I’m discovering that working on the pre-production of one film whilst trying to promote and distribute another is quite difficult. My time recently has been spent working on a movie that I shot last year and making sure it gets seen. You can read more about that here, so I won’t go into any more detail. I’m realizing that they have different demands, promoting a film doesn’t require much more creative input, it just involves the determination to keep pushing it forward. Making a film still presents creative challenges, which require a bit more thought perhaps. I enjoy all of these elements, but doing them in tandem at the same time is quite unusual for me!
It reminds me of the story of the tortoise and the hare. I had an Aesop’s Fables book when I was a child and this was one of my favourite stories. I think of the last film I made as the hare. It has accelerated very quickly over the last four years and taken me all over the world, for which I am very lucky indeed. But I am enjoying ‘Crushing Snails’ more. The pace at which I can savour the creative process, take time to reflect and amend things, develop myself at the same time. Ultimately, I believe this project will perhaps take me further as a person, because I’ve had to learn so many new things in the last few months that I would’ve always had someone else do for me. The challenge of making this on such a small budget has really focussed me.
I think we’d all be quite liberated if we judged ourselves outside of what we think everyone else expects. I’m certainly trying to forge a different path from the one I’ve always followed before, because I think there may be new things to find there!
On a very distressing note, I’ve come down with one of my occasional bouts of man flu, which means that my voice has dropped three octaves and I can’t play the flutes any more this weekend. Damn my unhealthy lifestyle!
