Put Money in Thy Purse

One of the routes one has to take making a film with a very small budget is that one frequently has to use friends and friends of friends to fill certain crew roles. (In the case of Folie, I also had friends in the cast, but that would be a disservice to their professionalism; they are also professional actors and I wanted to work with them again after an earlier collaboration.) The advantage of this is that they are usually willing to work for much less than the going rate - which is nothing other than the tried and tested 'Corman Method', in which the great Roger Corman used to say 'get students, they're cheap'. This has mainly paid off with Folie, and we have gotten this far with our rather limited funds, but no film is ever made without unexpected problems arising.

Hence the current post. Most of the postproduction team have been brought onto the project by my co-producer, and they have done a great job so far. It's exciting to see the final layers being added to the film, in particular the subtleties of the soundtrack. We're adding a lot of non-diegetic sound (look it up on Wikipedia, kids), and I hope that we can also add a few sequences where there is almost no sound at all. (The Italian gangster film Gomorrah uses episodes of near silence to great effect, as did Edgar Reitz in Heimat II.) I've always had a silence fetish, and I hope this will be in evidence in Folie. But, as with all such budgetarily challenged projects, people have to go off and earn money on real jobs. Heck, I've even done it myself and am looking for paying jobs as I write. So we are at a standstill once more whilst a key player in the operation does properly paying work, and I am left waiting and sending emails which rarely receive a reply. It's a bit like making a film with Lord Lucan. But, if you're going this route to make a film, then it's something you have to live with, and get through. I don't want to begrudge anyone the right to earn some cash. Speaking of such things, the film itself needs cash...

Perhaps we should rechristen this not the Corman Method, but the Orson Method, as a homage to the great man's production techniques. I'm thinking in particular of the Othello shoot, in which, when the money ran out, cast and crew were left stranded in hotels whilst Orson went off to act in other people's films. It took him four years to make the film. I can recommend Michael MacLiammoir's Put Money in thy Purse, which is a great book about the making of the film. He was Iago to Welles's Moor, and therefore had firsthand experience of what it's like to make a film piecemeal. At least they were holed up in decent hotels. But as a motto, Put Money in Thy Purse both explains the current impasse on Folie, and also sums up the need for me to raise some more money to get the film finished. Like the Lord Our God, I will no doubt be paying for the rest of Folie myself, as investors seem to have gone bankrupt. Or joined Lord Lucan in darkest Africa...

The End is Nigh!

I don't want to make any definite statement at the moment, but it seems that we are now finally very close to finishing, after a rather long period of postproduciton, one that could be safely described as a fucking nightmare. (What film isn't, though?) A cast and crew screening will probably take place at some point before the end of the year, although it's a bit early at the moment to start thinking about anything as organised as a festival strategy...

And the News Is...

Well, there isn't any. Still trying to get the final mixing sessions set up, without a great deal of success so far. We could easily have the film finished by Christmas, but it all depends on what - if anything - we can get done either this month or next. It's extremely frustrating to have gotten so far only to have the film still unfinished, especially when festivals are starting to show an interest in it. Memo to self: give up filmmaking as soon as possible...

Funding Appeal - Only £1,000 Now Needed!

OK chaps, with few other ideas in my befuddled head about how to secure the measly £1,000 now needed to finish the film, I thought I would post here on the offchance a reader or readers of this blog might be going to the cashpoint this evening... Seriously, folks, we do need the cash to get it done as we're now finally very close to the end of the line.

We could have finished it a lot earlier, had we had the cash. In fact, I've worked out that so far this year, we have spent approximately 4 weeks working on Folie. The rest of the time has been spent waiting for money or downtime to use the necessary equipment (online suites etc). And of course the usual amount of worrying, cursing and setting the world to rights over a pink gin or two...

Drop me a line if you're able to help the Widow's Son...

Mixing - In Progress

We started mixing at the end of June, and are now about halfway through. We've had another lay-off, although this one wasn't due to lack of funding, but due to the fact that our brilliant sound wizard, Hamish, went on holiday for two weeks, as did I myself. Louise and I spent a fortnight in Manhattan, never the most restful of places, schlepping around art galleries and applying copious amounts of foot cream to worn-down paws afterwards. We saw a great Chris Marker show and also had the unexpected pleasure of meeting the great documentary maker Albert Maysles. It was quite a trip, but I now need another holiday to get over it!

Now that we are all back in the UK, mixing will re-commence within the next week or so. It hopefully will be finished 'soon'. (I've given up announcing completion dates.) We are aiming to complete as soon as possible, as there is interest in the film, and it really is high time to get the beast out into the world.

In the meanwhile, our documentary about Scottish filmmaking genius Bill Douglas, Lanterna Magicka, has just been released on DVD. The film appears on disc 2 of the BFI's release of Comrades, Bill's legendary film about the Tolpuddle Martyrs. The disc has already had two very good reviews, which also give the thumbs up to our documentary. (See the Lanterna blog for more details.) Very nice to have such a positive response after three years' work. But the main reason for buying the DVD/Blu-Ray is, of course, Comrades. One of the greatest British films of all time, and something I have never really recovered from seeing. Yes - one of those films you can say changed your life. For the better, of course - as all good things do.

The Beatles Rock

And this is the same rock the Beatles sat on, nearly 46 years later, taken yesterday after yet another depressing visit to the bank. Lack of money and absence: strange things.

Music History Part the Second

This is a bit OT, but as a Beatles fan and Weston historian, I thought I would post this link, which has plenty of Fabs-in-Weston photos, including one of those telescopes that you'll see in Folie... And if you scroll down, you'll see two home movie clips.

Location Burns Down

One of the locations we used in Folie has mysteriously burnt down. The Royal Pier Hotel in Weston-super-Mare, which appears at the end of the Chekhov scene, was gutted last night. It also appears in my short film Genius Loci, which was one of the episodes in Super-8 Cities. It's yet another Weston landmark to either be destroyed - as the Grand Pier was last summer, another fire - or let fall into decay - such as the nearby Birnbeck Pier, which is slowly falling into the sea. If Weston had a town council that had an ounce of imagination and moral fibre, these things wouldn't happen.

To go back to the fire at the Royal Pier Hotel, it sounds as though it was burnt down for the insurance, but the owners, who at one point were interested in investing in Folie, claim they don't have any insurance. The waters get murkier and murkier... It'll be interesting to see who they arrest.

The hotel is also part of music history: the gentlemen in the photo stayed at the Royal Pier Hotel when they played a week-long residency at the Odeon in Weston in 1963.

The End is Nigh!

No, I don't mean the end of the world is at hand, although I'm pleased to see that capitalism and (British) democracy are in dire straits. (And I'm a bit concerned about the bees disappearing... maybe they're leaving the planet like the dolphins did in Hitchhiker's.)

The news is, of course, that we are now in the home stretch on Folie. Sound mixing begins in Edinburgh on 22nd June. We have had a two month enforced lay-off, as the facility we have been using has been totally booked up and, as we're dependent on their downtime, had no option but to wait. This initially felt like one more delay - a delay too far, at that - but I've been so busy with the book and Cannes, that two months have gone by in a blur.

We hope to have the sound done by the end of June, and we'll then export back to tape in early July. I'm still hoping that it will all hang together. From what I've seen so far, it looks good, but, as Bresson once said, 'You will never know if the mountain range of efforts you are putting into your film will be worth it.' And if Bresson didn't know how his films would turn out, there's not much hope for anyone else...

And in the news for parrotts: I've just set up a new blog, which will detail other projects, although Folie updates will continue to be posted here.

Lanterna Magicka Trailer

A quick plug for our other film, Lanterna Magicka: Bill Douglas & the Secret History of Cinema. The film is being released on DVD next month, and the trailer is now online here and also here.

It's a relief to actually have something finished at last! Making two films at the same time is not recommended; making one is bad enough. I'm continually reminded of Noel Coward's line, 'Don't put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington.'

Sound

The grading is done, and now sound mixing and design is the order of the day. I'm sure Bresson or Tarkovsky had insights about sound, but I don't have any of their writings to hand to have a look... (I'm sure B. said something like 'if it is all ear, give nothing to the image, and vice versa'. And T. certainly new a thing or two about great sound - just listen to the shepherdess's calls in The Sacrifice...)

Making the Grade

OK, pretty crap title for this post, but I haven't had a day off in weeks and am too tired to think of a better one. (What about Sir Michael? Sir Lew? Very Steep? Bottom?)

I watched a graded copy of the film last night, and can report that it's looking very good. A bit more wizardry needs to be applied to it - possibly making certain parts darker - but on the whole it really feels of a piece.

The pacing is also very good now - measured I think is the word I'm looking for. Some people might regard that as a polite way of saying slow, but then again these are probably people who are too stupid to watch Bela Tarr or Into Great Silence, and are not people I want watching my film. Let them have their sanitised Hollywood pap! Their tabloid newspapers! Their lives of quiet desperation and Tony Jacklin golf clubs! Off with their heads! Eugenics! Round them up!

Oh dear, I really must be tired. Better seek a darkened room, and go and lie down in it.

Grading Started Today

Er.... that's about it. Should be finished by the end of next week, fingers crossed.

Still on the trail of a bit more dosh to tie things up, but apart from that, this final bit of the film is coming along nicely.

