This month my goal is to write and direct my first rough five minute short to submit as part of my application for a commision to produce my first dramatic digital short. It's a competition for the British Film Council and there is a possibility of a £12,000 budget up for grabs but I won't hold my breath. I'll just consider it an exercise in creativity as I'm probably too off-beat and too "foreign" to get my paws on any arts council funding. I'd probably have better luck selling gimp masks on eBay.
Last night Jackson came with me to do some lighting tests at Manchester Airport so I wouldn't look like the Puerto Rican wing of Al Quaeda canvassing the area with my video camera. The tunnels and the lighting in certain areas are particularly atmospheric, great for sci-fi themes and quite inspiring, it would be easy to produce a decent looking short film with a very low budget at this location but security restrictions mean that you can't really linger very long and you certainly couldn't bring tons of lighting equipment or boom microphones. Every shot would have to be carefully thought out and choreographed beforehand.
I've been thinking about the space in which dreams and reality overlap, as usual of course but I would have to condense this into a five to seven minute short and I have to get it done pronto as I plan to submit two proposals, one for a drama which I have not yet concieved and one for a documentary about the children of Guantanomo, a subject which suprisingly seldom gets press:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minors_detained_in_the_global_war_on_terror
I'm writing a full length fictionalized drama based on the Camp Iguana detainees and some of the research I am doing for this will be the basis for my work.
I guess I'd better get cracking now. I've had some difficulty with my concentration over the past couple of days so now I'm taking ProPlus caffeine tablets which seem to help but I have to take about four at a time to offset the Zonisamide. These along with Pepsi Max and Nescafe and I'm ready to go amigo!
