That film and the a-n Re:View Bursary (part three)

I’m just going to dive in all guns blazing and hit you with the good stuff.

As a direct result of getting the a-n Re:view bursary last year I’m now finally on the right road to making a short film. It was born out of a preceding public art project that started in 2012. That project was based on the design and execution of painting something big, bold, bright and positive on a property in an area of Liverpool that had been left devastated by the Housing Market Renewal initiative. It was to be a big flag, a banner and SOS call to the world that this wasn’t what we wanted. A derelict grey coloured landscape, the streets and skys above seeming to reflect the hundreds of houses covered in galvanised steel, empty homes and people-less roads. The painting never happened. Politics.

Granton Road street party in the 80's

The whys and wherefore’s of the mural project are well documented in my previous blogs on this site or here http://jaynelawless.blogspot.co.uk 

Peter Blake, Village Fete

But for the purpose of moving forward and not straying too far back here’s what’s happened up to now with the bursary:

• Late 2013 – a two year public art project ends in tears (mine)
• I got a massive cob on (an angry sulk) for ages

I’d thought about film throughout the mural project, from a documentation perspective initially. I’d met and discussed ideas with various film makers and about incorporating young people into the process; developing workshops based on documenting, ‘the making of the mural’. I also wanted to invite young filmmaker Viktor Krc over to Liverpool from Sturovo in Slovakia to get involved too, I’d worked with him for 3 months whilst Artist in Residence in Slovakia during this 2 year period.

• Early 2014 – a friend sent a link to the ad for the a-n Re:view Bursary
• An opportunity to look again at a stalled or ‘change of direction’ in a current project
• My interest in film had sparked the application
• Early 2014 –  I got the bursary
• The bursary enables you to seek out professional advice and offer to pay for mentoring time
• Being able to offer people some payment to talk about your ideas is brilliant – we all know in the art world how its taken for granted that so much is done for free
• I’d met with David Jacques (Artist/Film Maker) and Jah Jussa (Film Maker) early doors, they were great and full of reality checks, I knew this was going to be a long journey after our first few meetings. I knew I was a million miles off knowing what I wanted but interested enough to know I was on the right track with regard to this unknown medium.
• Gary O’Donnell, the composer who agreed immediately to write the score when the film materialised as well as act as a mentor in this development phase.
• Sam Jones (artist) who I could discuss content and approach with in depth and really think about what kind of feel the film would have.
• Mia Tagg (Filmmaker) then carried the baton on to actually knuckling down and thinking about structure and narrative and real practical lessons in what film making was about
• I struggled  - opened a gigantic can of worms and just couldn’t get it into my head how to approach it
• A massive story, it started out being a film about why I couldn’t find a wall to paint on but to talk about that you needed to explain the context, then how far back do you go???
• It was becoming the story of my life – which was not how I wanted it
• It was getting way too descriptive and detailed
• My friend Maria said a very important thing: ‘it should be your work – your work but in film’ – after thinking about it I got it.
• I’d forgotten that
• I’d forgot that my work has always been much simpler, abstract yes but letting the materials do the talking
• Then a stream of words emerged, not sure I can call it a poem but I scribbled them down so I wouldn’t forget them, I knew they where important.
• After all the thousands of words I’d written over the course of 6/7 months it came back to 56. Somewhere to hang everything else off
• Fifty Six Words spark a vision and a sound and a loose narrative
• The final mentor came about by complete chance whilst at The Liverpool Radical Film Festival at the end of 2014

On the closing night of said festival we were invited to join in a debate about some of the shorts watched that night that had looked at various political protests. I stood up (which isn’t normal) and started talking about how all protests don’t necessarily look like that (marches/placards.)  I used another project I’ve been involved with over the years, Homebaked http://homebaked.org.uk and my own work L5-6QW http://l5-6qw.tumblr.com as examples. After my ramble a woman called Janet Brandon (who I recognised because she’d been introducing the films) came over to say hello and chat about what I’d said. Within about 10 seconds I knew I wanted to work with her on some level. I had no idea what she did at that point of introduction but she was obviously into films. By the end of the conversation I’ve learnt she’s also a filmmaker. I looked up her work the next day and knew my instinctive creative alarm bell had gone off accordingly.

