Maine Screening Confirmed

Folie will screen at the the Maine International Film Festival in July. At the current time, we are still waiting for exact times and dates. I will be there, along with intrepid co-producer Louise Milne. Leading Lady Sally Scott hopes to be there too. More news soon. At last, the film is getting out into the world.

Heroes

When you make a film that has taken a long time to get finished, you inevitably look for someone else who has been through the same hell. Here are some people, in the photo below, who have been through hell.

Film Finished!

Yes, you read that aright - Folie à Deux is finished, at long last. We are doing the end credits in about half an hour, and then I'm going to burn a DVD, check that it works and then get it off to a film festival in the US. All that we have to do in January is make masters (on HDCam, probably) and possibly do a few sound tweaks, but, essentially, it's done. And once those things are taken care of, there will hopefully be preview screenings in London for cast, crew and creditors.

We've been discussing whether to do more ADR, or to trim the film, but we've decided that it should stay as it is - none of us can face any more tinkering on the fucker. Sorry, film. It's been far too long in the making, but has turned out better - and different - to the film that I originally intended to make. But that's how the cookie crumbles, usually: you have to make the best of the material you've got, rather than trying to force your material into being someting it frankly isn't and can never be. 

There will of course be a long list of things to do in 2012: website, edit a trailer, festival submissions, previews. I've even considered writing a book - how to make a micro-budget feature film, experience far more difficulties than one originally envisaged, but somehow find ways to overcome them and come out the other side, if not smiling, then at least with a finished film that is good enough to show the world.

During the utter nightmare this film has been, I've also considered giving up, but as I've been writing this blog entry, I've just had a text from a producer asking me to pitch him a few ideas. And earlier this morning I had an email relating to what could be my next project, a documentary about the writer David Lindsay. (Another film, another blog...)

Anyway, I'd better work on my pitches for said producer, and then spend the p.m. making DVDs of Folie. When the trailer is up, probably in the New Year, I will blog again. Until then, have a very merry Yuletide and Hogmanay, and see you in 2012:-)

Folie a deux | Sponsume 2

We have just set up a new Sponsume campaign to raise the final £500 needed to complete the mastering. More info on the link!

Folie a deux | Sponsume

And Steve Dineen in... Oldham

In another so-late-it's-almost-not-worth-posting announcement to promote Folie's actors, Steve Dineen is appearing in a new production of Equus at the Oldham Coliseum. As with Sally's play, this ends tomorrow night (08.10.11.), so get your skates on if you fancy an evening in Oldham. More info and tickets here.

Sally Scott on stage in Salisbury

Sally Scott is appearing in a production of Alan Ayckbourn's Way Upstream at the Salisbury Playhouse. Reviews have been very good! The show ends tomorrow, so if you want to see our leading lady tread the boards, you'd better book a ticket straight away. More info here.

The film is nearly finished

We've all had a fairly bad summer, for various reasons. Julien had his MacBook stolen, which had the closing credits song on it (amongst a lot of other music), while I've been trying to raise the remaining money. My luck was just about summed up by an old friend offering money to help us get the film finished... and then dying (not suicide, I hasten to add).

However, things are now looking up again. Money is on the way, no thanks to Sponsume and IndieGoGo, both of which have proved completely useless. Julien, Jake and I met on Friday to discuss final delivery, and I should be getting the files on Thursday. (Julien is re-recording the song in the week.) If no more remixing is required, then all we then have to do is marry the mixed sound onto the images, get our master copy made, and then probably promptly collapse into an emotional heap on the floor. Who'd have thought it would have taken this long, heh?

Folie à Deux | Sponsume

We now have a campaign up and running on Sponsume to get Folie finished:

Folie à Deux | Sponsume

The amount now needed is only about £1,000, due to monies coming in, which I am very relieved about and can postpone my own suicide attempt. Please help if you can.

I would very much like to become risk averse once this project is done. I'm tired of taking risks. I'm tired of all my money - what there is of it - going into the black hole of filmmaking. I want to be... a lumberjack!

