I wish I was prolific...
...but this probably goes some way to explaining why I'm not.
Hello from the world’s hottest attic. It is currently 31 degrees Celsius in here. If anybody reading this happens to be an air conditioner, please move into my house.
As I write this, I just read that Brian Wilson died, so go and listen to Pet Sounds.
Today’s edition includes:
Some low-effort online lying
A bit of film festival niceness
a bibliography of sorts
I case you fully can’t be arsed with all this, skip to the end for a big list of films and books and stuff that I’m recommending.
On we go then…
Cannes-cellations
I’ve spent entirely too many hours travelling to and from London over the past month, plus one quick trip to Paris (not exciting, don’t ask) wherein I made a very low-effort attempt to trick people unfortunate enough to be my friend on Instagram that I was, in fact, at Cannes.
Sorry if I tricked you - I was simply trying to remain sane. Also, my flight home got cancelled while I was waiting at the gate, so I got stuck in a hotel in the weird no-man’s-land of the 3 mile radius surrounding an airport for an extra day. If that was karma’s way of trying to rebalance the scales, I’d say it over-corrected and I’m owed a lottery win.
A couple of nice things.
Last month I went to LA1 Shorts film festival in Lancaster with my good pal Georgia because they were screening her short film Got Guts (which I got my grubby mits all over and landed a Producer credit on top of my editor credit). The film went down a treat in the room. It’s the funniest film you’ll see about a shitting lesbian all week.
The festival’s photographer chose not to include us, so we did this instead. My ancient short film Bald has had a bit of renewed energy recently, which has led to me appearing on the Filmd Chats podcast, attending the CenterFrame industry showcase in London, and then just last week, the fabulous Writer/Director Prano Bailey-Bond picked it as one of her favourites on the CenterFrame Selects live stream.
You can watch the stream below if you fancy, they talk about Bald at like 14 minutes in and they’re dead nice about it.
I was a big fan of Prano’s film Censor, so to have her be so complimentary of my work was really lovely. Some of the crew who worked on the prosthetics for Bald also worked on Censor, and I remember being quite excited to just have a little connection to this film that I was really excited to see. This was all very notice me, senpai but I don’t mind.
An incomplete bibliography
I’ve got friends who make films at a rate far, far, quicker than me and when I’m talking to them about work, one thing I often say is how jealous I am that they’re so much more prolific than I can ever hope to be.
Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with not being prolific, if you can get over the fact that you’ll have less things to show off about on the internet, but I still wonder sometimes what it is that keeps me from churning out films at a rate of knots like my talented and successful friends (you know who you are, you energetic bastards).
I think one of the reasons is that when I settle on a project, I want to look at it from all angles, and that usually means research. (ugh).
It comes in different forms and varies from project to project, but whilst some people love to stay pure, shut themselves off from the external and not let other people’s artistic attempts at a subject matter cloud their creative process, my brain won’t let me work that way. I feel like I have to walk into a situation with at least a strong base-level understanding of a subject and the way that subject has been shown on screen before I can even begin to feel confident enough to write my version.
Quick example, for a feature script I’m developing at the moment I’ve done two days of bushcraft survivalist training. I don’t even know how relevant to the final film being able to navigate using the stars, make a shelter with mud and tree branches or start a fire with a couple of sticks is going to be, but I can do those things now (sort of, please don't rely on me in a survival situation) and to me that helps me find a way in to a story where a character knows how to do those things without it all feeling like complete and utter bullshit.
So yeah, this shit takes time… and that’s before I’ve even done draft one. Don’t worry, I hate myself much more than you ever could.
All that is to say, I wanted to share a wildly incomplete bibliography of films/books/music and other resources that I visited and revisited when making my new short 'How to Wash a Body…’ (updates on the film are pending, but things are moving). Some informed facts, or ideas, some are stylistic and others might feel a little unrelated, but they make sense to me.
Books
Films
(side note: 2016/2017 was apparently quite important for me)
Music
After Yang (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) - Aska Matsumiya
(but very specifically this song from the score)Filmzenék Tarr Béla Filmjeihez (Underground Katalógus) - Vig Mihály
Other Things
Right, fucking hell that’s a long list of stuff. Hope you find something you like and possibly something that makes you question why we’re friends.
Thanks for reading! Until next time support your friends and punch your enemies in the tummy.
Lukey x