FoolishPeople

101 Things I learnt whilst directing my first independent feature - Part 1

Part I - Madness and Imagination 

The first in a ten part series sharing 101 things I learnt whilst writing, directing and producing my first feature.

1. Not all ideas are born equal. I completed three screenplays in total before the story of 'Strange Factories' even existed. None of them were right. 'GraveLand' was even set in the same location as 'Strange Factories'. I re-wrote many, many drafts to make 'GraveLand' the one, but it just wasn't. It was tough for me to accept, but I'm glad I suffered the process as the lessons I learnt over those re-drafts are immensely valuable. Don't willingly accept the first idea for a screenplay that comes to mind. You may need to clear some distance to reach the place in your imagination that holds the key to the right story.
2. It's easier to write a script for an incredible location than it is to find an incredible location for a script that already exists. 'Strange Factories' was written with full knowledge of the environment and location that we would be using. This location inspired and shaped the story.
3. You never have enough time to rewrite and you can never do enough drafts of your script. Leave time for another draft after your rehearsal period.
4. Fundraising and crowd funding require more focus, work and attention than any other element of pre-production. They're easily one of the most brutal elements of the filmmaking process. Be willing to get your hands dirty. You'll learn why having a pair of human eyes on your funding page means people are more willing to give money to your campaign, and this will feel like a small victory. If you take it seriously, you'll learn a whole set of skills that will aid you in the future, not only in filmmaking. I recommend picking up a copy of the 'Influential Fundraiser.'
5. Rehearsals are not only for actors. The more time you spend with your team working out how you'll shoot together, the better.
6. Your mind and body is as much a resource as your camera and your location. Making a feature film is a marathon. You need to be healthy and fit enough to not only direct, but to carry equipment and props (sometimes for miles and miles up very large hills if you can't afford transport). The entire process of making a feature on a tiny budget will push you to your limits and beyond. Don't underestimate how much you need to prepare and get fit before you start. Not only physically, but mentally too. A daily meditation routine is the reason I'm still here. 
7. Instincts are rarely wrong when it comes to what you feel you need to shoot. There are scenes in 'Strange Factories' that exist only because of mad moments of inspiration. I couldn't always explain why I needed them, but I just knew and some of these scenes have proven crucial to the story I wanted to tell.
8. You make your film more than once, some say it's three times: when you write the script, during the shoot and in the edit. I'd say it's more than three times. I'd count the rehearsal process and also how you choose to eventually share your story when you exhibit or unveil the work. You could also include the creation of any transmedia elements if they have depth and truly exist within the story world. The 'Strange Factories' live cinema event will be another chance to create and tell the story that first came to me four years ago.
9. I've never had much patience, but as a filmmaker I've learnt that patience is a prerequisite on many, many levels. Sometimes there's nothing you can do but wait.
10. Have faith, because if you don't have faith in your film, who will?.

That's it for part one, part two will be posted in late April.

 

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Emergence

How do you travel the strangest of roads?

What should we be willing to sacrifice?

[ARCHIVE RETRIEVAL 777/6/42BRAVO/QUINN-HARRY-L/2031-08-12]

 

[BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:]

I take no pleasure in being right. I really don't, I take no pleasure in their suicidal bliss, their rage and the sickening depressions. I could feel guilty, but there would be no point, no point at all. Honestly, how could you ever explain that the shadow-side to the human psyche will always find its way free of restraint.

I could taste it on the back of my tongue at first, all metal, like sour blood. I saw the monsters bleeding through the cracks. I saw the decay and ferocity beneath the enforced idyll, the stalking nightmares that eeled their ways past the wards of civility.

 I tried to warn them, but of course, all they saw was 'Quinn's hobby-horse'. To them there's no such thing as being able to feel the currents, to divine the patterns in the dry data. They're drowning in information, paddling and thrashing in it.

But I know how to swim, to dive deep. I'm like a shark I can smell the blood in the water, and like a shark I have to keep moving, keep breathing it in, to live, to exist.

Down I went, and I saw the rage, the discontent. But of course, the technology was supposed to protect against this. They couldn't conceive of the backlash – the inevitable catharsis, the...massive psychic venting that needs to occur before you can even try to clean a wound properly.

