Dazed and confused

[smokingboot]

So I know my direction. I know the next thing I'm meant to be writing, great concept and I honestly believe very funky indeed. It needs time, it needs energy. It's moving slowly but that's how I write.

There's this other thing, another project I cannot give up. It makes no sense and has very little practical future. Presuming I could get funds for it, I would need a director, someone who a)could evoke The Tempest and b)could create wonders for a song. And even then, what is its point? A film entry for the Festival of Strange Shorts? (this festival should exist even if it has nothing to do with movies) It's crazy, but somehow I keep going back to it and adding scenes. I haven't even formatted the damn thing in Final Draft. Why can't I leave this alone when I have a far more important, far more fun and far more marketable project to focus on?

Because I'm ill and woozy. It seems my creativity kicks in most comfortably when my temperature's no less than 102 degrees.

Comments

[hybridartifacts.livejournal.com]

Impractical creative projects are a creative necessity. It's what creative people do. Practical creative projects that will make money are for business people ;)

Getting a balance between the two is ????

I think I'm feeling deliberately controversial today...

maybe there IS a film festival for strange shorts and the status if accepted would lead to other things?

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Heh. Not controversial so much as bang on the button! Weirdly, this morning, I have been able to do a little work on both projects.

I find it very hard to get the balance right. Oh, if there was a festival for strange shorts, how happy I would be! I could camp out there! The only thing I don't get from what you've written is what you mean about the status...d can you make that clearer for me? Forgive my obtuseness I'm really not well right now (coughs pathetically!)

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

ignore that 'd' I don't know what it's doing there!

[hybridartifacts.livejournal.com]

One of the reasons for creating shorts is that if they get accepted in a festival, even if the short itself does not generate a profit, it does confer the beginnings of a positive reputation and can lead to interest from backers for other projects, offers of work and so on. At the point where the idea of an animated version of my Alice artwork was still 'on the go' I had the original animator who proposed the idea, an award nominated composer, a scriptwriter and a publicist all keen to be involved and putting time into the project alongside their paid work because they saw it as a viable opportunity. In the end it fell through because the key person (the animator) went freelance and no doubt the extra stresses and having to prioritise paid work just made it all impossible.

[hybridartifacts.livejournal.com]

I rather like the 'd' - it seems (d)efiant and if not (d)eliberate than somehow (d)esirable in a (d)ecadent way.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see, of course...that does make sense. I hope one day Alice does get made. If I ever meet an animator, I will ask you if you would mind me giving them your contact details, just in hope!

You are right about the creation of reputation and getting more work: that's certainly how the directors at our studio try to get things going. I know a few very gifted starting out directors, but their work is more happening, snappy and immediate, less dreamworld orientated - except for one, who has the right feeling but no knowledge of the background to my story. So I dunno.

If the fever gets too much, I might stick it up here, see what people think...

[hybridartifacts.livejournal.com]

Its probably easier to impart the knowledge to the director with the right feel than to encourage the other ones to be different in how they do things. A lot probably depends on to what extent the directors are working from gut instinct/preference with their approaches or if they deliberate choices - film is a language, and someone truly fluent in it should be able to employ a different 'accent', but often they only know it in the form they already use it (if that makes any sense).
A sense of a dream-world in film can be imparted in so many ways - through unconventional editing, visual or audio incongruity, 'flat' direction, lighting, even encouraging certain acting styles. Twin Peaks is a classic example (and David Lynch as a director tends to the dreamlike in many of his films). I did my first degree in film and drama (though it did have a practical element it was largely theoretical and back in the early days of video so I'm no director myself alas).

I have a feeling that the Alice film may be on a back burner so long that if it ever gets any further I will have moved so far on myself that it would be a major leap for me to integrate where I was with where I will be (perhaps thats actually appropriate for Alice though?). I am always more than have for people to share my work with others regardless btw - you never know when a connection might lead to something.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

I think you are so right about film being a language, as becomes more evident to me from the way I stutter in it!

Often these projects left in the past take on a new guise when we've detached from them, and someone else picks them up. I don't know if the 'later' creation is necessarily better, but it's often so different it wakes us up.