coming out of the dark in between projects

Behold, she speaks!
So much has happened. Three steps forward, half a step back - of sorts.

I've temporarily finished my first film. I say temporarily because there's still so much that needs to be fixed. That's what I think and say in good moments. In bad moments I simply yell: "IT IS ALL CRAP THROW IT AWAY KILL IT KILL IT!"

It's not crap. I know that. I know because I know and because people keep telling me - so I've got my ass covered double. I got pretty fantastic feedback when it showed at a prelim screening in film school. The biggest problem is crappy sound and since I can't fix that (I suck at audio) it seems unsurmountable to me at times. Things I can't fix by myself make me uneasy. Can you say "control freak"?

But it'll be fine. (Hello, new mantra!)My producer gals have promised to find me someone who can fix the sound. Incidentally, if you know any sound engineers in or around Vienna who'll work for eternal gratitude and a heartfelt handshake - let me know, please.
I want to reshoot one scene but it's a small one and shouldn't be too big a problem.
And I'm in talks with someone awesome to do the music for the film.
So if all that works out I'll be happy. Maybe not utterly content - I don't actually know if my little fucked up perfectionist brain is capable of that - but happy in my heart.

All problems aside, there's really nothing that compares to showing your film - finished or not - for the first time. It's like being torn between looking at your own baby and watching other people look at it. Then there's the applause. I did ALL THE BLUSHING! I think we humans are somehow wired to well up with pride when people clap for us. Our hearts are applause-fillable.

I got good feedback too. Good as in helpful in regard to mistakes I need to fix. But also good as in people love and get the story which is a load off my mind. It's like someone handed me a certificate that says: Woman, you can tell a good fucking story. I have a strong story. And that's what's important. Lack of story can't be fixed. Almost anything else can. So now I'm waiting to get help with fixing it and finishing the cut until September.

Right now, the waiting entails taking some fucking time off to recuperate. Predictably, I fell into the big fat post-film hole. I felt depressed and sad and mostly meh. My body told me it needed a break but my brain was in high form telling me I didn't deserve a break because, really, what had I done? It's not like I had a final product yet! I had to develop gastritis to get the hint that my brain sometimes really doesn't know what the hell it's talking about.

So I went to the doctor. Got meds. Got the advice to relax. Decided that I had gotten lax on all my relaxing techniques and purposefully took some time off. I've been working out more, I started doing yoga again. I've been eating better. I try to leave the house every day even if it's just to get some groceries so I don't become a shut-in again. I read. I play WoW. I listen to music. I lose time on the intarwebs. I watch True Blood and am mind-boggled by the lack of togetherness in this season. (Really, that show is all over the place at the moment...) I relax by rewatching Everwood. Nothing - nothing! - relaxes me like Everwood except maybe Gilmore Girls. They're my happy place TV.

It helps that the heat has relented a bit and the weather right now is fitting my liking and skin tone a lot better. Cloudy skies and rain and wind and cups of tea always make me want to write, to create. This is part of relaxing as well: Getting into writing again which I missed a lot during production and post. Turning my focus to other projects even if the first one isn't finished right now. I can't be tethered to an undone thing if I can't do anything about it right this moment.

I still occasionally worry about it. Just like I worry about the fact that I'm not earning any money and should probably find a day job - but then that fills me with panic and I go back to relaxing. I'll probably try to get a mini job at a local Starbucks eventually, if only to fulfill the cliché of the filmmaker properly. It seems like something I could handle and maybe even enjoy.

Sometimes I worry that I will never make anything again or nothing good. And if I do that my films will never be heard/seen, I never acknowledged, never successful, never able to earn a living. Maybe I'm lazy? Why do I feel so empty? Maybe I'm just imagining that I'm creative and an artist... The worry, it settles into an underlying panic that has to be actively combated in order to make it retreat and give you back your confidence.

