Filmwise
January 28th 2004 -
Filmwise
8/8 this week: I had a bit of a problem with #6 – I remembered the film from childhood, but couldn’t work out the name of it. In the end, brute force got me most of the way there: a search for “dragon” in the imdb.
I was pleased that last week’s poor effort was due to my not having seen most of the films I missed. The only one I’d seen was “The Sting”, and the picture for that one was very obscure.
Film making
Anna & I & Jon & Kate went to a film group evening and listened in at all the professional and semi-pro people talking about film-making. It was a long way more professional than I was interested in: I tried to ask what level most of the people were at (what production budgets do most of you work at? I’m at 0 to $100), but phrased it badly and was righteously smacked down by an actor who I vaguely recognised (eventually) from one of the Matrix films. I don’t think there were any other “weekend warriors” there. One person said that, as an actor, he never, ever worked for free, and that it was insulting that it still happens. He got a lot of applause. I was pretty much ready to slink out at that point, but the others were still pretty interested so we hung around through some spirited debate about working overseas, heard some people introduce themselves, heard a pitch for an acting workshop and a casting/crew call for a medium-budget horror film, and then took off to have dinner at a vegetarian restaurant in the city.
It could have been mildly depressing – I certainly copped a couple of sneers and a wee bit of hostility – but I think it was mainly because the state of film-making is quite poor in Australia at the moment: everyone was talking about how little work there was.
Dinner was nice, though, and I told Jon & Kate about my idea for a full length film about a kidnapping, about which I worked out some more details as I was talking to them. Which was nice.
baddogbot Says:
January 28th, 2004 at 5:34 pm
"a full length film about a kidnapping…"
possibly "starring" some sneering actor from one of the matrix movies…? what’s your motivation for *this* scene, acting-boy?
for what it’s worth, the issue of pay-for-performance (as you’ve just discovered) is one of the touchiest ones in what i’ll loosely refer to as "the arts world"…
certainly comes up a lot in poetry circles… some people are happy simply to be invited to read & will do so for free or, if they’re lucky, for a pittance. others refuse to read if the organisers can’t offer sufficient recompense… the second group tend to paint the first group as immoral &/or stupid people who are essentially taking the food out of the second group’s collective mouths by allowing themselves to be exploited…
as with so many issues, i’ve always thought it’s a context thing… i.e., it’s fine to read for free if you’re (for example) helping out a friend, or have been invited to read at a rally, or a benefit, or something… but if you’ve been invited to read at, say, the sydney festival (unlikely, i admit) or some other large, comparatively well-funded event, then damn straight there should be some cash attached…
i would’ve thought the same would apply to film-making, depending on whether you were shooting something on video over the course of a weekend or trying to wrap up post-production before new line cinema makes good on their threat of sending in the hired goons…
as for, "as an actor, he never, ever worked for free, and … it was insulting that it still happens", well, that’s great. congratulations to whoever that was on being able to resolve things so effortlessly into black & white…
(& let’s just not start on "as a non-actor, i never, ever worked for six months for a few million bucks & a percentage of the gross, & it’s insulting that that kinda thing still happens…" of course, that’s not to say i’d refuse a contract should 21st century otter ever need to cast a george clooney – would you believe john goodman? – look-a-like…)
Andrew Says:
January 29th, 2004 at 11:03 am
Yeah… I wish I’d made it clearer that I was a full-time job, weekend-filmmaker kinda person, willing to work on other people’s projects for free with quid quo pro…
baddogbot Says:
January 29th, 2004 at 8:46 pm
i’m guessing that means i still have plenty of time to work on my clooneyismo…?