1st Cut

Famous in my own Bedtime

If you live in the UK and happen to be watching ITV1 in the Carlton TV Central region this coming Thursday at about 11.30 pm then keep a look out for a bongo playing, maracas waving Assistant Producer on “CHAINS WHIPS ‘N’ RUBBER TIPS” – (produced by Nicky Smith, Directed by Jacqueline D. Smith) and a Production Assistant with a nifty line in feathery headresses on “PEOPLE TO CONTACT WHEN YOU’RE DEAD IN THE MIDLANDS ” – (produced by Nick Simpson, Directed by Matt Cope).

The first batch of the Carlton TV/Screen WM First Cut 2003 documentaries are being shown then and I’m crowing as loudly as I can about them … so there!

The Telephone Preference Service

“Hello! My name is Joe and I’m calling you on behalf of Your Privacy Ltd., is now a convenient time for you to talk?”

“That’s Great!”

“I’m calling you today because I’m in a position to offer you a unique service whereby you’ll never have to hear from me or my kind again. I’m sure you’ll agree that would be a good thing wouldn’t it?”

“That’s Great!”

“All you have to do is have some details ready and we can start the ball rolling right now with very little inconvenience to you — Do you know what your telephone number is?”

“That’s Great!”

“Just let the TPS have it and you’ll be living in a ‘Cold Call’ free environment in no time at all. What’s TPS? — I’m glad you asked …”

The Telephone Preference Service (TPS) helps you to make sure your telephone number is no longer available to organisations who may telephone you with offers and information you do not wish to receive.

Under Government legislation introduced on 1 May 1999 It is unlawful to make unsolicited direct marketing calls to individuals who have indicated that they do not want to receive such calls.

You can either do this by contacting companies directly and asking them not to phone you or you can register with a central service (The Telephone Preference Service) to stop all such calls.

The term individual includes consumers at their residential address, sole traders and, except in Scotland, partnerships.

It is free to register with the service.

“… So can I assume you wish to register with the TPS today and do me out of a job?”

“That’s Great!”

The horror, the horror!

I had a dream last night — I’d woken up really late and instead of getting into the call centre at 11 am I had staggered in at 2 pm. In the dream, this resulted in instant dismissal but instead of sorrow I was filled with joy. Presumably because I hadn’t had to make the decision to actually leave.

But it had been a dream only, I had actually woken up and had got to work on time. There we were, a hundred or so mercenary souls crammed into the call centre. Like so many battery hens rolling out scripted eggs to the unfortunate householders. Why? Because at some distant past point in there lives they may have innocently filled in a magazine questionnaire thus sticking a secret ‘please disturb me’ sign upon themselves for the rest of eternity.

Suddenly I got a sale and then another. Perfectly sane and intelligent people had listened to what I’d half heartedly regurgitated and decided that they needed that which they hadn’t thought they’d needed but moments previously. By the end of the day I’d made six.

I really don’t get it; I was selling things. More disturbingly, I was enjoying it.

I’m feeling less like a character from ‘Glengary Glenross’ and more like one from ‘The Heart of Darkness’.

Forget Cannes!

Hey, if I was in Dhaka right now, I could have been at the 8th Dhaka International Film Festival which is running at a couple of venues there.

Alas, I’m not! … but If I was then I would have had a choice of mostly Eastern European and Scandinavian movies as well as a few from India but for some reason a disproportionate number of movies from Switzerland!

Man Friday

“Be there at ten on Friday morning”, said the agency bloke — yup, the same one who sent me off to do door-to-door charity mugging over Christmas. At least he didn’t try to cover up the fact that this was going to be another selling job and since I went along with it I’ll stop maligning the man.

So, I turn up at ten past, great start but ‘who cares’ I thought. Unfortunately I’m not there late enough to avoid the round table ‘introduce yourselves to the group’ session that was in full flow. I’d walked into a group interview. The other candidates were a recent graduate who wanted to be a runner, (everyone’s a media wannabe!), she sat next to a man who up until a week ago had been a BBC researcher down at the Pebble Mill … huh! There was another recent graduate who’d come over from Ghana to study business, an ex-shop assistant who couldn’t remember whether he’d worked for Dixons or Comet (!), yet another graduate who’d just come back from backpacking around somewhere purporting to be far-flung and a Terratorial Army (TA) bloke from Lichfield.