If anyone is interested in investing, please email me. We have a guaranteed theatrical release in North America, so investors should get a return on whatever they put in. (We shall of course be avoiding banks and their delightful CEOs like the plague. All money will be in bulging manila envelopes:-))

Onlining, Grading & Finishing

On Friday we finished importing all the footage into the Avid online, which was a fairly painless process. It's actually also the first time I'd seen the film uncompressed, and can happily report that it looks very good, even without the grading. We also took a few things about - mainly cutaways that weren't working, but we also chopped out an entire scene and made some changes to the final scene. And a few things went back in: the cat (a superb feline performance), and two shots which have never been in any previous cut.

All that is left to do now is the grading, which will start next week, and then the mix. Hopefully we're still on course to get the film finished sometime in April, depending on how long the sound takes.

And, it probably goes without saying, I'm still looking for some final funding... And then, finally, it will be finished.

Last Post

On Thursday next week we start the final leg of post in Edinburgh. We have relocated to Scotland for financial reasons:-) And for the pubs. There's still not enough money to go round - or even to buy a round - but we're getting damn close to finally having the film finished at last (at least a year late, but let's gloss over that). One or two darlings that have survived until now may well go - as well as a scene which wasn't a darling (at least of mine), but has somehow become the runt of the litter, and will almost certainly go as well.

Until I have more to announce, please avail yourselves of a copy of Carl Dreyer's Vampyr, which I got as a Christmas present. It's one of the most unusual vampire movies ever made but, perhaps more notably, an amazing dream of a film.

Lengthy Gestations and Other Matters

OK we are nearly done, thanks to the production team's tenacity, and my own. We still have a month's worth of work to do, but we are nearly there, at long last.

When postproduction stretches out to such unexpected lengths of time, it is natural to wonder why the hell you are doing this, and do you really want to keep doing it? In such moments, I've thought of those who have gone before. (No, I'm not talking about first world war vets, but filmmakers who spent inordinate amounts of time either on their first features, or getting their careers established.)

I think of Eric Rohmer, mainstay of the French New Wave, who missed the boat in 1959-62,and didn't get established until the late 60s with Six Moral Tales, which established his career finally when he was nearly 50.

David Lynch, who spent 7 years making Eraserhead(And that was 7 years shooting, as well as editing; Folie has had 30 days' shooting overall, but 20 months editing.)

Jacques Rivette, for Paris Nous Appartient, which took a year to film, a year to edit, and then another year to get a release.

Al Reinert, who spent TEN YEARS making the moon landing doc For All Mankind. (And that was ten years of hell, from what I've heard.)

And to cap it all is Emir Kusturica's teacher, who shot his first feature in 1976, and promptly died of a heart attack as soon as the shoot was done, so, we're not doing too badly. (Kusturica later helped get the film finished.)

It seems as though our hard work has paid off: people are already being affected by film, in particular the final half hour. That's good. That's what I want. I only hope the next one doesn't take as long....

Can you help the widow's son to the tune of five hundred nicker?

Some more cash has unexpectedly turned up, to our immense relief. We still need another £500, which hopefully will be drummed up somewhere. Maybe I can hang around certain pubs in Earl's Court...

Our other main project, Lanterna Magicka, is also approaching completion, and will actually probably be finished first. But to get both done within the next month or so will be a cause for celebration or, to quote Life of Brian, 'a great rubbing of parts'.

Let us hope that 2009 is the year of completions and new cycles. I must consult the charts and tables, especially the position of Uranus.It has certainly gotten off to a good start:-)

Father Christmas to the (half) rescue

Well, it's been a funny seven days. Last weekend, I was more or less ready to give the whole thing up, and part of my car exploding only seemed to confirm that I suspected: things felt like they were ganging up on me to prevent the film from ever being completed. You may know the feeling: the postman brings one too many shitty letters from the bank, the toaster cremates your breakfast, the dog farts so badly you have to have the windows open all day - that kind of thing. (A more poetic version of this is, of course, Algernon Blackwood's marvellous phrase 'The willows were against us.')

In what can only be described as a sudden reversal of fortune, we now have half the money we need to complete. The remaining cash is still being sought. But I feel as though things are at last coming together. We're not out of the woods yet, and I don't want to put a completion date on the film, given that we're somewhat behind schedule, but at least if the dog farts now, I won't mind so much.

I hope you have had a good Christmas. I am looking forward to seeing Carry on Cleo on New Year's Eve, as it features the acting talents of a certain B. Douglas....

Music Completed

Sharon has just completed the score. Or, I should say, she finished it about a week ago, and I've spent the intervening time trying to download it! One track in particular didn't like my FTP client - or maybe it was the other way round - but eventually I managed to access the piece via the good offices of www.adrive.com. I have only watched the film with the first cue in place, and I have to say it works wonderfully well. Sharon has intuitively understood the needs of the film.... as I knew she would. It makes the struggle - and believe me, every filmmaker ought to write a book called My Struggle (although that wouldn't be very popular in London NW11) - bearable when you are collaborating with people who understand what you are looking for, and manage to surprise you in the process by not only giving you what you want, but more than you asked for.

We now are about to start mixing and grading. Stay tuned! The film will be ready in 2009, finally.

New CD from Composer Sharon Farber

While we wait for Sharon to finish the score for Folie, I'm pleased to report that her marvellous score for the movie When Nietzsche Wept has just been released on CD and download. More info and purchase details here. Congratulations, Sharon!

“Some scores are worth fighting for - for more than a year we have been working on acquiring the rights to release this immensely beautiful orchestral score by the hugely talented Sharon Farber. Based on the novel by Irvin D. Yalom, scoring When Nietzsche Wept was a dream project for the composer, who had read the book as a teenager and immediately fell in love with it."

Mikael Carlsson
Moviescore Media

Music

Composer Sharon Farber has been hard at work this month on the film's music, and I watched the near-final cut last week with the score for the first time, and the difference Sharon's work makes is palpable. She has given us some wonderful, sensitive, enigmatic and haunting music, which will only serve to take the whole film up several notches... Hopefully we'll be mixing in October/November, and have the film finally ready by Christmas. Cannes 2009 awaits!

Picture Locked

After sending Wendy another 10 page memo about changes that we felt necessary, I can now report with considerable relief and even a bit of mild elation - careful, now - that Folie is now locked. The decision to extend all the cutaways has proved very effective - everything now appears as a memento mori - which gives the film a deeper feel, I think. And the new ending certain works a treat. True, we'll need to make a few minor cosmetic nips and tucks - there have been calls for the shot of the cat to be put back in! - but the film is now, to all intents and purposes, done and we are into the final stages of post at long last. Composer Sharon Farber is now busy with the score, and we should be mixing and grading in October. Oh, and did I say, there is even a director cameo in the film now? It's a blink and you'll miss him type of shot. Play spot the auteur at a multiplex near you in 2009...

Behind the Scenes Trailer Online

A taster of both the finished film, and Rhys Hayward's fine 'Behind the Scenes' documentary can be found here:

http://blip.tv/file/337320, featuring Adam Napier summarising the film rather well, and a comparatively young, carefree and happy director talking about how the film was cast.

A full trailer for Folie will be uploaded later in the summer.

Meanwhile, please buy a copy of The Bill Douglas Trilogy, finally out on DVD and with a contribution to the booklet by your humble auteur himself...

Deadline Dates Loom

On the last day we were in Cannes, we had some interest in Folie from a film festival - and a rather good one at that. Their submission deadline is looming - it's in about 6 weeks - so we're hoping to get the film more or less finished by then. We're shooting the final pick-ups this weekend (final, that is, apart from re-doing the final shot, which will have to be done in either early July or early September), and hopefully these few extra shots will be in the cut by the end of this month. Completion can't some soon enough, believe me. I feel rather like the song says, 'Don't put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington', the stage in this case being the whole ordeal of producing an independent feature...

Sturgeon's Law

Someone once told the SF writer Ted Sturgeon that 90% of SF was crap. Sturgeon agreed, but then addded, 'But 90% of everything is crap.'

I had this infallible truth on my mind this last week in Cannes, where there was indeed a lot of cinematic crap on display, and a lot of idiots talking the usual merde.

There was interest in our proposed documentary about Tarkovsky, Cinema of Dreams, and interest in Folie from a film festival. Their deadline is a mere eight weeks away, but we may be able to get it about 80% or 90% done by then, financial fairies permitting.

More anon, once I've recovered from the usual festival rigours (sore feet, bad diet etc).

Blackballing Bastards

Another fruitless meeting with a so-called 'very keen' investor who was making noises about how he wanted to put some money into Folie so we can get it finished has just left us feeling rather like Mr Wiggin, from Monty Python's Architect Sketch:

Mr. Wiggin:
May I ask you to reconsider?

Clients:
Well...

Mr. Wiggin:
You wouldn't regret this. Think of the tourist trade.

Client 1:
I'm sorry. We want a block of flats, not an abattoir.

Mr. Wiggin:
...I see. Well, of course, this is just the sort of blinkered philistine pig-ignorance I've come to expect from you non-creative garbage. You sit there on your loathsome spotty behinds squeezing blackheads, not caring a tinker's cuss for the struggling artist. You excrement, you whining hypocritical toadies with your colour TV sets and your Tony Jacklin golf clubs and your bleeding masonic secret handshakes. You wouldn't let me join, would you, you blackballing bastards. Well I wouldn't become a Freemason now if you went down on your lousy stinking knees and begged me!