What I can do is pick the next story out of the hat and get to work on that. Then let other people help me make it happen. Get the directing high. Apply the lessons learned. Finish it. Let my heart be filled with applause. Then let go and pick the next one.

And for when I'm between projects I'll simply have to learn to relax. Work out, eat well, see friends, do other things I love.

We went to see the amazing Alanis Morissette in concert last week and that really got me out of the funk. I finally properly connected to her music. This song is my sorely needed reminder to just get my head out of my ass already:

I did some research and read what other people have written about the dreadful in-between-projects-phase and it's definitely different for everyone but it made me feel less alone. For those interested here are two blogs I read about that: "The between-projects zone" & "Artists between projects"

before the storm

The birds are chirping in the early evening warmth, the sounds from the city streets are oddly muted. I'm alone in the flat, I have nice music on and am sitting on the couch with a cup of coffee. The bunnies are contentedly munching on hay.

It's an eerie calm-before-the-storm-feeling.

In an hour Finn will come home and my second producer will show up and so will my brand new assistant director. And we will hold our production meeting and get some last minute stuff done because tomorrow is our first shoot day.

In one hour this place will be loud and crazy and wonderful and exciting. But for now it's just me and a cup of coffee and a long-overdue blog post. For now it's a peaceful quietness in my heart, with traces of nervousness infused.

Tomorrow I start shooting my very first film. Tomorrow.
Today I get to have coffee and music on the couch. If only for one hour.

Fish... meet water

You never forget your first time.

I'm talking about directing. What did you think I was talking about? This is a respectable blog. Well, most of the time at least.

Strangely though those two firsts have some commonalities:

1. It's hella scary before you do it.
2. At first you're all insecure and timid.
3. Once you have a basic grasp of how it works though you begin to notice how much fun it is.
4. And as soon as you've done it once you'll want to do it again and again and again.

While one has happened for me quite a while ago the other experience has been a more recent one. Last Saturday I had a ten hour directing workshop scheduled at film school. I was wary, at best, of spending ten hours on my feet when I currently get exhausted by about two hours of running errands. I also had no idea whether the teacher was going to be any kind of good or all kinds of bad. But I packed my energy rations (coffee, water and nuts, never leave the house without nuts, and some chocolate) and an extra dose of Ritalin in case my Concerta wore off to fast. I printed out the scene I was going to work on and hopped on a curiously empty Saturday bus on a lovely spring day.

Boy was I wrong to be apprehensive! The teacher turned out to be fantastic, running us trough the basics of directing, giving immensely helpful feedback, and he even has a sense of humour (sadly, that's not always a given). Otherwise he pushed us into the deep end - the best thing he could do.

About two hours after arriving I was already in the middle of DP-ing for one of my colleagues, sketching storyboards on a whiteboard and discussing the benefits of purposely jumping over the axis. Then, before lunch break, I set the lighting for another colleague's scene and watched from the side as they took their first tries at directing.

The differences in style are completely fascinating. Everyone has a different way of easing into the job, of talking to the actors, the crew. I was learning a lot just by watching. Suddenly it was my turn. I jumped right in, assembled my crew, briefed the actors, and there I was, doing a first read-through already, then setting up the scene, blocking, sketching floor plans, figuring out the best camera angles with my DP. Shooting. Tweaking. Shooting another take. Working with the actors. Giving my DP the chance to get a focus change just right considering the limited amount of time we had for our practice shoots. Shooting another angle. Another take. Saying "Action" (although I prefer the more friendly "Aaaand go") and "Cut". Thank you, you were wonderful. Great camerawork. Everyone take a break. I got great feedback from the teacher, the actors, the crew.

And all of it - ALL OF IT! - felt so fucking right. Much like, fish... meet water.
Felt like I was meant to do this. Never supposed to do anything else. Like every other job I'd ever had was just a youthful indiscretion before getting hitched to this wonderful thing called directing. I fell in love, fast and hard.

