slingshot in Edinburgh
Admidst all the flurry and furore that surrounds making a film, not only have we been thinking a lot about marketing and development but Rachel and I also managed to escape from London for a few days to attend the Edinburgh Film Festival. Whilst Rachel was watching obscure Korean films and meeting with loads of Regional Screen Agencies to source new and upcoming talent (and hopefully find THE NEXT BIG THING!) I attended an industry training programme run by the Script Factory called SCENE Insiders.
Briefly, through a combination of workshops, masterclasses and seminars, we discussed …well we discussed lots of things but the real question was - how do you get to a great script so you can make a great film? And sure, since some Greek geezer started talking about character and action, the technicals are something that writers (and developers) obsess over. But everyone was talking about the same thing - being Storytellers …
I capitalise for a reason; if filmmaking is really just the modern version of sitting round a camp fire and telling tales, then what makes for a good Storyteller and whose voice are we talking about? I’ve attached a clip - it’s from one of Malcolm X’s final speeches, setting his politics aside, the man was a great orator, a storyteller, he had a rhythm and diction in his voice that makes it pretty impossible not to listen to him speak. The content of his speeches, the words and sentences themselves are in disarray; they simply aren’t written well, largely unsophisticated and poorly articulated for the most part …but as you listen, it’s a wholly different experience. So that’s my question, is it words alone? And as they come of the page into the hands of a Director, Editor, Costume Designer, DoP…whose story is it anyway?