Clouds In The Head

Just led a workshop in how to write scripts at Newcastle’s Real Film Festival, and from this starter – “two mates discover that the old person on the hill has stashed a treasure” – we came up with:

Auntie Ann the arsonist runs an ice-cream van and burns down competitors’ premises. Her assistant in the van is her nephew Peter, age 17, the hero of our story, who recently lost both parents. Ann is divorced from and would like vengeance on her ex husband Frank, Danny De Vito, who lives in the big house, hoards everything, has chihuahuas and has set traps. He lost his legs in a fire Ann started (Toni Collette for Ann?). Broke and failing, Ann and Peter decide to try to steal the formula for the greatest ice-cream ever, which Frank has. Our fourth main character is Frank’s gorgeous 19-year-old nurse, Billie, a clear love interest for Peter.

After many setbacks including remorse, trying to emulate the ice-cream themselves, and having to deal with Frank realising what they’re after (the film’s mid-point) and plotting in reverse, we come to the climax. Peter and Ann are in the house, Ann accidentally sets fire to the place. Peter has to decide between his Aunt (who in reality he is responsible for keeping safe, since she is crazy) and Nurse Billie. Ann has to decide between the recipe and Frank.

Denouement: Ann and Frank in adjacent prisons but attending the same psychiatric hospital, so a love of sorts. And the emulative ice-cream turns out to be a source of renewable energy, making Peter and Billie very rich.

Not too bad for two hours including loads of tips and tricks from me and the gurus of scriptwriting. No wonder I’m tired.

As a human being I’m honest, I’m passionate, I’m courageous, I’m disciplined, I have a concentrated mind, I’m compassionate, I’m aware, I’m a good listener, I’m patient, I’m tolerant, I’m fun, I’m adventurous, I’m loving and I’m affectionate, I’m kind, I’m responsible, I am love. I don’t get caught up in my thoughts, I don’t give control to my ego, I don’t dwell on the past, I don’t worry about the future, because the only moment we have is this moment right now.

As witnessed on Judith Lucy’s Spiritual Journey.

“Unemployed at last.”

“Harry Joy was to die three times, but it was his first death which was to have the greatest effect on him…”

Even though I love -

“The hideous low scarred yellow horny and barren headland lies curled like a scorpion in a blinding sea and sky.”

- it’s hardly taken off. Are there any other great opening lines that people know of?

Battery acid. Near the park.

No more screams.

Last heartbeats of info. Leaves blow.

Dead night, dead end, dead man.
Dead carnation buttonholed.
One confused bee.

noirku

syllables: up to seventeen

season: rainy grief

blood flowers like snowblossom

animations combined create 08 (silent)

►

A couple of people asked me what happened to the animation class I was teaching at the Gresford Create 08 festival. Here it is in all its gloire. Some of the films are much more polished than others, which is no reflection on any individuals as they were all done in cobbled-together groups, and the ideal would have been for everyone to come back the next week and talk about the results and make another one. But for me, even the really raw ones are interesting, especially with the right music (the last one works great with heavy metal, for example).

The kids got a DVD (computer only) and a set of instructions as to how to make an animation at home using Windows Movie Maker.

Hope you enjoy these. Well done, kids!

On Reflection (rough 1)

►

The urge to make movies won’t leave me. Scripts get rejected, producers are unavailable, the clock ticks as if icicles are weighing its hands down.

So I’m starting to make my own shorts again, but instead of working with a team I’m going from go to whoa with all the cocky assurance of a – well a cockerel or a spatchcock, though we do know why they’re called spatchcocks so maybe not that.

It is so nice to actually make something. This is just a rough little thing, a study if you like, to test my new editing software. Of course learning new software is going to be one of the 21st century’s great clichés. Everything goes wrong, nothing is quite as you expect, it doesn’t do what you want, and it does do something you wouldn’t want, and then they get you to upgrade (which is usually downgrading by other means).

