Monthly Archives: January 2011

Or cheque, for us Englanders.

This post from Seth Godin1 sums up very neatly some of the ideas and concepts about ourselves and our potential I’m working on at the moment.

A check in your wallet does you very little good. It represents opportunity, sure, but not action.  Most of us are carrying around a check, an opportunity to make an impact, to do the work we’re capapble of, to ship the art that would make a difference.

Seth Godin, sethsblog.com

1. one of the few people on earth always worth listening to [↩]

According to just about everyone1 today (17th January) is the most miserable day of the year. Every year.

But why? And since when?

I’m sure the original assertion was based on hard data, but how hard can that data now be if we all know we’re supposed to be at our most miserable today?

If we’re told every year that 17th January is the most miserable day of the year, that makes 17th January make us feel miserable.

Telling people something as fact will make it just that, but we can tell ourselves differently.  Whatever you want to be – happy or sad, jubilant or miserable – just be it, because living it will make it so.

1. or everyone in the media at least [↩]

My most productive time of day is very early in the morning. I’m used to being up at 6.30am to take K to the station for her commute to London and I know I work best in those 2-3 hours immediately I get up.

I have another burst of focus around the 5-6pm mark, where I tend to push myself into completing things before calling it a night.

Finding these productivity peaks not only helps you be more productive, but is much less likely to allow you to become distracted by other things. Just remember to close down Twitter and Facebook while you’re trying to make the most of your peaks.

When is your productivity peak?

My increasingly awesome Twitter-buddy Tyler Weaver posted this great article on his website today. I don’t know why, but I love peeking into other people’s work spaces, although Tyler’s minimalism puts my crazy-chaotic office/corner desk bombsite to shame.

I remember an old adage I used to try to placate my parents with at home:

A creative mess is better than a tidy idleness.
Anon

I clearly just need to learn how Tyler manages “creative tidyness”.

For a superstition, the muse certainly needs structure. You’ve got to tell it where and when to show up, or else it’ll become an excuse for you not to do your work.
Tyler Weaver, tylerweaver.com

Ben Craig, a Scottish director who made his short film MODERN TIMES for a budget of tea and sandwiches, has been taking some heat on his Vimeo page for the definition of “no budget” given the very nice Sony EX3 he shot it on and the studio space he used for a flick that’s now gathering some major buzz from Hollywood agents and execs1.

The truth is that Craig shot the entire film using equipment and a studio borrowed from a photographer when it was free at the weekends. He then set about doing all the visual effects himself, learning the software as he went.

The bitterness of the commenters is hard to fathom2. If we as filmmakers want to make the projects we’re passionate about, we need first to focus on building a contacts book of creative collaborators – a network of mutually beneficial relationships.

By asking first “What can I do for them,” before “What can they do for me,” we can not only start relationships on a positive footing, but also potentially open doors to exciting opportunities that will never come the way of those filmmakers who spend their time bemoaning the fact that they don’t have the resources that people like Ben Craig or Gareth Edwards3 had.

Sometimes selflessness and generosity is the best way of being selfish and getting what you want. I guess that’s what they call Karma.

1. as per yesterday’s Hollywood Reporter blog piece here [↩]
2. although sadly all too common [↩]
3. the director of the similarly home-made (effects-wise) MONSTERS [↩]

Mashable.com carried this article yesterday. The intro sums it up perfectly:

Good, smart, fun and relevant content should be at the core of any social media strategy. Great content should reflect your brand and give people a reason to stay engaged.

Frank Marquardt, Mashable.com

Last summer I did a stint making short videos for THE PRODUCTION OFFICE LIVE. The show is presented and produced by my friend, author, filmmaker and blogger, Chris Jones. Its mix of interviews with genuinely valuable insight and lively studio chatter, saw it quickly become a favourite among indie filmmakers across the world1.

Chris and his producing partners have recently launched a crowdfunding campaign for the second season of the show to give them enough capital to run the show professionally. Take a look at their IndieGoGo page to find out more (and back them if you can).

The campaign itself has one key element that too many filmmakers2 miss: “perks” or “rewards” that backers genuinely want3 at minimal cost to the production.

Too often crowdfunders come up with lists of brilliant bonuses, but if you’re giving away a $40 T-shirt to people who back you to the tune of $50 it doesn’t take a genius to tell you’re not going to raise the amount you need to make your show. Some would argue even a $10 T-shirt on a $50 pledge is too much of a chunk to give away.

