Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Invited by a real writer.

Dear All,

I was invited by a proper writer, Alison Down to write stuff and 'guest star' on her blog. 

I was genuinley surprised and chuffed as she, 'does writing' for a living so to be part of her 'writers tour' was just DEAD GOOD.

Here it is on her blog, 

http://www.alisondown.net/things-i-like-a-lot

I'm now going to test you on what I said so you better go back and actually open the link.

I'm not really.

Or am I?

Thank you Alison Down for inviting me in. I got there eventually!



Some Photograghs.

Taken 1st September 2014. 

Final wall of Granton.
























































Wednesday, July 9, 2014

The Wall-less Mural and The a-n Re:view Bursary (part two)


I'm finding that making a film is rather a complicated thing.
Actually, it's nowhere near the actual making of the film yet; it’s the, ‘getting the story out of my head into some kind of readable format thing.’
The toughest lesson is, you think you have your story, your story is your story, it's there, it happened, and it’s fact. But it still has to be written down. Written down to be read. Written well, so it’s not too short, not too long, not too dull, the right tone...it’s a complicated story. I could narrate over a series of images and sound but obviously the first part is to get something narratable! Oh yes, and I’m not a writer, which seems mad whilst tapping away on the keys on my laptop. Normally at this point I’d draw something, sketch something, doodle. I’d have materials in my head, objects, form, colour, because I’m a visual artist that puts stuff together, I’m allergic to writing. Not that putting stuff together is easy, far from it, but I make things that make people ask questions, I’m not used to spelling it out, so maybe that’s the same tact I use here. Nobody said the film has to spell something out, it has to invite and engage and offer a platform for discussion, an arena for thought, I don’t have to come up with a new strategy, I just have to work out this new medium.
The difficulty of putting your thoughts into words.


Of course this is difficult!
So, I sat and stared at the blank screen...
Made tea, came back, went to work, came back, went to Aldi, came back, saw friends, came back, went the game, came back, flippeneck something has to give at some point. 

studio

studio

I thought I'd figure out how to actually tell the story quite quickly, uh errr (that's the Family Fortunes X noise off the board, remember it?)  But as you begin to talk to people, my mentors David Jacques (artist/filmmaker) and Jah Jussa (film maker) and you begin to see the possibilities available and really think about the translation of your tale into moving image with sound. It's completely overwhelming.
I feel a sense of responsibility here, this is important.
The first few meetings with my new mentors were more about explaining the actual story behind the initial stalled project, The L5 Mural, and it's context, the area, what happened with regard to the family house being demolished, the bigger picture, the Housing Market Renewal Initiative, Liverpool Football Club, local politics, local people, postcodes, Liverpool Biennial, a bakery, childhood memories, the match, the crowds, the horses, minding cars, the lemmo man, the icey, pebbles in cobbles, it's all in there kids, you name it! It doesn’t even matter if you don’t know what all of these things are or can’t relate to it personally, everyone can relate to growing up and the profound effect childhood memories can have on you and this is really how far back this project goes. It has to because it was all a response to ‘home’. Emotive stuff, it's a frustrating topic because of it's layers. Especially when later on in the story the academics with their statistics stepped in giving the moneymen and developers a ‘supported’ reason for wading into an area and changing it forever with no regard to the people who lived there. I find it frustrating to try and explain. I think part of the reason to paint the mural in the first place was so I/we wouldn't have to anymore - it would spark questions - it's easier to answer questions I find than sit and try and tell it from the start.
So here I am, in a room with two filmmakers trying to explain something so complicated knowing there's a way to do it but also knowing I'm far from working that out yet.
Acceptance and patience needed. Not strong character traits of mine.
My mentors are not new to the story, far from it, but they are new to me. We swap opinions and they give me some great heads up on films to look at, websites to check out and ultimately offer support and we all realise there's a long long long way to go. However, that's what the bursary’s for. I keep saying this and that keeps me sane. One of the films David put me onto was Blight 1994-96 a collaborative project between filmmaker John Smith and composer Jocelyn Pook.
It's a great piece and seriously resonated with me as the footage in the film is so similar to what we already have. The film has ‘space’ within it, room to ponder. The words and voices we hear could be lyrics from a song, a poem, they’re only pieced together towards the end. The idea of collaboration with a composer is also exciting. I’d had already had initial talks with Gary O’Donnell, a composer who happens to live around the corner from me in Anfield. We’d never met before but he’d offered to write a score for the film. Amazing.
Gary becomes mentor number 3.
I met him via Pat, my friend from another ongoing project in the area, Homebaked. (Another complicated beast so it was inevitable it and I would end up together.) We've weaved in and out of each other’s lives since early 2012. Homebaked is embedded forever to all those who’ve ever become involved. A concise summary of that project in relation to my practice here:
So...we have an artist that makes films, a filmmaker and a composer. And me.
I was still struggling though. I still needed to find a way to express the story.
I watched lots of films and it wasn't until I had a conversation with another Homebaked graduate and fellow Royal Standard studio member, artist Sam Jones that I began to see how this could develop. I'd never been interested in a 'straight' documentary style piece, always drawn to the more abstract. I’d seen and heard enough not to go down the documentary format again, I understand that is a personal instinctive feeling. The documentary format would lead to personal frustration. To those like me who are numb to the subject I need to find an alternative approach.
In the film Blight I liked that although there is very little dialogue you gained so much information. It was thoughtful and poetic.
Based on my painful attempts of verbal description and throwing around words such as 'Narnia' and 'gritty' Sam understood where I was coming from. I know, a miracle. She introduced me to the filmmaker Jan Svankmajer and the term 'magic realism', in regard particularly to literature.
studio
Sam becomes mentor number 4.
I’d also had the idea of incorporating stop animation into the film, the mural itself had taken a 'children’s story' pallet if you like, (bright primary colours most prominent – think Lego and inject some electric Mexico sky blue) and theme. I developed this approach to allow a serious complicated subject matter a stage that would actively engage all levels – friendly fire if you like but powerful in the selection of 'characters' used to represent the stories main players. At the stage of the mural project that I began to work with young people it was brilliant to see them put their own spin on it too. Immediately getting where I was coming from and responding.
sketches
Then, a chance meeting with yet another Homebaked connection, Mia Tagg, led to finding out that she in fact also made films. I'd only known her in 'bakery guise' but more specifically Mia had done stop frame animation.  I'd roughly said what I wanted to do in regard to stop frame animation and we decided to build a light box. Something that she'd done before and I thought could work beautifully for this project and future work.
This is now a smaller on-going project with my friend Stefan building, The4tieredMialightboxstopanimationmachine!
The4tieredMialightboxstopanimationmachine