~

It is of course heavily ironic that Weston-super-Mare's not very much missed MP was called Wiggin, Mr Wiggin in the sketch was played by Weston's very own John Cleese (shot at the time Wiggin was MP - surely no coincidence), and Folie was of course shot there. It is verily a town of blackballing bastards. And we're still waiting to get in at Hendon.

Mikloś Jancsó (and the latest edit)

Last weekend we went up to London to see the great Mikloś Jancsó in person at the Curzon Mayfair and the Curzon Soho, as part of the Curzon /Second Run Jancsó festival. The great man was in very fine form, especially considering he is 86 (and certainly doesn't look it or act it). Apart from answering questions about The Round-Up, which was screening to celebrate its release on DVD, Jancsó talked about some of his ideas about film. He complained that many films don't give the viewer enough time to think, which I can heartily agree with. The point of most Hollywood cinema (and western culture/consumerism in general) is not to make people think. If you stop to think, you realise what a pile of crap it all is, and they don't want that, offering instead the vicarious, emotionally dead pleasures of shallow, poorly conceived stories that basically reinforce the status quo, or what Philip K. Dick called the Empire. (A term also used by Alain Badiou - thanks Nathan!) It is of course tempting to add the word 'Evil' before that word. There are a lot of them out there. We need - indeed, must have, films that make us think. And not just films - anything that makes us think: books, art, music, media (the list could go on...).

I was reminded of all this the night before last when I finally got round to watching the latest cut of Folie. The new version of the film certainly made me think, perhaps because it's the first new edit we've had a in a few months, so it was akin to seeing the film for the first time. I found myself wanting to know what was going on in these characters' heads, what their pasts were like - something that would be killed by the inclusion of voice-over. So, in a U-turn worthy of any government (and they're nearly all despicable), I have now decided to omit voice-over from the film, which also means that the dreams will be cut as well. Actually, it's the other way round: watching the film the other night made me realise that the dreams really have to go; they're darlings that simply have to be murdered. I think the film will be better without them. And hopefully it will make people think more, which must surely be a good thing.

Latest Edit

Got the latest edit from the FTP server last night. At only 2GB, it managed to download OK even with my rather slow broadband (surely an oxymoron?). Anyway, the film is looking good - nearly there I hope. For the first time in cutting, instead of getting shorter, it is now getting longer. This present edit is 89 minutes, which is a couple of minutes longer than the last version. We want something that's just right, of course; a lot of the decisions we now need to make are trying to strike a balance between style and story. I'm quite pleased that some shots have been held way beyond their 'normal' time, but obviously we can't do that with every single shot, so I need to try and reign in my desire to make this Weston-super-Mare's answer to Sátántangó. (Maybe that will be a DVD extra...)

Into the Last Stretch of Post

I've just gotten back from Edinburgh, where I spent all day Tuesday making copies of the pick-ups for Folie à Deux. I was originally intending to do them in Bristol, but the price I was quoted by a certain post-production facility near the BBC was a ludicrous £460 + VAT. It worked out to cheaper to get the train to the other end of the country and get the copies done north of Hadrian's Wall, where I have a well-placed contact in post land. Total expenditure: £4.50 (for three new mini DV tapes). The material was shot piecemeal between June and November last year, and will definitely enhance the film considerably. I've also decided that the film will have a voice-over from both Adam Napier's and Sally Scott's characters, which we'll try and record sometime in March. A Cannes screening in May remains a possibility, as does fame, fortune and reforming the Baader-Meinhof gang to settle a few scores with a well-known high street bank... The film definitely feels like it's nearing completion at last, and I'm feeling very inspired by the extra footage and the impact the voice-overs will have.

Director Seeking Inspiration

I mentioned in my last post that it becomes very difficult to remain interested in your own work after a certain length of time. The original plan had been to get Folie finished by last summer, but that didn't happen due to the necessity of getting pick-ups, which was done piecemeal between June and November of last year (with a possible further day of pick-ups still to come). Varying degrees of soul-searching and questioning whether it really is worth dedicating one's life - or at least large portions of it - to making films, while not exactly slowly down the shooting of pick-ups, did at least mean that it was harder than ever to get back into the right mindset to get the film finished.

To that end, I've been trying in the last few weeks to seek inspiration via other means than various ancient country hostelries, and have renewed my Lovefilm.com membership. Almost the first two things I watched were Louis Malle's great 1963 film Le Feu Follet, and Fassbinder's In a Year With 13 Moons (1978). One could say Folie is tangentially related to both in terms of certain themes, while being stylistically very different. What interests me about both films is the use of dialogue, especially the main characters' attempts to articulate their feelings. Fassbinder makes great use of a tape recording at the end of 13 Moons, and this has led me back to thinking that short voice-overs could go into Folie, perhaps over the dream sequences.

On the subject of voice-over, I learned last week that Bresson's Mouchette was one of Bill Douglas's favourite films, and that contains no voice-over at all, so I may go back and watch that again, too. On the other hand, Diary of a Country Priest is a great voice-over film, so one could assume that Bresson had no particular aversion to it as a storytelling tool. My main feeling is that, if voice-overs are used, it would be to deepen the film and, if anything, make it more enigmatic, rather that explaining anything. There are very few explanations in our lives, and most of the time, we are adrift in a sea of seeming certainties, but which, on closer inspection, turn out to be as solid and long-lasting as a cobweb.

Another film that made an impression on me recently was The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which I saw at one of my favourite cinemas, the Cameo in Edinburgh. Again, a voice-over film, and one with a voice-of-God narrator as well, which added a sense of inevitability about the whole thing, which I think suited the story. But perhaps the thing that struck me most was the sense that it was a film about the passing of time, and the briefness of meaningful moments, suggested by numerous shots of apparently inanimate objects - various domestic still lives, the sunlight on the floorboards, views through lace curtains or windows, etc. As any good filmmaker knows, there's no such thing as an inanimate object. Everything should play a part in your film; there is only inanimate writing, direction and acting. (To say nothing of inanimate distribution, criticism and overall cultural stagnation... but perhaps I'm going off on a tangent here. Or am I?)

How all this will feed into the last stage of Folie, I don't know, but it feels somehow like it is finally gelling. If I make another film after this, I'm tempted to take a leaf out of Fassbinder's book and do the whole thing from start to finish in 3 months. He averaged one feature every hundred days. No wonder the poor man died at 37. I'd quite like to survive a bit longer than that, Manoel de Oliveira being my main inspiration in this department, still making films in his 100th year. If there's one lesson to be learned from the Portuguese Master, it's this: whatever happens, keep going.

Finishing Folie

We are now hopefully in the final stretch of post on Folie, after far too long in limbo, a limbo largely created by actor's schedules (unintentionally and unavoidably delaying the shooting of vital pick-ups) and the ever present spectre of a profound lack of cash. If the Gods of Post permit, we could screen the film in the Cannes Market in May, and hopefully finally get the film out into the world thereafter.

The main problem with being in post for so long is that it becomes very difficult to remain interested and inspired in one's own work, and the last few months have certainly been an object lesson in how to do so. I can't say I have any secrets, you just have to learn to watch something totally uncritically, and imagine that you are a member of the audience seeing it for the first time. Also to recall what got you excited about the story in the first place, excited/obsessed enough to get tangled up in the chaos and all-round assault course that is making a film.

The main artistic quandaries we have at the moment are deciding whether to add a bit of voice-over to the film, not to explain things, but to deepen the film, and also the vexed issue of music. I'm not sure that it needs very much, and seeing 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days on Saturday, which has no music at all, strengthens my feeling that less will probably be more.

Sir Edmund Hillary RIP

More film news anon, but at the moment I would just like to doff my hat to one of the greatest chaps of recent decades, Sir Edmund Hillary (L, here with the great Tenzing Norgay, just after the conquest of Everest in 1953). God Bless You Sir, and may we all learn from your example. (And have a quick single malt for Tenzing, too!)

Pick-Ups Finished

Today we shot the final pick-ups for Folie. Sally came down from London to shoot three shots: Cleo picking up an envelope from a mantelpiece in her flat (a nicely austere shot, a little homage perhaps to Bresson, Dreyer or Hammershøi); Cleo looking through Lucas's photos in the hotel and a close-up of her feet (a bit of Buñuelian foot fetishism, perhaps?). The envelope was deemed necessary, because it later reappears in the film at a very crucial stage in the story, while the photos and shoes were things we could have got on the day if we'd had time. We also battled valiantly against traffic, birdsong and the occasional dog to record a very brief wildtrack. Not the hardest day's work imaginable, but it feels good to finally have everything in the can. Very good, in fact. Once we have the pick-ups dropped into the cut, we're onto music, mixing and grading and hopefully a preview screening within the next few months. And then I can retire/do a Lord Lucan/Reggie Perrin/Jim-Morrison-splitting-to-Africa...

