Lee Kemp

I’m a member of Triggerstreet.com. It’s an interesting film website set up by Kevin Spacey amongst others. The primary purpose seems to be to generate good scripts. It has a system of feedback and ratings and you aren’t allowed to submit your own until you’ve fed back on five others’ scripts.

Triggerstreet.com recently found itself on Moviemaker Magazines’ 50 Best Websites for Moviemaking. There’s so many websites on there i’d never even heard of. So that’s another fifty excuses to procrastinate when it comes to writing.

I’m not linking to 50 individual website, good as it would be for me and Google to be friends that way. Luckily Moviemaker have kindly linked all of them for you:

Moviemaker

Firstly, sorry. It’s been quiet on here forever. I’ve just been pretty busy. But not as long Josh Friedman.

Rant commences: I went to the Apple Store today for a Genius appointment. My beloved macbook is failing to charge the battery. The problem is intermittent but when it charges the battery lasts for a good 4 hours. At other times it won’t charge at all but will run off the powerpack. So it sees the power but doesn’t charge. I’ve reset the management unit and the PRAM and it’s had no effect.

So here’s the diagnostic process we go through:

The internal diagnostics tells us the battery is fine.

A rather swish little programme called Coconut Battery tells us the battery is fine.

The Apple specialist diagnostic tool tells us the battery is fine.

Apple Genius conclusion: “Hmmm, we’ve had a bit of a chat upstairs and we all think it’s the battery. That’ll be £100.

300 charge cycles is average. I’ve had over 800. Apparently I should consider myself lucky.

Well screw you and gargantuan marketing behemoth you rode in on.

Video analytics is increasingly important to the world of corporate film and advertising. This is something that we’re developing skills in at work. With this in mind  I’m testing a new system that’s been developed by a company close to us so I’d appreciate it if people could watch the video below if you could spare a couple of minutes.

If you’re going to do it then watch it as you normally would, in other words if you get bored turn it off.

Thanks for your help.

Fazeley Studios, where Fullrange is based, runs a yoga class on a Tuesday night. I’m genetically, politically and historically predisposed towards not doing stuff like yoga. It’s the kind of thing that people who read the Guardian do and, you know, I was in the army, grrr gung ho bollocks etc.

But I went for physio about 8 years ago after a car accident. Another car went into the back of mine at speed and I was hit hard enough for the stereo to fly out of its housing and into the back seat. I went to physio feeling generally fine but with sore muscles around the neck from the whiplash. After the initial consultation I felt like a wreck. Not just because the physio, a waif-like pregnant woman, had used my body for origami practice but also because she had identified a series of other problems. My left hamstring had become much shorter than my right, I wasn’t breathing properly out of my left lung and my awful posture had set in motion back problems that would likely plague me if I didn’t resolve them sometime in the next two decades.

All this made me realise that we are very good at compensating for stuff. Over time we develop little physical problems from bad posture or unresolved injuries that don’t score highly enough to need medical attention but do affect us in some way. So we compensate. When you tie your shoelaces you find somewhere to sit, you don’t crouch down or bend at the waist anymore like you did when you were a kid. Your ability to sit cross legged for hours has long since disappeared so you don’t do it. I’m probably about 60% as flexible now as I was twenty years ago and those are just two points on a downward trajectory towards a wheelchair in old age. I don’t imagine it needs to be like that.

I think, hope, you just need to give your body some attention.

I don’t mean like running, which is giving your cardio-vascular and leg muscles attention. That’s fitness. I’m talking about just concentrating on your body, how it works and how it moves. Or doesn’t move. Hence going to Yoga.

I’ll tell you about it later. It hurts.

I went to an RSA event recently as a guest of a fellow and got talking to someone from the Birmingham Book Festival. He was telling me about writing stuff that I didn’t know about and I was telling him about things that he didn’t know about. So I thought I’d put it all in one place.

Coming Up: Channel 4’s scheme is open to writers without an original single, series or serial broadcast on telly and directors without a primetime credit. Someone I know on the scheme a couple of years ago went on to write a film called Outpost. It got made by the same director and got theatrical distribution last year. The scheme’s definitely worth a look. It is aimed at writers with something of a track record but I know for certain that they’re simply looking for talented people.

