Location Spanner office |
Mood Confident |
Date 31 March 2006
Crude structure in post-it notes on office wallHave spent the last five days with David The Editor and a huge pile of multi-coloured post-it notes working out Crude's overall structure, animation sequences and narrative arc
Location Pub opposite De Lane Lea, Soho |
Mood Strangely isolated, as though everyone is talking about someone else's film |
Date 9 February 2006
Second funding evening tonight. Last time we were asking for 500 quid a punt, this time it was 5000. Which seems an enormous amount of money to me, but didn't seem to cause too many raised eyebrows. We slightly picked the number out of a hat - but then said people could also get a "half loan" – i.e. 2500. Played the trailer tonight. First time we've had Crude up on the big screen. Seemed pretty coherent to me. Everyone loved Fernand. Friendly Funder spoke again and was even better than last time.
Location Chained to Avid in office making Crude trailer |
Mood Spaced out |
Date 2 February 2006
I've made trailers of other films and they take only a few days. But that's when you're making one from the finished film, I now realise. Whereas we've got 87 hours of footage and not much idea of what we're trying to do. Even watching all that would be more time than we have - 5 days of David The Editor.
Location Greasy spoon cafe in Old St |
Mood Black humour |
Date 11 January 2006
Osteopath Simon - together with painkillers Nurofen - worked a small miracle on my back, to the extent that I can now do everything except play the piano. Apparently I had twisted a rib which was poking into a lung and causing me to squeal every time I breathed in. The camera equipment and French Alps have owned up.
Location Spanner Films office |
Mood Happy |
Date 13 November 2005
Entirely predictably, the new monitor arrived today, the day after John's disappointment. I watched the footage at full quality - and found the best shots - and it looked spectacular. David Hill came over. He edited McLibel and I'd love for him to edit Crude too. Only problem is that he's very expensive. But I explained the concept of all the crew owning shares - and getting royalty cheques for the next 10 years - and he seemed to agree.
Location Spanner Films office |
Mood Fed up |
Date 12 November 2005
We've been waiting ages to show John Battsek the footage, as we can't look at it at the highest quality until we get the new HDV monitor and Avid setup, which I'm being slow about getting my head around. So we gave in and invited him to come over and watch me looking through tapes trying to find the odd good shot. He looked suitably worried, as I would have if someone showed me that pile of crock and said it was a film. Now he's all disappointed I feel like I've failed my Grade 5 trumpet exam and let down the teacher all over again.
Location Healthy Eating Cafe in Camden |
Mood Preparing for long battle ahead |
Date 11 October 2005
Two good thoughts from "The End of Oil" conference today.
1. The problem is: how do we market austerity?
Location Sitting on floor in corridor in weird Chinese-owned hotel in Paris as only place where WIFI works |
Mood Annoyed |
Date 12 June 2005
Airbus's mockup of their really really big new plane at Paris Airshow.
Location In bed at home in Camden |
Mood Quietly confident |
Date 26 June 2002
I was snowboarding through perfect powder yesterday, so didn't really want to wake up and answer the phone. But it did insist on ringing and ringing on the landline and then the mobile and then the landline, till I suddenly panicked that my dad was dead and leapt to it. It was my filmmaking friend Alex Cooke, wondering why I was asleep at 7.45pm when we were meeting in Kings Cross at 7.30pm to go to a documentary seminar. She was remarkably understanding and suggested we forget it, but - thankfully, thankfully - I felt bad and cycled down there quick.
+