Shooting Pick Ups

On Monday we shot pick-ups with our male lead, Adam Napier. We've had to wait this long as Adam has been in a play in London's West End all year, and the run has only just finished. It was a long, frustrating wait, but it was good to see him again, and we got some good stuff in the can. We also attempted to reshoot the final shot of the film, but we're not at the moment sure if what we got is useable. It's a fairly simple shot - the camera tracks away from a car - but was fraught with all sorts of little problems (reflections, temperamental smoke machines, bumping into things, the public, shadows, sunlight too bright etc). So: we may have to have another go at that shot sometime.

This coming week, we are shooting pick-ups with our other lead, Sally Scott. Again, we've had to wait all year for Sally's schedule to free up enough to allow her one day in Weston. At the moment she can be seen in Boeing Boeing at the Comedy. Once we've done Sally's pick-ups - and had another crack at the final shot - the film will finally be all in the can, and the final push in post can begin. And not before time. Roll on 2008 and red carpets.

Another Short Post

A few slight changes to my next book, New Waves in Cinema. It was originally scheduled for June 08 with a still from Rivette's marvellous Va Savoir on the cover (Jeanne Balibar emerging through the skylight, a cover I liked a lot). The new publication date is next September, which is good for me, as it's still nowhere near finished, and the cover now features a certain gentleman by the name of Kinksi. More info here.

Mannheim News: Sales Agent Picks up the Film

Just got back from the Mannheim-Heidelberg Film Festival, where Folie has been picked up by a sales agent, despite being incomplete. More info soon.

Seeking Funding, Meeting Fools

In our current search for a bit of cash to complete Folie, I have been exploring various funding options. One of these is that bastion of filmic culture and wisdom, the UK Film Council. Yesterday they turned our application down on the basis that the acting and directing were weak, despite the fact that these are precisely two of the areas that have been singled out for praise by the various good gentlemen and women who have seen the film as it stands at the moment. What planet are the Film Council on? They are obviously so far up their own arses that they can't see out. Oh yes, and I suppose we did commit the cardinal sin of actually needing money, as it seems they only give handouts to films that don't really need it. And then of course the film is about white middle-class southerners, with nary a member of the lower socio-economic orders in sight, to say nothing of homosexuals (that was my last film), non-Caucasians (the film before that), northerners, Scots or any other group who might appear to myopic fools in plush offices in central London to be worthy of portraying on screen. Oh yes, and the style of the film - decidedly not MTV, Shane Meadows or Guy Ritchie. So, really, we stood fuck all chance of getting money. What a fucking riduculous country this is. Reminds me, sadly, that Truffaut was right: cinema and Britain are incompatible terms.

The Gospel According to PJ Harvey

Just read this interview with PJ Harvey in The Grauniad. This bit caught my eye, as what she says is completely on the money:

'Our time is almost up. In the car park, Harvey points out the remains of Abbotsbury's 11th-century abbey and a chapel dedicated to St Catherine - the patron saint of spinsters, she tells me - and then goes on her way. On my long journey home, I tune into Radio 1, and hear Zane Lowe once again playing When Under Ether, which sounds every bit as singular as Harvey had suggested. By comparison, the music that follows it seems hollow and generic, which rather puts me in mind of something she had said earlier on - an outburst, by her standards, in which she said her sense was that the quality of music, literature and film seems to be going "down and down and down, and I struggle so hard to get excited about anything".

Characteristically, she wouldn't be drawn on exactly who or what she was railing against, but lurking in what she said, there was a kind of mission statement. "There's too much of everything in the world, but particularly too much of everything that's not all that good. The world doesn't need any more art that's just all right. It only needs mind-blowing, inspirational, life-changing stuff."'

Folie: Clip Now Online

A short clip of the making of Folie is now online. Go to www.rhyshayward.com and click on the bottom right-hand image of the four displayed (showing Sally Scott in the shelter scene). The clip is from Rhys's documentary about the making of the film, which I saw for the first time yesterday, and a fine piece of work it is. Hopefully it will be on the DVD, once that comes out sometime next year. Right now, I'm in the midst of trying to get the remaining pick-ups in the can and trying to get things on track for the final stage of post. Watching Rhys's film reminded me as to why we got into this particular adventure in the first place - I only wish it was longer. Perhaps I can talk him into a longer cut, for those keen on the realtime experience...

Why We Need Art

Mikhail Kononov, who played Foma in Andrei Rublev, has died. Obituaries can be found here and here. Something he said which is reported in the latter of these two articles reminded me of something I've been thinking about in the past few days. To quote:

"I am guided by the precepts with which our generation regarded art. This is why I desperately refuse to act in the TV-serials I am offered. I am terrified by the scripts I read: they are horrible! ... I have no right to allow myself playing in such nonsense. During one role test I even burst into tears. They all thought I was weeping because of growing into my role, while I cried for the horrible state of today’s cinematography and TV. I rejected the role, though it offered big money. One cannot meet the viewer on such a low moral and intellectual level. If we follow the mass public tastes we can lose our way. This is what is happening in cinema today. This is anti-art, anti-aesthetics. We must not support vice and mass psychosis. Otherwise our profession is not needed. Neither artists nor writers are needed."

It occurred to me that one of the reasons why arthouse/world cinema - call it what you will - is needed more than ever is due to the psychotic nature of Western civilisation. The film The Corporation makes that clear: that putting profit about all else has lead us into a state of cultural pyschosis. Money matters more than anything else. Now, I'm not against making money, but it seems fairly clear that we need to value other things as much as, if not more than, making a profit. These other values could include nuturing the imagination, pronoia, fostering the idea that each one of us has repsonsibilities for our own lives and other people, that every decision we make matters, etc.

This is where so-called unprofitable arthouse films come in. The best of them do foster, I think, some of the values mentioned above. In order to make these films more viable for exhibitors, maybe we need to change the whole cinema-going experience. Your average multiplex has perverted the whole idea of a 'House of Culture' that the French were trying to establish in the 50s, where you could go to the same place for films, dance, galleries, theatre and music. The multiplex simply gives you a dozen or twenty choices to choose from, and they're mainly all crap, junk food for the mind and soul. Plus you can't even get anything decent to eat or drink: it's all sugary crap. (Popcorn ought to be illegal at film screenings. If you eat it during a film, you are effectively saying you are a moron.)

We need art and culture (high culture) more than ever to fight against the relentless drivel of our society. Tarkovsky quoted Gurdjieff in The Sacrifice, and it is a quote worth repeating here:

"If sin is that which is inessential, then our civilization is built on sin from beginning to end."

Mikhail Kononov was right to cry: we should all be crying. The inmates have been running the asylum for far too long. It is time to pity them, and begin their re-eduction, otherwise the asylum will turn into a prison, from which there will be no escape.

Sunset Song

Now that we are out of the Dog Days of August, which have been very frustrating with little progress on the project (July remains largely unspeakable - never my favourite time of the year), I have a few updates: we should have the film finished in time for the Berlinale deadline (around 01/11/07), as we now have a smidgin of cash potentially in the bank. More cash is of course needed, but I am now starting to feel that the whole bloody film will finally finish itself by the end of the year, meaning that 2008 will be our year! If we miss the Berlinale, we'll show it somewhere else instead (somewhere slightly warmer would be nice!).

I have also had some interesting conversations with people who have seen the cut. All have been positive, but a chat I had tonight in Glastonbury (of all places) has made me wonder whether we should add something else to the film, namely a voice-over. (Think Sunset Boulevard or American Beauty.) What Folie is about, in one respect, is the sense of being alive in the world, the sheer strangeness of being in a body, of feeling the wind against your skin, hearing a dog bark or a church bell, smelling the sea or a bonfire, smelling the salt of the sea. So the idea of a voice-over adds to the general ontological conundrum posed by the film. In other words, I want the film to ask the viewer, Is It Worth Being Alive At All? And If So, Why? Why Do You Appreciate Life? You should, because one day it will be taken from you. As The Doors said, 'Someday soon you're going to die.' This is the inherent tension at the heart of Folie - when will they (we) die? And how?

FTP Horrors

At Wendy's suggestion, I have set up an FTP server so that she can upload the new cuts of the film instead of posting DVDs. The main problem I've had in downloading the new version of the film is that, at 4.42 GB, it's a tad larger than the last version (699 MB), mainly due to resolution issues etc. After trying to download the bugger for 4 days, I switched laptops and it finally worked. 'Laptop' is a swear word around here at the moment, given the current major attack of gremlins that seems to be going on. Gremlins, in fact, might be an understatment. Think poltergeists. Think Amityville Horror, for that matter. Still, I now have the latest cut, and now need to sit down and watch it. (Provided the TV doesn't blow up, that is.)

Good Offices and the Bad

Well, it looks like we now have a deal for online and grading, thanks to the good offices of our DOP, Richard J. Wood. I need to call the guy in question and get something arranged. Anyway, well done Rich, that's another big weight off my shoulders.

Speaking of good offices, there must surely be bad offices as well. First in line are those amateur halfwits, Shooting People. The last 4 or so messages I've tried to post there have all been rejected for the most pedantic of reasons. (One or possibly two of these messages were appeals for online editors and graders.) The latest was rejected yesterday on the grounds that I had not included the 'going price' for the item I'm trying to sell. (A Z1 training DVD) As it's an auction, the whole notion of 'going price' is a little dimwitted to say the least. It costs £30 a year to belong to SP, and, quite frankly, it's just not worth it. If anyone else feels likewise about these idiots, please leave a comment and cheer me up! I thank you.

