Essay - Handling Rejection from Metroscreen

A month ago I wrote my second script and submitted it to Metroscreen for consideration in their first break program which gives you $4,000 dollars and a producer to help make your film. I was just notified that I wasn’t selected for the program. This post is about how I’m handling the rejection.

Emotional Reaction

Of course there is the feeling of being silently knifed in the heart. This will pass and is perhaps the most unimportant of all the reactions. There is nothing you can do with that pain, except morph it into something which will drive you. But I’d never been able to get senselessly angry at others for something I haven’t been given. My reaction is always to turn inwards. However, and this is quite new, my first reaction this time was anger at them. How could they not see how good a piece of work it was? How could they not recognise the impeccable taste? How could they turn down the 12 or 13 pages of supporting material that included visual references, pithy director’s notes, a complete shot list etc etc. Didn’t they understand my references to Apichatpong, and Zhenke? Did these imbeciles even know who they were? I felt real anger. Riding underneath all this bravado was the question: ‘maybe I have bad taste.’

Wanting Information

They had made a mistake. What a mistake they had made. I instantly want to know reasons. How could they make this mistake? What did they miss, what didn’t they understand? The email they sent out was a bland auto-letter. I’d put in a month of work and I wasn’t going to be satisfied with that. I wanted to know why I had been rejected.

Turning Inwards

And then I asked what I could have done better? Was the structure too complex for a short? A lot of people in the AWG writing group didn’t get it. Sure, they could barely do up their pants, but they found it difficult to understand the structure. But I explained the structure succinctly in the supporting notes.

Perhaps it was a cliched story of a beating. Stuart Parkyn, a producer who had read it, thought so. But he didn’t read the supporting notes which spoke to how the way the story was being told is innovative. That we follow the abuser after the abuse and leave the person being abused. Maybe it is a cliched story.

How about storyboards, perhaps instead of a complete shot list, I should have done storyboards. That couldn’t have been it, my visual references were good, and the shot list complete.

There was a spelling mistake in the first page. But that’s the only mistake. I had formatted the thing impeccably, it doesn’t look like what they usually get ‘loony scripts’.

Maybe they didn’t think I had the experience to pull it off. My bio could have been better, less jokey. What was I thinking? But then, it is a First Break program for new comers. How much experience were they expecting?

Perhaps it was because I didn’t have anyone else attached to the project like a producer or dp. But again, they had said that that wasn’t an important consideration.

Maybe it was a fatal combination of all of these

Reaction to the Reaction

Next I thought this: ‘how you react to this will decide everything. Film is hard, it’s full of rejection, how you go about getting information to make the next thing better is the key. How quickly and convincingly you get up from this is it.’

So I went for 15 minute walk and thought about things and moved my body around a little. I suppressed any doubts over my taste. I decided to write an email to the organiser of the program:

‘Thanks for considering my application David.

Obviously it’s a disappointing result after writing 13 drafts of the Omission script and countless drafts of the support materials (including visual references, and a nearly complete shot list for the film).

I’m sure it is difficult to respond to so many applicants but I’m very interested in the reasons for your rejection. I would be interested in any information you could provide to help me to make a better application next time around.

Also, I’d like to confirm that my application was considered under the multi-cultural background scheme for First Break.

Thank you again for the consideration.’

And then I thought that I’d better write down my reactions to this as soon as I can. Get this out of my system.

Moving On

I’m sure I’ll grieve a little. I really want to find out what happened, why the submission was rejected. But in a way I was preparing for this (just as I was preparing to get it), I’m deep into planning (scene outlines) a feature film called The Immigrant. It’s had a good start and it will get better. I’m directing a film at TAFE. And now I have to think about how else I can get Omission made, including using my own money and wrangling favours.

What’s important is not what’s happened, but my reaction to what’s happened.


Posted 6 days ago

Omission - Draft Shot List

The organisers of the Metro Screen first break program emphasised that film is a visual medium and any materials in the submission that showed the visual direction of the film would be welcome. At first I tried to do storyboards for the film, but a very effective combination of having no drawing ability, and the lack of time made me try a different approach: a shot list.