We were led off to be interviewed individually, which was quite a lengthy process which involved answering questions like, ‘describe a time when you’ve been in an awkward situation and how did you resolve it?’ … I was tempted to answer ‘ Now! and I’m going to run away’ … but I didn’t. Anyway, the interview finished and we were led off to the next stage — the roleplay session.

So, here’s the situation, I was to pretend to be a DVD player salesman who’s just phoned Robinson Crusoe on his desert island and need to convince him that he should buy a ‘Panasony DVD player for ??79.98′. Of course Robinson hasn’t been around for a while and so doesn’t know anything about DVDs, CD’s, remote controls or even Pot Noodles. Needless to say that I didn’t make the sale.

Eventually, we were led back to a room in which our team playing abilities were tested — apparantly, we were on a sinking ship and had a number of items with us which we had to put in order of importance given that we were going to be on a life raft for an unknown period of time … in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Apart from me thinking who I’d cast in the movie, ‘The Interview that never Ended’, the TA bloke naturally decided to take over and the rest of the bunch were quite happy to let him. To be fair he was spot on with his choices and his reasoning but I did argue against him for the sake of arguing regarding a 160 bars of chocolate. Sometimes you just have to make a stand.

Well, the movie … urm … interview did end and we were given the results. The wannabe runner, the TA bloke and myself were offered the job. We were underwhelmed. Indeed, upon being informed as to how he’d done at the interview, the ex-BBC bloke bounded into the room and shook our hands heartily, grinning with relief as he told us he’d failed it. So it’s entirely possible that from next Monday onwards you may be the lucky, lucky recipient of a phone call from somewhere in Birmingham offering you something you never knew you needed.

I promise to quitely hang up, without another word, if you shout, ‘My name is Robinson Crusoe, get me out of here’.

Sylhet Time Bomb

Via Reuters ,

Three die in Bangladesh tomb blast
Tue 13 January, 2004 08:37

DHAKA (Reuters) – Bangladesh has suspended an annual festival at a Muslim saint’s tomb after a bomb killed three devotees and wounded about 50.

Police said two people died instantly when the bomb exploded on Monday night as thousands of disciples sang and prayed at the tomb of Hazrat Shah Jalal. A third victim died later in hospital.

Police and officials said the blast at the 650-year-old tomb in Sylhet town, 300 km (180 miles) from the capital Dhaka, was the first act of violence in the pilgrimage spot, and spread panic among the town’s two million residents.

This disturbing development apparantly has the authorities stumped as to who did it and why. I can hazard a good guess even if they can’t! It’s most likely the same group of cowards who poisoned the fish in the famous fishpond at the Yemeni saint’s shrine a few weeks ago and who killed seven people at the shrine of another Muslim saint in Tangail district a year ago. These murderers probably killed the seventeen people who died at two cinema bombings in the northern town of Mymensingh back in late 2002 and the nine people whose lives were destroyed at a concert in Dhaka back in April 2001.

One of the things I remember from my Quranic studies days was a particularly zealous teacher admonishing us, his hapless students, against the ‘evils’ of cinema, television and radio and telling us also that not only was music and dance forbidden but so too was chess!

I’ve since learned better from wiser souls.

Anyway, that was a long time ago and I’ve watched enough telly and listened to enough music and even played enough chess to be irredeemably condemned in the eyes of his ilk who unfortunately seemed to have been reinforced, back in the ‘desh at least, by a different kind of Afghan asylum seeker. Thank you Uncle Sam.

I wonder if Osama likes fish?

Day Two – Long Live Documentary!

Hot on the heals of Day One was, unsurprisingly enough, Day Two of the “Documentary is Dead – Long Live Documentaries” series of seminars. Day Two’s agenda asked the question, “Is there a future for documentaries on TV? Cinema? Or are there other outlets?”

