shortage of butter in Julie & Julia. Even so, I wasn’t sure this film was going to be my cup of tea as being English I’d never heard of Julia Child and have no idea why anyone would consider cooking their way through a cook book to be a tremendous achievement (having made my own way through many). Still I decided to give it a go on a cold winters night when I’d missed the beginning of a film I’d actually gone to see.

I was pleasantly surprised that although the film is very long, it held my attention throughout, Meryl Streep is fantastic as ever as the slightly barmy cook and Amy Adams was thankfully way more animated than her dull character in Doubt. Stanley Tucci and Chris Messina made their support roles charming too.

Technically well done, colourful soft cinematography and a score as pleasantly frivoulous as hollandaise sauce makes for a pleasant film which, captures the drama and comfort of cooking, the respective cities and time zones, the feel of day to day living and eating, friendships and relationships and sets the scene for a film that was more relevant than I expected it to be. It’s about the stuff of life, the food we eat, the people we share with and the way we validate ourselves. Perhaps a bit of a girls film and nothing that will blow anyone away but a decent watch nevertheless.