Lee Kemp

This went quiet. Then I was going to fix it. Then I didn’t. Then I decided I couldn’t blog till I’d updated the word press theme. Then I couldn’t work out how to update the theme I liked. Then I realised I was being a tool. Then suddenly I was here typing.

If you watch enough news footage of distant lands you will see, at some point, some untrained foreign militiaman firing an AK-47 into the air for no good reason except to waste about thirty quid’s worth of bullets (UK prices) in random celebration. That’s called a Beirut unload.

Underneath this paragraph there’s a list of things I’ve learnt in the last seven months in no particular order. It’s like a Beirut unload, just spraying up in the air with neither control nor accuracy and probably constitutes an irrational emotional response. Once i’ve got this out of my system i’ll start doing proper actual blogging about stuff I care about, films, directors, business, cool stuff on the internet and increasingly, Birmingham. It’s a weird list and it’s really, genuinely, not worth reading. I’m just dusting off the cobwebs…

- I really need to get my glasses fixed.
- There is no miraculous quick fix for business, you just try and keep going in the right direction.
- I am not yet all that I can be. My guess is that neither are you?
- Digbeth is actually ok. But it could be much better.
- My office leaks. A lot.
- We suck at football.
- The people who complain the most might be doing it because they care the most.
- Sitting there and worrying about the mountain of stuff only makes the mountain of stuff bigger.
- Knowingly or unknowingly, most people have it in them to fuck you over. Even friends. The right reaction for me is to save it until I need something. But knocking someone the fuck out seems pretty appealing sometimes.
- There are great days.
- Swearing isn’t clever.
- Punching inanimate objects just makes you look like a twat.
- Random acts of kindness do actually work.
- There are good days.
- The list of people to admire can never be long enough.
- Nothing good comes of making lists of people you’re going to screw over in future.
- There are ok days.
- Don’t do payroll when you’re shitfaced.
- There are bad days.
- Get involved. It can be good fun.
- If you think that a friend is lying to you, and you decide you can live with it, you’re lying to yourself.
- Pete Postlethwaite is charming, mellifluous and gracious, in equal measure.
- That thing about lying was quite pithy.
- Everybody needs a hug every now and again. Sometimes its nice to be the huggee, rather than the hugger.
- That day really sucked a lot.
- I don’t know that talking about shit helps. Up seems to be the right response i.e. shut up, man up and step up.
- Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, even when it comes to SEO.
- We’re going to win, because the people I work with are awesome.

That’s nearly all of it.

Whenever the MOD announces further deaths in Afghanistan I check the BBC news website to see if it’s anyone I know. It’s not that likely because I didn’t do that kind of job, which means mostly my friends didn’t do that kind of job either. But I look, just in case. So I saw that another three blokes got the good news this week in Helmand bringing the total to 199. Between landmines, ambushes and just taking the fight to the enemy in a most aggressive fashion the casualty rate was always going to be higher than people had perhaps expected, or were used to. Particularly when our own, distant, experience of “war” is driven by the two Iraq conflicts.

A couple of years ago a friend of mine, recently returned from Afghanistan, told me that a British soldier was more likely to be killed or injured over there than an American soldier had been in Vietnam. I’ve no idea if that’s true but the fact that it might be is pause for thought. Particularly as you rarely get to see the wounded. That’s why I found this article at the BBC particularly interesting.

Marine Mark Ormrod stepped on a land mine and lost both legs and one arm. Apparently it didn’t hurt and I always find it interesting when the greviously wounded say it didn’t hurt at the time. But if you consider that landmines contain high explosives. This is material that burns at more than 3,000 m/s as opposed to a low explosive that burns less than 3,000 m/s. If you consider that gunpowder is a low explosive then you have some context as to how fast Mark’s life changed.