IndieGoGo

At the suggestion of a fellow filmmaker, I have started a campaign on IndieGoGo to get the remaining money, as it seems I will now be a pauper for the forseeable future. You can read more and even donate here.

95% finished, and another funding crisis

The film is now almost finished, and it looks like we are about to fall at the last hurdle. Some investment I was expecting has suddenly not materialised, leaving us high and dry. We only actually need about £1400 (yes, fourteen hundred, not fourteen thousand) to get Folie finished and out there into the world at last. (A bit more would be helpful, to pay for marketing materials and film festival entry fees, to be honest.)

I had been expecting all of this to come from some documentary editing work I've been doing for a new age loony, but she has now announced that she is not going to pay me. Totally unbelievable. (I'm also on strike - that's the problem with rich amateurs - they have no conception of how much work is required to make a film, and think that it's a privelege to work for them.) So if anybody feels like going to the cash machine to help us out, please let me know. Right now, I'm going for a long walk.

ADR Completed

Yesterday, during one of the worst downpours I've ever seen in Edinburgh, we completed ADR with the inestimable Chris Dunne, who plays Ogilvy, the slightly mad, pyschogeographer priest in the film. As with all the other ADR sessions we've had, it was hard, finicky work, but it has improved the film immeasurably. Now ADR'd dialogue outweighs the original, live dialogue. I think if I had my way on the next film - if there is one - I would ADR everything. Anyway, I shall leave pipe dreams well alone for the time being, and get on with finishing the film at long last. The end is nigh.... or call me Harold Camping.

The Joys of ADR

Yesterday we did ADR with Steve Dineen, who plays Paul, an itinerant tie-monger. OK, "Top Regional Sales Consultant, Southwestern Region". As with all ADR sessions - a few weeks ago with Adam Napier, today with Sally Scott - the pleasure of all this hard work is when the actors can contribute a slightly fuller intonation than in the original. It means that not only is the sound naturally greatly improved, but the emotional content of a scene is, too. You start to see your own script in a slightly different light, realising how even the simplest of words can carry hidden weight. Even the line quoted below!

"We've got a website. Under construction. My tie's on the homepage!"

ADR finally begins

ADR finally begins this week. We have about 15 pages of script to re-do with 4 actors, which isn't too bad. Hopefully it should all be done by the end of next month, cash flow permitting. I was greatly cheered today to read about how John Cassavetes made Faces. Basically, he plodded on, much as we have done. They had a lot of bad sound, and at one point he was advised to give up. But he didn't, even if it meant spending over 3 years in post. I knew his first film, Shadows, had taken a long time to make (well over two years, including a lot of reshooting and recutting), but I never knew about the problems Faces had. Just goes to show the old adage is true "quitters never win, winners never quit". Or maybe more realistically it should simply be "quitters never finish their films".

Adam Napier in Dr Who

Our very own Adam Napier - Lucas from Folie - appears alongside Matt Smith et al in the new series of Dr Who, which begins this Saturday, 23 April. Adam appears as Captain Simmons in the first two episodes, "The Impossible Astronaut" and "The Day of the Moon" (broadcast on 30 April). More info can be found at the official Dr Who site.

Congrats to Adam - let's hope his character doesn't die horribly! Saturday is also St George's Day, so we shall be celebrating with morris dancing and copious real ales...

Come Together

Some good news at last - the mix and sound design are really coming together. At times the film is positively eerie. We are doing ADR next month finally and then we'll be ready to get it out to the sales agent and also to film festivals. More anon.

More s****** in the news

It just went social.

Our film "in the news" again

Another story in the news that seems sadly apposite to our film. Actually it was my Mother who brought this to my attention by sending me a clipping from the Daily Telegraph. Perhaps her way of reminding me that it's high time this film was finished. And here it is, brought to you by those nice morally upright bigots at the Daily Mail.

BBC E-mail: The stigma of Japan's suicide apartments

Just noticed this on the Beeb website. Apt for this film, and also extremely sad:

** The stigma of Japan's suicide apartments**
Few in Japan will rent an apartment where a previous occupant committed suicide, so a death is frequently followed by a demand for money, reports the BBC's Roland Buerk.
< http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/news/world-asia-pacific-12397216 >

** Disclaimer **
The BBC is getting far too right wing and is not responsible for the content of this e-mail, and anything written in this e-mail does not necessarily reflect the BBC's views or opinions. Sieg Heil!