The chap I met told me about the Birmingham Book Festival. The event is geared more towards novelists, poets and non-fiction writers but there is some scope for screenwriters so worth keeping a weather eye out.

Shooting People is  something some people rave about. I think it’s worth joining for a year and making your own mind up. The guy that runs the writer’s list, Andy Conway, lives in Birmingham and his website is worth reading. www.andyconway.net

Film Forum West Midlands. I’m a member but haven’t yet managed to make it to any of the events. They used to be on weekends and then when they held their first midweek event it was on the same night as my own embryonic writer’s group. But i’ll be along before too long.

In other news, we had a Canadian music video director called Jazz Virk come into the office. We sat round for  a while swapping favourite movies (anything by Park Chan Wook) and watching each other’s films. I was lucky enough to have some stuff with guns and explosions in but I couldn’t really compete with his Jazzy B video that contained a couple of Rolls Royce Phantoms, two Bugati Veyrons and a gulfstream jet.

The lovely Simon Cox, director of cult movie Written in Blood popped in too and I might have my first interview on here soon with him. He’s currently seeking funding for his sci-fi movie The Kaleidoscope Man.

Something substantial next time. See you soon.

Bear with me, it’ll take me a couple of paragraphs to explain why I’m annoyed. But it’s to do with my dog’s arse.

Dogs have glands in their arses. Two small anal glands manufacture a particularly awful smelling liquid that is unique to your dog. This is the aroma your dog is seeking when it smells another dog’s arse.

When your doggie does a toilet, the poop will squeeze against the glands and force some liquid onto the excrement  and essentially barcode it with his own aroma. It’s a statement that tells other dogs “not only have I dropped one here, I want you to know that i’m the one wot done it”. A canine sociological researcher would be able to identify all the areas related to a particular dog’s poop just by scent,  like twitter hashtags but for shit.

If your dog’s diet isn’t perfect he won’t digest food properly, the poop won’t solidify properly and it won’t press against the glands as it comes out. The glands will fill up and become prone to infection. My dog hasn’t got an infection, but you do occasionally get this disgusting metallic stench emanating from his general direction. If your dog is nipping at his hind quarters regularly its often a gland problem and you should take your dog to the vet to get him checked. Your vet will stick a rubber begloved into your dog’s anus and express the excess liquid from the glands.

Tonight we were having a conversation about Marley & Me. It’s shit, don’t bother watching it. But we were talking about how awesome it is having a dog and how completely unconditional a dog’s love is for its owners when a particularly powerful disgusting metallic stench began to emanate. Alfie was laid looking up at me with his gorgeous, expectant brown eyes. He was laying on my new favourite woollen jumper. When it comes to favourite clothes I’m like a kid with a spiderman costume. I find something I like and I wear it continuously until someone responsible peels its decaying mass from my skin.

It took me about half an hour to work out that Alfie’s ass had actually leaked onto my new favourite jumper. Ordinarily you shouldn’t be able to smell what is produced by a dog’s glands. Tonight I could see it.

Alfie’s going to the vets this week. I love my dog more than you would believe, but right now I’m in the market for a vet with really fat fingers.

The other end of Alfie

I went to a lecture this afternoon held by a representative of the British Board of Film Classification with colleagues from work, Rachel and Dave. It was held at the Lighthouse in Wolverhampton which is a nice little place though you’d need to ask Rachel in person about how angry some elements made her! It was a really interesting afternoon. Generally I think the BBFC does a sterling job, in 2006 they classified nearly 14,000 films for cinema release then again for DVD, also games and other little bits. Of these thousands they banned 2. Not exactly the reputation they still seem to carry from the video nasty.

There are 29 full time examiners and they watch on average 5.5 hours of material around 3-4 days per week. Screenings are selected at random. Our lecturer once spent a day viewing The Departed, 2.5 hours of hardcore sado-masochism porn followed by several episodes of Noddy.