Please go and have a look. You get an insight into the guy’s life. He’s 5’6 now because of his prosthetic legs whereas he used to be 6’1. Having gone to a bad taste party in high heels recently I worked out that actually it’s pretty cool to be taller. Mark would probably appreciate that, my experience of marines is that they like to dress in women’s clothing. If they’re not naked at least. So being tall is cool, that means it must be quite shit in reverse. Mark finds it harder on very hot days because we lose a lot of heat through our skin and he simply has less of it. His new legs measure his gait and bluetooth it to a computer to help him improve his walking. The technology is fascinating and the determination of the guy, and many, many others like him is extraordinary.

He now works for the marines and Help for Heroes.

Finally, while I was poking around the MOD website I found this fascinating story about army divers working in Afghanistan.

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.

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.

It is of concern to me that I haven’t made the films I promised myself I would.  There is nothing else that makes me feel old. When I think about it I can feel the seconds go by.  For every one that’s taken I feel like three have been stolen. But William Goldman didn’t even see a script until he was 33, the age I am now so it’s far from being the end of the world.

I’ve got to burn my bridges. By that I mean talking openly about my ambitions. Failing is bad, but not as bad as failing publicy. I have a lot of good ideas and I talk about them far more than I do them. So here is a public statement of intent:

1. 4 short films in 2009. The first of which gets filmed in March. It’s called Aftermath and the first draft is finished.

Potential others might be Alien, (2/3 written), Code Duello of 1773 Rule 13 (easily my favourite title and 1/2 written) and Hard Man (first draft written and received good feedback from working writers).

2. Director showreels to every appropriate Creative Director by the end of the year. I love commercials and that’s one of the two things I want to be doing (through Fullrange)

3. Screenwriters group up and running in February. Started work on this already, got some writer’s interested. Birmingham writer’s please get in touch (leekemplives@gmail.com).

4. Filmaker interviews on here. I used to think there weren’t very many resources out there for directors wanting to get started. I believed this was mostly because you learn by watching, working your way up the hierarchy of the film set OR you did something awesome in film school and got a big break. As it turns out there’s plenty of resources out there (not least audio commentaries on DVDs) but I still think it’s a good idea. I like hearing about how other people have done it.

I’ve got someone who’s agreed to do the first one. Director of a low budget, horror that has a bit of  cult following.

So there it is. If I don’t manage this I’m gonna look pretty stupid. At least to the 5 people that subscribe to this blog. I’ve no idea who 4 of you are, but thanks for following. You’re my conscience and come 1st January 2010. It’s open season on me if I haven’t achieved these things.

Tick follows tock…

time marches on...

…is what I would be saying if I was a complete arse.

That’s a Simpsons joke just there. Brilliant.

I love foreign films. Not all of them, obviously. But Korean and Japanese cinema have given us some of the most inventive and exciting films around. Oldboy is stupendously grand. Giving Oldboy to your colleagues and hearing the trouble they get in from their girlfriends is almost as good. A Bittersweet Life is a lovely story about violence and love. 3 Iron is a gorgeous love story.  Happiness of the Katakuris is inventive madness.

Foreign films rock and if you don’t have the patience to read subtitles then not only are you an idiot, you’re depriving yourself of some of the most fearsomely inventive and well-crafted films ever made.

How does this affect you Lee, I hear my 5 subscribers cry? Why should I care about what other people watch as it doesn’t really affect me. Well apart from the generalised effect whereby the more people tha watch films that fall outside of the Hollywood mainstream, Well I’ve just tried to watch the trailer for Tokyo Sonata, a Japanese film from Kuyoshi Kurosawa. It looks lovely. Good job really because there’s no bloody dialogue in the whole trailer. This is a problem that I first remember being conscious of when I watched the trailer for Brotherhood of the Wolf.  Marketing departments believe that people won’t go and see foreign films. So they try and trick people into thinking that a film by Kuyoshi Kurosawa called Tokyo Sonata with a trailer that solely features Japanese people and has absolutely no dialogue at all might somehow be set in Kansas.

Not only that, but because of this fear of the foreign, films don’t get a wide release, don’t make money and genius doesn’t get perpetuated. Until it gets remade with Nicholas Cage. No Nicholas. Oldboy is perfect, just as it is.

