It feels like it has been a spectacularly long time since I finished a film. In reality it depends on the definition. I’ve had music videos recently, did experimental shorts in the pandemic and produced Isra with Will. But it’s been a while since I directed a narrative. Over ten years in fact. And it has pissed me off immensely for most of those years.
I shouldn’t been so hard on myself. A lot happened in that time, and it wasn’t for want of trying to make stuff. In fact, some of the false starts were more demoralising than the bad films I’ve made (I speak from experience of having made a lot of bad films.) Failing to finish something is hideously frustrating. The fact that The Confusion of Tongues took ages to polish was maddening enough, but other projects got abandoned in varying states of incompletion. That was never previously my style. I would always complete things, even if they ended up shonky (made a lot of shonk… you get the gist.)
So, it has been a pleasure to send a final version of a documentary to the Goldthorps in Weymouth. I followed them last summer while they made an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s The Well Beloved on iPhones. I’m quite happy with the result, primarily because it gets me back on the bike. Another cliche: you are only as good as your last gig. And my last gig was some time ago.
What next? Well I am buzzing with ideas. Although, ideas haven’t been the problem for the last few years. I still feel as if I am without a tribe here in Bournemouth. At least in Birmingham I was working with Andy Paton, John Bradburn and Peter Rudge. Here is much more atomised. I know other filmmakers but it doesn’t feel as if we have grown together in the way that I did with those guys. Obviously things have to start somewhere, and I very much enjoy working with Will Whiting, but we don’t have a critical mass here. A couple of weeks ago I was presenting to the newly formed regional film office, which is lovely, but I remember doing similar 15 years ago in Stoke/Birmingham.
I don’t wish to sound negative, because I think they’ll do great work. But I don’t personally see it as a play space that I’ll operate in. That’s for a different, professional league, which offers little appeal to me. My days of chasing that rainbow are definitely over (do I get prizes for the cliche count?) So, answer the question, what next? Well I enjoyed the single person shoot for the documentary and would like to do something I’ve never really done before; shooting drama single handedly. I think necessity has brought me here, but also the issue of what I find fun to do. As I pointed out, I have no professional desire, so the hobbyist amateur should stay on the razor wire of fun/challenge that keeps the subject interesting. I have no young mouths to feed, no career ladder to climb. I just have ideas for stories and I want to make them. So I shall get on and make them.
