This kept me awake a while back, but it took me that while to be able to form my thoughts into words*. Maybe this will be of use to somebody else.

Directing, in the eyes of many, is simply about making decisions. Being able to make decisions, really. And it’s the decisions you make (or don’t make) that define your style, for better or for worst. And not just the style you see on screen, but the style of how you work, the vibe on your set, how others work and so on. It’s a domino effect, I suppose. Anyway, I digress…

In the heat of a shoot, not to mention the time leading up to one, you can find yourself making rather a lot of decisions quite rapidly. Thing is, how do you know you’ve made the right decision? Well, you don’t. Not really. And it’s far too easy to get caught up in “was that the right decision?” mode, get stuck over-thinking something and create a panic-ridden tar-pit that will drag you in the more you struggle. The important thing is to allow yourself to move on and keep making decisions. Be a shark; not in the corporate wanker sense, but in the “keep moving or die” sense. Unless that’s the same sense… I don’t think it is…

Now, I happen to subscribe to a Japanese aesthetic known as Wabi-Sabi, which roughly (or, at least as I choose to interpret it – and there is really no need to correct me on this) says that the mistakes we make are what makes a thing our own. If you and I were to both potter a cup, for example, two perfect cups would look identical; but my cup is mine because of the mistakes I make, and yours the same. This (admittedly, likely bastardised) philosophy eases my mind whenever I find myself in that nasty doubt-loop.
You don’t have to buy into my love of Eastern mysticism, but I do urge you to find some mental defence against the dark arts of self-questioning.

Incidently, what kept me awake was that I’d unknowingly made a decision that had a negative impact on somebody else. Of course, I found out later and that was a sadness to me. I did my best to rectify that situation. Eastern Philosophy only eases the mind so much…

*Credit where it is due: Lenny Abrahamson (him of Garage and Adam and Paul fame) was in with us today and I brought this up with him, which is what helped squeeze some cognitive action from the auld mind-grapes… Big up, Len…

…are a pain the hole. They are the worst part of screen-writing (most creative writing, really), and sadly comprise most of your writing time…

What follows is a brief overview of the writing process:

Step 1: conception! This awesome part is idea generation, wherein you get to come up with cool ideas, set pieces, characters, quotable dialogue and bits to make folk cry. I made that bitch cry, bitches love crying.

Step 2: rewriting, phase 1 (the majority of rewriting – boo hiss!). This is the part where you take all the great, fresh ideas and you go over them a million times. Don’t get me wrong, you add new stuff and that’s cool and all, but usually this is a rage filled stage wherein you hope to goodness that you have something worth spending time on. Herein lies pitfalls such as Second Act Boredom and such.

Step 3: rewriting, phase 2 – that bit where most of the shit is gone. Now you (hopefully) know you have something good and it’s mostly in front of you. You just have to figure out how to drag it from potentially great to actually great.

Step 4: final polish. Grammar and such balls. Cleaning up those bits you highlighted and said “I’ll fix this crap later”. But you’re mostly done and should reward yourself by having a wan, em, a wander. Have a nice wander about the city. Yeah…

Step 5: when you get to write ‘End’ (or, if you’re particularly classy – and not at all pretentious – ‘Fin’). This bit is awesome.

Let’s just ignore Step 6 (sending it out to reader to have it torn apart) and Step 7 (back to Step 2, sucka!) for now. Instead, let’s have toast and play video games, shall we?

Next Screening: Wednesday 20th July, Doors and wine at 7:30pm, screening starts at 8pm sharp in The Spirit Store, Dundalk.

We’ll be showing The Brothers Bloom:

For more info go to the Beta Movement website where you can also sign up to their twitter/facebook to be kept up to date.

See you on the night,
Dave.

Thursday night was a night of watching films it seems. Here is a brief run down on what I watched.

First of all, courtesy of the Directors’ Guild and The Factory I got to wander along to a preview of Lance Daly’s The Good Doctor, in which Orlando Bloom plays Dr. Martin Blake, a lonely doctor who forms a relationship with a patient.
I really don’t want to say much more about the plot, but it is a lot better than I am making it sound. Trust me and don’t look up much, since all the marketing material (trailers, synopses, etc) give away far more than they should. Which is a pity since the plot and its pacing work best when you don’t expect it all. Anyway, a good film with solid performances, a nice story and generally a nice looking flick.
The kind of film I would recommend seeing if you like going to the cinema but find you’ve seen all the films you wanted to see. Or just like to support Irish filmmakers.