BTW, if you want to bid on my DVD, go here. Bidding ends on Tuesday 1845 BST.

Cut No. 6

We're currently trimming the cut down a little, to tighten the pace. I sent Wendy nearly 100 things that I wanted changing, and she's done most of those. We're still fine-tuning, but hopefully we're nearer to getting the picture cutting finished.

The search for money to get it finished continues very slowly. Hopefully we should have some news on this front over the summer. Folie is shaping up to be the first film I've made where I'm very happy with both style and subject. It has a real time feel, a lot of silence and stillness, nothing is properly explained, especially the ending, which I think some people will not be able to accept.

Funnily enough, having nearly finished a film I can say is the 'real me' stylistically, I also for the first time ever feel like giving this malarky up. Perhaps it's Folie's subject matter, turning 40, I don't know. So, I may be going off the air, or at least I might spend a bit of time doing other things, e.g. documentaries, or even a few shorts. We'll have to see. It's best not to plan too much. As John Lennon said, 'Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.'

Back (side) from Cannes

I spent a few days in Cannes last week, having what are euphemistically known as 'meetings'. This should mean, in normal (i.e. non film industry) circumstances, that you arrange to meet someone who might, perchance, be beneficial to your current endeavour, and that you meet at arranged said time and place, and business proceeds forthwith. In Cannes, however, that usually means that whoever you have arranged to meet isn't actually there when you turn up, and you then spend all your available time trying to leave messages for all the people you missed, while trying to see some films and having a bloody good time. Because, if you don't have the latter, the whole business is a waste of time. I mean, on the one hand, you have the great auteurs and a few geriatric critics expressing their belief that film is/can be/ought to be an art form here and there, but for most of us, it's not; it's sadly a load of old shite most of the time.

Look at the poor response Béla Tarr's marvellous The Man from London got in Cannes. Is this a recognition of art? No, it's a bunch of ignorant, self-appointed cultural arbiters (e.g. Simon Mellons or whatever he's called at The Grauniad) talking about that which they are not intelligent enough to talk about, except which parties they've been to. Whoever said there is no high culture or low culture, there's only culture, is clearly wrong. Most of our self-appointed experts are decidely low culture, and they wouldn't recognize a masterpiece if it came up behind them and had their way with their fat ignorant bottoms. Viva Béla!

Anyway, enough of ranting about the intellectually challenged. Better out than in, as Jung said. (Well, it might have been that Freudian who encouraged his patients to go to the toilet as often as possible.) There are vague filigrees of interest in Folie, from various parties in Europe, North America and the UK being the usual wastelands of the Challenged, as I think I shall refer to them from now on. We are still ploughing on with post, just in case. Wendy is trimming the film down a little, as I feel we could improve the pace somewhat. The film is 90% there, it just needs that little extra je ne sais quoi. (For the Challenged, that's French for 'I don't know', whose meaning is rather more along the lines of 'A Certain Ineffable Something'.)

I did manage to chill out on my last afternoon there on the wonderful Ile St Honorat, where I visited the C11th/12th fortified monastery, and generally tried to think about what really matters (in other words, Cannes wasn't on my mind much).

Congratulations, finally, to Christian Mungiu, whose 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days - which cost under £500,000 to make, had no stars and was about a tricky subject - won the Palme d'Or. I wonder which party Simon Mellons was at when that was screened?

Off to Cannes

Off to Cannes first thing tomorrow. I don't normally go this late in the festival, but was away last week in the wilds of North Wales, writing. While in Cannes, I hope to sign a distribution agreement for Folie à Deux, and also discuss festival strategy with the sales agent.

We are hoping to get a near-finished version ready by the end of June, so that we can get it into the Mannheim Film Festival, but that all depends on raising more money. Right now, the piggy bank is empty, and more of the old folding stuff needs to be procured ASAP.

I also hope to visit St Honorat and go to the monastery, catch the new Béla Tarr, The Man from London - the first time the great man has been in Competition - and of course visit the Scandinavian Terrace every day for Happy Hour. (The one place you're always guaranteed to find me.) Wih me luck. We need more cash, otherwise the film will remain an unseen and rumoured masterpiece...

Online Editor and Grader Needed

We are in search of some facilities and hard-working, inspiration-filled folk put at our disposal to online the film for next to nothing, and also to grade it. The film has been made on a wing and a prayer (OK, not forgetting Magners and Glenmorangie, with the odd spot of Thai massage), and we don't have the wonga to pay for a day's onlining, plus the marrying of the sound to the master. If you can help, or know of someone who can, drop me a line. We would need to do this probably early summer (e.g. June-ish), so that the film can be ready for autumn festivals.

Trailer Online in April

A trailer will be up online sometime during April, hopefully before Easter. A link will be put here, and also on www.myspace.com/891filmhouse.

Post: The View from Here

I'm now back in rainy, windy Old Blighty, and have to crack on with the rest of post. The plan is still to show the film in Cannes this year, at least in the Market, which will mean filling in the online forms and, of course, paying for the screenings. Whilst sorting this out, the cut as it currently stands needs to go out to the various interested parties to see who - if anyone - will come on board as a co-producer. And while this is going on, I need to start looking around for alternative sources of funding, just in case no one comes on board. Plus I'm also supposed to be re-working an old, now out of print book for republication, and also getting on with the Bill Douglas documentary. No rest for the wicked (I'll leave you to guess who they are...) Nor filmmakers.

Picture Cutting Complete (ish)

We've now finished picture cutting - for the time being. The film runs 99 mins without credits. Now it's time to get feedback from various interested parties and see what they have to say. I'm happy with a lot of the film, and will be looking at the few things that I'm not sure about once I get back to Old Blighty and proper (i.e. bad!) weather. LA is tediously warm, and I'm looking forward to my car arriving to take me to LAX in about 3 hours' time (time enough for a final visit to Amoeba and the Cat and Fiddle while singing that Clash song I'm So Bored with the USA quietly to myself.)

The things that I'm not entirely sure of are the dreams, the first and last shots, the final scene and the start of the second pub scene. Apart from those things, I think the film has a stylistic coherence that I'm pleased with (a lot of long-ish takes, with the camera simply following the actors around; very simple blocking in general), some humour (mainly courtesy of the supporting characters, especially Steve Dineen's tie salesman), and also a quietly spooky feel to it (or so I've been told by the people over here to whom I've shown clips). I hope we can still make Cannes, but if not, it's not the end of the world, and however long it takes to get it fully completed from now, it won't be as bad as your average Bela Tarr shoot (I believe the great man has been trying to get his few film, The Man from London, completed for the last two years now). All being well, we'll have a fully finished film in a matter of months, not years...

98 Minutes and Counting

We now have a 98 minute cut of the film, which is certainly getting there. I've just emailed Wendy (the editor) a few pages of notes for what we should do for the next version of the film. Although we've had to control our urges (well, my urges, to be honest) to do everything in long takes (we'd have ended up with a 3 hour film otherwise), the film still has a convincing real-time feel to it, and a lot of the scenes are shot with a moving camera (our trusty and esteemed colleague Figgus Riggus in action!). So I'm quite pleased with the style of the film, and its overall pace. Once I get back to Blighty next week, I'll be showing it to various interested parties to get their feedback. Hopefully they won't ask for too many changes, especially reinstating the Busby Berkeley ending... Actually, I'm not sure what changes any one could ask for, other than the film be quicker, which I think would be wrong, so acquiescing to demands of various sorts may not be possible, other than demanding the finest wines available to humanity...

Editing

I'm currently editing the film in Los Angeles (the 'g' should of course be pronounced hard, like the narrator does in The Big Lebowski...) with Wendy Elford-Argent, who cut The Notebooks of Cornelius Crow. Folie is, of course, a very different film, and we have to trim out anything that reminds us of Crow. The film has gone down from 135 to 118 to 108 mins. Not bad for something with a shooting script of only 38 pages. We need to cut it down even further, of course. The dream sequences aren't really working at the moment, and the other characters tend to deflect too much from Adam Napier and Sally Scott's characters in the second half of the film, so they may well end up getting cut or judiciously trimmed. Adam and Sally are superb, IMHO, and the best of the rest at the moment is Steve Dineen as the wonderfully ridiculous tie salesman. That's all I have time for at the moment. More later.

BTW, Happy Birthday Sir John (Tavener)!

Cutting

We now have the first 4 pages of the script roughcut. The footage runs for about 15 minutes, so we're averaging about 3 minutes per page at the moment, rather than the traditional 1. Well, balls to tradition. The script for Stalker was apparently only 35 pages long, and the film was 161 minutes, which works out at about 4.5 mins per page. Anyway, it's looking good. We should have a roughcut of the whole film by January.

Mannheim

I spent all of last week at the Mannheim-Heidelberg Film Festival, where Folie had been invited to participate in the Co-Production Meetings. They generally invite projects that are still at script stage, so we were quite lucky to get in. Only one other film, an Italian film called Nemesis, had already been shot. I also spent most of my time there suffering from some sort of flu-like virus, which knocked me out completely for a day.