What I found out was that doing the shot list well was nearly as much as half the work of doing the script. The need to visualise each and every shot to tell the story well was a challenge, but a welcome one. You exist purely in a world of imagination and pictures.

Please check out the Shot List.

Also read the original script, and the supporting material for the short film Omission.


Posted 3 weeks ago

Omission - Supporting Materials

My dreams of making two submissions to MetroScreen’s first break program was quickly shown to be the utter folly that it was. Here is some of the support materials for my submission. Read the script for Omission here. If you are especially masochistic, read the draft shot list here.

Short Synopsis

Omission is a meditative study of a hard working immigrant family’s internal violence and quiet trauma. A stern father suspects that his mischievous son has stolen a hundred dollars from him. In front of his helpless wife he savagely beats and hog-ties his son. Later, his silent attempts to come to grips with his horrifying actions towards a person he deeply loves is poetically explored.

Main Characters

Monir

Is a wiry middle aged immigrant from Bangladesh. He is the paternalistic but loving father of Rajun, and Veena’s husband. He strongly feels the obligations of being the traditional head of the family. He is under immense pressure and works as an office cleaner during the day and as a taxi driver at night. Although usually reserved, he has a very quick temper, which unpredictably devolves into frightening rage. The contradiction in his character rests on his love and desire to protect his family, and his wild anger and fear of not having control. He is also confronted by the conflict between his inner moral norms and values, and those of the western world that he has immigrated to.

Rajun

Is a mischievous, adventurous 9 year old boy who is the son of Monir and Veena. He is afraid of and antagonistic towards his autocratic father and is confused by the strict obedience that is expected of him at home and the opportunities and freedoms that are offered to him outside. He is curious and tests the boundaries of what he can get away with. He feels that he has little protection at home as his mother is equally infantilised by custom.

Veena

Is Monir’s wife and Rajun’s mother. She is a conservative but loving wife who is incapable of protecting her son because of her traditional role in the family and lack of power. She tends to the house, loves Rajun deeply and helps her husband in his cleaning jobs. She attempts to stop the violence but also accepts the beatings that her child suffers as a cultural norm, a right of the father.

Minor Characters

Boy who is a school friend of Rajun. Older Boy who watches the Boy playing video games. Clerk who sells Rajun sporting goods. Driver who drives taxi before Monir. Attractive Girl who passes Monir’s taxi. Girl 1, Girl 2, Girl 3 who have been out clubbing. Man in suit who catches Monir’s taxi.

Outline

Hideously beaten, Rajun lies bleeding on the ground at the bottom of a stairwell. His mother Veena sits close to him in shock then screams.

Monir and Veena clean an office building on a weekend morning. Rajun comes along and plays cricket against a wall. It is a supportive, hard-working immigrant family.

Back at their small apartment, Rajun watches television whilst Monir searches for a hundred dollar note that he has lost.

Rajun skips school with a boy from school. They buy frosty cones and then go to a games arcade with the small amount of money they have between them. At the arcade Rajun says that he has found a hundred dollars. We can’t be sure if he really has found it or not. He leaves the arcade and goes to a sport store. Warily, he buys a cricket bat and oversized T-shirt.

Rajun arrives home. He tries to hide the bat from his mother but she sees it. He makes up an excuse for how he got it.

Monir gets home and Veena tells him that Rajun has got a new cricket bat. Monir suspects that Rajun stole the hundred dollars from him. He bursts into Rajun’s room and beats him to near unconsciousness [the camera turns away from the violence and looks elsewhere]. Monir then ties Rajun’s hands, and his feet together and dumps him at the bottom of the apartment block stairwell. Veena sits close to Rajun in shock.

Monir quietly gets up at 2 A.M and eats. He sees the cricket bat and T-shirt laid out neatly in the lounge room and is confronted by his grotesque act.

Monir picks up the Taxi that he will drive that day. He has a jovial conversation with a friend, suppressing what is happening inside him. He drives around the city. He picks up a group of girls outside of a club. He is about to light a cigarette whilst waiting in the taxi ranks at the Airport when a passenger asks to be taken to Coogee.

Monir is reminded of how lost and isolated he feels in this country by something the passenger says.

Suddenly smiling, he looks at his hands.

Creative Concept

Pacing

The film is sedate, meditative, observant. It is not primarily about the cliché subject of child abuse, but how deep love, and extreme abuse can coexist; how the abuser deals with his act; and how cultural paradoxes can confuse and haunt a person. The film is interested in the pre and post climactic moments.

The audience is driven to search for emotions, for causes, for meanings in the restrained, sometimes evasive narrative, in the impassive faces of the characters. The film isn’t primarily about action, but about reaction. What is important is not what is asserted but what is shown, documented.

There is a slow accumulation of details and actions and evasions which hint at who a character is and the scenario they find themselves in. The events themselves seem inevitable.

Structure

The structure sets up the initial mystery and then mirrors the meditative pacing. After the sharp climax the film becomes not about the abused, but about the abuser.

1. Initial mystery of how this young boy was so horrifically beaten, tied up. Who is the woman? The hook for the audience.

2. A study of the boy. The audience is given the chance to observe the boy’s behaviour, his character, his desires. The narrative balancing act here is to let the audience identify with Rajun, so that the climax is especially painful, but confound the audience expectation by dropping the story of the boy and concentrate on the father.

3. The climax is sudden and harrowing. During the worst of the violence the film looks away, but not completely.

4. The aftermath is a crucial character study bathed in silence. Because of the intense climax the audience are on edge, searching for remorse in Monir’s face, searching for an effect. It isn’t clear if there is any, the audience grasps for a clear, neat resolution, but life often doesn’t let us choose our moments of epiphany. Perhaps the resolution for Monir comes years later. Perhaps it never does.

Camera Turns Away From the Violence

After Monir first strikes Rajun the camera turns away and looks at the parent’s empty bedroom. The camera turns away but the film doesn’t. The audience still hears the screams and cries and pleas of Rajun and Veena, and the rage of Monir. The audience feels the shock of witnessing something only partially. The disorientation intensifies the terror.

Extreme Out of Focus Surroundings

Once Monir leaves for work at night, he is in sharp focus but his surroundings are extremely out of focus. He cannot connect with the world. He’s visually isolated from the events around him. The audience is in the same seclusion and quarantine that he is in. The audience have the chance that they’ve been craving (or avoiding) to study the man. It would be nice to introduce this gradually by decreasing DOF in the kitchen scene between cuts.

Some Dialogue in Bengali

It would be lovely to have the speaking parts of the parents spoken in Bengali and the film subtitled. This would bring an authenticity to the film and highlight the differences yet interdependence in language between Rajun and his parents. I speak Bengali and will be able to translate the dialogue.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

Camera, Editing and Grading

A static camera with long, unhurried, watchful gazes at the characters and their situation is what will match the narrative flow best. When the camera does move it moves smoothly, gracefully, unnoticed (with heavy use of a steadicam). The camera work and editing needs to be restrained, allowing the moments to accumulate. The scenes need to breathe naturally.

These film makers are especially relevant: Apichatpong (esp. Syndromes of a Century), Ozu, Antonioni, Hsiao Hsien Hou, Jia Zhengke (esp. 24 City), Tarkovsky, and Terrence Malick.

The film will be shot mostly in natural light with only reflectors or small lights when required. The scenes will show Australia’s brightness, the colours, yellow and faded. There should be a half-felt feeling that this is in the past somewhere, in some hot forgotten Sydney summer. However, there should be a natural look to the film with only a slight yellow summer tint in the grade, nothing extreme.

Please see the Visual References that have been attached to this application.

Casting

Bengali actors are needed for the three lead parts. There are a number of Bengalis in Sydney who have had theatrical backgrounds and who are part of the strong Bengali associations that exist. Non-actors would be ideal for the parts of Rajun and Veena (and others) as the parts are relatively passive and a more authentic performance will be achieved. I respect the methods of the early Neo-realists and Bresson in ‘modelling’ non-professionals and using restrained acting.

Sound and Score

The film will only be minimally scored as the atmospheric sound that exists in the scenes will highlight the still, authentic, repressed mood we want to build. We need to get rights to a Classical Bengali ghazal for the car scene. I want the sounds to be otherworldly during the violence and the aftermath. See Alan Splatt’s work on Blue Velvet.

Locations

Required: apartment, office building/factory, school grounds, outside of service station, games arcade, shopping centre, sport store, street at night, taxi, car.

Director’s Bio

Adnan Chowdhury is an astonishingly innovative photographer who has recently spent 3 months on a morally questionable street photography project in Dhaka, Bangladesh (See here www.adnanchowdhury.com). In a past life, he was the sole Product Manager, looking after strategy, planning, and design of a software product with revenues of $16 million dollars a year. He has a degree from the University of NSW in completely the wrong field. He has recently been making short films and shooting and editing interviews for various organisations.


Posted 3 weeks ago

My Second Script - Omission

I couldn’t hear Wesley on the phone. I can never hear him on the phone. But, as usual, he had something for me to do, to do RIGHT NOW! I had to get over to Surry Hills to a place called Metro Screen for some talk or other. I looked at my half finished jigsaw and my reversed underwear. It would be the first time I’d left the house in four days. I leaped at the opportunity.

Dripping sweat from my bike ride I walk through a mysterious door into an enigmatic hallway. It opens up to a production studio full to the brim with eager hopefuls. I didn’t know then what they were hoping for but they had that rat like intensity of wanting something, that aggressiveness of being cooped up in a room with others who wanted the same thing.

I looked around for Wesley, and as usual at the other side of the room he was surrounded by a flock of young girls. They were trying to take photos with him. I bared my teeth at an equally maniacal writer who was blocking my entry into the room and found myself a tiny corner.

It’s a competition for ‘emerging’ Writer-Directors (the high security VIPs of the film asylum). Eleven people get roughly $4000 and all they have to put in is a draft script, and a synopsis, outline, character breakdowns, director’s statement (?), creative concept (double ?) etc. etc. As I’m backing out of my the room with my hands up protectively in front of me, they also mention that four of the eleven spots are for ‘people of diverse cultural and non-English speaking backgrounds’. Hey there!

So I get home and (two months later) start writing my second script ever. The world needed this. Who was I to deny the world? I decide to do a story from experience. Here’s what it is about:

Omission is a meditative study of a hard working immigrant family’s internal violence and quiet trauma. A stern father suspects that his mischievous son has stolen a hundred dollars from him. In front of his helpless wife he savagely beats and hog-ties his son. Later, his silent attempts to come to grips with his horrifying actions towards a person he deeply loves is explored.

Following is my submission to Metro Screen’s First Break (http://www.metroscreen.org.au) (Read a PDF version here). Please also read the post that contains the support materials for the script and the draft shot list. They received over 115 submissions. The results come out at the start of March.


Posted 3 weeks ago

Interview Notes - Nuri Bilge Ceylan at BFI Southbank (link)

Photo by Unknown

GA: And there are elements of Chekhov in there, as well?

NBC: Yes, actually in all my films I believe there is an element of Chekhov, because Chekhov wrote so many stories. He had stories about almost every situation, and I love them very much. So maybe he’s influenced the way I look at life. Life follows Chekhov for me, in a way. After reading Chekhov, you begin to see the same kind of situations in life. And in the scriptwriting stage, I remember the stories somehow, so yes, Chekhov is here.

GA: One of the things that strikes me about this film is that a lot of it is shot with very, very little dialogue, and that seems to be a common thing in your films. Do you think that people express themselves better without words?

NBC: I don’t know, actually. I don’t try to make my characters silent. In the script, that scene had a lot of dialogue. But in the shoot, it’s the only place to understand whether what you wrote works or not. Always during a shoot, I try to find more balance in the situation, so I end up taking dialogue out here and there and finally there’s no dialogue. I feel the balance is reached at that point and I don’t know what to do about it. It just convinces me more like that, somehow. And of course, dialogue should be treated very carefully. I’ve investigated this a lot. I’ve recorded many conversations in order to understand the nature of it. It doesn’t follow a logical progression. Somebody says something, the other person says something entirely different; if you analyse it, you see it is that way. So dialogue, even if you use it, it shouldn’t be so logical and it shouldn’t carry much information about the film’s secrets or the meaning of the film. Dialogue, for me, only works if they talk nonsense, anything unrelated to the film. I like to do this as much as possible. I try to tell the meaning of the film without dialogue – with the situation, the gestures, and so on. This is my intention, but maybe I’m not successful.

