Clouds In The Head

The problem with not getting much work as a writer – of falling in a pit for a while – is that when you do get work you’re not ready. You haven’t been writing. You’ve forgotten. Maybe this isn’t every writer, but it happened to me a couple of years ago. So what am I doing about it?

So far, making resolutions. Must do better. And tweeting replies to people’s tweets, but it’s hardly writing, and verges on the triting. Oh, and churning out Dungog Community College material, but that’s mostly straightforward.

To write you must write and write and write. Voices, dreams, headaches, options. anything that works. Stuff that doesn’t. Attempt to make sense of the world. File your thoughts. Live and – well, record the living. Above all make time for it. Start obsessing. Process and churn and then type/scrawl/draw/etch.

Hopefully that’s what I’m going to be doing. To write. To make myself. Until it becomes easy again. Well, if not easy, then not such a struggle.

http://followmyfilm.com/7films/

I’ve watched the first one which was great. I’ll get round to the rest …

The video of the clay stop-motion animations from the 2010 Create Art Carnival. Well done kids, there’s some good-uns in here.

You can also see the last lot from 2008 earlier on my blog.

In the first half of 2010, students at Dungog High School made a 1-minute ad for the Jennifer’s Words project. I acted as a mentor for the project, in an ad hoc way. Already the teachers Louise and Fiona and the students had had meetings with Jane Caro and Mojo ad agency and honed out a fine script.

What they didn’t have was experienced guidance for the shooting and editing stage. Louise called me and I gave them a little bit of help.

Let me say straight away, I had no input into the script. I read it and said, wow, that’s great. I helped with casting, running quasi-professional style auditions for the main parts, had a look at the storyboards and then made myself available for the first half of their one-day shoot.

They needed to know how to add a bit of light in– well I’m no DP but I’ve been on a few sets so I got them to set up a light, showed them how to angle a reflector. I explained some of the things I’d learnt over the years – like filling up space with actors, doing rehearsals, finessing the framing. I encouraged them to leave a lot of top and tail on shots, to not be satisfied with their first take, to go a bit tighter. I gave the director Tess some advice. Not much – you learn by doing, really.

In the afternoon I discussed the shots they’d be using for the main performance sequences and then left them to it.

A week later I came in to help with editing. Cameron their editor had already made a rough cut but there were some basic things that I knew from having been involved for years in this biz –when to cut in close, cutting for tightness of the audio track, cutting for performance, finding a rhythm, cutting out pauses and trimming out weaker moments (even Cate Blanchett’s performances get some degree of “rescue” in the edit room). It’s not rocket surgery but it is very important.

The Jennifer’s Words project is about literacy – its founder Janne Ryan’s mum loved words but has lost them through dementia. Janne wants to promote a love of words.

Literacy has two sides: to be able to read (and comprehend) is wonderful. To be able to write (and be comprehended) is even more wonderful. And writing isn’t just about sentence structure and vocab. There’s a mechanical process too. Knowing the difference between non-defining and defining relative clauses, or understanding what we mean by subjunctive or homoioteleuton or a hapax legomena is FAR less important than being able to actually pick up a pen and write – or turn on a computer keyboard and tap the keys – and create meaning.

Film literacy also has two sides. Despite the Twilight series, teens are pretty film savvy as far as watching and understanding.

But the act of picking up a pen and scrawling on paper translates in film terms into knowing how to crew, getting someone to “turn over”, calling “action” and “cut”, leaving space, thinking about pacing, shooting coverage, finding succinct ways to help an actor improve their performance, adding a little underlight to brighten a face, making sure that the basic uninflected action in a shot is clear, framing, not crossing the line, controlling crowds, safety, collaboration. To having patience – “hurry up and wait”. And thence to the mechanics of working an editing program, and then finding ways to cut for sound and performance and clarity and meaning and rhythm.

That’s what I wanted to add to the high-schoolers’ experience, a bit of my experience, a bit of film production literacy.

As my reward I got a free ticket to the final night film at the Dungog Film Festival – got to see Sami Swilks’ great little performance and then had a ticket to the party afterwards – but the real reward was seeing a film that had all the elements of a lovely little ad being given the chance to achieve that potential through a few small tips.

We knew we’d been losing chickens while we were away, according to Denis who was visiting every couple of days to look after things. He found a hen dead in the chook house and then a couple of the babies (2 months old) seemed to disappear. We assumed chicken hawks were responsible – we’d scared a couple off before we left.

So we got back home and unpacked and were watching telly when there was a noise from the fowl yard. Like a shot we were all out there – half of us naked. Coco (she’s a dog, she’s naked anyway) started rounding up chickens that had fled the yard and Gus and Ziz started rounding up Coco, who likes to gnaw on chickens given half a chance.