Norman Hull began the day with an airing of his recently broadcast “Bernard’s Bombay Dreams“, which I’d watched a couple of months ago and in which vile racist-joker Bernard Manning was taken to the almost equally vile Bombay Gymkhana Club where whilst attempting to entertain the assorted glitteratti of Bombay High society he came a cropper (Hurray! – end of his post-modern, post-ironic, revisionist revival). Anyway, Norman Hull told us, amongst many other things, the “Documentaries are TV stunts now” and that “commisioning editors require more justification these days”. Unsurprising really as everyone is having to justify their spends to shareholders and shareholders are looking for profits – it’s just the way of our world today.

Martin Smith was a director on the seminal “World at War” series and said that he tries to “work within the system … and subvert it”, that documentaries can be dangerous (to the powers that be) citing as example the recent incident involving Blunket’s kerfuffle with a documentary that showed racist police recruits. Echoing Brian Moser from the previous day, he said that although he himself began life as an editor he always employs an editor and that feedback from the crew is important. (This I find interesting especially in the light of the trend for one-man productions these days). Generally Martin Smith emphasised the need for having a theme in the production and the need to be persistant. Interestingly, he suggested that the Internet could be a location to list, “research sources for documentary films … as per a book”.

There was a lively exchange between Martin Smith and one of the two people sharing the stage for the next seminar, Penny Woolcock. It had to do with the scripted ‘documentary drama’ – “Tina goes Shopping” and hi-lighted the blurring of the distinctions between drama and documentary. Anyway, Penny feels that her films are, “about people who survive on the margins” and that she feels responsible for her subjects, i.e. keeping in contact with them well after the end of the production.

Both she and the other person on the stage with her, Marc Issacs (of ‘Lift’ fame), felt that it was quite legitimate to blur the distinction between drama and documentary and using documentary as a stylistic premise for drama. They too referenced Italian Neo-Realism cinema regarding this. Marc Issacs also added that he “fictionalised for creative reasons”. Also regarding his own approach he suggests, “figure out what you want to say and the way you want to say it” and that he uses his budget to buy time which fits in with his method of allowing a narrative to develop over a long time spent observing/recording subjects. Naturally, he feels that “DV has democratised things”.

The final session of these two illuminating days was chaired by Dick Fontaine from London’s DocHouse. Three documentary makers talked about their very different projects.

Hal Vogel has (or is getting) a cinema distribution for his feature documentary “Game over: Kasparov and the Machine“. this reflects the recent trend for cinema releases for feature documentaries such as, “Bowling for Columbine“, and the stunning, “Touching the Void“. He noted that he had to play with the sound, “doing things that work in cinema but would be unacceptable for TV”, also that, “distribution is difficult”, and that next time, “[He] would go with a small and very hungry distributor”.

Mike Uwemidino from Vision Machine has been part of a collective that made ‘The Globalisation Tapes”. This was commisioned by the (International Union of Foodworkers) IUF. He hi-lighted the many alternative sources of funding from NGO’s through Labour Networks to Unions. In answer to a question he revealed that, “the subjects were the crew”.

The final speaker from DocHouse was Alex Cooke, the filmaker behind the very recently aired “Arnold Shwarzenegger: The Governator“. She told us about how she just went out to California, living off her credit cards and filmed the political circus swirling around Arnie’s governial election campaign. This in-spite of lack of access to the man himself. At this point Dick Fontaine pointed out that, “not getting access is about not getting access” (?) and that filmaking relies a lot upon luck but, “you’ve got find it”. Ironically, Arnie’s success has fuelled hers – her documentary was picked up by the BBC and she’s managed to break even!

Alex Cooke continued by telling us that no matter how bad we think the situation is in the UK Documentary film making business, it’s even worse for American’s and finshed by hilighting the many International sources for marketing/distribution and funding such as ARTE, the Franco-German cultural channel – the Amsterdam Forum pitiching event, hosted at the International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam (IDFA) and the Toronto Forum which is hosted at the Toronto International Documentary Festival (TIDF). The key to documentary filmaking she said, echoing practically everybody else, is persistance!

The weekend was wrapped up with a Q and A session during which, regarding the distribution of Digital-Shorts, First Cuts, etc., a questioner asked why these were not available on the Internet. The answer given was that, “at the moment film on the Internet is horrible to watch but with expansion of broadband, things should improve significantly … it’s happening already”

[UPDATE 20/01/04: Melissa McCarthy, over at shootingpeople.org, has written a two part review of the first day of the conference -- you can read part 1 and part 2 to get a classy analysis about what was said on the day]

Day One – Documentary is Dead!

