As the hazy summer days have crept into Autumn, I have found myself submerging into my writing more and more. In fact, I couldn't wait for the blasted 'Indian Summer' to bugger off, so that I didn't feel quite so guilty about wanting to shut myself away in my bedroom den for days on end, curtains closed, scribbling and researching to my hearts content!
The music video has had to take a back seat for a while, as Medway Council have still not allocated Niamh a school place, and being a single mum, I have had no time off to shoot the final scenes. In a way though, this is a blessing not a curse, as I anticipate wrapping the shoot, just in time to edit over the holiday period, when Justin is free from Uni to help with the CGI and After Effects side of things. Jon and I will also have more time to prepare for the shoot, so hopefully it will run fairly smoothly, and we'll get the shots we want.
Script writing has become my new best friend. My diet consists of: Reading a film script for breakfast every day (today I read 'The Graduate' by Buck Henry, which truly is script-writing at its finest), as lunch cooks for Niamh, I sit in the kitchen and dive into a brilliant book Jon lent me called, 'My First Movie' by Steven Lowenstein. It is a brilliant collection of interviews of various famous Directors, being questioned about the ins and outs of how they made their first ever movies. Joel and Ethen Cohen were first on the list, and it inspired me so much to hear about the painstakingly difficult way they traveled about, visiting the homes of small business owners, showing them their movie trailer and asking them to invest in their movie. Today is Tom DiCillo, who was DP on Jim Jarmusch's first two award-winning independent films, and who later went on to make it as a director himself after writing 'Johnny Suede'. I now know, more than ever, that this is what I want to do, and by hook or by crook, I will.
So dinner is a film, whichever is next on the list to watch. Sometimes I'll spend this time re-watching the previous night's film and taking notes (such a geek)! By evening, once Niamh is in bed and dreaming, I sit at my laptop, spending endless hours working on my current script. I am in my element when I'm writing. Shut off from the world (give or take the few distractions Facebook throws my way) and submerge myself in characters, story-lines and subplots. I can't wait for the day that I am able to direct one of the scripts I have written, but I think I will probably have to write something that I don't mind selling to another director first, because money is so tight I can barely afford to eat.
I have however, just been offered the chance to jump on board as Co-Writer for a project that a friend is involved in. I met Stella Corradi on a rather unusual music vid shoot back in the summer. We spent 18 hours, over night, knee-deep in water in the pouring rain, on what was a rather ambitious and difficult shoot. She made me giggle and we kept our spirits up while all around us, crew were getting grumpier and grumpier! I kept hiding from the 1st AD's Irish temper by delving into my Celtx Iphone app, and working on my script, and Stella mentioned that she'd had some funding interest for a film that a friend of hers had written. Apparently, he is a director and DP and needs a writer to jump on board and work through the dialogue and narrative. Stella got in touch a few days ago to see if I'd like to take it on, and hopefully I shall.
So, gone are the days of going out and partying, but I don't miss it too much. 'Achievement' is a far superior feeling to 'hangover', and hopefully a way out of this dreaded poverty. So off I scribble, and shall pop back soon to let you know how it's all going. Thanks for your interest, Han. x