What Chris & Co have done is to come up with a crowdfunding model whereby they offer great value to contributors at little cost to themselves. That is the ultimate lesson in crowdfunding best practice not only because it gives the show the best fundraising model, but also because as a backer you know you’re money is going to help your favourite show get made, not to produce the rewards you’ll receive for putting your hard-earned in.

Well done to Chris, Judy, David and Gemma for creating a great campaign for a great show. I can’t wait for the new season4.

1. literally, with viewers in the US, Germany and Australia among other places [↩]
2. and crowdfunders of other art forms [↩]
3. such as a credit on the show, a visit to the studio, a VIP pass to the always-awesome wrap party [↩]
4. which will also, incidentally, be featuring the return of the LOWDOWN from yours truly [↩]

My body decides that 6.30am is a good wake up time this morning and, as the room is freezing and the wind is rattling the door, any chance I have of convincing myself to go back to sleep is thrown out of the window, so I get up, close the window over lest the same fate should befall the lovely K1 and head downstairs.

I make myself a cup of tea with the penultimate tea-bag in the house2 and sit down to catch up on emails, news and blogs from the last two days since I’ve been out of the office for most of them. I promptly let my tea go cold and debate whether to walk to the shops but a) it looks freezing outside and b) I’m digging too far into the news blogs to leave my laptop.

By late-morning I’m all caught up on everything I’ve missed and have worked my way through two scripts that were in my To Read pile. I fire off an email of feedback to the writer/director of one of them, but promise myself a second read of the other, since it’s being pitched to me as a possible new producing project and I think it needs a more careful evaluation.3.

K eventually rouses herself and announces (shock of all shocks) that she actually had a good night’s sleep and feels rested and happy – not a common thing for K of a morning. She also informs me that we’re popping next door at 2 to give Wee C4 his delayed Christmas present that various events colluded to prevent us handing over pre-Christmas (or even pre-New Year).

Back from that we take a stroll down the road and pick up some tea and milk, then K hits the sofa to dig into some statistics homework while I clean up the kitchen, including mopping the floor from Thursday’s jumping cider incident (it’s been a bit sticky since).

That done, I head upstairs and have a chill out in the bath, followed by some relaxation, then make a few phone calls that I needed to catch up on, including chasing up a commission that came my way yesterday.

Phone calls finished, I try (and fail) to wrap my head around K’s statistics stuff to see if I can be of any help, but drawing a blank on that I instead fall back on my dinner-cooking talents and rustle up some griddled pork and accompaniments.

After dinner, K hits the sofa again and I head up to the office to check messages and update the blog. When K’s brain has exhausted itself and her mind is a whirl of statistical mess we play a quick game of Bananagrams before heading to the movie room and throwing in the original BBC STATE OF PLAY series, which K’s never seen. I realise I’ve forgotten just how much I love this show as we get through two hour-long eps back-to-back and could quite easily have stayed up and got through all 6 in one straight marathon, but I’m keen for K to rest up before Uni starts on Monday, so I drag us both to bed for sleep.

1. although that’s hardly likely as she sleeps like the dead once she’s nodded off [↩]
2. naturally leaving the other for K the tea monster [↩]
3. the first of the scripts is another project i’ve been producing that’s been slowly working through numerous drafts over the last few months [↩]
4. the neighbour’s 3-year-old [↩]

The alarm wakes me at 8am, which is the latest I’ve been up all week (I figure I deserve it). I get out of bed, shower and rouse K so we can make our 9.35 train to London.

We get in to Town and K heads off to Angel to Uni, where she’s meeting her study group to polish up their joint project while I head down to Waterloo to meet up with HC, a filmmaker friend of mine. It’s good to finally see her as we live a life of constant “we must meet up” messages and rarely manage to find time that both of us are free to actually do it.

We pick each other’s brains about various work-related thing, as well as chatting about new projects we have on and our hopes and plans for 2011. The hour-and-change we spend in a lovely little South Bank café1 passes way too quickly before I’m back on a tube and headed North to Angel.

I meet K to accompany her to a meeting with her Uni that she’s organised to try to sort out arrangements for her placement this term, which goes very positively and we’re in and out inside half-an-hour.

K smuggles me in to the uni library using one of her study-mates passes and I stick my head into their room to say hello to the group and thank Sc for her card. They carry on working and I sit in the main library study area and battle (unsuccessfully) with the WiFi before giving up and settle into preparing a business plan for the new project I’m working on with CR that doesn’t require ‘net accesses.