I suppose this isn't surprising. Because me and directing, we were set up ages ago. After all, I grew up watching my father direct. He started out as a theatre actor, then became an editor at the Austrian Broadcasting company. He started directing for TV even before I was born. I suspect he did some work on documentaries early on but I mostly watched him direct television broadcasts of operas, concerts, theater productions, ballets etc., both recordings and live broadcasts. My mother was his assistant director a lot of the time then became a director herself. When I was older I even worked with them as a floor manager.

Sure, it's a bit weird working with your parents (though it didn't even take me that long to hammer it into their heads that it was definitely not okay to call me by my embarrassing childhood nickname on set) but I learned so much from listening to my dad's voice transmitting through my headset. The way he maneuvered the giant and intricate system of cameramen/women, sound mixers, lighting technicians, cable pullers etc. through live broadcasts has given me a certain instinct for directing. He was always respectful, never without a sense of humor, knew that everyone on set was indispensable and took care to treat them as such.

He knew how to talk to people, knew when to be strict, when to be diplomatic. Ironically, his communication sucked big time in familial settings but while working he knew what he was doing. He felt safe, I assume, like he had a spot in the world that fit him just right. I'm lucky to have seen him work, and while I wasn't aware of it at the moment, soaking up all that I could learn from him.

I was way to scared during my first directing stint last Saturday but I think if I had been viewing myself from the outside instead of, well, being wide-eyed and in the moment, I would've been able to spot a lot of my dad's directing style in my work. I choose to believe that had he seen me in that moment (and maybe he has, I'm agnostic after all) he would've been proud of his director daughter. I'm finally proud of myself as well.

Here's to my dad who unwittingly taught me a lot while I unwittingly learned from him. You would've loved seeing me do this, dad, I just know :)
I love you.

Today is the day everyone will find out that I'm a fraud

at least that's how I feel about it. We're doing the photo shoot for my films school application today and I am absolutely clueless. Finn is running around awesome-producer-style, getting everything ready, while I'm still pondering how on earth I will hide my cluelessness.
I barely understand the intricate workings of a camera. Sure, I can point the lens in the right direction but everything between seeing a great picture and taking one is lost on me. Lights? No idea. Finn's the master of that, fortunately.
But I know that I'm depressed this week and shouldn't take this too hard. That this is just another hiccup on the way to making the images in my head tangible for others.

oh my... here's to hoping. keep your fingers crossed for me.

Just say no! Even if it comes with cash.

Today I won. Or at least the new me won. I said "no" to something; a job/project opportunity to be exact. That may sound like nothing special but to me it is. There's a project I could be working on in late August and September, and as much as I'd like to I made the smarter choice this time.

The pro list is a lot longer than the con list:
- Yes, it would bring in some cash.
- Yes, I'd probably have fun doing it.
- Yes, it would be a good kick-off for our company, that we're planning to start (we originally planned to take off later in 2010).
- Yes, we could probably prove ourselves worthy and get more jobs based on that project.

BUT
- I am still not well.

And I have an inkling that I will not be well two weeks from now. Considering that I can't muster the strength to get up before noon I actually highly doubt that I'll be able to pull off a PR and Social Media Campaign 14 lousy days from now. Hell, I don't even know if I'll get to that point by November!

So I made the hard choice of saying no to an opportunity. I don't think I've done that before, ever. I'm the type of person that always always takes opportunities, because, hey! It's and opportunity. I never considered my health in these choices. If it meant I would have to work myself into the ground for a couple of weeks that never fazed me. So what if it exhausted me - it was still an opportunity and those had to be taken.

My dirty little secret is that I felt really good after declining the offer. I had been mulling it over for some time now and it worried me, put pressure on me. It would have put a serious dent in my R&R time. The moment I had carried out my decision I felt free, like I had my almost-lost time back.

I've begun to understand that time is mostly what I need. Time to get rid of this exhaustion that is pinning me down. Time to work on my issues. Time to learn to listen to what my body says, even if it's a "no".