Come on over!

So this is just a quick note to say that I’m blogging over at www.theborderlandstate.com – the website for my upcoming feature film. Come on over to check out all the ups and downs of the production process!

Task paralysis.

Soooo, obviously still not on the other blog. I’ll let you know as that comes to hand.

As for the film, the wheels are spinning and stalling on a daily basis. This whole ‘start up a feature film’ thing has been an interesting journey already. We have people attached/unattached/reattached, then we have the budget – the only thing constant is that it keeps changing. We’ve been refining how exactly we’re going to shoot this monster, what approach we’re going to take etc. Why we’re doing it. Basically refining what it is we’re doing and what we want to get out of it and the ethos that we’re going to take with making it.

Do you make a film to make money? (If you want to make another one you better at least make your money back.) Do you make a film to be recognised as a film maker? (If so then it better be damn good.) Do you make a film for the fun? (If not you should seriously find a different career.) Do you make a film to send a message to the world? (If so then you better have something to say.) Do you make a feature length film because it’s hard to do? (If so then you’ve picked the right medium.) So much to tackle here.

So far it’s been an unexpected extremely formative stage and I’m really keen to get it right before we set off, make it and then look back and realise it’s not what we wanted! There are more decisions going on (format, budget, cast, crew, approach, business plan, online plan etc. etc.) then I realised would take place during the entire film, let alone the very start.

As I said before the wheels are turning, it’s just that they keep getting stuck. Working on it!

On the verge of the thick of it.

I really thought I’d be blogging on a different blog – the one for ‘The Bordelrand State’ movie – by now but not quite yet. It’s all good though, things have just been gearing up for our trailer shoot to hopefully get some interest in our little feature film!

We’re shooting at the end of the month for a couple of weekends and things are starting to fall together. Mainly because other people are getting involved and there’s no ‘I’ in film making! Or something like that. Had a few people read the full script and feedback is good. There’s still work to be done but it feels more tangible now. When the new blog goes live I’ll introduce some people in detail and offer a bit more of a breakdown on what exactly is going on, where we’re at, what writing demons I’m fighting etc.

While everything seems to be slowly getting off the ground ‘The Borderland State’ is a big rocket and it’s gonna take a big freakin’ push to get it airborne. Step by step people, crazier things have happened.

The world turns.

Wow, a lot has happened since I last blogged, the world cup ripped into action, Australia swapped in a new Prime Minister and I’ve been to Perth and Queensland and back shooting a new TV interstitial. Action-packed times. I’ve also been ripping into that script of mine and the second draft is a bitch.

There’s an old adage that you write your first draft with your heart and your second draft with your head. Well, my head hurts trying to fix all the structure, dialogue and character problems that my heart wrote. But it’s good, there’s something satisfying about getting through the tricky bits and coming out the other side with better material.

We’re also working on early shooting schedules and budgets and I have a feeling the project is going to snowball very soon… We’re also working on the blog as well, it’s a bit of a learning curve but hopefully I’ll be blogging over there in a lot more interesting fashion shortly with the rest of the borderland crew (so far just Kate and me!)

So in terms of writing, not too much to report apart from I’m planning on having this draft done by Sunday.

And now for something completely different, a shot from outside the Tim Burton exhibition at ACMI. If you’re in Melbourne definitely pop down and check it out.

2010 is almost half over.

And how’s that feature film going Dave?

Good! There’s lots going on and I’m pretty excited by a lot of it.

Firstly that tricky script thing is nearing the end of the first draft – I’m currently on a six day writing blitz off work so I should be finished with it in the next few days. I thought it would never happen but it seems like slow and steady wins the race. (Not that I’ve actually finished it yet but ya know… it’s as good as cooked if you know what I mean.)

While there’s still a loooong way to go with redrafting and working on the script, finishing this draft will be superfly for a number of reasons. Firstly, it means we are a major step closer to rolling cameras, secondly, the wheels can turn on other bits of pre-production, things that we’re ready to pounce on includes concept art, shooting schedules and budgets. Thirdly it means we get to amp up the online bit.

