It’s been over a year since I posted about Kithara – at the time, I intended it to be my debut film. A silent black & white two-reeler, I imagined it as a stepping stone into larger, more complicated projects (it wouldn’t require location sound or sophisticated colour grading, for instance).

The project stalled after a couple of meetings with the actors/brains trust I corralled to be involved. I got hung up on trying to incorporate all the (valid and insightful) suggestions they provided on character motivation, story structure, film theory and more. Naturally, I wanted Kithara to be perfect, but trying to retrofit all these ideas onto the story proved impossible for me. The clay refused its mold.

In the end, it got pushed to one side. Like Raymond Chandler said, “the more you reason, the less you create”.

It took me a stupidly long time to realise the movie didn’t need to be perfect. Some of my favourite movies are riddled with baffling logic and lapses in judgement. What movie, however canonical, is truly perfect? There is too much chance involved in achieving even near-perfection (as anyone that knows the history of Casablanca can tell you). Conversely, aren’t flawed films often the most intriguing?

Kithara will be an imperfect film, and I am happy about that. That simple conclusion is freeing.

My driving creative philosophy is best put in the The Cult of Done manifesto, “done is the engine of more”. Getting Kithara done will lead me to the next thing. The experience gained is as important as the end result. I’ve reworked and improved the script, I’m storyboarding at present, and looking to shoot by the end of the year.

Ironically, what started as a ‘stepping stone’ is now relatively ambitious – recently I’ve been reaching out to actors, make-up artists and costume designers. The end result will be lush, beautiful and dreamlike – a perfumed handkerchief in a field of shit – to borrow a phrase from The Extremist.

Part of my attraction to shooting a silent black & white movie is my love for films of the 20s (particularly those of Buster Keaton, who I’ll write about another time). I’m no scholar, but like anyone exploring a new medium, I find it helps to start at the beginning. I’m fascinated with the process, the nuts and bolts, by which early films became such an idiosyncratic artform – while I am not interested in strict pastiche, I want to use Kithara to explore some of the constraints (static camera shots, blue-sensitive film stock, variances in speed on account of being hand-cranked) and innovations (make-up) of the time. Filmmaking as film school.

HALF IN SHADOW, HALF IN LIGHT

September 12, 2013

FILM, LUKE, MUSIC, NICK

Prom’s very stylish video has been out for a couple of months.

Nick and I collaborated again, with him writing the script and producing. Shot in four and a half hours over two nights, the pace was a return to our running-and-gunning Heartbroken Assassin days.

With seven performers(!) and two camera operators(!), it was the largest production I have been involved in. Alongside the band, we had the fearless Davey Fuzzsucker and Eloise Menzies playing our beleaguered couple (thanks so much guys!). We brought on board theatre director Cameron Thomas to help corral the talent – he was instrumental in keeping the energy up and making sure people had something to do in each frame. This was also my first time with a second camera op – You Are Here acolyte Shane Parsons – who came up with several great ideas I am happy to take credit for. He’s more experienced than I, and it meant we got scores of material very quickly.

The blue light in the Street Theatre’s hallway was an unexpected bonus – I slowed down the shot to evoke the chase at the start of Chungking Express (but stopped short of undercranked “step printing”).

Because if there is a choice where you can pretend to be Wong Kar Wai and Christopher Doyle, that’s the right choice.

When I showed Nick the first edit, he said the dinner scene felt like an eternity. This was great news to me – the victims were tied to the chairs and being fed something they didn’t want; if the audience felt the same, I’d done my job (we did add extra band performance shots to keep it from being overbearing). The dinner scene (and in particular Shane’s sterling close ups) evoke Terry Gilliam for me.

I’d bargained on the height of the Street Theatre allowing some great bird’s eye shots, of which we took copious advantage – in particular, it sold the bed scene.

FAUX FAUX AMIS, PART DEUX

September 12, 2013

LUKE, MUSIC

Faux Faux Amis will play our first gig as part of Local’N’Live’s Bootlegs Session, Monday October 21^st.

The group has solidified into a tidy three-piece – myself on vocals and guitar, Chris Gleeson on drums, and Kevin Lauro (Space Party) on bass. Davey Fuzzsucker, who was to play guitar and vocals, moved to Melbourne just before our first rehearsal. I threatened, for the benefit of band lore, to tell people we kicked him out for listening to Matt Corby (he was so happy with the idea, I am now refusing to do it in a futile attempt to spite him).

I’m disappointed about not getting to play with Davey, and devastated about The Sinbirds-sized whole he’s left in Canberra. He’s irreplaceable and so we decided not to replace him. A brilliant and charismatic performer, he was to be my security blanket. While I have fronted bands before, my natural inclination as a bandleader is to give myself the easiest on-stage role (The Bluffhearts, where I got some of my favourite musicians to play my songs while all I did was strum open chords on an acoustic guitar, ranks as my crowning achievement). Without Davey, I am well out of my comfort zone. But this seems to be my year for getting uncomfortable. Not only am I singing, I’m playing more lead guitar than in any band before, building from the elementary licks I performed with Shine Tarts.