He gave us a detailed explanation of how some films fall into the margins of each classification and how those grey areas are defined, such as between a 15 or an 18 certificate. We explored Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm episode that features two usages of the C-word along with Veronica Guerin which has a violent sequence with 6 instances of everyone’s favourite shock factor cuss word. Curb Your Enthusiasm managed a 15 certificate on the basis of the inherent comedy and the rather sweet way it was intended (you really need to see it) whereas Veronica Guerin got an 18. Sustained and most importantly aggressive use of the word alongside sudden and prolonged male to female violence was sufficient to bump it higher.

Saving Private Ryan (15) was compared to The Last Temptation of Christ (18) with an interesting focus on history. Hard lobbying from Christians on the basis of special educational merit failed to get the certificate reduced to 15 because of the sustained and particular focus on one individual.

The BBFC has an interesting history and stands in starkly independent contrast to the MPAA. I think it’s a British institution to be proud of and it will become of more interest in the near future. It is funded entirely out of charges paid by studios for the legal requirement of a certificate. It’s been financially sustained over the past  few years by the classification of studio back catalogues that are running out. The other factor is that their remit only really covers theatrical releases and there’s nothing required for online delivery so keep that in the back of your mind because it’ll be a topic of conversation in film circles in years to come.

The presentation ended with a Q&A and I asked if there was support within the BBFC for a lower age limit on the 12A certificate. This was a polite re-phrasing of the question I wanted to ask, how do I stop adults taking kids to films that are clearly not suitable for them, not really understanding what the A means in 12A and through their own ignorance abrogating responsibility for that decision? The answer to both questions was the same; the BBFC is undergoing a lengthy public consultation. Let’s hope they ask the right people.

Yes. I mean me.

Writing, yay.

This blog has been very quiet recently so for the 8 of you that do subscribe, my apologies. Mostly it has been due to work which has been extremely busy recently. I spent a week in Amsterdam shooting tractors for AGCO with DoP Ed Moore and camera operator Phil Wood. There are more details of this over at Ed’s website The DoP Diaries and on Fullrange’s website and work at Fullrange. I had another shoot with Bedford County Council for Bonfire Design. That’s a company I’ve been trying to do work with for about 3 years now so that was a little bit of a victory. Then we managed to get a competition in the Birmingham Post giving away three films and loads of other exciting stuff. So yes, busy.

The second reason I haven’t blogged is that I had a particular blog post in mind and it’s taking a little bit of time to put together as I want to give the season 5 and series finale of The Wire a really good close up look. Subconsciously this became one of those ‘big jobs’ that just seems bigger and bigger the longer you leave it. But i’m going to make a start this morning.

Finally I want to mention that the writer’s group I was talking about a little while ago launched last Thursday. I’d had it booked in the diary for a while so I was disappointed that the Birmingham Filmmaker’s group launched a midweek fixture on the same night and I couldn’t go to that too. I met with another writer, David Wake, who has previously run another very successful writer’s group called PostSCRIPT and we put together some ideas for what we would like this one to be. Our aim is to provide an open, honest forum to critique each other’s work, learn from each other and I would hope that eventually we will be able to give the members a sense of community. It was decided that we should keep this group small until it finds its feet.

I was fortunate enough to have one of my short scripts analysed. I had put forward one that is a finished first draft that I’ve had two working screenwriters that I know look at. They’ve both given me good feedback, pointing out flaws but being encouraging of my abilities as a writer so my ‘magical shield of self belief’ was in place. As it turns out it wasn’t needed. We went round the room saying one thing we liked and one thing we didn’t. It’s a useful exercise to enforce both parts of that. Then we began looking in detail at 9 point story structure and applying the various break points to my script. Here’s where the fun started. Two of us couldn’t agree on where various break points were and in the ensuing discussion it became apparent that there were two areas in which the script could be improved quite dramatically. I didn’t have to agree with what was said but it so happens that I did and I’m looking forward to making those changes.

The group meets on the last Thursday of every month so we’ve decided to call it Last Thursdays and once the feet are found, i’ll start inviting people.

Bore off

…annoy me. I fidget. I fuss and I deliberately analyse. None of which are ‘good things’.