Is the End in Sight?

I don't want to get ahead of things here, but we may at long last be close to finishing the film. Julien and Jake are working on the sound, recording foley and incidental music, and cleaning up the mysterious hiss that makes somes scenes sound like they were shot on a cross-channel ferry.

It amazes - and horrifies me, to be honest - that I started this blog five years ago, thinking the film would only take about eighteen months to make whilst we looked for cash to make The Gulf Breeze project. How wrong could we be? It's turned out a better film than I'd anticipated, but still, the endless delays have, I fear, had an adverse affect on me. I mean, do I really want to make another film? Do I want to go through this again? Wouldn't I be better off just throwing molotov cocktails at Tories and bankers? (Hang on, maybe that ought to be my next film...)

Joanne Lee suicide pact: the comfort of strangers | News & Politics | News & Comment | The First Post

Joanne Lee suicide pact: the comfort of strangers | News & Politics | News & Comment | The First Post

Silent Movie

We have now recommenced postproduction, with a new sound team, after 18 months of delays and general silliness. (Certain people have pins in their voodoo dolls, shall we say.) This is in itself a minor miracle, as I had been feeling that the film would either not be finished at all, or would emerge as a posthumous work. It looked at one point like we had a silent film on our hands, as all our Avid sound files have disappeared from the drive, which is very strange. The audio risked being lost from the onlined version of the film altogether, but we noticed in that the drive also contained an AAF file, which saved the day. This is an occupational hazard when you have such a long gap between the online and the sound design and mix. I must write a book about how not to put together a workflow... The upshot of this is that we will be spending the next few months on the sound, possibly getting the actors in to do some ADR, and then we will HAVE FINISHED THE FILM. (Cue cheering, clapping, general delirium and heavy drinking.)

Location Destroyed by Fire

The arsonists have returned to one of our locations, the Royal Pier Hotel, and completely destoyed it. An insurance job, natch. It's very sad - always been one of my favourite buildings in Weston, elevated to Holy status by the fact that the Beatles stayed there. They started demolishing it today. More info here.

Newsworthy Farm

A rather uncannily 'on topic' news story has just broken. Go here to read.

Final Push into the Ardennes

"We are now at war with Germany." Ah, yes, the good old days of '39... Not much point in beating Hitler, really, as Nazis do indeed run the world these days.

But I digress. I am posting to announce progress. I did not find a rich auntie with a grand and a half to spare (what Mel Brooks calls 'Little Old Lady Land' in The Producers). I have instead been working as a cameraman/director on a series of documentaries tentatively entitled The Lost Science. Should be out on DVD and the web in time for a tie-in conference in Amsterdam next June.

This means that, schedules permitting, we can resume work on Folie and get it finished before then. Hopefully within the next few months. I can't say more than that at the moment. I feel so out of the loop with this film that I almost can't now be bothered to finish it at all. But if it does get finished, and screens at festivals, I plan on becoming insufferable in an 'I always knew we'd do it' kind of way, and not miss an opportunity to slag off people who have got in our way. (I can think of at least 4 or 5 people who I'd like to publicly humiliate...)

Anyway, money is flowing in, so I'd better spend it on Folie before I spend it somewhere else, or dash off to the bookies and put everything on the 3.30 at Doncaster.

First Fruits

Well, after starting a search for a sound designer and mixer, we have had our first offer from a two-person team. This has led me to feel that the project is happening once more, rather than languishing in a limbo of someone- other-than-me's making. (Unless of course it is all my fault, in a perverse, subconscious sort of way; something I've actually considered. Must get some Jungian therapy!)

For this final bit of work, I need to find another £1500. Anyone have a rich auntie who happens to like arthouse films about suicde pacts? Let me know:-)

Plan B

We've decided to divide the remaining sound work up between two people, sound design and sound mix. That may make the film easier to finish, and give the prospective sound maetros less of a headache. I think it's more usual to have sound design and mix being done by two separate people, anyway. Nowt else to report at this hour, other than it's time to go to bed and catch up on my reading. (Which is currently The Fanatic by James Robertson.)

