My first month as a freelancer....

I can’t believe it’s been a month since that first Monday I woke up and DIDN’T have to shell out £45 for a week of forcefully inserting myself in to someone’s armpit for 30 minutes (return!) to go and sit in an office all day, to instead have a fully flexible diary and be only answerable to myself. What a change! A wonderful one.

The first month has been unexpectedly busy, and it’s amazing to already be able to look back and see I’m overtly heading in the direction I wanted when I made the difficult decision to leave the comfort of my full time production studio job.

I was lucky enough to spend 5 days in Denver and New York securing soundbites for a film about conflict free gold mining. It’s an interesting subject, and I’m delighted my old agency, VisualMedia still trust and value me enough to continue booking me to produce work for their clients.

My job consists of a lot of travel, but more often than not I don’t get the chance to enjoy the locations I’m filming in. With this in mind, and with newfound diary autonomy I extended my time in New York by an extra couple of days and had the most amazing time hanging out with friends, and exploring the incredible city.

America aside, I have spent time on the beach in Kent (thank god for the Indian Summer) and a day in a storage unit filming a pair of web promo films that are currently being edited, have recce’d several London pubs for a short film about a vivacious landlady, spent time in Madame JoJo’s getting inspiration for a short film from an Award winning feature script that I’m really excited to be producing in December, and trying to blag a free bunch of flowers for a no-budget short I’m Producing for one of PunchDrunk’s incredibly talented performer directors.

So. It seems Freelance Month Two has a LOT to live up to!

The Inaugural AdCan Awards - WE WON!!!

I’m on Cloud 9.

5 months ago I came across a tweet from Partizan that caught my eye - the announcement of a new Awards scheme (http://www.adcanawards.com/) with the key purpose of giving emerging film talent a platform to shine within the highly competitive advertising industry, with the added bonus of doing something wonderful for small charities desperately in need of creative media to communicate their story.

Inspiration for our ad struck while I was sunning myself on a desert island off the coast of Colombia (note to self: sun, sand & surf are definitley conducive to the creative process!!) and upon my return from holiday I set about securing crew and sourcing talent.

In brainstorming the idea I had two overriding aims:

1) As it was a no-budget production the creative HAD to be sympathetic to that. Locations and talent had to be kept to a minimum. Simplicity was key, but in order to be in with a chance the story therefore HAD to be strong.

2) As a Producer I wanted to push myself in terms of embarking on a challenging production (and hopefully that would be recognised come the final submission), so kids (and all the associated legalities), animals, animation and the Great British outdoors definitely ticked that box!!

As ever production had it’s ups and downs: ups being our wonderful 6 year old lead and his very flexible and amenable mum, downs being the squally Bank Holiday weekend weather, but despite all this we actually managed to wrap 10 minutes early, and everyone seemed delighted with what was in the can.

As a shortlisted entrant I had the privilege of spending a day meeting Producers and Directors from the Awards’ main sponsors: Rattling Stick, Partizan and Nexus. WHAT a fantastic and inspiring day! Everyone was SO intersting, kind, patient, informative, fun and deeply motivational.

What really stuck out to me was that everyone has their own story. Their own journey. And that this wonderful industry we have the privilege of earning a living from is extremely open minded and not only welcomes, but flourishes on diversity in whatever form it may come.

As the evening Awards event arrived it was electric entering Framestore and being ushered past their real life Oscar they’d recently won for their VFX work on Gravity!

It was strange, and of course exhilirating to see our ad on the big screen and to witness other people’s reactions to it! The speech that Juno Hollyhock (the Executive Director of the charity our film represented) gave about what an important tool we had given her brought a tear to many eyes in the room. And to win not only our category but also the Grand Prix prize for the evening: genuinely a dream come true.

So I’m extremely excited to see what the coming weeks will hold. I have received so much invaluable advice and had the opportunity to meet some of the real luminaries of the industry I aspire to - so a massive thank you to Dan and Brydon who organised the whole event and I hope our paths cross again very soon.