The online aspect of this film is going to be a blast. Right now Producer kate (@k8ymac)  and I (@blakefontaine) have been figuring out web hosting, wordpress blogging and other things that have a bit of a learning curve. In a very short period of time (probably a couple of months) you will be able to watch the film unfold via blogs, video updates, tweets and all other manner of involvement. It’ll be good fun and beat the pants off the semi-regular blog I’ve got here.

To this end we got new smartphones to play with so I’ve also been wasting time taking photos like:

I smell a parallel.

I thought I’d update with something a little different today. I’ve been writing about writing so long that the topic itself is becoming a little old. Mainly because up until this point I’ve been incredibly vague. The wheels have definitely been spinning on the pre-production front for our feature film project and the film is slowly becoming something tangible as the script is developed. It’s changing from the dream of the film as a ‘film’ to the dream of the film as a particular and specific project. At this point titled ‘Borderland‘.

So, what’s it about? Well, a lot of things. One of the things Borderland has a lot to do with is dreaming, a pretty broad and well studied topic. The great thing about dreaming is that no matter how well analysed the subject is, no matter how much we grasp the science behind it (or don’t), it still represents a very personal thing to each individual. You will not dream the same thing in the same way as anyone else. I like that. I also like the fact that whether dreams be insightful, spiritual or completely random, it’s still something that’s very much a part of you. Even if you don’t remember your dreams – you have them, and I bet they hammer away on your subconscious in some way.

So that’s one of the elements of Borderland. Dreams. The type that you have while awake or asleep.

In other, non-thematic news: We (as in Kate – Producer and Art Director) has just started on some concept art. I’ve just finished the first act of the 2nd draft of the screenplay. It’s still very early days but we’ve also set a shoot deadline – January. It’s the tiniest part of the snowball… but it’s got a roll on.

In completely different news… have you seen Jim Carrey’s website? It’s redonkulous.

And now for something random, a picture of Adam Lawes and Paul Todd from the short film I finished almost a year ago now – ‘To the Victor’.

It’s not just square one, it’s a completely different set of squares.

The most exciting thing about the script writing process is that it’s the easiest and cheapest phase of a film to change things. You can effectively finish your whole film, then change everything about it with only mental anguish to yourself: the author that is slowly plummeting into madness. Psychological damage to a single person is a small price to pay for improvement!

Unlike the scenario of shooting an entire film and then deciding you should have done a better job, writing is one of those things which is so much more forgiving. The trick is to identify that your script isn’t ready BEFORE you roll those cameras.

Is this a fancy way of saying that I’ve changed my entire feature script again? Well, yes, but ya know, I really want to do a good job here. I read somewhere once that a really important element of a screenplay is to be honest. Now, I don’t really like reading about how to write screenplays, I did it once and then wasted four years of my life trying to fit my stories into three act structures. Works for some, not for me.

I do like the honesty thing though, it works on every level. For example: would that character do that? Yes. Honestly? Yes. Honestly? Okay, no. Does this mean I have to change the last twenty scenes? No, I’ll just… Honestly? Yes.

It also works with unnecessary scenes. “When I first conceived this film idea there’s this one scene I absolutely have to include! It sums up the film, and I haven’t been trying to write the whole film around it.” Honestly? No, but… Honestly? Fine.

Is that character needed? No. Could what you said in those five scenes be done in one? Yes. Is that scene there just for exposition? Yes. Why is physics at a tiny level so complicated? I don’t know. Honestly? Yup. That kind of next level scientific stuff is fairly complicated. And a bit beyond me.

Seventy-one pages. And counting.

