Movies & Mascara

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.  ~Oscar Wilde

So where do i begin…

This has been a week of epic proportions. September has reared it’s ugly head and instead of being the ugly month it should be. I’m so glad here. 

So, How did this week go?

I started at meeting #1 talking about the film ‘Primary Target’ i produced last month before  brainstorming 2 bookings to produce corporate videos.

Walked 2 streets away to have a meeting with a few film makers about their new film ‘How Darren Got His Groove Back’ I had read the latest draft of the script and i absolutely loved it.  It’s something different and honestly nothing like i’d ever read before. In the directors own words above the link to the script were : Contains curse language, violence, sexual content, twisted characters, off color humor, dick jokes, vagina jokes, religious jokes, jokes that make no sense, puns, twists, turns, thrills, spills, intrigue, mystery, spaghetti, ice-cream and general down right nastiness of the nasty variety. I’ll tell you one thing, if there’s one way to get me to read your comedy script - that’s it. This script, for me is perfect. It’s exactly my humour, the production team is fantastic… the budget is in the bank and i’m proud to now be producing it.

I was offered a brand new job working permanently in Post Production -  I accepted!

I’ve totally dyed my hair back blonde! yay! well… it’s more of a gingery blonde…

I attended a call back casting session for ‘How Darren Got His groove Back’ where some very promising male actors came and auditioned for us…then went out for ice cream until 1am!1 (ice cream makes me happy…)

Got a co producer on board for my new script ‘The Post Box’ (working title).

Attended a Camera/Acting workshop with friends… 

At this point it’s now Thursday… I’ve had a brilliant week and was looking forward to starting my new job the next day… when out of the blue i get an email saying ’ Congratulations’. Not knowing what the hell it was about… mid conversation with friends in a bar, opened the email on my blackberry and literally blurted out ‘holy shit’.

Butterflies has been awarded £1000- to market it. I had totally forgotten that i had entered it in a film funding application for marketing monies… and we had won.

I’m totally over the moon, really i am. This money will make a huge impact to marketing this film. It was never expected in the budget to have this to promote it, screen it and send it to film festivals… money which other wise would have come out of mine and Leilani’s pockets.

I’m super excited, and so is the team. I can’t wait for it to be finished now so we can get to work on getting out there in the world. It’s going to make a big difference to the audiences that will see this film. We can show it to so many different people, and hopefully get it noticed! 

Butterflies is an important film for me, really it is. It’s almost as if it’s a mini breakout film. It’s so far won 1 script competition as well as £1000.00 funding and it’s not even finished yet!!

I started my new job (i loved my first day!) had a few shots… found a tenner on the floor and to top it all off… I’m currently sitting in the pub writing this with a ginger beer and a plate of battered halloumi, chips and veggies. 

An incredibly busy week for me, but you know what… i wouldn’t change it for the world!!

Meddy

Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, “What’s in it for me?” ~
Brian Tracy

Producers, I need YOU! I’m looking for an experienced producer or two… to come on board with me on a high concept, glossy drama short. Aiming at a 4-5 figure budget through private investment & crowd funding.

Planning on shooting Spring 2012. 

Email - meddy@meddyford.tv for information.

When a man is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something ~  Ralph Waldo Emerson

People  often ask me what inspires me as a film maker, as a writer, as a storyteller or an actress… and for me i only really have one answer.

I don’t believe in happy endings.

I believe a story doesn’t have to have the snow falling or the fireworks exploding at the end for it to come full circle.

I always have been and i always will be more interested in what happens when the guy doesn’t get the girl. Or what happens if she gets stood up at the alter.  What happens if he gets passed over for the job promotion and or if he can’t afford to eat that week.

For me, i love the sense of truth that comes with those stories. As a film maker i want to make my audience feel, i want to make them cry and i want them to understand how the character feels in that moment. I believe certain films are there to take us on journeys, to change the way we look at the world and to help us understand our fellow beings better.

For me, drama will always be the genre of choice. I’m a firm believer in a good moral story. I think every film should change a perception of something and drama is the genre i’ve chosen to work in to do it.

Meddy x

Judgements prevent us from seeing the good that lies beyond appearances. ~ Wayne Dyer

So, I received this email a few days ago… I’m going to share it with you all because i think it’s something you should see.

Just saw your Movies and Mascara blog and you seriously made me laught out loud at work. Honestly (and I probably shouldn’t write this if I want any chance of possibly working with you in the future) I have always had a really bad opinion of glamour models, but from just reading a bit of your blog you have genuinly made me completely change my mind (and feel like the judgmental cow that I was being).

So… I’m an actress and am always looking for new people, scripts and ideas to work with and I love your work ethic.

If I have not completely offended you and you think you could stand working with someone who always believed she was very open minded and clearly wasn’t. Send me a message.

If not, good luck with all your future endeavours.

(sic)

I’m sharing it with you because a lot of people don’t realise that this is the judgement I’m facing every day.

I actually had the chance to talk with Gareth Unwin (The Kings Speech, Exam. Producer) about this a little while ago and after he got his head around it all… you know what he said?

‘If you take yourself seriously, other people will take you seriously’

That’s an important piece of advice i think all film makers should live by.

What keeps me sane? Having a great community around me who GET me. Who aren’t afraid to let me run loose and make mistakes.

People who are supporting and expecting me to do well.

Yet, on the other hand… there are plenty of people who are expecting me to fail. They don’t expect a lot of me. People expect me to stand there and ‘look pretty’ and not have anything going on between the ears.

I managed to make this person think differently of me, and of the other girls in the industry i used to belong in… but what of the people who don’t email me?

For every one person who gets me, i betcha there are 19 who don’t!

What keeps me going?

The fact that i know I’ll be everything they said I couldn’t be.

Meddy

Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the titanic. ~ Author Unknown

The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become. ~ Charles DuBois

There comes a time in every film makers career when you have to make sacrifices. In the script, on the shoot or in the edit. Sometimes you can’t afford that dolly, sometimes that crane is in your dreams. You haven’t got time to shoot every angle you want and you can’t afford to shoot pick ups.

These are all problems that we as Guerilla film makers will face at least Once if not twice on each shoot we do. That’s just the way it is. We don’t have the budget of the Hollywood studios and often we’re working long long hours on very little sleep for the love of film making.

So, what exactly does this mean?

Today i made a sacrifice for my art. Have you ever wanted something so much, it’s all you can think of… that classic car, those football tickets… that holiday around the world?

For me, I bought my first motorbike when i was 17, i got given football tickets for free and i flew around the world as a model… yet i had one thing that i wanted. Designer bags.

I admit, i did quite like the idea of collecting designer hand bags a few years ago… Gucci, LV, Prada, Versace… VERSACE.

There was this bag, the most beauitful bag i had seen in a long time… It was $4,500. I remember seeing it when i flew to LA a few years ago and almost dying looking at it.  It was perfect, my heart stopped a beat… i guess similar to the way guys feel when they see that Ferrari or Zonda for the first time. This bag i wanted. i got talked out of buying it and promised myself i would get it next time i set eyes on it in London.

That day never came… I never saw that handbag in a shop again, maybe i pushed it to the back of my mind. Maybe i stopped looking for it altogether (yes I’m talking about a bloody bag!).

I never saw that bag again, until today. I randomly wandered into a shop trying to kill some time and there it was. Sitting on the shelf in front of me! urging me to buy it. I picked it up, it was magnificent. The way it looked on my arm… i had to have it as soon as i saw the price tag… £499. BARGAIN!  (considering it was 10x that amount last time i saw it!)

I got half way to the till with it on my arm, sparkling like a silver beacon… when it hit me. The £499 i was about to pay out for this handbag could also pay for a short film… It could pay for 2, even 3, 4, 5 short films if i budgeted properly. 

So did i buy the bag of all bags and stay in my glamourous old life?

Or did i put the bag back on the shelf?

The answer is simple really, the bag went back on the shelf and to be honest a little part of me went back there with it.

I may be talking about a bag, but you and i know that that’s not what this is about. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices in order to move forward in your life. Walk instead of getting the tube, don’t order a takeaway, eat pasta. Don’t go out to the pub, have a DVD night instead.

My sacrifice today was to give up my ecsessive lifestyle for good.

Simple things on film sets make big differences. If you have a crew of 10 working on set for you for free, ad you turn up in a taxi with an expensive handbag on your shoulder… how is that going to make them feel?

As a producer, if you’re paying everyone a great salary and are treating them very well, by all means turn up to set in that dolce and gabbana suit with that salon fresh blow dry.

If you’re on the set of a Guerilla film and you have the budget of a small peanut. Wear jeans, wear that paint splattered t shirt because you’re there with the rest of them. Working your ass off to make a movie.

So although I won’t feel that bag on my shoulder tomorrow, I won’t have the bag of all bags on my shoulder, i still gained something.

I gained the sense of realisation, that to be a film maker you’re always going to have to make these sacrifices, you’re always going to have to choose between your film or your desires.

Today I realised. The feeling i get from seeing my scripts being developed or worked on, the feeling i get when i watch that first cut or the final cut is priceless.

I realised one important thing today. £499.00 - RIP OFF.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. ~ Winston Churchill

And so, that’s that. Butterflies is officially wrapped on filming!

What started as a little idea that came into my head 8 weeks ago is now in post.