We looked at so many clips/short films/music videos...a small selection here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hSJxbG9Vls music video by Merz, Verily
https://vimeo.com/10005002 Lemony Snickets - end titles Jim Van Wyke
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDPYiZSKHfc Little Red Cap by Hazel O’Brien
The 'walk and talk' film made with Jeanne Van Heeswijk interviewing me in 2012 as we walked around Granton Road and L5 https://vimeo.com/50310050
The list is extensive. It’s time to bring that net back in.
After a series of writing attempts, still really not sure what I was writing, I decided to get some of the images I had floating about in my head on paper. This I can do. This is something tangible that can now be discussed.
In the meantime Mia has agreed to be screenwriter. This takes a huge weight off me, I think sometimes a subject is so big and literally so close to home is hard to distance yourself from it. She can try to translate my sketches and hours and hours of dialogue!! We'll work together with Gary and Sam to begin playing with sound and see where we go.
It’s a huge learning curve and when I’m not panicking I’m enjoying it. Honest!

Monday, May 5, 2014

Phoenix and all that...The Wall-less Mural and The a-n Re:view Bursary



This is a weird one as I’m writing with two platforms of readers in mind, my ‘regulars’ who’ve come with me so far and any new readers via a-n magazine’s blog. I’m not able to work out how to begin at the very beginning, that’s just not fair for any of us! So, I’ll take it from here and continue as normal and see how we go. OK?

The reason for the second blog strand is that I recently received an a-n re:view bursary and part of the requirements on receiving it is to talk about it via the a-n blog. Fair enough. I got all bamboozled at the thought of writing two blogs, as if I had to split it and talk to one (like an old mate) and the other (a-n) like a newcomer. Then I thought, flippeneck stop thinking about it and just write! Sometimes honestly the things you spend time on...

I’ll just get straight to it.

I received the a-n re:view bursary to help me to lift one of my projects off a dead end street (by crane) and give it another go, it’s third go.

The Mural Project came to a grinding halt and I was stuck. In concrete. Fixed. It was scary. And in my head, everyone was looking. Waiting...TICK TOCK, TICK TOCK. Waiting for my next move, I didn’t have one. Panic.  What do I do?


shadow drawings - planning the mural



Then it started to dawn on me, nobody else is looking, nobody else is even thinking about it, they’re thinking about their own concrete, or cornflakes or whatever. I don’t enter their heads, of course I don’t! They just think that I’ve hit another obstacle to navigate, they think I will navigate it and actually weren’t panicking at all. I don’t know who ‘they’ are but find myself thinking way too much about what they think. In my head all the people I’d worked with on this project, The L5 Mural, were sitting there with nothing else to do but wonder what I was doing and getting more and more disappointed in me the longer I took to figure out how to reach the right tool to start chipping me out of that concrete. They were getting impatient; surely? I thought I’d failed them. Them and me.

There’s an argument for walking away, but there’s a bigger argument to stay.

After many months of anger, resentment, and blank landscapes where creative thought used to be I finally started to look at what I’d amassed, collected, recorded along the way, there was so much interesting, beautiful raw material, particularly film footage taken by Stephen, thank God he thought of it. I would've been gutted now without footage of Granton Road coming down. Other stuff is from my phone. Raw is the word. This was the turning point. I’d met people involved in the ‘film world’ along the way whilst trying to make the mural, I’d always planned to have the actual 'mural making' onsite filmed by professional film makers who I also trusted to respond to the project as a whole within thier production. 
I thought I had something. 
It was vague but made my belly flutter like it hadn’t done since the project took a fatal blow and it’s knees buckled last September.

shadow drawings - planning the mural


The new idea.

A film plus another work – the two will go hand in hand but at this stage I’ll keep the other idea under wraps. Too much too soon can sometimes become overwhelming. For me!

A film though!!?? I’ve never made a film. Anyone who knows my work will have heard this before. “I’ve never made a (pick a work).” It annoys me; my own ideas annoy me! A film about the process of trying to make a mural in an area that couldn’t be more complex if it tried, during a major regeneration project that has stop-started since 2002.  The mural was something I’d hoped would flag us up, add something, bring people too, share issues with, educate via, brighten, enlighten, demonstrate pride, defiance maybe? Ultimately show we were worth it. 
With the film I have an opportunity to look at this journey and the story that underpins it all. At this stage I know who to approach and have already had a couple of initial chats with the chosen ‘mentors’ – it’s the preparation for the preparation stage. The pre, pre, pre, pre-production. I’ve no idea what’s going to happen but I know receiving the bursary in the first place gave me a timely boost that the work I’d been doing for the past two years may not have been in vein.

combining ideas from Arch Bishop Beck workshops