I spent much of this week rereading and making copious notes from David Mamet’s ‘On Directing Film,’ a book which has had a huge impact on me.

It’s been massive wake up call, making sense of a lot of what I’d learnt whilst making SToA, along with introducing and refining a lot of really cool ideas on all aspects of filmmaking.

OK, so David Mamet’s not exactly ‘Mr Hollywood’ (in fact, much of the book flies very much in the face of conventional Hollywood wisdom), but with his aesthetic ideal being very close to that of Eisenstein, he’s made me realise just what I should be doing (or at least be trying to do) with my films.

The most important thing that has really sunk in is exactly what Film is – Telling stories visually. I knew that before, but I didn’t really understand it, mainly because I was missing the second half of the definition – through the juxtaposition of uninflected images. It took me ages to really get my head round the full significance of this.

And to answer my own question from last week, yes, there on page 72 he says it like it is, “Basically, the perfect movie doesn’t have any dialogue. So you should always be striving to make a silent movie.”

It struck me as I was sat at work the other day that books and films are, in their purest forms, the complete opposite ends of the storytelling spectrum.

Books give you a narrative and invite you (with appropriate clues) to visualise the action.

Films show you the action and invite you (with appropriate clues) to visualise the narrative.

Hmmm… I used to think writing a novel was harder than making a film, now I’m not so sure.

Anyway, all this has got me fervently rewriting the new short – gawd know how’s it’s going to turn out. I’m certainly not going to try to write a silent movie, but who knows where this might lead? It’s all very exciting.

I’m sure that all you people out in LaLa Land will be going, “No, NO! If you want to make films, that ain’t going to pay the way.’ I’m sure it’s not, but quite frankly, at this point in the game, I don’t care.

There’s a possibility that I may disappear completely up my own backside, but at least I’ll be doing it with more conviction than I’ve had in anything else I’ve done so far.

I’m off to read a bit of Freud and Jung now – see you on the other side…

It was nice to see someone in the industry echoing my thoughts on the extensive adverts we have to endure when going to see a film at the cinema.

While unveiling a new logo for his distribution company Pictrehouse, Bob Berney commented that if Cinema chains wanted to survive the threat of Theatrical/DVD same day releases, such as Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Bubble’ on Friday, “they should seriously look at limiting commercials to make the experience better and really comfortable.”

Full story here.

I finished the new short screenplay on Thursday night and, at the time, I was very pleased with it. Now I haven’t seen it for a couple of days, I’m starting to doubt myself. Still I shall leave it until next weekend before I give in to the urge to read back through it. Then I’m going to try David Ball’s working backwards technique through it, see if it stands up.

It’s a very dark little story and I can’t think of a title for it yet, but I like it, and I felt very moved by it while I was writing. We shall see…

I’ve been reading David Mamet’s ‘On Film Directing’ which is another interesting read. He seems (at least when he gave the lectures in the book) very keen of the Eisensteinian notions of telling the story through the cut, through the juxstaposition of images.

However, I’m still struggling to get my head round how this actually works for films with dialogue. I get what he’s saying but it only seems to make real sense if there is no sound and you are telling the story through images alone. I suppose it’s a way of structuring scenes that allows you to keep dialogue to a minimum, freeing it up to become a tool for subtext or irony. The real story is in the images.

I was watching back through SToA this evening with his words fresh in my mind, and there is actually very little I could think of changing, not that I could now anyway.

Perhaps more will become clear as I work through it (it’s only short, I started it last night and I’m halfway through it already – I was starting to find Mackendrick a little of the slow side the past few days so I thought I’d take a quick break from him).

I’ve spent this evening ploughing through my Screen International 2006 Festival Guide, working out which ones would be suitable to submit SToA to. Cannes is definitely the first port of call, with its deadline of March 15th. Thing is, if, and that’s a huge IF the size of Jupiter, it got selected, I’m going to have to work out how to get my paltry MiniDV film onto Hi-Def or 35mm…

Met up with Ben Shockley for lunch today and was introduced briefly to the great Ken Colley. He didn’t hang around for long but at least I got introduced which now puts one degree of separation between me and George Lucas and Clint Eastwood. I also got to meet two of Ben’s other friends, Denis and Alan who are both filmmakers and/or actors. A good time was had by all.

Ben was telling me about his appearance in the banned X-box 360 advert. He plays the taxi driver at the end and can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch.php?v=WnpGtHq7Z0U. I’m not entirely sure why it was banned, I thought it was quite good and could see little in the way of anything offensive. I guess it’s just not the image Microsoft want to promote.

This evening I went round Daz’s to see how the sound mix was coming along for SToA. It’s sounding rather good. Daz showed me a new method he was trying of playing along to a drum beat, rather than just playing along to the film. It was amazing how rhythmical my edit was, I was muchly pleased. The drum beat worked really well and, although it won’t be in the final mix, I’m sure we could release it as a single… Perhaps not.