But if this works a bit, and the next one works better and then things keep rising – I’ve got a couple of feature ideas that I could shoot in my spare time. I’d like to remake Chris Marker’s Sunless, of course, who wouldn’t? But instead … let’s just see if the sands of time work in my favour, as distinct from the ticking icicle clock above – er um. Will those sands form a hill I can climb before I take that leap to paradise? Or will I drown in them? And what’s the air like in hourglasses anyway? And why would the top be paradise? If it’s full it’s sinking, if it’s empty you’re sliding down and there’s no grip.

Hmm.

It’s called On Reflection. It’s a rough. Trivia note: if you look closely at the bum sketch you can see my reflected face.

This season my big word seems to be “hoik”. It’s a chunky animal, your average Hoik, with sudden bursts of energy and a mating ritual that can lead to terrible back problems.

On the weekend we managed get the Virgin in position at last. Ever since Leon delivered her and helped us hoik her into temporary storage in the big shed, we’ve been treading gingerly round the lady, worried about her physical state and anxious for her Assumption, body and soul, to her next long term home. For decades she’d sat under a staircase in Rose Bay, getting sea-spray weathered, contemplating her infant’s deteriorating face, a white religious creature that was no longer wanted when the owner commissioned a new Bali-style garden. That’s Buddha Chic for you. Knowing Katya’s enthusiasm for all things Mariolatrous, from the basilicas of France to Virgin Mary Blue anythings, Leon offered her to us. Katya wet herself and shrieked yeah!

Leon’s good like that. He can get things, he’s got a great eye, and he’s a wonderful landscaper and rose planter. This year at the Show his roses even gave the Usual Suspects who always dominate the flower sections a run for their money (you know who you are, Usual Suspects, though fortunately you do not know about this blog).

But where to put her? I wanted to have her over near the studio, where the remains of the old shed are sitting. But I’m lazy. Putting her there meant fewer holes to dig or posts to saw. We considered cleverly subtending her in relation to Buddha, who already dominates the grape pergola. Katya eventually decided on a spot at the end of one of the long paths in the vegie garden. And she was right, again. With a floor of leftover pebble stones leading to her, in her grotto of corrugated iron bolted into bush posts from up the hill, Mary would be able to contemplate the bananas and raspberries and lettuce and broccoli for many years.

Luckily we had Jane & Brian’s trolley still. Must return it ASAP, especially after I blew up Brian’s chainsaw last week. Now, Mary weighs much. Maybe 200kg. And we don’t like to ask visitors to do the heavy lifting, so it was up to Katya and me to hoik her. We mapped a path across the lawn. Then squirmed her onto the trolley. Tipped her back, and “holy hell” we cried, crossed ourselves and set off. There were many adventures along the way. Or committee meetings, really. Trying to decide how to take a corner was a ten minute chat. She ascended pretty easily in the end, after a hairy moment or two where we were weighing the pros and cons of centres of gravity and the difficulties of walking with crushed feet.

There’s still some landscaping to do – rocks from the roadside will lie at her feet. Katya will have to get into the bondcreting: I suspect that this is the first time Our Lady’s felt the kiss of direct sunlight on her plaster skin. All the same, we haven’t seen the brown snake that was hiding among the potatoes until she arrived.

The very next day, who should come but Michael from Harboursat to put in our satellite dish. I won’t bore you with the dread tales of our internet problems – well I will, but not today – but here he is, a man with a dish and some wires. Nice fellah, put it up in a trice and it’s sitting on our roof looking very …

… big. It’s quite a dominant structure. Me and the boys are into it. To me, it’s an echo from my childhood, all that space race stuff, there’s still something scifi about satellites. Katya hates it. She thinks it makes our house look like a shed again. Specifically, like a mini NASA outpost. You enter the office expecting banks of computers and someone worried about the signal from Houston. I reassure her that in two years time it’ll be history. The whole country will have gone wireless — Next G with buckets of downloads will be cheap as can be — we’ll be VOIPing and Skyping and gaming till our hearts are content. Somehow that didn’t reassure her.

Oh well, two new additions have hoiked our family into spring. We hoik ourselves out of bed at the hoik of dawn and gaze at our two new inhabitants as they channel spiritual and digital signals onto the farm. Our eyes are a-hoik with wonder.