Zeitgeisters,

As Edwin saith, he will not wait by the ‘phone. Well, nor am I; I’m doing bunches of other writing, for other people. Some of whome will pay me cash money. I am attempting this in the four days that I do not work for a salary.

So my weekly financial set up is this: three days working for wages, four days freelancing as a script writer with the occasional magazine article thrown in.

I don’t even think about film funding in between times, I leave that to the director and the producer. Concentrating on what might be is quite pointless. And a waste of energy.

The downside of my 3/4 weekly split is that sometimes the projects pile up. Hence,my being awake at 3.45am writing this blog when I need to be up by 6.30am. Deadline stress just adds to my unnatural insomnia. And I’ve got a paying project really pressing in right after I shuck the present monkey on my back (a short film script).

This is actually a typical dilemma for any freelancer. Suddenly you have too many paying jobs to do all at once. Woe is me.

The upside is suddenly I can afford a new Sunbeam Cafe series 2 slice toaster – the old TA9200. Go here to discover more.

Many in the arts in Australia make their money with a ‘patchwork quilt’ of teaching and freelancing. It can lead to many hours of soul-searching. Teachers and arts administrators who began as artists often discover they are devoting most of their time to pulling down a wage and sending their kids through school.

This leads to the age old questions. Am I a ‘painter (or whatever) if I am not actually painting. This is dealt with by people such as Julia Cameron in books like her 1992 blockbuster The Artist’s Way.

So, not waiting by the ‘phone, taking on too much freelance work and that affecting the stable paying job. That’s this particular artist’s way and I know through many conversations over the years I am not alone.

Crack The Script!

Mr Trivia

Well. I’ll eat my hat!

After submitting BTS to the AFC and Bluecat, I started struggling with a sci-fi no-budget screenplay, Yellow. I was scheduled to shoot in Feb / March, but the script wasn’t exactly writing itself.

Then. Life took hold.

Cancer in the family and a new job writing screenplaysfor DADAA saw Old Father Time disappear.

Last week, I had coffee with a mate of mine who says, “I’ve got a really good idea for a film”. He saw the irritated look in my eye and backed down. But I needed the distraction and, two sips into a strong long machiatto, heard myself say “Go on.”

It was a beauty. Story, character, locations – everything. He told me a riveting story about something that happened to a friend of a friend. It had a complete screenplay structure – turning points, mid-points, Voglerian call to adventures – everything! On a plate.

I wrote an outline with my mate in about two hours and we’re shooting it at the end of the year. I’m already saving money.

The AFC makes decisions about this year’s Indivision projects on May 3rd. I refuse to wait by the phone.

Hi, this is Phil Jeng Kane,
I asked Mr Trivia (now M. Le Trivia for some reason) for a bit of space on this blog to provide a lightning sketch of Edwin Lynch.

Yes, true to his last posting, Edwin is indeed a jock-wearing, shut-in weirdo who constantly peers through peepholes looking for a Godot-like postie. But he’s also a writer-director who studies performance and screenwriting; he networks with actors and filmmakers and has always kept up with filmmaking technology; he has a strong grasp on filmmaking skills, like how to break down and choreograph a scene.

Why the resume? Because it occurred to me that his self-portrait was an ATOMISED version of Edwin Lynch the writer and director. I probably wouldn’t work with Underpants Man and yet, in reality, I have worked with Ed for more than a decade.

Filmmakers are great storytellers. I realised recently that I’ve learnt to take most of what film people say, with a grain of salt. Not because they have lax moral or ethical standards, but because they see reality through an imaginative lens. They’re fantasists, embroiderers, hyperbolists, analysers, searchers-for-truth, attention-seekers, spin-doctors, entertainers and sometimes complete bull artists.

Filmmakers spend their lives looking to create a world, through writing, performance, directing, editing and post-production. After this process is complete, they might have a behind-the-scenes story to tell and this becomes part of the creation myth that they then use to publicise the film.

So there’s before-the-film, behind-the-film, during-the-film and after-the-film. Filmmakers will use all of it to persuade you to see that film and this will help them to make their next one. They love to tell a story.

There’s a line in the 1987 movie OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE (not to be confused with the very funny New Zealand soap on Network Nine that SPAA protested against.) The 1987 film is an odd-couple pairing between Bette Midler and Shelly Long. Long plays a pretentious actor and to get under her skin, Midler’s character says “Actors are just bullshitters who get paid.”