When not in meetings, I visited Heidelberg and also managed to catch a couple of films: a Turkish film called Times and Winds that used a lot of Arvo Pärt's music, a Swiss film called Stealth, a very low budget Polish film called This is Me Now and a couple of Kieslowski films that I'd never seen before, Short Working Day and The Calm.

Now that I'm back in front of my desk, I'm realising that I still need another few days to recover. Still, we have a lot of interest in the film. Fingers remain devoutly crossed.

Editing Begins

Editing begins this week. Last week was spent getting all the material digitised at Doghouse in Bristol, which was then Fed Exed to our editor Wendy in LA. I'm hoping she can cut a scene by next week in order to have something to show in Mannheim, but I'm not sure whether she'll have enough time to actually finish something by then. We're aiming to get the fine cut done by the end of January, and spend Febuary doing the sound and grading. Our first market screening will probably still be Cannes, where we hope to get a few festival scouts along to watch it...

The Movie Poster

The poster. At least for now. Photo by David Hamnett.

Lucas's Photos

Lucas, the character played in the film by Adam Napier, is a photographer. These are some of his pictures, as seen in the film. Photos by and (c) Louise Milne.

William Styron

William Styron, who wrote Sophie's Choice and Darkness Visible, the billiant memoir of depression that we've relied on a lot for Folie, has died. Obit here:

http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/article1951248.ece

Thank you, William. Sleep well. We'll raise a glass of whisky in your direction.

Cry God for Larry!

We wrapped yesterday. More posts will be uploaded once I've found time to re-enter the Pepys Zone (if you know what I mean). Or, to put it another way, once I've found time to do a John Evelyn (another C17th diarist, whose diary actually covers a much greater time span than Pepys).

But for now, a huge thank you to everyone who worked on the film. As Ray so memorably got his lines wrong: 'Cry God for Larry, England and St George!'

Day 11 - All Hallows

The biggie: the final scene. The morning was taken up with finishing off the hotel room stuff, and then we had to shoot Adam and Sally driving to the beach, which saw our trusty Manfrotto car clamp being used yet again. Rich hit upon the idea of having the B camera taped to the dashboard for some shots, and then taping it to the boot area, facing the windscreen.

The beach scene itself was incredibly difficult to shoot, mainly due to the howling gale that was blowing. The chill factor was almost unbearable, so much so that Rich, who has often worked in just a T shirt, asked for his coat, declaring that he would die if he didn't get it. Someone fetched it for him, and he promptly put his hood up, and stayed in hoodie mode for the rest of the afternoon. I must say, I can't blame him; I was absolutely freezing my knackers off, and had to go and sit in my car while takes were going on (there not being enough room in Adam's car for more than him, Sally, Rich and Stu). Sally was totally frozen, bless her, given that she was only wearing an evening dress. (You'll understand why when you see the film.)

The scene on paper is now only 2 pages long, but Adam, Sally and co-writer Nick and I all knew that, for it to work, it would have to be a 10 minute scene. The first take was precisely that long, and after I'd called cut, Adam got out of the car looking somewhat ashen (maybe it was just the perishing cold), but all he said to me was, 'That was so sad.' I was greatly encouraged by this, as this is precisely the feeling I've always had about this scene. It is incredibly sad. Bresson once said something like 'your film is beginning when your secret desires pass into your models [actors]' - I feel that, with Adam's comment, the film really is achieving itself. This feeling was borne out by a comment Rich made a night or two ago in the hotel bar (or The Regency - my memory gets a tad hazy the later we get into the p.m.), when he said that at some point - I think it was during the hotel scenes - that the penny dropped as to what the film is actually about, and he said that he felt sickened.

Again, I have had the same feelings reading the research books (things like William Styron's Darkness Visible, and Kay Redfield Jamison's Night Falls Fast). What we are ultimately dealing with here is a sickening and inexplicable subject that makes one question almost all of one's values. It's a story that calls everything into question. And again, I think that Bresson was right: the film has now taken on a life of its own, which will hopefully see it through post, and out the other side into festival land.

Day 10

I forgot to add that yesterday's cafe scenes between Lucas and Ogilvy (Adam and Chris) were rehearsed for the final time in the Queenswood bar late on Saturday night in what has come to be dubbed 'The Glenmorangie Rehearsal', in which the scene somehow got better as more refreshment was taken. Quite extraordinary.

Anyway, this morning Rich decided that we needed more bridging shots, so we spent an hour or so shooting Adam and Sally walking around, either together or on their own. After lunch, we started the hotel room scenes, whereby hangs a tail.

I'd envisioned a large hotel room, with that rarity of rarities, a large bathroom. We were going to shoot at the same hotel where we shot Michaels's mother's scene, but their bathrooms proved to be far too small. Will, our tireless production manager, found an alternative on Friday, which we recce'd during the lunch break. This was a lot better, and I had my heart set on it until last night, when Rich suggested over his nightly Magners that we shoot the scenes in his room (Room 10), as he has a decent shower cubicle. A quick recce proved right, so we started the scenes there. The other hotel were a bit pissed off when I called them to blow them out, but fuck it, the Queenswood is a much nicer hotel, with better WCs! (I would say it's one of the best hotels in the whole of Weston; I stayed there on Thursday night, and it was marvellous! And again on Saturday night, in the fabled Room 1, which has a very New England feel to it.) Because of the unscheduled bridging stuff this morning, we're now a little behind schedule, and wrapped at the ungodly hour of 8pm. Most days we've wrapped at 6. Mind you, as feature shoots go, this has largely been a picnic, especially compared to Cornelius Crow. And we have the nightly blessing of the Queenswood bar...

Day 9

Today was potentially the most confusing and demanding day of the shoot, in that it's the one day of the film where we have the most hands on deck, mainly in the shape of extras for the cafe scenes. It was also one of the few scenes to not be shot in sequence, as the main cafe scenes - between Lucas and Ogilvy - happen early on in the film. The reason for this is quite simple: the cafe we were using - the Heritage Coffee House in Wadham Street (does great veggie good!) - is only shut on Sundays, and we couldn't shoot during the week as that would have meant recompensing them for a day's lost trade, which we couldn't afford, and we also couldn't shoot it last Sunday, as Chris (Ogilvy) wasn't available.

Things got off to a slightly slow start, with Steve Dineen coming down again to do his final turn as the by now rather sympathetically sad, rather than annoyingly sad, Paul, who is now faced with the prospect that he won't be able to get to the Cravatter's Guild Conference in Torquay (something he boasted about to Cleo in the car just after he picked her up). We then re-made the scene where Ogilvy and Lucas head off for the Dream Roads, the consensus being that the scene was working a lot better (probably due to a miraculous absence of busses, taxis and buzzsaw wielding stonemasons).

The main cafe interiors were all shot with Rich's patent Two Camera TM method, which again speeded things along nicely, although, as we haven't had a shot list for the entire film - a partially deliberate ploy - it was a bit of a headache trying to remember what coverage we actually needed. Again, the reasons for this are due to the nature of the story: when Lucas and Cleo are together, there is a definite 'conspiracy of two' feeling, conveyed by knowing, troubled silences, looking away, minimal dialogue. When they're with other people, however, things are different; they wear masks, play along, try to pretend that all is well. So with Lucas and Ogilvy, we need to have as much 'normal' coverage as possible, and keep the Bogo Tarr stuff on the back burner. One splendid moment occurred during the wild track, when Stu called for general cafe ambience. Suddenly, everyone was a percussionist, moving tables, coughing, clattering knives and forks etc. I even reiterated Ray's words from Wednesday: 'Any chance of another, dear boy?'

The final hour or so of the day saw us shooting the scene in which Sally's character buys a dress for her 3 year old niece. We shot this in my sister Lois's shop Mya Rosa, with Chris's daughter Catherine playing the shop assistant. As the clocks went back last night, we lost the daylight at 1700, meaning that Rich had to frame out the window onto Waterloo Street. Again, 2 cameras were called into play, one on the good legs (my tripod; the hired tripod, which came with the hired camera, turned out to be shit, hence being called the Bad Legs) and the other gaffer taped to a shelf.

I now feel like I'm heading towards a state of relief: we've broken the back of the schedule, but still have two very demanding days to go. Thank God for licensing hours, I say.

Day 8

After the semi-debacle of yesterday afternoon, I was keen that today went better. Thankfully, it did. The main grumbling points were shaky camera (again), due as ever to bumpy ground. We tried another Bogo Tarr tracking shot from a wheelchair, but none of the takes came out smoothly. And on the way back up the lane where we were filming, Rich decided to turn the camera on and shoot Adam and Sally walking up the lane instead of down it. This inevitably meant that our two crew members at the top of the lane - Helen and stills photographer David - were in shot. Helen realised, and ducked into Grove Park. David, on the other hand, didn't realise that our waves to him were meant 'get out of shot!' He thought we were being friendly and waved back. Repeatedly. Such was his enthusiasm, he even started jumping up and down, making him even more visible in shot.

This gaffe was followed by a return to Dog Shit Car Park, where there was a bit more actorly annoyance. This time they were complaining of being rushed. I must say, I agreed with them; I felt rushed and unable to think as well, but what do you expect when you're trying to shoot an entire feature in ten days?

Things went a lot smoother after that, with the Picnic Scene going remarkably well, much to my surprise. (For whatever reason, it was one scene I was sure would be a bitch to shoot.) We ended the day with more semi-improvised Ogilvy/Paul stuff, before we all descended on both the hotel bar and the Regency for much needed refreshment. DRINK! FECK!

