Archives: Documentary

This weekend, I caught up on the BBC’s awesome BTS doc on COME FLY WITH ME, the new series from LITTLE BRITAIN creators Matt Lucas and David Walliams.

One thought from an interview with Matt Lucas really struck me. Inevitably, there was a question about how you follow up a series as successful as LB was1. Lucas commented, on topping LB:

Can we do something as big as that? No. Can we do something better than that? Certainly.

And there’s the rub: whatever we’re setting out to create, the aim should never be about creating something bigger, simply creating something better.

Striving for size and reach will bring pressures and compromises; striving for quality will not only better ensure excellence, but also come with its own–much wider–rewards and may end up being both bigger and better.

1. and love it or hate it, you can’t deny its success [↩]

Filmmaker and author of the seminal indie film bible THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX OFFICE, Jon Reiss, yesterday finished up his five part series of guest posts on his blog from Julie Eckersley about the success of the indie documentary THE SECRET, which has earned over $300million worldwide since its release in 2006.

The series is well worth taking the time to read and serves to back up, instill and reinforce all the lessons that Jon is constantly trying to drive into us through his TOTBO courses and book.

1. Start strong.
2. Tap into people’s passion.
3. Understand the power of your title.
4. Plan your marketing campaign from Day 1.
5. Align yourself with the key influencers in the area.
6. Alternative release and some very good news.
7. Shoot a promo first.
8. Cultivate your audience.
9. GIVE, GIVE, GIVE.
10. Define your brand.

Julie Eckersley, jonreiss.com/blog

I’m writing this at an almost respectable 7am, but considering I’ve been awake all night it doesn’t feel like the start of a new day.

Why have I been awake all night, I hear you ask? Or is that the voices in my head? They crept in about two hours ago and are pretty insistent on staying there. But I digress.

I have a weird and wonderful brain that kicks into gear at random moments, which is fantastic for creative and lateral thinking, but not so good when it steps up to overdrive just as I settle down for some well-earned kip.

And so it was last night, when my head hit the pillow mere minutes after hitting on the most amazing concept for a HUGE new project. The real beauty of it, though, is that it’s not a ‘new’ project. Rather, in a flash of awkwardly-timed, knock-out inspiration I found a way of tying together no fewer than FOUR existing projects into one symbiotic whole.

For those of you familiar with transmedia storytelling, hold your groans. I haven’t just wedged a bundle of ideas together into one unconscionably complicated and sprawling hole. I have – you may be surprised to know – actually thought it through.

Some of the ideas were already concrete in my head, other were more shapeless and still others were small moments of “wouldn’t it be great if I could…”. But they all shared a common theme that I just hadn’t identified before, a theme which will – hopefully – over the coming few months, be explored through a wide range of stories and across a variety of different media; not least, I suspect, this blog.

This is going to be a HUGELY ambitious project, but one I passionately believe in. I’m going to need a lot of help and support along the way, but that’s what you, dear reader, are there for. Together we can not just explore, inform and entertain, but hopefully expand and engross as well.

Here’s to 2011 and a new world of excitement. Won’t you come and join me for the ride?

PS – regardless of project-related bloggage, there’s going to be a lot more content on the blog in the weeks and months to come, so stay tuned (or come back more often than you have been…)

At last! After three weeks of mad cutting, re-cutting and finishing, I’ve got through all three days of the London Screenwriters’ Festival Video blog. And I’m quite proud of all three, if I’m honest.

Here, for you delight and delectation, is the final day of the festival. You can also read about it on Chris Jones’ blog, too, and show your support on my Vimeo page, if you’re so inclined.

Wow.

That was an event. And a half. And probably another half again.

Three days of early starts, 1.5 hour commutes and running around like a loony with a camera in his hand. It was truly a remarkable festival – the constant feedback I was getting talking to delegates and speakers both on- and off-camera was overwhelmingly positive. Even the negative things being said were all fairly minor niggles, and all delivered with a sense of wanting to improve the festival for next year, not to criticise what happened this year.

