September 10, 2006
glasgow update
It’s been a busy last few days on the Hallam Foe front.
The picture of Jamie Bell was taken this morning on the film set. Jamie is the actor who plays Hallam. He’s best known for the lead in Billy Elliot.
Jamie flew in from America the day before yesterday to do a reshoot. Colin [who took the above photograph] writes about it here and here on the Hallam Foe blog.
Our first task is to shoot some scenes in the treehouse. As we’ve explained in the last few posts these are to enhance a section of the film that could do with a bit more emphasis. The film currently flies along at quite a pace and there is one aspect of it that could do with being brought out a bit, heightened for the audience. You’ll have to try and guess what I’m talking about when you see the movie!
I met Jamie briefly last night at a restaurant with some of the other crew members. Really nice guy. You can tell right away that all that celebrity filmstar crap hasn’t gone to his head. Good news.
I’m finding I have the same attitude about the film business as I have about the wine and suit buinesses i.e. it’s not something I ever planned on being involved with, but now that I am, I find it increasingly interesting in ways I hadn’t expected. Like anything else, the glamorous parts are actually quite dull, and the mundane parts are where the really interesting bits happen.
The one thing I have learned since watching this film project evolve from the very beginning is: Film making is REALLY hard. Seriously. Here are the hard bits:
1. Writing the script.
2. Raising the money.
3. Convincing the right actors to appear in the film.
4. Shooting the film.
5. Editing the film.
6. Finding distrubution.
7. Marketing the film i.e. convincing Middle America or whoever to part with their money, one movie ticket at a time, in sufficient numbers to see an eventual profit.
8. Probably the hardest part of all: Ensuring that none of the above goes over budget.
Trust me, each one of these parts is a bloody nightmare. You think breaking into the film business is difficult? You should try staying in it. Seriously.
This would explain why increasingly I have nothing but admiration for the folks involved with this project. I can think of A LOT of easier ways to make a living.
Right now the main emphasis of the production is geting the final bits of the shoot and the editing “in the can”. And then we proceed to the part I’m more involved with, Part # 7, the marketing, while the main production concurrently moves into postproduction: fixing the sound, visual effects etc.
This phase officially starts for me in London, on Thursday, September 28th. Just over 2 weeks away. That’s now the official date of the UK blogger’s private screening of the film. I had originally wanted it to be on the 14th, but we had to knock it back 2 weeks, for reasons to do with the editing schedule etc.
What I’ve done is I’ve invited a few of my best UK blogging buddies to come see the movie, take them out to dinner afterwards, meet some of the production crew, and hopefully start a conversation. It should be an interesting evening all round. Can one single spark start a wildfire? Of course it can, but that doesn’t mean it will. This is what makes life interesting.
Meanwhile, as this gets more and more busy for me, so does the Stormhoek project. So does English Cut. I’m living the most interesting of lives at the moment, but My Goodness, it’s gotten a bit relentless around here. I can’t decide if it’s just the times we’re living in, or just some form of extreme business modelling on my part. Probably a bit of both.
C’est le guerre.
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A wee chuckle to start your day off right etc.
Call me a cynic (many do), but it could be worth casting your eye over this before comitting to a final cut. (Note: I have no idea what Hallam Foe is about, but ‘guess’ it is a growing-up angst movie). Some formulas are timeless, some formulas are rebranded, and other formulas just don’t taste good. Steal the best, sidestep the rest.
Back when I was a “writer” rather than a blogger, I had this theory of how to go about it… I suck at making things up, so I figured the easiest thing to do was go out and live an interesting life and then transcribe it. Problem is, when you live an interesting life there usually isn’t a lot of *time* to write it all down.
You’ve been doing a kick-ass job the last bunch of years at managing to do both. Sure, there’s been the occasional dry period, but if you’re sleeping more than an hour a day in addition to everything else, I think you’re doing just fine.
Interesting to note the parallels between the list of tasks involved in movie making, and the not-so-different set of tasks involved in making wine. Stormhoek and Hallam Foe are closer than one might think — both are creative efforts seeking a market of reasonable size (I hesitate to say “mass market”).