Oh, I forgot to add from earlier in the week, that my camera has been bench tested at Visual Impact. Apparently, there's nothing wrong with it. The hiss is simply a design fault. Even Z1s have hiss problems, so they told Stuart. Anyway, good to know my kit is AOK.

Day 7

Today was very much a game of two halves. The morning's work entailed an improvised scene with Martin walking about looking pissed off. I myself was in quite a similar mood: just as we were about to start shooting, I stepped in a veritable Somme of dog shit. Nobody seems to have poop scoops in Weston and, as a result, canine faeces are everywhere, much to my - and Rich's annoyance (dog diarrhoea being one of his pet hates, if you'll pardon the pun). We got some good stuff in the can, and then allowed Martin to get the train back to London (incidentally, he'd found Ray slumped unconscious in the hotel bar yesterday afternoon - we all got a bit worried that he hadn't made his 8pm train due to getting wrecked).

The rest of the morning went pretty well, with more Ogilvy/Lucas scenes, and the scene where Ogilvy encounters Lucas and Cleo. We shot this around Holy Trinity, one of Weston's more prominent landmarks, which can be seen the Grand Pier end of the sea front.

The afternoon, however, was a different matter. Although so far when the actors have been given free reign to change scenes, the scenes in question have improved, today's bit of thespianic re-jigging came a cropper. Nobody was happy with the scene, something they only realised when we were trying to shoot it. The public were a bloody nightmare as well, and to cap it all, a ghastly little woman whose cafe we were shooting in front of came out to complain that we were scaring off her customers (one awful piece of housing estate trash who'd taken offence when she was politely asked to move out of shot a few paces). I could have punched the fucking bitch.

I left the location fuming, vowing to never again try and shoot a scene that hasn't been thoroughly nailed down beforehand. I'm afraid to say, the actors were the main culprits in this fuck-up. But Rich seemed to think we got the scene in the can, and the Queenswood bar has never been so welcoming.

Day 6

Back in Grove Park again this morning, shooting Lucas and Cleo walking about, and then past Priestly, who quotes a bit of Hamlet at them. Ray also had the brilliant idea of quoting from The Winter's Tale in the scene where he's sitting next to Lucas near the start of the film in the Italian Gardens (so-named after Marconi, who made the first ever radio transmission across water from Weston to Cardiff in 1897 - quite why he chose Weston is still something of a mystery; perhaps he was a member of the Order of the Golden Dawn, who had a temple in town). The Shakespeare quote really transformed the scene into something quite strong. In another bit of off the cuff improvising, we shot the scene where Lucas goes to a newsagent to buy cigarettes outside a newsagent we were passing on the way back to Grove Park for more Lucas and Cleo stuff.

Lunchtime saw something of an ecclesiastical emergency in that we realised that Chris Dunne's dog collar looks more like, in Adam's words, 'a bandage'. Much merriment was had by all, but it then meant we had to either find a real vicar and appropriate parts of his clothing, or try and make a new collar of our own. This is what Helen, our brilliant make-up artist, managed to do, so we were able to carry on with Chris's scenes. It's good to have Chris down - he was great to work with in Cornelius Crow, and will no doubt become a regular feature at the Regency (the unit's other watering hole, down the road from the Queenswood).

Another quirk of the film came to light today. We were shooting the Dream Roads scene around the Shrubbery (a strange little part of Weston you can only access by going under a mock Venetian bridge), an area I chose for its charm, and the fact that it's quiet. Well, when I say 'quiet' I meant it's like that provided film crews aren't around. As soon as we showed up, there were cars, vans and busses galore, to say nothing of a stone mason with a circular saw cutting big chunks out of Weston's answer to the Bridge of Sighs (the sighs in question being our own). There must be some obscure branch of physics that could explain why all it takes to turn a quiet street into Piccadilly Circus is about half a dozen people, two actors, and a small HDV camera... Needless to say, we had to set the world to rights in the pub afterwards.

Day 5

Today has been a day of contrasts. First thing on the agenda this morning was Michael's breakdown scene, which we shot in Clarence Park. Apart from Fed Ex vans appearing in the background when we, in all honesty, least needed them, we also had to contend with learner drivers - of both the two wheeled and four wheeled variety - doing three point turns and emergency stops. Joe and Josephine public were not too bad - a few old biddies walking their lap dogs (that looked more like toupees than anything) - but the main problem was the weather. It rained, not to make too fine a point of it. In the 15 or so takes we did (another Bogo Tarr tracking shot), we only had 2 or 3 without rain on the lens.

This was followed by shooting a lengthy single take (6 minutes) of Sally in church. The script specifies that she leaves £500 in the collection plate, but the cash machine would only let me take £300 out, so I gave Sally that, plus the £20 already in my wallet. Yes, you actually see production cash in the film! The scene went well, although we lost the focus momentarily about halfway through, which means we may have to cut away to something. (I think in the script we have another Lucas/Ogilvy scene that bisects the church scene.) My mother, who has been doing the catering, put in a cameo as flower-arranging lady in background (a role she plays in real life).

The logical place to go after church is of course a pub, and the afternoon saw us in the Cooper's Arms in Highbridge (one of my spiritual locals). I'd originally booked the upstairs room, but John, the landlord, kindly let us use the actual back of the pub, which is a lot better. The trouble was, the scene, having been changed quite a lot, now no longer worked as originally envisioned. That, combined with the fact that we ran over time, causing a bit of friction with the locals, meant that the scene was quite stressful to shoot. The scene also marked the debut on the shoot of Ray Callaghan, as the drunken Greek chorus, Priestly. When not shooting, he was drinking and chatting up women a quarter his age.

Perhaps the day has best been summed up by the man who was walking his dog this morning in Clarence Park. He took one look at us in the pouring rain, smiled, and said, 'You must be mad.'
I think I would agree with him.

Day 4

We are trying to shoot in sequence wherever possible, mainly to aid Adam and Sally's growing onscreen relationship. This morning saw us shoot a long, Bela Tarr-style tracking shot in which the two of them reminisce - a bit - and then lapse into silence. This was shot at the end of Weston's High Street, and on into Grove Park (my favourite of Weston's parks). The traffic didn't present too much of a problem. More direct problems were created by the public standing and staring at the camera. They're like animals caught in car headlights. I mean, why are they so stupid? One particularly dense and obese example - a female of the species - started going on loudly from the other side of the stree about how she was now going to be on telly. Continued talk like that will see her on TV; specifically, on the news, in a body bag.

The other problem was the Hague camera stabilizer I bought for the shoot. I tried one out back in February at Video Forum at Earl's Court, where I walked up and down with either a Z1 or a PD170 mounted on it, and it was perfectly smooth. Great, I thought, a Steadicam-like effect, and for only £200! The trouble Rich is now having is that, as we are recording sound directly into the camera via my mixer, any slight tug from the sound cables destabilizes the camera. As Stu is following Rich during the tracking shots, this is unavoidable. Also, wind (as in breeze, not crew flatulence) similarly fucks things up. As Rich said tonight in the Queenswood bar, it's more like Bogo Tarr than Bela Tarr. Still, we hopefully have a few usuable takes in the can.

The PM saw us shoot the Priory scene, which was finalized last night in the bar at the Queenswood. All done in one 4 minute take. A definite nod to Tarkovsky, Nostalgia in particular (the location, Woodspring Priory, would not have looked out of place in that film).

Our final scene was the one in which Michaels - played by the marvellous Martin Trent - goes to visit his ailing mother in a hospice. He'd re-worked the dialogue brilliantly; it's now quite a touching scene. His mother was played by the irrepressible Di from Backwell Drama Group. It's quite ironic that in the scene, she likes inert in bed, but that was about the only time she wasn't talking. She's a great lady, a real character. She informed us all that she was having a great time being in a hotel room with 6 young men! (Nice to be called young! Ah! Youth slipping away.... Sensitive crimes in a punt etc... if I may lapse into Uncle Monty mode for a minute).

Day 3

This morning, we shot the scene where Paul buys Cleo a drink and tries to woo her in his thoroughly inept way. Our location was my (geographical) local, The Red Cow in Brent Knoll. This was the first scene we shot using both cameras, which speeded things up considerably. Stuart, our very able soundman, has detected a hiss on my camera, so we've swapped them over, with the hired camera now being our 'A' camera, and mine being relegated to the Second XI. The scene looked good, with Steve Dineen acting his little socks off while wearing a truly hideous tie. Sally was amazing too: she has an ability to do almost nothing, yet at the same time convey a huge amount of unsaid emotion. Her understanding of the role is spot on.

The afternoon saw us shoot the first meeting between Cleo and Lucas. Like a lot of their scenes together, it's been completely stripped down. There's now only about 5 or 6 lines of dialogue, but the scene lasts around 4 minutes. The final line in the scene, Sally's 'Shall we?' had a big effect on me. Those two words now seem to be the most important in the film. Given the ending of the film, they will hopefully have the same effect on the audience as they did on me today; I was actually quite moved when she uttered those words. Simle is strong, as Bill Douglas used to say.