I tried to tell them last year, but by January it was obvious they weren't going to listen.

I saw the riots coming six weeks ago. There was something familiar, something I recognised in the spiral curve of emotional intensity. It took a couple of runs to be totally sure, plus a jaunt back into my own memory. I'm really surprised how much the little pool of my own personal unconscious is mirrored in the larger data-stream and vice versa, though I did it off the books, as it were.

A little bit of self-hypnosis and a lot of experience with the rig confirmed it – on a fractal level we were close to the 2011 conditions. I was hoping I was wrong, but...unfortunately not.

The guy in Observation knows too, though how I couldn't say, any more than I could say how my gut works about these sort of things now. I might be crazy, but every psych-eval I have, I manage to come out sane.

Maybe that's a bad thing – that I can game the system. I don't know though, in some sense, I'm down a level in terms of complexity – not that topography means much these days.

The path up is the path downward.

Don't ask me where that came from. These days the inside of my brain seems odd - bigger but more crowded too.

If my forecasts are right, and trust me, I can read the signs better than most, the riots will push the Act through as emergency legislation. Which means it's in mine and everyone else's interest to sort the bugs before this becomes mandatory.

I'm not entirely sure that's a good idea for me – I've been checking my own data from the times I'm in the rig for the past few years, and I can see something in there. Something I wasn't expecting. I don't know what it is yet, but I know it's not standard.

I wish I could get Observation Guy in the rig, just to see if I'm right.

[END TRANSCRIPT]

 

Virulent Experience

 

[ARCHIVE RETRIEVAL 777/6/42BRAVO/QUINN-HARRY-L/2016-06-19]

[BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:]

Well, Campbell's gone. Took a dive from Blackfriars Bridge this morning, no note, nothing. Can't say I'm surprised. He's been increasingly twitchy the past couple of weeks – I tried to take it up with Dusty, but nothing was done. So now we're a man down and we've got a rollout deadline at the end of the month. I think they want to show Blake off to some bigwigs.

Honestly, I can't say I'll miss Dave Campbell one bit. Ever since he came back he's reminded me of a damn lizard. I never caught him blinking, not once. Still, maybe he'll find some peace, sleeping with the fishes?

Legge's put in for a transfer. Did it as soon as he heard. The rest of the team's spooked, but pretty much everyone's holding it together. Seems like Frantzen was right – psilocybin helps you fly. One of the boffins down in Neurology said it had to do with filters and bloodflow. Whatever, I don't really care.

I'm not risking it in the testing rig – it might queer up the data, and the last thing we need is Blake registering a Virulent Novelty upsurge with one of us instream – those protocols aren't entirely debugged, or so I hear from the techs. I really don't want my brain to leak out of my ears, y'know?

Of course, the problem with Campbell deciding to cark it is that it'll be at least three months before we can get someone in-post. Not to mention the [EXPLETIVE DELETED] interview cycle. Asking the same questions over and over again for days at a time? If I wanted to do that, I'd have transferred into Psych instead of Indexing.

I heard they've started calling us [EXPLETIVE DELETED] DWARVES down in Payroll, on account of all the mining we have to do. If someone calls me an elf, I'm going to punch them, I'll tell you that for free.

Some bright spark suggested outsourcing the other day, just so they could resurrect some old 'Psychic Driving' technique the CIA used in the 60's! Can you believe it? I mean, all right, I pulled everything Blake has on the damn stuff, just to check, in case it might help us out, but it's ridiculously crude.

You can't just hit the deep stuff with a hammer. It needs to be a precision extraction, otherwise there's no way for the database to integrate it, and all you've got is an orphan-fragment. Why they can't leave it to us professionals is beyond me.

I should probably pay a visit to Medical. All the usual veins have collapsed, and there'll be hell to pay if we can't fit the cannula for tomorrow's testing run. Some of the boys down at QinetiQ we had drinks with last week are talking about basic neural jacks. Years away yet, of course, but it'd make the work so much easier if we could just plug in to go Down.

I reckon we've got about another nine months to a year before the first INDEX run is complete. Blake's extrapolating where he – it, can but in the end, the source material has to come from us. So that means more runs, and an Experience budget that would make the Treasury cry if this wasn't the MOD.

