Urban Scrumping
went into the postbox today. It got me to thinking about something Siobhan Curran discusses a few times, about the dichotomy between those who feel that before they can create, they should have knowledge of what to do - she expresses it thus “I wish I could do X artwork, but I don’t know how to work Photoshop’. The opinion being that without this mental barrier in their head, more people would just do stuff.
See, I don’t agree. I can’t find a decent way to express it thus, but I’ll do my hamfisted best. I wanted to push myself by writing a show outside of my comfort zone with material that I knew wouldn’t appall other people into not being. Statutory died on it’s arse, thrice, because of various actor-based drop outs, and as a consequence the show that I put body & soul into writing remains a series of word documents sat on my hard-drive. Consequently I wrote a show about middle-class angst without a necessarily ’strong’ TV show format (It’s a serial, the journey of our central character during his writers’ journey, of which Part one is merely the beginning) and in my head, the show looks amazing, sounds amazing and has a crisp and sharp colour pallette.
Now, following the ‘just do it’ method, I threw myself into it, blundering about like an idiot and making life three or four times more difficult with the result that the show does not look how it is in my mind. I’d like to rebut Curran’s theory another way - imagine as a child I was obsessed with drawing tables. Now I drew the world’s greatest table using pencil and paper. It looks something like this:
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Yeah, so whilst in my mind’s eye, I’ve drawn the world’s greatest table, the imagination / expression dicohtomy has meant that whilst all you see is a rectangle, I see my magnum opus. How the hell do I convey that to you, unless I’ve been taught how to express what I see in my head properly?
The same thing happened during the shoot. I had the magnificent help of a crew (real bloody people!) for the ‘Drug Dealer’ scene, which is why it looks a million times better then the ‘house’ stuff, credit going to Matt Long and Laura Adams for coming out on the sunniest day of the year and spending it indoors with me giving orders. But the video came out grainy and uncoloured, thanks to the way that I had unknowingly set the camera up, and the following day, my precious, shiny shotgun microphone (An Audio-Technica ATR55, Fact fans) broke after only one other shoot. I was heartbroken, having my iSight camera poking out of shot for the ‘desk’ scenes paled in comparison to that beauty, who I shall be replacing (probably upgrading, since the ATR55 seems to have shoddy build quality) soon, but not after I’ve submitted U.S. to New York with Godawful sound.
My whinge has trailed off a little, but in general, what I’m saying is that there are some things in this world which have to be taught, learned and understood, and you can’t simply (I should rephrase. I can’t simply) throw myself into it with all the expectation in the world and expect miracles.
Oh, and don’t buy an Audio-Technica ATR55. They’re shit.