We used both cameras again for this scene. Stuart has not been able to sort out the hiss on my camera, despite being on the phone to Visual Impact for about half an hour. Still, we got the scene done. The location is wonderfully bleak, up by Weston's Old Pier, the sort of place which would be an ideal location for a seaside remake of Stalker. The Fig Rig has now been rechristened Figgus Riggus, which reminds me of Biggus Dickus from Life of Brian. Perhaps Figgus was Biggus's brother in law? (Which would make him Incontinentia Buttocks's brother... or something.)

Our final scene of the day was another Cleo and Paul scene. Again, Steve was truly ghastly as Paul. And I mean that as a great compliment! He's fantastic.

The actors have rather warmed to the Queenswood. Not surprising, it's a fantastic place. The bar and lounge area have now become our base, and spiritual home.

Day 2

Today was the second day of the shoot. In the morning, we shot Adam Napier driving around Weston. Simple stuff, but actually very difficult to keep the camera steady. We shot the service station scene at Sedgmeoor Services (Northbound, in case any of you are location fetishists!), and then drove onto the M5. Mein Gott! Talk about an urgent neeed to resurface that part of motorway! Rich (our brilliant DOP) had the camera on the Fig Rig, but even so, it was a tad tricky. Once we got into Weston, we drove past the beach bike races, and passed the longest traffic jam I've ever seen in the town (going all the way from the Beach Lawns to the Anchor at Bleadon - a distance of several miles).

The afternoon saw us shooting the first dialogue scene of the film, where Cleo hitches a lift from Paul, the sad and lonely tie salesman. (Come to think of if, ALL the characters are sad and lonely... but I don't want to give away too much of the plot!) We shot it on the A38 just outside Weare, where there's a good layby. Unfortunately, the weather was rather inclement, and there was a lot of traffic (beach race-related?). It was one of those scenes where you really need walkie-talkies - even two yoghurt pots connected by a bit of thread would have helped - but we didn't have any, so I had to do a lot of running back and forth across the road. The car scenes themselves - framed a la Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry - were good, although the mic was in shot for nearly all of Sally's shots. I think we can fix it in post, so no worries.

Tonight was the first night the actors and Rich could stay at the hotel, the rather marvellous Queenswood (www.queenswoodhotel.com). Rich has been on my floor for the last two nights, while Adam has been in Wells, Sally with friends in Redhill. Onwards and upwards!

Day 1

Shooting started yesterday. We did the opening scene first, which was in the rather surreal settings of a local garden centre, complete with life-size Father Christmasses that said Ho Ho Ho! a lot to small children, and a visiting Kenyan choir, who were doing a charity gig. Luckily, we managed to frame both out during the takes. The afternoon saw us filming in the rather restricted confines of my flat. We shot a great sequence on the front stairs, and even had time to fall over during a backwards walking steadicam shot. (A modest homage to Bela Tarr!) More anon.

As Tough as Bresson

'Martin Scorsese praised Bresson in uniquely American terms: "Elvis Costello said that whenever he's writing a song he asks himself, is it as tough as Hank Williams? Meaning--is it as ruthlessly pared down, as direct as unflinching in its gaze at aspects of life I might feel more comfortable ignoring? Young filmmakers might well ask themselves, 'Is it as tough as Bresson?"'

From Robert Bresson: A Spiritual Style in Film.
By Joseph Cunneen.
Continuum, 224 pp., $29.95.

Rehearsal Diary #1

Just back from London, where we've been rehearsing for the last four days. Things went better than expected, and that's not just my feeling, but everyone else's. Am absolutely shattered, so will write more tomorrow.

Once More Unto the Breach

OK, two weeks to go before we start shooting. Have been down to Holland and Barrett for some Rescue Remedy (as recommended to me by my sister, in whose shop www.myarosa.co.uk we'll be shooting a significant scene) just to keep the blues away. In fact, I have the spray version, which reminds me uncannily of the PKD novel Ubik, in which the titular substance first appears as a spray... We are definitely living in a Phildickian world, what with android presidents etc.

Anyway, talking of Rescue Remedy, I should add that we're in the grips of good old pre-production stress (as if you hadn't sussed!). It's very much a case of, to quote Animal House, 'My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.' Still one of the best lines of dialogue ever. But, stress is part of the job, and it amazes me how it comes and goes (am I quoting Black Sabbath there?!); some days it's awful, quite frankly, and I think any director you'd ask about this would agree. Hence drinking, smoking, and dying in your 50s. (e.g. Tarkovsky, Truffaut, Douglas). (Mind you, I'd rather give up than keel over.)

But on other days, there's no stress at all: things just seem to happen, in a rather tao-like way. Which reminds me of the wisdom of a Buddhist teacher or two whose names have escaped me: the advice being, rather than 'Don't just stand there, do something!', in fact being 'Don't just do something, stand there!' I think this could be a great motto for this film.

Rehearsals Start Next Week

We are now just about to start rehearsing. I've found a great space in Swiss Cottage, which we are sharing with Ken Campbell. (He and his lot are only in there one or two evenings, so we hopefully won't clash.) The owner of the space is a big Tarkovsky fan, and knows my book on him, while the lady downstairs is into the Cathars. Whether she's read my b0ok on them, I don't know. (Perhaps I could offer her a signed copy in exchange for a reduction in the hire charges.) Anyway, it's big, bright and easy to get to.

We're going to be shooting the rehearsals, and hopefully will have something to post online soon, probably at the MySpace page (www.myspace.com/891filmhouse).

We almost have a DOP, too. I've met someone who I think's our man, just waiting for his reel to show up. Or rather, as I'm currently in Edinburgh, the reel is probably lying there just inside the letterbox waiting for me to show up.

Sven Nykvist

Legenary cinematographer Sven Nykvist has died. He was 83. Although best remembered for being Bergman's cameraman, I will always love Sven for his work with Tarkovsky. His photography on The Sacrifice is just amazing - a strong contender for some of the best cinematography ever.

The Independent Obituary is here.

Stars

Tonight, on the 36th anniversary of Jimi Hendrix's death, I watched the clear night sky while listenting to the Jimi Hendrix C0ncerts version of "Little Wing". Uttlerly sublime. RIP Jimi. You'd have loved the sky tonight.

Mannheim

Heard on Thursday deep in the p.m. that Folie has been accepted by the Mannheim Co-Production Meetings, a prestigious affair that takes place during the Mannheim-Heidelberg Film Festival in November.

More info here: http://www.mannheim-filmfestival.com/en/Homepage/
It's a major step in the right direction, and it's also a great festival. Unlike Cannes, everyone gets an invite to all the parties, half the festival happens in the beautiful town of Heidelberg (which also has a bloody good record shop - record as in vinyl), plus there is also a great cocktail bar which hovers like a lighthouse over the Stadhaus, Stars, whose site is here: http://www.turmcafe-stars.de/

I can recommend a Fred Astaire, to be taken each day just as the lights come on. Impossible not to marvel at the beauty of the world - even the industrial bits that you can see from the bar - at a time like that.

The Psychogeographer's Guide to Weston-super-Mare

Spent yesterday recce-ing for locations, which generally meant driving around Weston with my camera, doing emergency stops whenever I saw something of interest. We've decided to try and make Weston look interesting, which, for people who are only familiar with such delights as the Sea Front, the Grand Pier and the Sovereign Centre, will sound like a challenge too far.

In fact, a lot of the older part of town - on the hill - looks great, so we will be shooting around there. It almost has a Lovecraftian feel to it on certain days, or at certain times of day. Something to do with the light. On the day, of course, we won't have the sunlight at our beck and call, but a nice even light should be good enough.

I'm doing another day of recce-ing, probably on Friday. Tomorrow I'm off to see the Film Council and a prospective DOP in London

IMDB

The film is now on IMDB, here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0852441/

Start Date Set

After spending two days in London, where I managed to touch base with four of the cast - Sally, Chris, Steve and Martin - we have now agreed on a timetable. We'll start rehearsing on 10th Oct, start shooting on the 20th, and hopefully have the wrap party on the 30th.

We have also all been discussing the script, and I can report that everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet when it comes to the need to pare things down to a level of minimalism that wouldn't look out of place in a Bresson or Bill Douglas film.

A General Update

I now have confirmation that Sally is doing her stint in Fool For Love on 23/8/06 at 1600. Tickets will be free, so if you want to see Folie's leading lady in the flesh, just turn up at the Apollo (which is way down Shaftesbury Ave towards Piccadilly Circus).

I will be meeting with Sally and the other actors both on that day, and the day after. Our main business at the moment is deciding on a start date. I think it will be either the week after Sally finishes Fool for Love (11/9) or the week after Adso finishes his [Noel] Coward piece (2/10). As Sally wants to go to NYC in late October, that will be our cut off point.

Before any of this happens, however, I still have another 48 hours in which to finish my Gnostic book before flying to Edinburgh for a much needed break. I haven't felt this tired in years, and in general, feel almost unspeakably awful. Only two weeks ago I was going running most evenings listening to Tord Gustavsen on my iPod. Where's it all gone wrong?!

Sally on Stage in the West End

Looks like Sally Scott, our female lead, will be taking over from Juliette Lewis in Fool for Love for a matinee on 23 August. More details to follow when I have them.

Still not finished the Gnostic book, but am in the home strait. Bloody nightmare.