Early 2015 – In a nutshell, Janet Brandon has been my final mentor and has now taken the film project on itself. Her production company, Trick Films will be overseeing the project and Gary O’Donnell will be writing the music.

I’m really looking forward to working with Janet and Gary, getting to see this next bit first hand, I’m genuinely excited about learning from them, I believe this wont be our only collaboration either. There’s a buzz about it all again now and a clear time-line with an end in sight. It’s necessary for both my practice and my personal life that this particular chapter is brought to a conclusion.

the big reveal - shadow drawings

The bursary has been a great tool to give this whole project a platform to re-launch from – all the mentors have been valuable and continue to be supportive.

I think it’s not only interesting for people reading to see the kind of influences I’ve had during this process, it’s important.
It’s a group rich in talent and I’ve learnt a hell of a lot.

David Jacques
https://vimeo.com/user5423212

Jah Jussa
www.imdb.com/name/nm3595393/

Gary O’Donnell
http://www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/films/p00dt5jg

Sam Jones
superforager.org

Mia Tagg

https://vimeo.com/miatagg
 
Janet Brandon

http://www.catalystmedia.org.uk/issues/nerve19/women_in_arts.php

https://vimeo.com/25571754

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.

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.

http://www.tanyaleighton.com/index.php?pageId=306&l=en

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:

http://jaynelawless.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/0-0-1-1041-5936-student-support-49-13.html

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!

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 

Maybe? Maybe not...

The L5 Mural Project

Maybe not then...?

So, when I started this project in April 2012 and said to myself, ‘I know, a mural! It fits.’ Never in a million and one years did I think painting something on a wall could possibly be so insanely complicated. The historical use of murals for storytelling and activism seemed a perfect way of making a statement for a house in an area desperate for some attention and under threat of demolition.

This entire project has been the most multi-layered, loaded, obstacle FILLED piece of work that I could ever imagined. Tears have figured often.

Unfortunately this is one of those times.

Feeling incredibly frustrated, actually multiply that by a million and it still wont come close.

In some ways it is almost perfect, perfectly frustrating. Echoing the Housing Market Renewal scheme that started this entire project off in the first place. Being an autobiographical artist with an instinctive alertness towards politics who’s family got tangled up in a demolition zone, it’s not rocket science that the work I’ve made over the past 5 years has become so wrapped up, or completely bound up in all the ‘goings on’ locally for so long.

A brief project timeline...

Spring 2012

• ·      idea for the mural
• ·      contact made with local Everton councillor, all is well
• ·      contacts made within another community based project, 2up 2down, now Homebaked (or to us, the bakery) lots of encouragement and support on all levels, feels good to be involved. Doors are opening up everywhere
• ·      the two projects entwine and cross over and both sides gain stuff from the other – it’s a learning curve and sometimes hard to navigate but it’s good, two projects more layered than an onion in their ‘reason for being’
• ·      funding applications - grrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Summer 2012

• ·      property sorted on Lothair Rd (no easy task I can tell you – courtesy of LFC)
• ·      Young people to collaborate with pretty much sorted
• ·      On site team sorted
• ·      Queries, quandaries, worries, concerns sorted (well, you know, within reason!)
• ·      Material sourced, insurance sorted, we’re good to go
• ·      Arts Council didn’t fund it
• ·      Gutted

Autumn/Winter 2012

• ·      Other stuff takes over
• ·      The mural is put on the shelf – at that point I have no intentions of ever taking it off again
• ·      Some time out on another project in Slovakia repairs frayed and dented confidence and nerves
• ·      Time to reflect
• ·      A realisation over what’s been achieved by trying to make the mural happen. The people I’ve met particularly. From all walks of life, from all types of backgrounds, people have now heard about the mural and why I wanted to do it.