The festival staff were truly phenomenal, from the top of the tree with Chris Jones and David Chamberlain’s constant calm under immense stresses right down the tree to the runners and volunteers who never seemed to stop but never complained about it, either. I’d love to name them all, but in truth I’ll forget someone and really offend them

I also really connected with a few of the delegates and volunteers and sincerely hope that we’ll enjoy ongoing and fruitful friendships and relationships.

I’m now sat on the sofa at home lazing around watching flicks and digitising the 8 hours of behind-the-scenes footage while trying to digest all the tidbits of information I picked up from talking to people throughout the weekend.

If I’m having trouble making my brain work today, I can’t imagine what the delegates who were actually IN all of the sessions are feeling like today.

I’ll hopefully be back in the next couple of days (in the breaks between cutting together the 3 days of material I’ve captured) to give you my impressions of the lessons that emerged throughout the weekend.

Until then, it’s time to kick back, chill out and try to fend off this empty feeling inside with no rush to Regent’s College to be met with the same smiling, warm and friendly faces I’ve been seeing for the past three days.

It’s been…. emotional.

On Monday night a friend of mine put a distress call out over Twitter looking for an editor. Having spent the last couple of years cutting my own projects and knowing her company – markthree media – use the same system as I do, I volunteered to pop in on Tuesday and help out.

It wasn’t a hugely technical job; I was there essentially to tackle a couple of issues that had been spotted ahead of final submission to the client and try to shave a little bit off each of the four vids they were submitting. All of which is par for the course on these kinds of videos, it just so happened that their original editor was unavailable to get it done before the deadline.

It was a really interesting exercise for me as a filmmaker, though.

Firstly, I’ve never cut someone else’s footage before, which means I’ve never really made many creative decisions in editing, as I tend to have my final picture laid out in my head while I’m shooting, which means my editing is usually a case of just stringing it together in a way that makes sense. I’ve never had to spend a lot of time working through all the footage and working out how to fit all the pieces in place in a sensible way.

Cutting someone else’s footage also made me realise how much you need to think about the edit when you’re shooting for another editor. Cutting my own stuff means I know what I’ve shot so I never get too hung up on shots that may not be there, because I never think of them.  As an outside eye on an edit, you find yourself thinking, “What I really need is a quick cutaway of this thing in close up,” or “It would be great to have that bit of action from this angle,” which can make it inordinately frustrating when you find you don’t have that footage available to you. I’ve taken note that if someone else is editing my work, I need to give them as many options, cutaways and inserts as I can.

I’ve also learned the enjoyment of collaborative editing. Being a self-shooting producer/director/editor on almost all of my documentary stuff, I make all the creative decisions. While this nicely feeds my control freakery, it masks just how much enjoyment you can get from sitting in an editing suite with a director or creative producer trying different options out and seeing how they work.

Not only did Tuesday’s looooooong day of cutting (left for Town at 9am, got home at 12.35am) give me great confidence in my own ability as an editor, but also allowed me to learn a number of valuable lessons that will make me a better producer, director and shooter.

Anyone need an editor?

Apologies for the delayed return to the return to blogging – I’m not sure why I chose to re-start blogging just before going into production on yet another short film – I should plan these things better.

The film in question, Love Like Hers, went remarkably well despite a hectic schedule and 3 lost hours on the first morning thanks to the good old Yorkshire weather.  The writer/director, Danny Lacey, has already detailed the ins and outs of a crazy 3 days on both his blog and his live show, which you can watch back on demand on his LiveStream channel, so I won’t go into it too much. For those of you who want a taste of what we went through, here’s a short behind the scenes vid from Danny’s YouTube Channel:

My role was essentially as an on-set coordinator, since I’d come on board too late to really be able to take a lot of the “real” production stuff from Danny. Although, frankly, I ended up with more than enough on my plate as it was. It definitely would have been an impossible mission had it not been for the extraordinary Bethan Davis, who started as a Production Assistant, but ended up as a Production Co-Ordinator/Production Manager and was outstanding, as was Danny’s girlfriend, Jacqui, who shouldered a huge amount of stress on Danny’s behalf.