Over the weekend, Screen West Midlands organised and ran a lively series of seminars, chaired by David Naden, entitled “Documentary is Dead – Long Live Documentary” in the Think Tank at Millenium Point. It featured some of the most influential names from British documentary filmmaking who talked about their own films and views about the genre, often illustrated with clips.

I made a few notes of what was said but not nearly enough (damn that spongy brain of mine!) anyway…

The first day focused on the history and development of documentary film making in Britain from the 50’s through to the present day and began with a contribution from Christophe Dupin largely about the Free Cinema movement. John Irvin then followed and emphasised the importance of using narrative in documentary and observed that ‘making the team is important for film making’.

Michael Grigsby and Brian Moser underlined the need for research, the former at one point saying that you need, “space to think, to feel, to listen; let film run, let sound run”, and urged filmakers to, “just do it!”, and use the internet and film festivals as distribution channels. Brian Moser, (who was in Bolivia when they killed Che Guevara!) noted that you need luck and told us that once he had his footage he ‘relied on his editor totally’.

David Pearson mentioned the influence of Italian Neo-Realism and the French Nouvelle-Vague on his work and Marilyn Guant told us how in the past she used to work with crews of eight or more and now must work with just two or less.

All the contributors made mention of the difficulty of the commissioning process now as compared to the past and lamented the diminishing airtime that schedulers, on the terrestrial broadcasting channels, gave to documentary programmes now.

The first day’s session was concluded by two academics (though they were filmakers too). Prof. John Corner discussed the transition of documentary making over the decades — from the 30’s through to the 60’s they became journalistic, through to the 70’s they became observational and through to the 90’s they became entertainment. He suggested that there is a “public values crisis” and that society’s core values had “shifted towards lifestyle and leisure” — presumably reflected in documentary core values. Both he and Prof. Julian Petley re-iterated the importance of scheduling for broadcast documentary making with Prof. Petley revealing that since the 1990 Broadcast Act , the number of documentaries shown on terrestrial TV has been cut by 30% – replaced by leisure/hobbies/soap programmes. That in fact, the act had not brought about de-regulation but ‘re-regulation’. They both pointed out the lack of critical space for talking about TV.

The first day finished with Nikki Smith a director of one of this year’s First Cuts asking, (quite understandably given the generally pessimistic tone of the day), what positive words of encouragement the ‘old-school’ had for those just starting out. The point was made to her (and everyone else) that without a realistic understanding of the industry as it is, she (and we) would not know what obstacles there were out there. Fair point.

However, after the day’s fascinating reality check this cleverly scheduled conference offered us hope but more about that tommorrow.

Sacked in my own Lunchtime

‘Team Leader’ had asked us to get into the office a bit earlier yesterday for retraining. We’ve been working on behalf of a number of children’s charities but now we were to work for a cancer research charity. “It’s easier”, began one of the hard-bitten veteren fund-raisers, “… the punters always know somebody who’s had cancer and that means they’re more likely to donate”, he continued in a mildy Schindler-esque sort of way.

It’s funny how within a few short weeks in the job I’d got to the stage where I didn’t think a statement like that was at all callous, afterall, the ends justify the means here dont they? .. Don’t they!? I would approach each new door with the intention of making a ‘good pitch’, reading the body language and, assuming they hadn’t slammed the door, meeting objections with a number of well honed responses and ‘closing the deal’. But it was hardly a ‘hard-sell’ and no one was conning anybody so I was settling into the job without any huge crisis of conscience.

So it came as a bit of shocker at this ‘retraining’ to find that we’d all been sacked!

Various explanations were given, something to do with the married couple who ran the company going through a divorce and the structure of the company changing … blah … blah … blah. But it sounded like bullshit, I mean there are ways to tell your staff that they’ve lost their jobs and inviting them to a bogus training session isn’t the best.

To cap it all we were told that another fundraising company had been formed by one of the divorcing pair which would be taking over the operations and that we could all work for it … but only after going through a job interview … bloody cheek and not bloody likely!

Well, at least I won my bet — I said I wouldn’t last more than three weeks.