I’m there to watch a film and even the very best title sequences simply elaborate on the themes of the film. Frankly, a little bit more thought by way of actually elaborating on the themes of the film, within said film, would be much better placed*.

What about the recognition of the artists and artisans who have slaved tirelessly? All the cast and crew on a film have worked very hard. You can tell that because they didn’t get fired and stuck around long enough to get their name in the credits. But I really don’t need to see their credits at the start either. There is genuinely no requirement whatsoever to delay the start of the film with names, even if it’s to say A Stephen Soderbergh Film. I know that. It’s why I’m there. If the person is even semi-famous, even in giant movie geek terms there’s a good chance that the people that care about that kind of stuff (me) will know about it already. Save the credits for the end. I’ll sit and read them. I promise.

Then there are those people who’s names you don’t know going in. The not yet Soderberghs, the never will be Tom Cruises and the grips and juicers happy to be getting paid. Perhaps some star turn from a lesser known actor or a half recognised face under a metric ton of superb prosthetics, maybe it’s music that makes your heart pound or writing so good it blisters your ears just to listen. Save it. For the end. Again, those people who care (me) will sit and wait. They won’t even wait until they go home to check imdb. They (I) will sit in the theatre and wait until the the relevant name turns up in the credits and they’ll keep it there.

Save the credits for the end. Please. And don’t get me started on James Bond credit sequences.

I’d be really interested in a list of credit sequences worth watching though, or ones that actually add something to the film. Any suggestions?

Go Dave!

*David Fincher’s Se7en is automatically excluded from any diatribe.

Like most other people I (possibly) found out who the Stig was this week and felt a little bit less once I knew. I liked that there was a secret and if I was going to find out, I didn’t want everyone else to know.

This brings me far from neatly onto Battlestar Galactica. It’s been a long feverish wait after the mid-season break following the WGA strike in the states. I don’t care if you’re not a fan, you should be. The writing is excellent, the themes are complex and intriguing and the approach is utterly fearless; no character is safe and no topic is taboo. The second half of season 4 is now showing and it’s the last season. Ever. The end is coming and I feel like a teenage mixture of quietly sad and completely joyous. The impending resolution, no more secrets, all the answers will be mine. But there’s another ten episodes or so and apparently the last one will be a three hour special. OMFG, as they say. The end is coming, the secrets will be blown wide open and I can’t wait.

Then there’s Lost. I got bored around about season 3 and then picked it up again recently and now have the last 2 episodes of season 4 to get through and it’s looking pretty damn impressive. The character’s have remained mostly the same, Kate is annoying and wet and suddenly a crack native American tracker, Locke needs to realise respect is earned and not given and Jack needs to earn it and not be given it. Sawyer just gets better and better. In my frankly not that humble opinion. But it has just got so damned good recently. I think the reason I’m enjoying it so much more now is that for a while the prospect of questions without answers, or answers that just lead to more questions was just irritating. Now it feels like there is a plan, there is an answer and they’re drip feeding it to me. I’m sucking at the breast of JJ Abrams and the experience is much more comfortable than the image. The show’s gone in directions I never expected  but at least it’s going somewhere, not just meandering. The weirder it gets the better it gets. It feels like the end is coming and that anticipation, no matter how long it takes, is where the excitement comes from.

Finally I’m on the last episode of season 4 of The Wire. I believe season 5 is the last one ever. I love these characters. Literally. Their actions are completely dictated by who they are and they still manage to surprise me. In this case it’s just the plot that’s a secret but the unfolding of it and the trajectory the characters are on is intense and addictive.

I have complete faith in the writers of all 3 shows. They’ve brought me this far and haven’t abused my trust, where they’ve faltered they’ve brought me back and I know that whatever answers they choose to give me will be surprising and satisfying. But when they’re finished I’m going to feel completely full and a little bit empty. This lack is what will drive me to find the next series, the next Quality American Drama. I’ll become entangled once again, hopelessly addicted. Yearning for the answers, worried that I might actually get them and scared that I won’t.

Wow this sucks, but isn’t it great? Ed and Tony have both told me I should be watching Mad Men next. God bless you writers of Quality American Drama. God bless you and all who sail in you.