Over the course of the summer this blog has been on hiatus. Partly a conscious choice and partly because I was in the process of gathering my thoughts and adjusting my game plan. I tend to internalize this kind of process and then “present” the results. But what if one has no findings to show…?
I should get one of those signs that says “One of these days I’m gonna get organezized” †
My thinking was: I still can’t live off freelancing so I need to create a more stable financial foundation. More-over I find myself working on one production and then another, week after week, month after month, without any particular progression. Yes, I gain more experience with every job, but ideally every following production should be bigger in scope, more ambitious, with a more talented and experienced cast and crew involved. This won’t happen overnight but over the course of two years I would expect to see a steady improvement – what I saw was marginal at best. It did not help that in the run-up to the summer I found myself on a couple of awful productions that lacked proper preparation and had inexperienced directors.
All major theme parks have had delays. When they opened Disneyland in 1956, nothing worked!
- But, John. If the Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don’t eat the tourists. †
This triggered looking for work in a different direction. For the first time I conscientiously tried to find jobs that would make good use of my software design and project management experience, but that would still take place within the film industry.
The Foundry is a company that fits that profile perfectly, they make software that is being used by all the major Visual Effects companies here in London and the rest of the world. Good job interview, cool building in soho, great people, but no luck there.
This process repeated itself numerous times at all the big and medium sized VFX companies, each time applying for positions in the sweet spot such as production coordinator or line producer. I also applied for more techie jobs such as data wrangler and the likes, but ironically for those jobs I was labelled “overqualified”, whereas for the coordinator-type roles I lacked the hands-on VFX experience…
1st Interviewer: Mr. Murphy, do you mean that you lied on your application?
Spud: No! Uh. Yes. Only to get my foot in the door. Showing initiative and that like.
1st Interviewer : But you were referred here by the department of employment, there was no need for you to get your “foot in the door,” as you put it.
Spud: Ehhh… cool. Whatever you say, I’m sorry. You’re the man. The dude in the chair. †
August. One of those months of which I am sure I was awake. I had done things, I just… can’t recall. A blur of trying to find work, trying to write, trying to enjoy the summer, trying… Until everything stopped making sense. World, meet my two middle fingers. Middle fingers, I’d like to show you the world. We agreed it would be better to start seeing other people. Literally.
So I left London for Dublin, bought a throwaway tent, and joined my mates at Electric Picnic. Escapism in its truest form, and boy, did I need it and enjoy it! To this day even just describing Massive Attack performing “Angel” in the torrential rain gives me goosebumps 
It gets even better because after a quick and flu-infested stopover in London we hopped on a plane to Genoa, nearly crashed, travelled on to Bari to celebrate Claudio‘s 30th birthday in style, with Rome as our final stop. This basically was my first proper holiday in four years, since I usually just go back home and chill out.
For every shadow, no matter how deep is threatened by morning light. †
Nothing better for a film maker than to walk around in an ancient city, 31 degrees sunshine, with a super8 camera! Thanks to my dad, who after 20+ years upgraded to an HD video camera, I am now the proud owner of my very own super8 camera! It has all the pluses of shooting on film: the look & feel, the magic sound that makes the camera operator very aware that he is filming, the fact that it is a lightweight and compact camera that almost forces one to be flexible and to come up with exciting ways of filming – super8 has it all! I shot some test footage on Tri-X black & white film in the summer, and went for the Ektachrome colour film in Rome.
Love, death, travel, revolt, chaos. †
The first two weeks after coming back I experienced a natural high and being on the manic side of life. An incredible buzz of feeling alive, energetic, inspired. The way I perceived the world was literally different from the period before. This lead to all kinds of experiments, ranging from fueled debates with random strangers to taking random photographs, cutting up DVD’s as cover letters 2.0, haircuts… the works.
I guess that’s the way the whole durned human comedy keeps perpetuatin’ itself. †
Two weeks after that I am back at square one. Inevitable, but somewhat sad nonetheless. I embraced going away and the following high for what it was, but somehow I was not able to convert that energy and conviction into something longer lasting. Sure, I do the occasional corporate video, we submit funding proposals because it feels like this finally will be our turn, we come up with plans for new films, so in terms of how I deal with the world: there will always be more post-its. But perhaps post-its are not the way forward.
There are stories of coincidence and chance, of intersections and strange things told, and which is which and who only knows? And we generally say, “Well, if that was in a movie, I wouldn’t believe it.” †
So the big questions remain. And I look at the skies and wait for a sign, wait for the frogs to rain down and give me direction.
How to make the jump from shorts to features? What role do I want to fulfil in the long-term?
Producing? I know it suits me given my structured way of working and organisational skills, but I find it not that creative and it gives me headaches.
1st AD-ing? One of the roles on set that I enjoy the most, although obviously I still have much to learn. It is a tough and challenging job since you have to keep pushing people to hurry or simplify their work. And when things go wrong, when you’re behind schedule, when everything falls apart, you want nothing more than to curl up and die in a corner – but instead you have to sit out the torturous hours that are to follow, making feeble attempts to “reorganezize”.
Writing? I write on the side. It is something you need to do every single day, and I do not. I scribble notes, I collect news article clippings for inspiration, I write outlines, but frankly I am underwhelmed by my productivity. A relevant benchmark for instance is that I still have not written a feature length screenplay. It is also tricky to “Keep It Simple, Stupid”.
Directing? I shoot stuff, but I do not direct on a regular basis, and I see people around me making bigger steps than I do. Plus there is no escaping the chicken and the egg conundrum; in order to direct (more) you need to direct (more), which is difficult if you do not have the means to fully focus on directing.
Apart from all that I seem to be proficient when it comes to cameras and all the techie stuff involved in the digital realm, opening yet another potential avenue to pursue.
So there we are. Jack of all trades, master of none.