All filmmakers need a bit of the bullshitter in them. And with any luck one will get paid. It’s not considered an adult occupation because it calls on all the skills and imagination you used in order to play when you were a child. And therefore its not fully respectable until you get paid. But who wants to be respectable anyway?

Phil Jeng Kane
C/- Mr Trivia

P.S. Of course, I’m an unreliable narrator, myself. I often use a pseudonym and don’t even reveal as much in print about myself as Edwin does. But one day I just might.

Until then I have ventriloquism and my addiction to prescription painkillers to sustain me.

Throughout my life, when I’m lucky enough to get a film into a festival, a certificate like this arrives in the mail. A participation certificate, an award or receipt of in-competition selection into this or that international film festival.

I’m usually indoors when it comes – working on a screenplay. Sometimes it’s arrives in a quiet email. Sometimes it’s a letter which comes with great pizza deals and white good sales. Other times it’s registered mail and I don’t hear the knock (I check my peep-hole regularly but always seem to miss the knock).

This particular certificate is from Germany. It’s nice. Maybe it’s worth a frame. It arrived with a well-produced booklet, stills from A Stone Throw and a short synopsis. I always have to haul out myWorld Atlas to see where the city is. Sometimes I get the country wrong. It’s always interesting to read how other cultures summarise a film you’ve been working on for years. I’m probably in bed – or writing – or web-designing or having a coffee with friends when my films screen.

I work from home – so I’m usually here.

I’m about to shoot Yellow, a no-budget feature film – right here in my house. I’m writing this BLOG on my non-linear editing machine and the finished film will be streamed online to a distribution server in HD quality. I’ve had my eye on several online distributors and I’m watching Telstra (yes, the phone company). By the time Yellow is cut, scored and mixed, I will probably YouTube the film for international festival pre-selection, do a few podcasts for publicity and then walk around the corner to post my Blu-Ray disc for big screen viewing.

Most of this time, I might as well be wearing underpants.

In the Can
Short Film Screenings
Saturday 13th, 8pm Bar 138, 138 Barrack Street Perth

The In-the-Can people offered to donate teh door sales at a local film night. Come along if you’ve nothing to do this Saturday night and you’re in Perth. We’ll probably make enough at the door to pay for batteries, sandwich bread and tape for the Yellow shoot.

I’m really keen to make a no-budget film before I do the budget one. I want a fun, creative, happy experience before I embark on another Kafka-esque procedural nightmare.

Hope to see you there.

In an effort to win a bit of our old presence on the web, a new podcast has been added, so be sure to check it out.

I’ve started writing something very strange. Yellow Lipstick, Yellow Hair is the title of a new screenplay I’m writing – by myself. Phil is to script edit it when I have a rough draft. Carmelo (the producer of Beware the Stingray) is keen to do a no-budget feature and has offered his HD equipment so I will be shooting the movie before the end of March and editing throughout the year (between websites).

In a futuristic world where more than 10 minutes of sunlight spells certain death, 3 strangers; an animist, a naturist and a paranoid neurotic spend their 4 week government-allocated holiday mooching around indoors.

There’s a little bit more to mooching around, but in the present draft – it’s mooching around. I’ll be podcasting a script session soon. So stay tuned.

Films in Australia are mostly financed by the government. You need a distributor and around 40% of your budget sourced from the private sector before you can make a $2m+ feature film here. In an effort to keep the riff-raff out, the FFC have added another requirement to their list – a very high quality, developed screenplay. To this end, they employ a team of readers (usually writers) to vet scripts which ultimately land on the desks of two assessors.

In other words – your screenplay had better be tight . . . and interesting.

But do you think the private sector know any of this? Do the Mums and Dads of Australia know that by investing in Australia’s film industry, they can write off 100% of their tax bill under the Taxation Department’s 10BA tax-incentive scheme? No. But lawyers do and it’s probably why the film industry is suffused with them. That and intellectual property protection.

As you know, I had someone approach me recently with a whole lot of cash – like this lady here. A lot of cash . . . and an undeveloped screenplay which they wanted to go into production with. These blokes were moving from property investment – to film production. They seem like good, honest investors and they have a huge portfolio of clients.

But they also had a very undeveloped screenplay.