Then Donna shouted “there’s a big fat python in the yard”. No one else saw it. We didn’t disbelieve her, what with herself always being right and everything. So, thinking that the babies and their mum (Little Blackie) might be in danger if they slept outside the chook house, we piled Little Blackie and the little ones into the laybox and went inside. It was night. Myopic creatures like chooks don’t move round much at night.

The kids brushed their teeth and went to bed. Donna and I stayed up. We knew there was a problem. We didn’t know what to do about it. We hoped it would go away of its own accord. We knew it wouldn’t.

More squawking caterwauled out of the henhole. Donna and I clamped the headlamps we’d been given for Christmas on our noggins and sprinted to the rescue. Cue dynamic Shaft-style music. Little Blackie was back in the yard with most of the chicks. We lifted the lid of the laybox and there was the python, squeezing the last breath out of a young chicken. We ran around for a few seconds, in that panic that reassures the human species they’re actually going to accomplish something when their thoughts settle down, then Donna, always the more sensible, ran to get tongs and a pillow slip.

A military machine, us. While I tried to grab the python with the tongs, Donna screamed not to grab it and if I did grab it grab it just behind the head and wait till it had the chick’s head entirely in its mouth and she gave me some scientific facts about pythons that I can’t remember but they couldn’t have all been true. The python got away into the wall cavity. We left the dead chick in the laybox (as bait, clever, huh) and went inside.

Ten minutes later we were back again. The python was back at the chick. We had our barbecue tongs and pillow slip again. I grabbed it. Donna screamed again, I dropped it again and the python glided into the chook house proper. We peered into the chook house. The python was inches away from one of our roosters, which was cowering, shaking, quivering like a kid who’s just eaten an ice-cream too quickly or a rooster hoping its Invisibility Cloak was working. The other rooster had backed itself into a corner and was pretending it was the corner. We went back inside. (All the hens had escaped out into the chook yard. Only the roosters had stayed to staff the barricades. I vote the hens the more level-headed.)

Ten more minutes and we were back yet again. By now we were fully dressed. Pythons don’t have venom but apparently they have a nasty set of teeth. This time the python’s head was around the chick’s head, its body coiled again around the body, and with one hoick I picked the tangled combination and dropped it into – not a pillow slip in Donna’s hands but a plastic tub with a lid, on the ground. On with the lid.

Breathe out. Bed.

Next day we offered the snake to our friends at Tabbil Forest, a hippyish property up the road. We couldn’t have a python living at our place that had acquired not only the taste for chicken but also detailed knowledge of their whereabouts. Jane and Brian jumped at the chance. They wanted it for their vegie garden machinery shed, to cut the rat and mouse population. So, we peeked into the tub to discover a serpent with a creepy bulge halfway along its belly, and put the plastic tub, the kids, and the dog into the ute. Time to deliver the snake.

We released our distended friend on a summer’s day in 2010. Once released, it gave a wonderful display for the hordes – curling between motorbike spokes, meandering over rake ends. We wish it well. May it live to a ripe age on the vermin of Tabbil Forest. May it never find its way back to our chickens again.

I’m temporarily shifting blogs to Bathing Franky at http://bathingfranky.wordpress.com/ for the duration of the shoot. Rehearsals start next week, but my main involvement will be firsting it for three of the four weeks shoot. And occasionally blogging or making the cast and crew do a bit of blogging themselves. Not that that’s a traditional first AD’s job, but I’m not a traditional first!

Figure 1 White Peach

Figure 2 Bananas b/w Clouds

Figure 3 Clouds in the valley

Figure 4 Forest Path Gate

Figure 5 Back To The White Peach, Rose Arbour Behind

I love this time of year.

Gresford School P&C are pleased to announce that the Cowpat Lotto will be on again at the Billycart Derby this year. We are exceptionally thrilled that Anna Tickle’s multi-award-winning Pinzgauer cow Lockwood Lodge Xena will be the animal called upon to do the honours. She will be parading the circuit with her 4-month-old calf as part of her extensive tour of shows and livestock events across the state, and ahead of her performance at the Sydney Royal Easter Show.

So far this year LLX and Anna have been unbeaten in interbreed female classes. Triumphs include the Canberra Royal, supreme livestock exhibit at the Crookwell Show (beating prime steer, wool and sheep) and of course supreme beast at the Gresford Show. The Pinzgauer breed is an Austrian one of great ancientness and cowpat aiming ability.

The cowpat lotto is moving behind the pub, near the gumboot toss, which the P&C is also taking over this year, volunteers willing. During the Derby, do take some time out hurl a boot, or vie for the $300 prize in the lotto.