After I got home from that I finally (as in I’ve had this staring at me for quite a while now) threw on Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi’s animated feature Persepolis. Adapted from Satrapi’s graphic novels that tells of her growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution.
Another lovely, though quiet sad, film. Interesting to see how Iran was during the 80s and how it was to be an Iranian woman through all those key events. The film also deals with a period of her life where she lived in Europe and it was equally interesting to see how she was perceived (or perceived she was perceived, at least) by the outside world at that time. A worth while watch. It was even nominated for an Oscar in 2008. Not that that is any real indication of quality, sadly…

Finally, to lighten the tone of my lonely filmic night, I turned to an old favourite of mine – Wes Anderson, this time trying out his stop-motion adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox, wherein an urbane fox cannot resist returning to his farm raiding ways and then must help his community survive the farmers’ retaliation.
Classic Anderson. His style of camera work and humour translated perfectly to the medium. A lovely looking film with great performances and clever humour. I really enjoyed it. Having never read the book, I can’t say how faithful an adaptation it is, but I can say I don’t care about that sort of thing. Reading is for eggheads, who have a known fondness for booky-wooks. You should watch this.

That was my Thursday night. My Friday was writing this. I am crushing life.

…is currently running in the IFI in Dublin. It’s a wonderful thing to see such a beautiful and powerful film on the big screen. A really enjoyable narration on the insanity of war.
Treat yourself and go see it, if you can.

Until this evening I’d never seen the film. I was always waiting to see it properly, like this. In fact there are a few classics that I’ve held off seeing, for want of watching them on the big screen; many of my friends know about my urge to get a Godfather trilogy day/night off the ground, not just in my front room, but on a big screen, with impressive sound and a crowd of people to enjoy it with.

In fact (tangent in three… two… one… ), I’ve been watching a lot of old films lately: The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia, All About Eve and a chink of the works of Hitchcock to name but a few. There is a real difference in storytelling evident between now and then. Everything is so rushed these day.
As my friend commented as we left Apocalypse Now, if they remade that film nowadays, the scenes would all be so much shorter and to the point. The scene where he is briefed on his mission would have lost the regret the general obviously feels for ordering the mission, the mystery of the suited man and the awkwardness of the captain who watches on. It would have been “Hello. take this document and go kill this boyo”. Yes. Boyo. That is how it would have been worded. And I would know. I make the movies.
The same with the character building scenes in so many of the films I named above. So much more relaxed and thus realistic than you get these days.

As another (some would say bonus) side point, there is something great about seeing a fleet of helicopters, a burning forest and lots of people flipping in explosions in films of this era. Because you know it all happened. It subconsciously feels more real because it sort of is more real. At least more real than CGI.

This was sort of a stream of consciousness. I think I can sum it up with “old films are good, give them a try”.

Anyway, ranting aside, I just found a copy of The Fantastic Mr Fox which I missed in the cinema and will now watch, thus ignoring my previous statements on old films and seeing things on the big screen. Oh well. Life is a fickle bitch like that.

Recently I watched Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins. What follow are my thoughts. With mild spoilers.

An obvious homage to ‘Seven Samurai’ (an awesome film, by the way – if you’re not seen it, go watch it. Then send me nice things as a thank you…) in which a the shogun’s advisor tasks one of his retainers with assassinating an evil lord, who for various reasons, can’t be touched politically.

It was a fun, but flawed film. Mostly flawed because of the scale of it; 13 assassins, then support cast and, of course, the villain and his goons – lots of goons.

Now – and I am not being racist here – considering that eveyone is dressed the same and has the same haircut they all look the same to me. Of the assassins only five – spear-man, cool-ronin, man-in-charge, monkey-man and nephew – have any attempt at personality. Which I have just summed up for you. The other eight dudes are interchangeable.

If they had gone with the five semi-characters and fleshed them out, while downsizing the scale of the end encounter, they would have had a more poignant, exciting and realistic film.

In short, the film can be summarised by this song:

For some reason I cannot fathom, people always ask me for my favourite films. Even more unfathomable to me is the look on their faces when I list them. No pleasing some folk…

Anyway, here is a(n unordered) list of films I really like:

• Spirited Away
• Pan’s Labyrinth
• Amelie
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the first one)
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show
• The Blues Brothers
• Up
• Big Trouble in Little China
• The Box
• Synecdoche, New York
• Memoirs of a Geisha
• 300

I can’t think of more. If I do, I may add them.

You’ve never had a better friend than me.

…a new film to kick-start a new project. And it’s going to require a blog.
Hence, I am relaunching my blog.
True story.