Time’s a funny thing. I wouldn’t have touched that project with a barge pole whilst out in Slovakia – but home is home and the desire to do something strong and good soon creeps back in.

Spring/early summer 2013

• ·      Mural take two – The L5 Mural Project
• ·      Application to arts council submitted – this time accompanied by a visit to their office in Manchester, to speak one to one with a visual arts officer, I felt like the passion for the project was impossible to get across on paper, it need facial expression and arm waving.
• ·      A new property search, the original now ‘plastic wrapped’ I’ll let you all imagine what that means. I had to ask, new lingo.
• ·      The bakery was suggested (Homebaked/Mitchell’s) as a possible location for the mural
• ·      On so many levels this felt right, but there was a nag
• ·      As time went on, I felt like the mural could almost be like a gift to the bakery but it was trying to keep the two projects separate that was a concern, as much as the projects crossed and bonded I still wanted the work to stand on its own right
• ·      I cast aside doubts and began to feel good that this could be a piece that not only highlighted issues in the area and City generally but that it could maybe have a positive effect on the ‘saving of the bakery’?? 
• ·      Decision made and it’s positive – I’ll run with the idea of using the bakery, see where it leads...
• ·      Receive Arts Council Funding, happy days
• ·      Now to recruit!
• ·      Who knew that recruiting a group of young people during the summer holidays would be so hard? Lesson learned.
• ·      Thank fully, the grapevine supplied a school and a phone call from an enthusiastic, passionate head of art, Kelly from Arch Bishop Beck
• ·      We agree to move the project to September and make it part of their curriculum, we’ll arrange workshops when they have their timetables at the start of term
• ·      I know, lets add another project into the mix – a film project – a documentary! Get two great filmmakers on board. Brilliant.
• ·      The backdrop to the story now starts changing dramatically – ‘still and tin’ is replaced with ‘dust and demolition’, it’s everywhere, buildings disappearing fast, including our house and our street, it’s surreal
• ·      In the meantime, the students from Arch Bishop Beck visit my studio. Their teacher tells me afterwards how inspiring they thought it was. I was made up. We arrange workshops for the following week (again, no easy task)
• ·      My friend and fellow artist Nicky agrees to come up to Liverpool from Cardiff for the workshops on short notice, she’s my ‘scaling up’ expert
• ·      The threat of demolition creeps and crawls around the bakery. We’d always managed to put it to the back of our minds but now whispers and talk create worries and concerns that start rising to the surface
• ·      Workshop two at the school, amazed by how much they’ve listened and taken in from the visit to the studio, their ideas are clever, funny and sad
• ·      The political and activist association with murals was suddenly becoming an issue in the current climate of the life of the bakery - could they still work together?

After an intense meeting it was with great regret decided not, there's just too much riding on the buildings survival at the moment and the work could harm the projects chances in the future on lots of levels and the work could also be swallowed up into the bakery fight. It was always concerned with the bakery but fundamentally the mural was to represent the area, the City and the people of many communities that had lost their homes. I can only say this now – a week after the meeting. I was so devastated at the time as the project was so far along, start date 30^th September, and I also knew I had to go into the school and try to describe something indescribable, that things out of all of our control had suddenly shifted. The workshops were brilliant and we will work together if the school is still willing. The location of the mural maybe under question but it will be resolved. This project isn’t coming this far to stop now.

A group project such as this and the bakery are by nature problematic because they’re born from something complicated already. However, they’re also inspiring because of this. They inspire because of the momentum they gain, the friends made along the way, the sense of achievement when someone ‘gets it’ and wants in or offers to help, when someone wants to be part of 'your crew' it's one hell of a feeling, just hard to swallow when you have to let them all down.

The L5 Mural Project is on hold...