In which we meet the Playwrights Of Cruelty, four sadistic oracles of page and stage. Can Holden meet their demands AND keep keep hold of his slipping soul? Watch and find out!
FILM
HEARTBROKEN ASSASSIN – EPISODE 2
More thrills, spills and straight up chills! Also, THE greatest Kate Bush-inspired dream sequence ever committed to film.
HEARTBROKEN ASSASSIN EPISODE ONE!
And away we go! The first episode has gone live and there is no turning back. Stayed tuned for the next ten days to witness the complete series.
In episode one: THRILL! to the lethal charms of Stella and her kitchen knife. GASP! as the You Are Here Hub space is turned into a scarlet canvas of gore. MARVEL! at my garish choice of shirt.
Featuring Ali MacGregor as Stella. The Facebook audience are already clamouring for her ressurection, sure sign of a breakout genre character!
HEARTBROKEN ASSASSIN – IT BEGINS!
Quick, rambling brain dump before the first episode is released (and thus maybe my last chance for a while).
My taste in film oscillates from the hyperkinetic (Sherlock Jnr, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, Run Lola Run) to the languorous and deliberate (Mauvais Sang, Ghost Dog, In The Mood For Love). What connects these movies for me is their forceful cinematography. In music, you’ll often hear people talk about using the studio as an instrument. In these films, the camera (and the editing) acts that way. I wasn’t always conscious this was what I was tapping into, I just knew I loved these films. Picking up a camera myself clarified it.
Of course people argue that’s style over substance, that it’s irrelevant to story. I disagree – what medium you choose is the first creative decision you make. How something is framed – its style – directly influences the stories you can (and want) to tell. Heartbroken Assassin couldn’t be a play, or a novel, or a spoken word piece. It’s unmistakably filmic.
We are now deep into shooting, which means really deep into editing. It’s a learning experience – FILM CRIT HULK wrote that you learn what you need from the script when you’re shooting, and you learn what shots you needed when you’re editing, and so on, always one step behind. That’s holding true, but we’re fast learners.
I’m also experiencing firsthand what I’ve read so much about – that filmmaking is a war of attrition, that the only way to make something that’s merely “good” is to overreach. And also why directors don’t wear a shirt and tie – it’s hot work. Combine that with the fact I’m on the You Are Here diet (so far already I’ve missed two dinners and a lunch), and I will be a husk by the end of next week. But a happy husk.
YOU ARE HERE 2013- HEARTBROKEN ASSASSIN
As Luke has already said in his previous Heartbroken Assassin post, this is the most ambitious project we've ever done. A ten-part Webisode series shot over ten days, one episode uploaded every day. Every episode including an original song, a scene of violence, and a cameo from at least one You Are Here festival artist and producer. Riskiest of all, I'm playing the lead role myself, drawing on the one week of acting school I did 12 years ago.
I had the idea for this a few days after You Are Here 2012. I was browsing through the racks of an op shop in Melbourne when it came to me, and I sent a text to our head producer Dave right there and then. I knew if I didn't then I would definitely puss out.
So by the end of this fortnight we'll have shot a ten-part musical action series set at an experimental arts festival. No sweat, right?
Oh, except two days ago I injured my knee pretty badly during the bronze medal match at Australian Wrestling Championships. I'm quite sure it's the meniscus but I can't get into a Physio until the Canberra Day long weekend is over. Either way, I can't straighten my left leg.
How will this impact on the epic saga of the Heartbroken Assassin? Starting this Friday, you will find out!
YOU ARE HERE FESTIVAL- THE SAGA SO FAR
Over the summer of 2010/11, as I was putting The Last Prom together and struggling to build my PT business, my friend Dave Finnegan was put in a sticky situation. Dave (pictured below dancing next to me), a writer and impresario whose experience and reputation far outstrips his still-tender years, had been approached by the Canberra Centenary and asked to fill the fringe-arts-festival sized gap in their program.
They have him 3 months, a pittance of funding and a High Concept: each event of the festival would be staged in vacant or repurposed shopfronts and public spaces in the Canberra CBD.
Under the pump in all but the most literal sense, Dave went to his known contacts first. This is where I got lucky.
Ever the opportunist, within one conversation I had up-sold my fledgling pop group into a live-concept-album-themed-costume-party-band-night. For some reason Dave placed his trust in me, and The Last Prom became the opening night event for the Inaugural You Are Here Festival in 2011.