I’ve written 71 pages of feature film – technically 71 minutes of film would be a feature film but since it’s not finished it wouldn’t exactly be very entertaining. Or make much sense…

So the latest is that the script is coming along. The good news is that I can now see the end of the first draft! The bad news is that like all first drafts (well mine at least) it’s a complete mess. It’s funny how I know this is how it goes – it’s ALWAYS how it goes – but it drives me absolutely nuts. I can’t concentrate, I worry about stuff I’ve just written that sucks. I worry about the way it’s shaping up, I reshape and reshape and change and alter and fix and break to a point where all progress is halted. The reshaping doesn’t quite work until it’s finished and I can’t stop reshaping it for long enough to get to the point where I finish it.

It really is the most vicious of cycles.

Then came Easter weekend and me and my script had a smackdown. The Borderland script didn’t think that I could leave writing that shitty in and just move on but I did! I showed that script file! Now it’s a sprint for the finish. And I know the finished thing is going to be a Godawful mess but I am going to persist until I wind up on page 120 or whatever I finish on and write THE END.

Then I will wrestle with the second draft. And get to play a similar game all over again.

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Piñata Party!

I found the little ñ symbol to put in piñata! I think that’s where it goes… I hope so. Anyhoo, here’s some more photos from our trip away. Kate made a piñata. Didn’t get any good photos of it being destroyed because I was on a video camera at that stage… bummer.

Don’t tell anyone – but there’s nothing under us.

I am writing this post from 20,000 feet. Actually, that’s a lie, there is no way I know how many feet up in the air I am. I use metrics. I’m from New Zealand. As far as I’m concerned we are X number of metres in the air. Whatever. I’m on a plane from Christchurch to Melbourne and I’m in the air somewhere. If you wanted to find me as I type this then you could look for the clouds. Yeah, I’m just above those.

Well, I’m glad we’re all orientated now. The reason I’m trying to blog from the discomfort of a plane is mainly to take my mind off the insanely traumatising turbulence we just had. You know it’s bad when the flight attendant has to reassure everyone five times that turbulence is normal and the sensation of the plane dropping like a brick was expected. I find the whole experience quite amusing in retrospect. While the aircraft is jumping around like an off-balance washing machine I grip the seat in front of me for comfort. It’s all psychological I guess, humans aren’t really hardwired to deal with flying. Well, I’m not.

The whole recent harrowing experience (I am a wimp by the way, the Nana next to me seems fine) is a good excuse to try and put my mind somewhere else, hopefully to create a sense of calm. I tried to think of the science that’s involved in keeping the plane in the air. Unfortunately since my knowledge of physics is very limited this may have induced mild panic (I declare flight is impossible – something I should have deduced on the ground) and so I tried different thoughts. Time to reflect  on the week I just spent in New Zealand. Good times, great food, helped prep a 21^st, caught up with mates, and tried to write a lot.

Currently I’m taking a break from the feature film script Borderland to write some one-page synopses to apply for funding from the New Zealand Film Commission. For those of you unfamiliar with the practise, writing a one page synopsis is pretty much what it says, you get the plot for your feature film and you squish it onto a page. The trick is to make it look like it hasn’t been squished even though you’re putting a 90-100 minute screenplay onto an A4 piece of paper. The hardest bit of all is to not only perform the ‘big squish’ but to then make said squish entertaining and readable.

So we (@jarl_devine, @k8ymac and @myself if you’re a twitter-type) are performing that feat so we can present our ideas to those with the means to fund them. I make films because I hope that people will enjoy them and discover some kind of insights and questions into human behaviour, I hope they’ll laugh, maybe cry, maybe – just maybe – feel something. So you write films for an audience, but first… you have to write them for funders. And that, as I am still slowly learning, is a completely different process. It’s one thing to watch a film and judge it, it’s an entirely different thing to read one page of text describing a film not yet made and decide whether it’s worth developing. I don’t envy the people that have to make those decisions.

Anyhoo, on another note, while Kate and I were in New Zealand we also took some photos! Oopah! Here’s some, I’ll be back with more later: