It may have appeared that very little has been going on in regards to my film projects of late but that simply isn’t true. This activity I refer to has been mostly of the covert variety – business and number crunching to be exact. Obviously this is nothing noteworthy to update people with, hence appearing scant lately.
The main focus behind this scrutiny was the feature film ‘Cruel Acts of Kindness’, which was previously postponed. Unfortunately, after all this reviewing the numbers and time frames weren’t kind at all… so it’s with my very deepest regret to say that the feature has been cancelled.
Whilst I acknowledge I haven’t handled everything flawlessly – which would have contributed to this cancellation – two other analogous events of great significance has been detrimental. One occurred last year and the other more recently – and that’s the loss of producers. They are the crew who manages a projects forward momentum and are basically why movies get made. Because of this fact, it’s no surprise that they would be the very last people you would want to jump ship. On both occasions they went MIA without contact for long periods of time and this not only halts production whilst trying to contact them but the additional time to search for replacements leaves everyone in the lurch with no certainty in sight.
I normally don’t throw sand in the sandbox, but in this instance I feel the need to vent for two reasons. The first is the fact that I spent over a year and a half of my life depositing all the time, passion and creativity I could muster into this project which has essentially been gnawed down to nothing. Some people seem to like the notoriety and status of being a feature film producer but when the time comes forget about the importance of deadlines, schedules, communication and even the most basic of work. Deadlines and schedules are like clichés – they may appear unreasonable, but they’re essential. The second reason is that I may have severed many great connections to friends and colleagues in the film circles of Perth because of said mismanagement and this is my major source of affliction. I love filmmaking and the people I collaborate with and I would hate to think I may not get that chance again with some because of others screwing me over.
I know that I’ve been complaining about others but at the end of the day I am the one who failed – I chose to work with the wrong people – so all my venting has been in vein. My only hope is that we can all take something positive out of this experience. Yes there was a great deal done wrong, but if we can recognise and rectify these faults as well as identify and appreciate the aspects that went smoothly, we can learn from this episode to collaborate and produce better projects in the future.
Some of these faults may seem quiet basic and almost simple common sense in relation to filmmaking but you would be surprised by how much passion can cloud your judgement. That sounds utterly ridiculous and maybe I’m way off base, but from my current point of view – running on a full tank of passion with a lack of a business minded overview can make for a bad case of tunnel vision.
Disclaimer: As well as the events leading up to this post, I’m currently reading ‘FREEFALL’ by Tom Read. It’s logline: “Breakdown and beyond – the extraordinary true story of one man’s descent into madness”. I think its affecting my outlook, but that’s yet to be determined…