Butterflies was a story that i needed to write. It’s a story that came to me and that i had to write down the moment it entered my mind. I’m a firm believer that you don’t find stories, they find you. This one found me.

So, in 8 weeks… what has happened?

I wrote the script, may have shed a tear or two writing it. If i don’t feel it, if i don’t see it - i don’t write it. I have to believe what I’m writing, and honestly i felt every single thing that ‘Madeleine’ felt when i wrote it. I put myself in her shoes, and let her tell me the story.

The script went through Script Development and got some great feedback and constructive criticism.

The script was offered out to directors, the Lovely Leilani Holmes came on board.

Location Recce’s, mood boards and ideas were thrown about with a fantastic DOP called Pete Wallington.

We crewed up, and i hired the fantastic wardrobe stylist Karena Sedgwick to come on board as out Head of Wardrobe. (She’s mind blowingly good!)

Locations were finalised and booked.

All sounding great so far? that all happened within 3 weeks. Then things started going wrong. Our first day of shooting was booked in for Saturday May 21st. 2 days before i get a call informing me that our fantastic DOP was seriously sick and would not be able to make the shoot. Panic begins, especially knowing how much money our Wardrobe Dept alone was worth!

A few hours later, i got another call letting me know that we had a replacement DOP. Samuel Pearce to step into some big shoes!

Panic over, all is well in the world. The first day of shooting went great… if you gloss over the fact that we were left without an experienced DOP for day 2 on 22nd May.

So what did we do?

Our 1. DOP was Sick, no chance. Bless him. Our 2. DOP had work commitments that could not be broken. Do you carry on and shoot knowing that all the wardrobe is hired, location is ready, kit, crew, catering etc. without an experience DOP?

or

Do you reschedule the whole second days shoot? what would you have done?

Our decision in the end came down to one person. Karena, our fantastic Head of Wardrobe.

It turned out in the end that ‘Madeleines’ costume, was not on a time constraint so we would not be shooting the two days back to back for costume reasons… so, we rescheduled.

It was a hard decision to make, but honestly, i’m so glad we made it because that gave us the chance to make it a bigger and better film.

During the time imbetween scheduling the new shooting date i decided as a producer, i wanted to make this film even better than we had planned. I wanted to make Butterflies the best it could be.

How did i do that?

I rewrote, Redrafted and changed filming Locations.

So, instead of filming in a modest pretty bedroom with a lovely four poster bed, i thought this film deserved the best it could be. If that meant paying for a bigger and better location, that was a call i was willing to take. I spent hours and a few weeks searching for something grand, something beautiful and something that would fit ‘Madeleines’ life and eventually i struck gold.

The Lovely, lovely team at the Bermondsey Square Hotel booked us in to our pick of their spectacular loft suites. Shoot 2 was on track.

Everything was booked, everything was in place, catering, crew, location(s), kit. Done!

Then, 2 days before the shoot, i get another call… telling me our DOP’s camera had *gulp* died. We were fully crewed, locations paid for, and without a camera. We pulled it together and loaned a replacement camera body of a very good friend (hero!) and all was well in the world again…

I don’t know why but for some reason that second day seemed to be cursed. Call time for the shoot was 3pm. I get a call around 11.30 telling me there was a major problems with wardrobe. We couldn’t get the same skirt.

12.pm, i’m ransacking my own wardrobe to find every piece of blue clothing i can find… eventually i strike gold. I found a floor length blue skirt, brand new (well, worn once) that was the exact colour and very very similar. What do you do in this situation? As a producer, two words came into my head which i instructed Karena to follow “slash it”. I may have lost a full length skirt, but i gained a mini skirt and solved the major continuity problems we would have faced.

You know what? I’d make the same call every time. If the only dress i had in my wardrobe was Roberto Cavalli, yet it was a match… I’d still cut it. I’d rather waste the money on a bit of fabric than waste a days shooting. Every time.

So that was that. 2 days worth of shoots, 1 days worth of voice over and that took 6  weeks from sitting in bed writing the first line to filming the golden scene.

Now i’ve had time to reflect, what are my thoughts?

I’m extremely proud of every single person who got on board with butterflies, from script development, to locations, crewing, costume.

So many people have been involved in making this happen, from the Designers who sent us clothes to feature right down to the rock that is the Director Leilani who has been absolutely fantastic. I’m so glad she came on board with Butterflies. As a writer/Producer she’s fantastic to work with, keeps you connected and is available at all times for you when you need to run something by her or ask any questions. As an Actress, Leilani is a great director who as an Actors director knows how to work you. If you get offered a chance to work with her, don’t ever hesitate.

It’s been a great 8 weeks and honestly, i can’t wait to see what happens in 8 weeks time! Bring on the Post Production.

Meddy