Director's Cheer: 20 FAQs # 3
Q: You plunged headlong into a feature length
film. It goes against all that is taught in film.
A: This project from inception, and at every step, has felt "right for me" and timely.
I have grown into the opportunity of course, so there was and is a tremendous foundation of professional/ personal creative experience and a rock solid network of colleagues in all the related creative industries. There is a lot of inner and outer support.
Well, about "all that is taught in film" - that point is moot perhaps, and I don't really compute my creative work in a 'how to', text book sense. In any case, I haven't studied formally like that. I've been guided all my life by an innate respect of my own talent, purpose, and creative impulse. I've learned and am always learning through reading, self-education, risk taking, on-the-job training, and discerning apprenticeships/ mentorships/ partnerships, so thinking that it ought to be done or not done according to some expert idea or convention, did not and does not terrify me out of taking creative risks.
Really, the project did start as a "short film"; 48 minutes was my original intention. We took the script to a feature length at 60 minutes when, as producers, we felt we would potentially have more access internationally. We've come out around 74 minutes.
I've written and produced 60 and 90-minute documentaries, television specials and live programmes. My stage plays for children and teens were 60 minutes (The Island, 1990) and 70 minutes (The Last of the Super Models, 2010). So I had a sense of 48 minutes being doable, even though the cinematic approach as a film maker/ director was definitely new for me. Having published several stories and edited 6 "tween" novellas around 60,000 plus words each, I had a 'felt' sense of what 48 minutes of storytelling time would require.
During principal photography it became clear to me that my writing of action in the script was very dense, and as a first-time director my shot list expectations very ambitious. I had to rewrite scenes to accommodate the short shooting days and the overall budget and schedule. But even with the rewrites, after reviewing a few days' rushes, Robert (MacFarlane, the editor) and I, could see that we easily had, without any frantic effort, a feature length film.
I didn't feel daunted by this. Luckily, he didn't either!
His camaraderie in this, helped focus me on 'getting the story', and this is what I did each day.
I think it is egotistic really, the rigid approach that starting small must always be more realistic, humble and conceivable. You know, "beginners must know their place and follow some set of rules", and all that.
That's quite limited and limiting and therefore, not absolutely true; especially in the deeper sense of what is real.
What is very, very difficult and most excruciatingly uncomfortable is not related so much to the scope of a work. The hardest thing in life for creatives, is to feel that you are out of your own groove or flow. No matter what the circumstance, field or genre - to feel 'out of step' with yourself, is the worst thing.
And that can happen whether the work feels too big, or even, too small.
Anything we are creating has a life of its own. All working creatives have spoken their awareness of that truth at some point. If we don't move flexibly, with a project that shows itself to be changing in some way, that can be detrimental. The same way taking on too much, with too little time, knowledge, experience, resources or support can be quite fatal.
For cultural creatives in such a pioneering environment as ours, (in Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean), I think the frustration we all share, may be a feeling of being so very full of effort, of overflowing with ideas and daring, yet we contend in each moment with the sheer 'smallness' of our island, our population, our market, our sense of self, of how others may see us etc. etc.
Why should we shrink away from our own Unknown territory of First Ever Land while we ache for challenging projects that excite and stimulate at the essential core of our individual creative purpose?
I would say that making a feature film is the hardest creative work I've ever done because it employs all the art forms and is a business minded art.
The process itself was also the most 'in my own flow' I've enjoyed professionally so far.
Plunging whole heartedly into my projects is typical, because the motivation comes from such a deep sense of purpose, even calling. This is a reflection of my passion and commitment to celebrate and express everything deep within my own "Caribbean belly", to draw from the vibration of David Rudder's "Calypso Music".
Throughout my life I've just had this keen sense of urgency, that this time, here and now is for me; for we; for I and I and I, all of us.
And it is not forever.
I want to do all that I can do, to toil for something more than the rat race; for that which feels greater than myself.
So why NOT plunge in?!
And then SALLY'S WAY went in a short, and came out an award-winning feature with an international world premiere!
Whatever is on offer I am willing to work at spinning the straw of our ordinary lives into golden dreams for all of our children; so that they claim their sovereignty and right to self-love.
Doesn't everyone feel that? I think so. I hope so!
JJ
(L-R) JJ with Alyssa Highly and Dyani Ramah, on lunch break during rehearsals.
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