I like the way Daz is taking the music, going quite synthy, rather than classical. He feels that it will give him more scope for ideas further down the line. Once he’s cracked the intro I’ll ask if I can give you a sneak preview (he did give me a copy, but I want the vocal effects to be dfferent, so you’ll have to wait!).

I also had some good ideas for the next short which I’ve been kicking about this evening. It could be quite a dark little story.

A very productive day, all told.

A seminal moment in my life happened yesterday.

I got my first rejection letter.

It was from the Zombie Film crew. A generic letter that told me little beyond the fact that I didn’t get to pass Go and collect my £200. Can’t say I’m devastated, though, too much else to do.

Architurus groans on at a frustrating and laborious pace – I can see the end clearly in my minds eye now, but as so much of what I’ve written needs to be tweaked, it’s hard to resist the temptation to go back and start tidying it up. Must… Finish… First… Draft… THEN… Rewrite

Band things precluded any work on soundtracks for SToA this week, (two rehearsals and a gig seriously eat into productivity time, but the gig went well so it was worth it).

The new SToA web site is nearing completion – I see about 40 of you are impatient and worked out the web site address.

Apart from all that – life trudges on.

Until next time Amigos…

Another busy week draws to a close.† On top of the usual round of working and writing, I’ve been working on the Secret Thoughts of Angels web site.† It’s not complete yet, when it is I’ll post a link for you to all to look at (a clue for the impatient: I’m in the UK…).† I’m quite pleased with it so far.

I’ve also been developing an idea for another short, something less ambitious than SToA that I can shoot in a single location with perhaps two actors.† The main idea behind it is to write something that creates an emotional moment or Objective Correlative, as T.S. Eliot would have it, (thanks to Danny Stack for pointing that one out). †

Also, having read and studied so much on character, I want to write something more character driven.† I think SToA is certainly plot driven as, at the time, that’s all I really knew how to write.† I think there are further untapped areas of Dramatica yet to be mined that may well prove useful in this area…

The ending to Architurus is shping up nicely in my head at the moment.† I still need to do more research, so the script remains parked on page 60, waiting for the ‘little men downstairs’ to set the lights to green when they have enough info.† I need to find out more about small scale special ops tactics and I know just the man to call…

If anyone finds themselves at a gig this Friday with a band called Scary Mary playing, say ‘Hi’ to the bass player (or at least don’t laugh too much at him when you realise after all these weeks of rehearsals he still can’t remember Chasing Rainbows!).

Happy New Year, one and all!

My yuletide has been quite special this year, with family all at our house for the big day last Sunday followed by a few days of snow (the most we’ve had here for ages I think). So it was a good time for snowman building and sledging with our son who is now old enough to enjoy these things.

The only downside to the week has been a dreadful ear infection I’ve had which has rendered me deaf in my left ear and in quite a bit of pain for a week now. Not much fun.

It’s been a very restful time, I’ve barely touched my Mac apart from to check the weather updates to see when the next snow shower is passing through. But I have been reading a lot.

I finished David Ball’s ‘Backwards and Forwards’, which, as promised at the Kent Screen seminar the other week, is a fantastic book – he probably packs more useful information for screenwriters and film directors into 95 or so pages than Sid Field, Robert McKee and all the other illuminaries pack into their thousands of pages. And he’s not even specifically writing about screenwriting. The book is actually about reading plays to direct them on the stage, but so much can be translated to the screen.

Now I’ve just started Alexander MacKendrick’s ‘On Directing’, which again, having only read the intro and the first chapter, is promising to provide a bounty of useful information. I think it will be a good partner to ‘Backwards and Forwards’.

No word back from the Zombie film crew yet, they wrote briefly to say they would be examining the submissions over the Chistmas break, so we shall wait and see. I’m eager to start a new film from scratch to try out all these new ideas I’ve gleaned in the past week or two.

I started my film viewing year tonight with Alexander Payne’s ‘Sideways’ which I enjoyed very much. But as the subject matter (wine, not getting laid before marriage) was very close to my heart, he’d have had to make a real duffer for me not to enjoy it. In fact if he’d thrown in a cameo by a packet of Twiglets and a Cadbury’s Double Decker, I’d have been in Nirvana.

As it was I thought it decent movie, possibly a bit flabby in the middle, but with some really nice touches. The only downside for me was that there were times when I really wasn’t sure how to feel about the main character – he seemed a bit too dour for the first part of the movie and didn’t really seem to want a great deal, apart from to show his mate a good time at the expense of his mother, who, for whatever reason, he’s neglected. It wasn’t until the second bombshell from his ex-wife at the end that I really felt for him.

I’m on babysitting duties tomorrow, so I’ll watch it again with the commentary on…