It Ain't Over Till the Fat Lady Sings

... and she's currently not booked to do any gigs for the forseeable future.

 We are now back to square one on the sound design and mix. The last 12 months have been spent at the mercy of two sound designers, neither of whom completed the job. So, 3rd time lucky? I hope so.I keep having to remind myself not to give up, and that it took David Lynch 7 years to complete Eraserhead, Martin Scorsese 5 for Who's That Knocking at My Door etc. We are not the first filmmakers to spend forever in post, and we certainly won't be the last. But even so, it feels like a never-ending nightmare.

Dance With Me

Sasha Damjanovski's film Dance With Me, starring Folie's Adam Napier, goes on general release today. The poor souls at The Grauniad haven't been able to make sense of the film, but then again, if it doesn't fit into their politically correct Islingtonian view of the world, they can't tell arses from elbows. It's a paper I stopped reading years ago. Anyway, I hope to catch the film in Glasgow. 

Meanwhile, Happy St George's Day! Be Falstaffian. You know it makes sense.

OMFs and Other Noises

Sound mixing continnues. Several scenes have atrocious sound, so we're going to have to try and create a new OMF file from the Avid Project folder and see if that does the trick. If not, it's down to London to do some ADR, which will further tax the purse strings but, without doing it, will mean we have an unreleasable film. I think the problems were caused by shooting with two cameras which, while it sped things up during the shoot, has caused no end of trouble in post, as one camera had good sound, while the other one was the bad one (two different mixers, I seem to remember). We should have sent both radio mic feeds into the good mixer. (I'm assuming we didn't do this during the shoot but, to be honest, I can't remember.)

Apart from the further funding required, it also means yet more delays. We probably have a month's work left to do on the film but, as we're all working part-time on it as ever, God knows how long that month's work will take. I think I forgot to mention that since September I've been doing a part-time Masters in Creative Writing, so that usually takes up about half my time at the moment. I decided that it would be unwise to put all my eggs in the basket of filmmaking, and have something else to fall back on once Folie is finally finished. At the moment, I honestly can't see me having a career as a director, and feel that renewing my Directors' Guild of Great Britain membership is probably a symbolic gesture and nothing more.

What, though, is a career as a director? About the only way I can think this through in a positive way is to recall either Eric Rohmer who, when faced with hardships early on (after the failure of his first featute, The Sign of Leo), went back to making shorts (the first of the Six Moral Tales) and didn't actually becomes successful as a director until he was pushing 50. Or I think of Margaret Tait, up in Orkney, making her own films, funding them herself, doing everything herself and generally just doing her own thing, world go to hell. And she made some wonderful things (have you seen Where I Am Is Here? Or Ariel? Or Hugh MacDiarmid: A Portrait?) I've got a few years to go before hitting 50, and maybe moving to Orkney, or Lewis or Harris is the answer. It's impossible to make a film over the length of time we've been stuck in the mire with Folie and not become increasingly introspective, apprehensive about one's future and generally questioning what lead you to be where you are at the moment.

Perhaps the only way to carry on is to do one's own thing and just not care too much. I hope to get started on a novel over the summer, something to take my mind off Folie and its never-ending problems. 'Who speaks of victory?' Rilke once wrote. 'To survive is all.'

Journeying to Cannes Also

I've explained the film's sound problems to our sales agent, and he wants a DVD of the film as it is to take to Cannes. He will see if he can try and raise some money to get the problems sorted out. All we effectively need is enough money to do a day's ADR in London, so we're not talking huge amounts of money. That gives us about a month to ignore the appalling sound in the pub and cafe scenes, and get on with some creative work, which I think Ali, our sound designer, is keen to do. He's had enough of dodgy OMFs, and I don't blame him. The key to surviving your own film is, I think, learning the art of hiding the bodges, which is something Ali and I talked about yesterday in our crisis meeting. So some of the sound design decisions will be dictated entirely by the fact that we have bad sync sound that needs papering over. It's like trying to wallpaper a house that is almost falling down.