Q4: This has been said before many times: that your compositional style is very similar to [Yasujiro] Ozu, especially in your positioning of the camera at very low level, perhaps knee-height, especially in the scenes inside the house. Did you purposely mimic Ozu or was it something that you did unintentionally? Also, can you say whether this compositional style is particularly important to avoid tracking shots and movement of camera work, as opposed to single shots.

NBC: Yes, he [GA] said the same thing during dinner. Ozu is my favourite director, actually. And yes, I don’t move the camera much – but I don’t know if that’s because of Ozu or because I’m a photographer. I jut don’t like to move the camera much, really, because it makes everyone more conscious about the camera. And the height of the camera is mostly decided for me, and I think for Ozu, by the vertical lines in the space. In the books, they say that Ozu put his camera 90cm above the ground but I don’t believe it. It depends on the vertical lines – and there are many of those in Japanese houses. But more than that, the psychology of the character is important – if you shoot a person from above, it’s different from shooting them from below. I generally like to shoot at mouth level for a portrait. Especially in closeups, even 1cm is very important. That’s why you should never leave it to the cinematographer, because the cinematographer never knows how to connect it to the next shot; only the director knows the relationship between the next shot and the previous shot. So the director should carefully place the camera to ensure continuity of the psychology.

Q5: Why did you decide not to use a conventional musical soundtrack?

NBC: I don’t like music in cinema, it seems to me like a crutch; if you cannot express something in cinematic ways, then you call the help of the music to underline it. I’m not against it, but if possible I try not to use it. In the editing, I try many pieces of music, but eventually I decide not to use any. And also, the sound of the atmosphere is the nicest sound for me in the cinema, so I prefer to use atmospheric sound instead of music. Because music kills things.

Click on the link in the title.


Posted 1 month ago

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Aphorisms 15 - 29 January 2010

1

Cinema is the greatest art form of the last century BECAUSE it has had the greatest constraints.

2

How you tell an idiot filmmaker: he isn’t talking about what’s actually on screen, he’s talking about follow focus’s and file formats. Another way to tell an idiot film maker: he isn’t talking about what’s on screen, but about other idiot filmmakers.

3

Bresson called his actors Models. Ozu did a single line of dialog in 72 takes. They realised that acting must be obliterated. What is left is only the person who has chosen to call themselves an actor.

4

Film is so hard to make that the unambitious consider it enough to have made one at all. But the demands of significant art remains, what are you saying that has never been said before, and why hasn’t it been said in this way? Only people with small penises point out that origniality is an impossible task. They’re missing the point.

5

If you haven’t seen it, heard it or felt it then don’t write it, it’s certain to be second rate.

6

Resolution (both camera and narrative) is the haven of the uncreative.

7

Oh, you want a happy ending? Die.


Posted 1 month ago

Che and the Digital Cinema Revolution on Vimeo (via Vimeo)

  • What I’m looking for technology to do is reduce the time from the idea to execution.
  • Is this camera going to actually work?
  • No other camera, or backup system.  Steven’s response was no … we are going to make this work. … I just wouldn’t be denied.
  • Body hot, body hot, body hot.
  • We’d shut the camera off and put it on ice, and put ice on top. … Turns out that the temperature guage was in the wrong place.
  • Spiders were getting into the camera.
  • Sometimes these cameras can be unnaturally sharp. I would use Anamorphic lenses to soften the image a little bit. A more filmic look.
  • It needs to be small. That’s the point.
  • We were controlling everything. I liked that a lot, just from a security level.
  • The efficiency of digital outweighed the difficulty of learning the new system.
  • Steven was able to the colour correcting himself.
  • I want to get to a point of reflection more quickly.
  • On a micro level movies are being cut better than they ever have. But at a macro level something is being lost. … I feel like no one’s taking the time to watch it end to end, over and over again.

Posted 1 month ago

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© Adnan Chowdhury 2009