Time to go down to Pharmacology. Again.

[END TRANSCRIPT]

Ministry Memoranda

 

 

JUST WHAT IS GOING ON IN THE DEPTHS OF THE MUSEUM? #MINISTRYOFINFORMATION

From The Ministry #12:Know The Signs

 

FOR YOUR PROTECTION. YOUR SAFETY, SECURITY & SANITY IS IN OUR HANDS #ministryofinformation

A PSA: For Your Health

Citizens - A gift from the Ministry Of Information.

Download and print off this leaflet so that you are never caught unawares by Virulent Novelty!

VIRULENT NOVELTY is a major threat to the safety & security of our country. It is responsible for moral & ethical decay, an increase in alienation, suicide rates & deviant sexual behaviour.

Recent research from Government Scientists at the Ministry indicates that outbreaks of VIRULENT NOVELTY can be directly correlated to an upsurge in degenerate behaviour. Medical studies report increased stress levels, insomnia and depression. VIRULENT NOVELTY is spread through unregulated informational contact.

This is what scientific experts call VIRULENT EXPERIENCE.

“VIRULENT EXPERENCE is information & experience which induces the sufferer to relentlessly pursue meaningless novelty. Sufferers often become obsessive and detached from reality, as well as increasingly isolated & reckless in their pursuit of dangerous emotional stimuli. They just can’t get no satisfaction”

SUSPECT SYMPTOMS:
- Obsessive compulsive monitoring of emotional identities via meaningless social connections
- rapid-cycle stimuli
- overeating
- Boredom, listlessness and generalised nausea.
- Rampant sexual appetite
- Decreased empathy & chronic dissatisfaction -
- Near-pathological desire for external validation (existentially)
- Increased stress; tendency towards depression
- Need to stand out, extreme fashion choices and adaptation of flesh with scarifactions and or piercings.
- Drug Use
- Scruffy clothing, unkempt appearance.
- Slurring of speech overuse of slang or colloquialisms
- Emotions associated with feeling unloved or broken hearted.
- Uncontrollable crying fits.

BE VIGILANT> STAY SAFE>REPORT & BE REWARDED

PREVENTION:
The filthy degenerate whose unrestricted emotions once threatened to tear apart the fabric of society are no longer permitted to pollute the experiences we share. The administration provided by the Ministry of Information has ensured that the most Virulent poisonous forms of information and experience are banned and restricted by the Index. Only interact with Ministry Of Information feeds, or those feeds run by Ministry Approved Experience Vendors. If in doubt, consult Sure Heart guidelines and await communion with Blake.

BLAKE will analyse any potential risk and extract and sanitise the area of your mind infested with virulent information for your Safety, Security & Sanity. We trust you to report any sites of VIRULENT EXPERIENCE immediately. BLAKE will then flag the issue and despatch Ministry investigators to the scene as soon as possible.

Many thanks, BLAKE!

Do not exceed your Sure Heart Bandwidth, any attempt to bypass Sure Heart program code will cause a medically induced coma for your protection. Your bandwidth plan is specifically tailored for your individual needs. Do not share unregulated Experience – cross contamination may occur. Always remain within your personal informational environment. Regularly consult BLAKE for the very latest updates and patches.
Remember – BLAKE is everywhere, for your safety and convenience. Access BLAKE directly, any time you feel unsure.

Reality will never again be diffused with worthless useless information presented as addictive Novelty. In filtering and purifying our minds of poisonous self destructive intent England has achieved what was once thought impossible.

 

 

 

From The Ministry #9

Keep Your Feeds Clean At All Times – Unclean, Unworthy. #ministryofinformation

 

From The Ministry #8

Solitude is your liberation, not your prison. #ministryofinformation

 

From The Ministry #5

Sure Heart for the right start. #ministryofinformation

 

David Cameron denies parenting classes 'nanny state

Defending the policy, David Cameron said: "I think this whole debate about nanny state is nonsense.

"Parents want help. It is in our interest as a society to help people bring up their children.

"We're taught to drive a car. We're taught all sorts of things at school. I think it makes perfect sense to help people with parenting."