Journey We More into the Nightmare

Yes, I know, it's a quote from Jim Morrison's poem An American Prayer (also set to music by the the Doors). It also sums up just how bad things are with Folie, the sound in particular. The cafe and pubs scenes are almost unusable, as are one or two other scenes. We are now looking at having to go on bended knee to those kind souls in ADR land and ask for free time in their studios, otherwise the film will never be finished. I don't know if this is due to a fault in the sound files, or a fault in the sound recordist. And if it's the latter, and he doesn't have a fault in him at the moment, he bloody well will have once I've finished with him. This problem could sink the entire film, and it will mean I've wasted the last 4 years of my life. Maybe I will become the first independent filmmaker to commit suicide live on the internet.

Steve Dineen's New Blog

That mostly non-mustachioed chap, Steve Dineen - who plays Paul the tie salesman in Folie (and superbly at that, I must add), has recently started a blog, Dispatches from the Frontline of Mid-scale Touring. You can read it here whilst waiting for us to finish the film. You may even have time read it more than once.... Seriously, folks, we progress on the sound mix. I am strongly tempted to make a silent film next, as postproduction seems to be nothing but trouble with the sound... One of life's little imponderables, I guess.

New Adam Napier Movie

Just a quick missive from Folie towers to let you know that our most excellent leading man, Adam Napier, is soon to be gracing select cinema screens across the UK in Sasha C. Damjanovksi's feature film Dance With Me. The film opens in London's West End on St George's Day/Shakespeare's Birthday (look it up on Wikipedia), and will then play in Glasgow. I will post more details when I have them. Hopefully by then Folie itself will be finished and about to start it's life on the festival ciricuit, before making us all fabulously rich... (That was a joke, btw.)

Back to the coal face

It's been a while since there was anything to report, but I can now announce that we are back at work on the soundtrack. The film will be ready in time for Cannes, although I doubt if we will have a screening there (except on someone's laptop!). A UK screening before the year is out would be could (in addition to the traditional cast and crew piss-up. Sorry, I meant 'industry screening':-))

Birthday Party!

My memory is a bit vague, but I think the project is 4 years old today (give or take a day). I can't recall the date, but it all really began one evening on the M5 (southbound, somewhere south of Taunton). Realising how beautifully simple the story is, and how it could be shot easily for little money, and also in a style that I could really call my own (a first!) were the deciding things.

Of course, none of us could have realised at the time that, although it was a relatively smooth shoot, post-production would drag on and on and on. And on. And on. Until you forget why you started working on it in the first place, and decide that you really should be doing something else with your life. But then have second thoughts about that as well, and then confusion sets in. And it generally doesn't plan to move out any time soon.

One of the few things that's kept me going over the past year is knowing that other films are in the same boat. Hearing of films that have been in post for 2 or 3 years has not been uncommon. Peter Strickland's Katalin Varga is a good case in point, and a good example of what can be achieved completely outside of the system, provided you're prepared to stick at it for years, rather than months, if that's what it's going to take to get it finished and out there. (For my money, Katalin Varga is easily the best 'British' film of the year. Another link about how the film got made here.)

So I would like to wish you all a happy new year, especially to those of you who are still in post yourselves. We may, Elder Gods willing, have Folie finished soon. (But how long is soon?)

J. U. O. F.

That's 'Join Us On Facebook' - as the saying goes, rather than something rude. (Can you rearrange the letters, kids?) Yes, Folie now has its own FB group, where you can see a few clips and stills.

Go here and sign up.

Although, given the nature of the story, perhaps we really should put on a page on Bebo...

(And the nature of the story will become central to our marketing campaign - i.e. how much do we give away? "Oh Michael, I'm telling you the plot." - Kenny Everett (as Cupid Stunt)

Waiting for the (new) Man (or Woman)

Owing to various circumstances, most of which are beyond our control, we are now looking for a fresh pair of hands/ears/Mac to complete the sound mix on Folie. If you have ProTools and live in Edinburgh, get in touch!

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!'