If there was one mistake we made it was in not having enough time for me to take financial control of the picture, meaning all spending decisions had to come from Danny himself. That will doubtless be rectified in future projects together.

What I’ve learned over the last few weeks, though, is that I’m actually not only a big fan of, but also well suited to being a producer. I like the coordination, I enjoy the on-set challenges, but most of all I like to be able to help other writer/directors achieve their vision.

This became abundantly clear to me yesterday after spending over 2 hours in a script meeting with a first-time writer/director who’s got a great little story mapped out.

Louisa is unique in many ways, not simply because she has made a powerful and fascinating documentary exploring her physical and emotional recovery from an horrific accident. She also knows exactly where she stands in terms of skills, abilities and desires.

The script she sent to me has, at its heart, a really strong emotional pull and a really quirky, captivating idea behind it, but it it – by her own admission – in very rough form. Yesterday afternoon she stopped in to my place and we talked through the whole thing from start to finish and really started to delve deeply into the characters, where they were coming from and why they made the decisions they did.  I’m totally confident that when she sends her second draft over it’ll be a vast improvement.

For those of you who want to know why I find Louisa such an exciting person to want to work with, check out her doc, The Highest Low:

And while I’m here, if there’s anyone out there with a script they want to turn or see turned into a finished product, I’m all for taking a look.

Way, way back in the olden days of May or June a few of my Twitter buddies started twittering about the Red Planet Prize, a free screenwriting competition run by Red Planet Pictures, the production company run by Tony Jordan behind dramas like CRASH, HUSTLE and ECHO BEACH/MOVING WALLPAPER.

The competition required writers to send in the first 10 pages of a 60 page TV show, either a stand-alone hour or part of (or pilot for) a longer series.

I’ve had an idea buzzing about in my head for quite a while for a TV series I want to write, so I thought I’d give it a whirl.  My early drafts were shabby to say the least, but as the first-round submission deadline loomed I had ten credible pages that I felt I could send off.

The biggest issue was the recommendations of most professional writers when talking about the prize – make sure you’ve got all 60 pages before you submit, so you can send the script across as soon as you get the call.  That is, if you’re successful enough to still be in the running once the 1500 submissions are whittled down to those few whose full script will be read.

I asked a friend and script editor, Lucy Vee, what I should do.  Her advice? Go for it anyway; it’s free, what have you got to lose.  So I did.

I have to confess at this point, I’ve been going through something of a crisis of confidence in my writing in the last few months.  I’ve not written a huge amount and what I have written, when glanced back over with a critical eye, doesn’t seem up to snuff for me.

I’ve been laying low, not hitting my keyboard as much as I should have (as evidenced by the lack of bloggage) and focused instead on filmmaking rather than writing.  I’ve been on a great project with Northants County Council, through Catalyst Theatre Arts, making a doc about a sibling support project in the area and I’ve also just come off Assistant Producing/Production Managing a UK Film Council short film, ELLIE.

I wasn’t prepared, then, for the email that landed in my inbox yesterday to say my script, NUMBER 10, has made it through to the next round of the RPP.  Seriously.

My first reaction was utter delight – it felt like a real vindication of my work thus far and showed me that despite my crisis of confidence, I do actually have a bit of talent at this writing lark.  The second thought was dread.  I hadn’t actually looked at the Final Draft file with my submission on it since I sent it in.  The email stated quite clearly that the full 60-pager had to be submitted by email by Monday lunchtime, just 6 days away.

I checked the file and did some calculations.  I’d managed 21 pages of the script so far, of which I’d submitted the first 10.  I now had 6 days to come up with another 40 pages that would match the quality of the submission that appears to have piqued the interest of the judges.  And given that this was at 6pm, it really meant 5 days.  And since I’m away giving a talking Liverpool on Thursday, that really meant 4 days.  That’s an average of 10 pages a day, but I’d still need time to proof-read and edit before submission.

Yes, ladies and gentleman, I am also currently blogging.  This is 600 words that could have gone into my script, but instead I’m sat here filling you all in.  I hope you’re happy.  I am.

Yours sincerely,

Oli Lewingon, King Procrastinator & Red Planeteer.