To get a screenplay into a condition where it is even eligible for government agency development money takes about 3 full-time months of writing with a good script editor by your side. The money is spent on fees for; the writer, script editor and producer and the odd airfare for deals and meetings etc. (Anywhere between about 20 and $50,000).

Naturally, there will be many more conversations as we all got on really well and want to work with each other on film projects in the near future. In fact, Friday’s meeting with the FFC advisor (Tait Brady) and the Fortissimo Sales Agent (Ashley Luke) couldn’t have gone better. Beware the Stingray is definately something that the FFC would be interested in pursuing. I was quite surprised. And relieved. What the hell would we do if they weren’t?

So it’s nose to the grindstone today for Phil and I.

None of the FFC’s enthusiasm, of course, was put in writing – despite many pleas from our producer. I feel good about things . . . today.

:)

Phil Jang Kane (screenwriter), Carmello Musca (Producer) and myself (director) have a 20 minute meet-n-greet market briefing with the Film Finance Corporation and a major Oz film distributor this afternoon. Based on our synopsis, they will advise us of sales opportunities in today’s marketplace.

Should be interesting. We’re going about things the traditional, Australian way. Which isn’t a bad thing.

The Australian way of raising feature film finance isn’t a bad one. We have limited funds and fewer good scripts than the US (where everybody in LA is working on a feature screenplay).
In Australia, screenplays are thoroughly scrutinised by industry professionals before they are even allowed to jump through a series of hoops. You also need private cash, a distributor and the FFC on board for budgets over about $2m. The system only allows scripts which have been thoroughly vetted to make it to the screen. And for writers, it adds to their growing pile of rejection letters along the way – which I think (seriously) counts for something.

The majority of filmmakers could learn a great deal from a little humility and having the odd chomp on humble pie.

I love the films which show a certain degree of humanity (or writerly humility). Most screenplays don’t reflect the plights of real people because, sadly, there are so very few real people in our industry.

The Phone Call

What happens when someone calls you up out of the blue and offers you the opportunity to direct a feature film – with a small (but realisable) budget?

This is exactly what happened to me the other day.

In an effort to bring a pre-existing screenplay to the screen, two investment brokers, on behalf of their clients, were scouting around for a director. They called a friend of mine (who they found in the Yellow Pages and on Monday, I get to be the first director to read the script.

I have hitherto said “no” to feature screenplays (often written by well-known Australian writers and with money on the table) – so I was very surprised to hear my mouth say yes to this particular project – sight unseen. I guess my body has heard me say no one too many times.

I told the writer that I probably wouldn’t like his screenplay and would want to make changes. He seemed very amenable to this idea and so . . . a new process begins.

We shoot in January and we need to have spent all the investors’ money by June 30th. A situation we are all familiar with in this industry.

I just heard that A Stone Throw is a finalist in the Frankfurt Children’s Film Festival (Germany). It seems that somewhere in Germany and India is an Edwin James Lynch fan-club. They’ve certainly bought films I’ve directed in the past. But there are just so many bloody filmmakers in the world today.

I’m beginning to understand that AST ain’t a crowd-pleaser. How could it be when it was ever-so-loosely based on Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment (set in a school). I guess it’s a bit dark. In fact, pretty much everything I write with Phil (or by myself for that matter) is a bit dark or creepy.

More good news (for us) is that Phil, Carmelo (producer) and I are having a casual meeting with Tait Brady (Feature Film Evaluation Manager, Film Finance Corporation) and Ashley Luke (Vice President, Development & Acquisitions, Fortissimo Films) to receive informal feedback on our feature film synopsis.

Marx & Venus update

I don’t know who the successful applicants are, but they have already selected 25 scripts (from about 2,000 submitted throughout Australia) for the Marx and Venus series. So if you haven’t heard anything yet, you’ll probably receive a thank you for your submission, but there were thousands of applicants and unfortunately your script etc. letter shortly (if they can afford the postage). I’m eagerly waiting for mine. I like to see how they word these things.

Stay tuned to the Taylor Media website to find out more on that one.

In the meantime, Phil and I have a screenplay to write. But first, my dayjob beckons.

The more one plods along, the more one understands that the gap between feature filmmaking and short film production is one gaping big canyon.

A Stone Throw was finalist in an LA festival this month called Moondance. But that has little or no impact on the feature film we were writing last night.