Russel Crowe - awesome actor - not so yay hair

On account of my not being a major player in Hollywood I don’t really know how the  dynamics of major movies work, but one assumes the pecking order is established relatively early on. I guess it’s dependent on a complex algorithm with variables like star power and ego.

The stories about stars and their egos are as endless and ridiculous as some of the stars themselves. In his book Bambi Vs Godzilla David Mamet relays a couple of stories about stars, without naming names. The prop master on a film had come in on his day off to find a particularly difficult to locate prop, in return the movie’s star tapdanced on the roof of his car in hobnail boots causing $10,000 of damage. Another movie found one star measuring the length of another star’s trailer with a tape measure because his contract dictated his be the largest. There is a story that Leonardo DiCaprio got publicly handed his own ass on Gangs of New York by Martin Scorcese because of his disrespectful attitude towards the film and the crew. He was allegedly turning up late, or worse for wear and outputs of Hollywood stardom. He’s gone from strength to strength ever since. My point is that the power play formula is pretty complicated. People without boundaries push as hard as they can until someone pushes back.

So I wonder where in the early hostilities of a power play does a star with naturally slightly rubbish hair, say Russel Crowe or Hugh Jackman, establish who has control of their hair in the film, because i’m noticing a pattern. Let’s look at some of Crowe’s films.

Romper Stomper – mainly TV roles then a great script falls into his lap and he gets the part. Not likely to insist on input on hair decisions. Also, he’s playing a skinhead.

Result: Movie par excellence

L.A. Confidential – After being hyped up by Sharon Stone and selected for her own vehicle The Quick and The Dead, success isn’t quite as quick as expected. He’s got a great role here and frankly, he nails it completely. The thought of the man who played Bud White reading this makes me nervous, but bollocks, I bet he can’t run as fast as me. Particularly with all that muscle and the hefty drag co-efficient of his bouffant. In this he’s a supporting role and hair decisions are shaped by the era not the actor. Probably not much control over hair decisions.

Result: Movie par excellence

The Insider – One of the immutable rules of life – you do what Michael Mann says. No hair decisions here.

Gladiator – Then he gets cast as the lead in a Ridley Scott movie.  I reckon it’s touch and go here, his star’s on the rise, Ridley’s not yet returned to the status of gigantic talent. I reckon history held sway and Roman slaves were unlikely to be particularly bouffant. You probably don’t screw with Scott either.

Result: Movie par excellence

On the other side of the argument…

The Quick and the Dead: He’s got Sharon Stone in his corner. She’s brought him in specially to be showcased in her own star vehicle. I reckon he’s beginning to insist on a little hair input.

Result: I hate this film.

Proof of Life: We’re post Gladiator now and Taylor Hackford‘s not the biggest action game in town. Definite hair input here.

Result: Why did they kiss? Why? What possible reason could there be? Meh.

A Good Year: Although this is only Crowe’s and Scott’s second film together, they go on to make American Gangster the following year, Body of Lies two years later and Nottingham is in production right now. Scott has found a creative partner and the results are great. So I’m guessing theirs is a collaborative relationship, with strong input on either side. I can’t imagine General Maximus or Bud White agreeing that a snotty London broker would have proper manly fighting hair, he needs to be different. I’m guessing hair was a Crowe decision here and the movie pays the price.

Result: Meh.

People always argue that story is king, this writer’s elegance and structure rules the day, or this director’s vision, or that actor’s extraordinary skill. My arse, it’s all in the complex relationship between an actor’s hair and his IMDB STARmeter.

p.s. It’s easy to beat on actors, but you never hear about all the good input they give do you? Or the wanker director’s they overrule.

Following a cheeky request from me to get a total stranger to design something for me, I got invited to write a guest post on the One Day for Human Rights campaign. I was very late getting it back to her but I finally got it finished yesterday and you can read it here if you want

I used to get kind of annoyed at Uni because people would ask me if, because I’d been in the army, whether I’d killed anyone. About halfway through the second year it changed, and people would just ask me how many people I’d killed. So I have a bit of a ‘thing’ about how people perceive soldiers. That’s what started it anyway.

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