While I’m working I get an email from a Twitter contact who was involved in Danny Lacey’s LOVE LIKE HERS offering me a Line/Co-Producer role on her new short. As it’s on my Blackberry, I can’t read the script, but I file it away to come back to later once I’ve got chance to access the ‘net and read it.

I also get an email from THE PRODUCTION OFFICE commissioning me for 12 new eps of THE LOWDOWN for them this year, which is a really nice boost. I’ve had great feedback in the past on the videos I’ve done for the show and it’s always flattering to be asked to come back and do it again. I accept without hesitation.

When K wraps up her study group, I pack up my things and we stroll back up to Angel and grab the tube to St Pancras, where we’ve just missed a train home. There’s one every half-hour, though, so it’s not the end of the world and we hit Foyles bookshop to kill some time, with me wading through the business section as a bit of market research.

We hop the train and ride some, K zoning out with tiredness while I read an eBook on her iPad for the first time. I’m impressed at how nice it is to read on it, as I’ve only used it for games and “useful” apps before. The workflow for reading PDFs is a little fiddly, but once they’re on there, it’s great.

We get home and swing by KFC for K and I whip myself up some chicken mayo sandwiches from the leftovers in the fridge2. We watch some SIMPSONS while we eat, then head up to the movie room and the PS3 to stream the first ep of FAMOUS AND FEARLESS that we missed on Monday, which we jump through the key moments of before coming back down to tonight’s Sky+’d final. It’s such an odd show – potential to be very, very good, but the live studio format necessitates quite a lot of padding. That said, if it weren’t live it wouldn’t have the same edge to it, so it’s a bit of a conundrum for the producers. It’s great to see Chris Evans doing good TV again, though – I miss TFI FRIDAY.

It’s late once F&F is over (well done Charley Boorman) and we take ourselves off to bed where I read for all of 10 minutes before conking out.

1. Earl Grey for her, green tea for me, both served in little bowls [↩]
2. K’s not a sandwiches kinda girl [↩]

I get up and drag myself out of bed and into the shower when the alarm rouses me at 6.45am. I gather my bits and pieces, kiss K goodbye and head out. The roads are very slow, so I opt to avoid the M1 and take the slightly slower, but moving faster, back roads to the hospital.

I arrive and it’s chaos, as should be expected on the first clinic back after the Christmas/New Year break. I sit and chit-chat with JL, another transplantee who’s doing amazing thing with her gift. We talk fundraising, sponsorship, goals and targets for 2011 and how we can help each other out before she’s called in for her tests and I sit and wait a while longer.

Eventually I’m called in to get my bloods done, then sent off for RFTs and X-Ray before heading back to get my obs done (the clinic is in utter disarray with too many people and not enough staff, so the whole blood-and-obs procedure take much longer than normal). I’m free to go by 11am and told to be back for 3ish, so I take myself over to Watford to settle into Starbucks and rock their WiFi with a bucket of caffeine.

I sit in Starbucks from 11.30 until just after 2pm and get through loads of email and other work bits & pieces, which I’m really chuffed with as Starbucks work days can sometimes be disappointingly unproductive. At 2.00 I get up and take a wander around the centre, grabbing a magazine to read during the afternoon wait and then jumping in the car, fuelling up on the way back and eventually landing back in clinic just after 3pm.

I wait a little under an hour before seeing the No.2 doctor dude, with whom I run through a few issues I’m aware of at the moment. None of them seems to overly bother him, so I’m sent away with the promise of a scan appointment to come through and a follow-up at Harefield in March.

The drive home is hellish as the anti-clockwise side of the M25 is completely closed due to an accident and everyone on the clockwise side (my side) wants to stop and see what’s happening. I take a detour off the motorway by take a wrong turn and end up clogged up in rush-hour traffic. By the time I get home a journey that should take 1-1.5hrs has taken me closer to 2 and I’m shattered after my early start and close to 5 hours in a car today.

K is waiting for me and I’m a little short with her for not emptying the dishwasher while I’ve been out, but we soon kiss and make up and settle onto the sofa for a cuddle. We opt to head out to get some takeaway as neither of us has the energy or compunction to cook tonight, so we ride the sofa and watch some Sky+ while we eat, then stay where we are for the rest of the night going through the programmes that have stacked up on our planner and chatting.

We eventually call it a night around 11ish, conscious that we have to be up for the London trip in the morning. I pass out almost immediately we get to bed.