If it had won an award, it would make no difference to what we are doing right now (there is only now, people).

I remember Australian filmmaker, Shirley Barret’s Love Serenade (Two sisters will do anything to hook the right man) winning the Camera D’or at Cannes in 1996 . . .

“Notably, the stuntman used in the final sequences died while shooting the scene, and this scene was retained for the finished product: consequently Barrett, distraught, did not make another film for four years, and then it was the major disappointment WALK THE TALK” (leask81 review on IMDB)

What a thing to happen – and then to make Walk the Talk years after. It must have been heart-breaking. Going all that way – from humble short film beginnings in the late 80s to this momentous and horrible experience. Now she’s working in TV. Naturally.

Phil and I are half way through our screenplay (page 45). Our synopsis is due next Tuesday and I’m currently clearing my desk of all student marking so I can make a start on our next project.

There is nothing I’d rather be doing than this right now. Writing this brilliant script . . . well, talking and pumping iron while Phil writes ;)

Writing a short screenplay and a feature movie are vastly different. It’s the difference between one day and three months – or 3 days and 26 weeks. It’s like comparing fixing a car with open heart surgery – or a 100m sprint with a 40km marathon. You’re kind of doing the same thing with your hands, but your brain is doing somersaults.

It feels really close . . . The feature . . . I dunno why. It’s a sterling script (if I may say so myself) and the creases are coming out easily. I don’t know why this hasn’t happened before.

Better go press my shirt . . .

I just added a link to Taylor Media’s website for Marx and Venus (I did the site). The SBS script deadline is March 31st, but, as I did her website and Sue Taylor is exec-producing the show (with Natalie Bell, Ian Booth and Francesca Strano line producing the 25 episodes) I felt it my duty to let everyone know that TM is looking for directors, DoPs and editors.

My CV is in. Phew! But I’m thinking of submitting a cover letter. Or hopefully, explaining my particular during interview – and without trying to sound like I’m gonna break house-style.

Writing with other people . . . Ooooh

I’ve written two episodes of M&V so far – one with local writer, Richard Hyde and one all by myself. I want to write one with Phil Jeng Kane, but I want it to be his idea. I’m second credit on Richard’s and I want the same credit on Phil’s. Three scripts sounds reasonable and not too greedy – especially if I’m working with other people.

“What? What kind of filmmaker are you? Get an ego man. This is a competition, not a kabutz. ‘I want it to be his idea!‘ What’s all this second credit stuff? Don’t you want all the glory? There’s hardly any cash. What do you get? Two grand? You gonna split that two ways?”

Well, Angry Filmmaker – my reason is simple. A second writer’s credit (to me) – means that I’m working on someone else’s idea. Or, at least, that person instigated the screenplay (ideas are free). Working with another writer is different to script editing. As co-writer (I hate the term because often co-writers do as much – sometimes most of the work) I have permission to change (or in my case hack into and delete – sorry about that, Richard) the other writer’s words and dialogue.

As a script editor (and by the way writers, I will script edit your work for a very reasonable fee. Click here to find out about that) I have no such write – er – I mean “right”. I see my job as being the writer’s spiritual guide and mentor. Script Editors should guide the writer towards what it is he/she wants to say. It’s a bit different in TV tho – ;) – but that’s how I reckon it should work in a perfect world. And we’re all heading for that. Right, Aristotle?

As co-writer, you don’t get final say on the screenplay. Whic is good because tehre’d be too much to-ing and fro-ing over little stuff.

But as local producer, Carmello Musca put it to me one day (this is why Phil and I have a script with him) . . . “The writing doesn’t finish until the execs have left the editing room.” That’s someone who knows the business. The best producers share a similar POV in my experience. Beware those who don’t!

“Ahh, shut up! You talk a lot of crap. What have you done? A few shorts? The odd TV show? Who cares about your Pee Oh Vee, man? Im going to Hollywood. I don’t need ScreenWest’s money. I know a couple of guys . . . Anyway. Just wait ’til you see me strut my stuff man. I have talent.“

The door is to your left, Angry. Talent is never enough.

Yeah. He’s gone now. If you’re going to work with other people, you have to respect what it is they do. And listen to what they have to say. There are a lot of frustrated and angry filmmakers out there. I pity that guy.