You can view the film here:

https://vimeo.com/102888459

Boyhood

I went to see Boyhood last night & what a treat it was!

The film was shot intermittently over a twelve-year period, as protagonist Ellar Coltrane grew from childhood to adulthood. Filming began in the summer of 2002 and was completed in October 2013. Upon its release, the film was declared a landmark by many notable film critics, with particular praise aimed at the film's direction, acting, and scope.

Rotten Tomatoes describes it as "Epic in technical scale but breathlessly intimate in narrative scope, Boyhood is a sprawling investigation of the human condition"

As a viewer we are regularly asked to suspend our disbelief in order for events unfolding in front of our eyes to have a genuine impact. Not so with this incredible 'life's-work' of Richard Linklater.

Viewers are often distracted in coming of age journeys, busy assessing how well cast the various children are, and how effective the fake wrinkles are on the A-lister we relish seeing disguised as a geriatric.

In 'Boyhood' it is delightfully easy to quickly become hopelessly immersed in the story. It feels like we are recounting memories of real people from our own lives.

As the film comes towards it's conclusion & we see the mother of two having the predictable tear filled crisis that both her children have flown the nest, for the first time ever, I felt genuine empathy, as her feelings triggered the realisation that my own journey with this wonderful family was also coming to an end.

As a Producer myself I suspect this is a fairly bold statement but I genuinely don't want to break the magic by researching how the film was produced. How it was scripted (was any of it real?? The inclination towards saying yes is too wonderful to burst), the mundanities of scheduling and contracts....

For now anyway I'm just going to enjoy the magic of a fantastic and incredibly real story, very well told.

AdCan Awards - We Are Shortlisted!

I was absolutely delighted to receive notification that the entry I wrote and produced for the inaugural AdCan Awards (http://adcanawards.com/) has been shortlisted for an Award. 

To receive this news just 24 hours after announcing my intention to become a Freelance Producer feels like a wonderful omen!

The new initiative, predominantly sponsored by Partizan, Rattling Stick and Nexus, is a vehicle for young talent to emerge, whilst also benefiting very worthy causes (namely charities who need creative, quality TVCs but who don't have the available budget to commission such productions) so it's fantastic to have been recognised for our entry. 

I specifically wrote a script that would challenge me from a production perspective: all the action was set outdoors (which considering filming was set to take place in the UK over May Bank Holiday was a gutsy plan!), our lead role was to be played by a 6 year old boy with no film experience (but an enthusiastic amateur dramatic according to his mum!), and the Director suggested a scene with a pack of dogs would really enhance the narrative (to which I agreed!?). Embarking (excuse the pun!) on securing a pack of dogs for a no-budget short was intense. The usual bartering tool of "we're shooting it on a Red Epic - it'll be great for your showreel" doesn't really hold much weight with canines...! But the pieces all fell in to place and not only did the shoot go really well, we even wrapped 10 minutes early!

The film is strictly private until the winners are announced so we all have our fingers crossed for the Awards Ceremony on 7th August......

Going It Alone....

After eight and a half years working in full time contracted work, initially in Consumer PR, then as a Producer in a corporate and online production studio, I have decided I am ready for a change, raring for a new challenge, and so am going to brave it alone.

It's definitely not been a rash decision, in fact I started researching and initiating meetings with people almost 5 months ago, but now that I have officially tendered my resignation, it feels like D-Day (AKA the first Monday morning I wake up and DON'T trudge to the tube, shell out £45 for the weekly privilege of sweaty, intimate stranger-armpit-time, but rather have a nice lie in, a cup of tea whilst strolling around the garden) is approaching VERY fast and the learning curve feels very steep!

I was quite a nerd at school so can say with conviction that I didn't sleep through the class that outlines the pros and cons of limited companies vs. sole traders, or the one that explained tax returns....but, happily, all seems to be falling in to place piece by piece. 

As a true Scott's lassie I'm certainly not alone in saying the countdown to independence is ON!