mascara lashes eyes
black rabbit-hole pupils
hide behind sunglasses
empty

Alice, I know who I was when I got up this morning,
but I think I must have been changed several times since then.

A mock up of the creative direction for The Boys.

I quit my job last Friday. I don’t have anything else lined up – no other source of income. I just bought a brand spanking new 27 inch iMac which is resting loving on my credit card, biding away on interest.

It’s probably not the first thing a lot of people would do. A lot of people need and love the financial security of a job – but to me that financial security comes with chains that tie you to monotony, routine, and and neglect the freedom for you to start that business, get that idea rolling, and in my case, to write.

In the opposite case you have the cynics who don’t believe in you, or have been burnt from doing the same thing themselves. It’s not friendly advise, its advise built on bitterness after a career reached dizzying heights only to plummet and now spend the last ten years of their life trying to get it back. It’s laced with disbelief that you can achieve it, because they haven’t been able to, no matter how hard they try. I hope that by now I am old enough that I can run the maze of negativity, take the criticism and forget all about it so I can create.

So, I quit my job because I felt I had too. Because I felt that in this industry there is no other way to DO IT than to actually go out on a limb and DO IT. There is no studio you can climb, and no corporate structure to swing from limb to limb until one day you have the biggest office on the 52nd floor with views to the ocean. Don’t get me wrong, I gave it a try.

So in one week I will be unemployed. I will be a writer. I will try to swim and not drown in the drought that will inevitably be caused by inconsistent freelance and contract work.

As Shakespeare wrote, We are such stuff as dreams are made on. So lets make them happen.

And I was extremely wrong. The person who watched my film, read my script, is an established, published author and incidently loved my screenplay. She now wants me to adapt one of her own works for screen.

So this is my point – what I have learnt over the last month, even if you think there is no point, and you may suffer that excruciating humiliation (I did think my film was out of sync and so drank copious amounts of wine…..) you should always go for it!

What a nice inspirational message for today!

IndieFest is the online festival of IndieFlix. From its website: “IndieFlix promises to build a fair and open market to empower filmmakers to be the engine of their achievement and audiences to be a vital part of a movie’s success. IndieFlix is committed to encourage public opinion and power of choice while reinvesting in the independence of film, the people that craft them, and the organizations that support them. We believe that every movie has an audience, every filmmaker has a story to tell and each story has the right to be shared.”

Interesting…

When you first start entering your work into festivals, online is the big no-no. It’s tainted with impression of short, I-don’t-care-really-about-this festivals. The value of the film is completely lost the moment you hit “Upload”, and automatically you have been vetoed from entering a plethora of festivals. Yes, its probably a little snobby, seeing as the whole idea of festivals is to give voice to your work. Heres a secret – its not really what filmmakers care about! And its not about the prizes. Its about being seen at the right festivals. It’s like being a debutante.

It will be interesting to see as we move deeper into the twenty first century what happens to online festivals. DVD’s are surely on their last legs – Its so quick, easy and cheap to download from iTunes. Not to mention the actual physical space they occupy in the lounge room… So will this replicate to online festivals? Will we all sit in our living rooms, with our own popcorn, noone munching loudly in our ear, nostalgic for the days of phones ringing and being ssshhed.

Perhaps it is the nostalgia, and the atmosphere that keeps as at festivals. After all, you can potentially view every consenting film in WOW’s program on Indie Fest, so why even leave your house?

Just food for thought…

Oh – and don’t forget to vote for Iris at Indie-Fest: http://wow.indie-fest.com/?p=103

Check out: http://12words.com.au/

Check out the trailer, and make sure you go along to see this great Aussie comedy: www.stonebrosmovie.com.au

Tundra, if that is what it will be called, is still with the sound designer. A script I have written, tentatively titled The Boys, is without an ending, while only three of the five roles have been cast. I started writing a novel. A Girly Novel. I can’t even complete the first chapter.

Somehow I have become one of those forever ambling soles, lost and without purpose.

At least one project, Iris, is finished! Although, I may have another look at that cut…..

xx Claire

I’ve always worked on my projects, short films or writing, in quite a personal capacity, and have never really pushed myself to put anything “out there”. It is quite a leap, to have enough faith in your projects, or in yourself to peddle them.

I always felt that this was pretentious, or arrogant. Self assuming and extravagant. But after my time at Dungog Film Festival I’ve realised that you immeadiately negate anyone’s interest or enjoyment in your hard work if it is never there in the first place. This sounds like such a simple realisation, but you really have to hammer this in to yourself until you are ready to accept this!

While I was at Dungog Film Festival, my first little baby project was shown at Newtown Flicks. Iris is an experimental short I completed last year at UTS, with the very talented Katharine Richardson! While Newtown Flicks is just a little film festival in Sydney’s inner city, it still gives you a queer thrill to have a piece of work on public display, external of yourself.

So, I will begin to enter my films into festivals, my writing into competitions – And most importantly I am going to blog!!! Times have changed. So watch this space!

x Claire