It took place in a big stone room that was a Dick Smith's and is now a MacDonalds. For the ten days of the festival Dave and his team of 14 or so festival co-ordinators/artists took this space over as our festival hub. I was one of them, acting as a runner or artist supervisor and producing another two or three small events (like the wrestlers and circus performers tuitional jam pictured below). One or two of my bands snuck onto the other live music bills, and a lot of my friends in the Canberra arts scene were involved in one way or the other.
It was, for me, an unprecedented experience. For someone who spent their whole time scrabbling around in the arts with a small immediate circle of collaborators, to suddenly be part of a larger machinery of super-skilled and super-positive artists with a little bit of money and marketing behind us was a quantum leap. Attendance for the festival blew expectations out of the water, and I was left emboldened to push my art farther than ever before. 
Stay tuned next week as the saga propels us into 2012!
HEARTBROKEN ASSASSIN
Heartbroken Assassin is part of the multimedia blitz that is You Are Here. Without divulging too much, it’s a webisode series – part musical, part blood splattered action flick – that takes place over the course of the festival, using its performers as actors, and its events as plot points and backdrops. Because we’re fond of a challenge, we’ll be releasing an episode a day – it’s like a 24 hour film challenge… TIMES TEN.
Recognising how long filming, editing and uploading will take each day, we’re doing what we can ahead of time. Yesterday, my recording studio/spare bedroom became a revolving door – actors and singers, trumpeters and drum programmers. Often they were the same people – Nick’s co-songwriter for the project is also our fight coordinator (our friends have many talents). We spent six hours hammering down the musical bedding. The episodes are short, thus so are the songs, and we knocked over 80% of what we need. It’s purposefully raw (a counterbalance to the music’s melodrama) but I’ll still spend a fair bit of time mixing and adding instrumental embellishments.
We also filmed a scene that doesn’t take place at a festival event. That leaves two more we can film in advance and then it’s All. Systems. Go.
It’s the most ambitious thing Nick or I have shot, and aside from the The Last Prom promos, our first filmed narrative work. Yippie kay yay.
SPIDER OF WARNING
Lou and I have settled on the name for our production company.
It’s a nod to artist/writer/personal hero Brendan McCarthy, whose 1980s series Strange Days brandished a faux-Comics Code Authority badge that read ‘Approved By The Spider Of Warning’. McCarthy is a genius and it will be nice to be reminded of his passion and imagination in everything we do.
As a production company name it’s more Bad Robot than Universal Studios, but I’m happy about that. Picking a name is harder than it appears – every interesting word or filmmaking term seems to have already had ‘films’ or ‘studios’ or ‘pictures’ slapped on its end. I thought of a dozen that Google uncovered were already in use. Originally I was keen on Handsome Films after my Cool Weapon alter ego, but that was snapped up recently.
I’m glad we didn’t settle on that – SPIDER OF WARNING is a brilliant name, playful and strange. Now we have to live up to it.
ONE POT PUNK ROCK INTERVIEW
You Are Here’s writer-in-residence Andrew Galan interviewed El Lukio a couple of weeks ago – it’s now up on their site.
http://youareherecanberra.com.au/andrew-grills-el-lukio-grills-him-like-cheese-part-1/
The interview was uber-fun – I had prepared some answers to possible questions (Why do I cook? How do I feel about other cooking shows?) but as you’ll read, Andrew had his own ideas. It was exhilarating keeping character at whatever he threw at me, all while wearing the mask in a very public place (like the Fyshwick Markets, no one cared – I’m starting to think there’s something beautifully wrong with Canberra).
I quickly discovered that the best answers came from taking Andrew’s questions completely seriously. Will post Part 2 when it shows up.
SHINE TARTS UPDATE
Over the last couple of nights, I’ve had to re-create my Sunshine Sally edit, at a higher resolution. All up, it’s taken about five hours (not including a couple of hours spent trying to figure out a workaround). A little frustrating, but there was a silver lining. When most of your musical pieces last between 30 seconds and a minute, a standard song can feel like a lifetime. I got to go back and tweak two of the longer scenes, cutting a minute’s worth of footage. It makes a huge difference to the film’s momentum, and will spare the band some needless repetition.
Rehearsals are going brilliantly – we’ve now covered over half the movie. The first half has a lot more turnarounds, so getting across the final half will be even quicker. From there, it’s a matter of playing it over and over and developing some muscle memories.
One month to go!
Lick Nuke 