For all my worry, Chris and Kev are so relaxed and capable that I know we’ll be fine. We’re a month into rehearsals and the sound gets bigger and stronger each week.

The band will be a multimedia experience, principally so I can try out things I’ve never done before. Value-adding to music typically means a “pro-active web presence”. Our sound, influenced by CBGBs punk and The Velvet Underground, lends itself to a different approach. I’m creating a symbology and visual aesthetic separate to the music; I always liked the goofy Radiohead symbol circa 2000, and how it seemed at odds with their “serious” music, adding another layer to perceptions of the band. I’m interested in finding those wrinkles. The early result of this exploration will be a zine given away at our debut.

Dead Medium – Un Manifeste Par Faux Faux Amis, is a combination of lyrics, chords, personal hieroglyphics/sigils, Borges references, tarot doodles, quotes and haji-influenced collage. Nick and I had a conversation months ago where he called zines a dead medium – I filed the phrase away as the perfect title if I ever made one.

MY WEEKEND

June 10, 2013

FILM, LUKE

LIGHTS debuts!

May 31, 2013

FILM, LUKE, NICK, WORDS

Nick and I attended the short:seasons festival tonight, which included the world premiere of Lights. ARC cinema is the preeminent film venue in Australia – I had been taken in by a lot of ‘chat’ on the internet regarding the comparative quality of DSLR footage when blown up, but our footage looked amazing. I was also concerned with the quality of our audio – again, I found the cinema more forgiving than I had been led to believe.

Lights was really well received, and it was thrilling to hear a crowd laughing in its lighter moments. I’m still blown away by seeing a film of mine on “the big screen” (as my Mum calls it), in front of a near capacity audience.

There were a couple of discrepancies in the programme which I need to highlight – in particular, the programme stated “Nick Delatovic and Luke McGrath have been on the fringes of the film community for many years”. This is false – I haven’t even been back in Canberra that long, and I didn’t pick up a video camera until June of last year – that’s 11 months at most, not “many years”.

It downplays the achievements we have made – in less than a year, our debut short film has been funded by ScreenACT and screened at the National Film & Sound Archive, I have edited and live-scored a 1920s film that also separately played to a full house at the National Film & Sound Archive, completed a ten part webseries for the You Are Here festival, shot 15 videos (here and overseas) for a cooking show, and filmed 11 bands for 2XX’s Local’N’Live channel. All without any training or guidance – we’re learning quickly, and for it to be stated we’ve spent “many years” on the “fringes of the film community” is straight-up wrong. They also credited Nick as the director – again, wrong and easily correctable.

Aside from those frustrations, it was a great evening. The other films were by and large fantastic – I’d have to single out The Book Of Memories for its amazing cinematography, and New Friend for its simple but clever storytelling.

Finally, a shout-out to Ben Drysdale’s impressive characterisation – the script called for Vic to do a “too-loud laugh”. WIth only that to go on, Ben truly made it his own, and provided not only an audience highlight but an anchor for the character.

LIGHTS at NFSA

May 30, 2013

FILM, LUKE, NICK, WORDS

Lights will be screened at the National Film & Sound Archive today, as part of the ScreenACT short:seasons festival.

Originally I wanted to film Lights in a series of direct, static shots, in emulation of Ozu, who’s Tokyo Story I saw and loved recently. Nothing clever, tricky or extraneous. After five minutes on set, that already felt constricting, and I was back to framing shots through mirrors or from extreme angles. What’s more, after my first cut, the producer (Nick) requested more shots establishing character and setting, to “open it up”. He was right.

Mamet reckons all establishing shots are unnecessary and insulting to an audience, but that’s too harsh and restrictive. Done right, they can be artistic and satisfying on their own. Once something is established though, it’s insulting to establish it over and over. Or just silly – Alias used to sub in the same exact shots of building exteriors in each episode. Watching the show week to week, you might have brushed over it – watching several in a row on DVD, it becomes comical (do as Lou and I did, and turn it into a drinking game).

I wanted something different between scenes – fading to black felt like a wasted opportunity. Fading to a colour was something that stuck with me from watching the right-up-my-alley Submarine (and I think I read that Ayodade took it from Rohmer). I wanted to go one better than Submarine though, where the colours seem arbitrary, and to tie them to our theme. Lights takes place over the months of autumn – as the scenes progress, the coloured fades change from a mustard yellow to maroon to corduroy brown, in concert with the leaves of the season. It’s not a huge detail, but I like the thematic unity it gives.

I want to thank everyone involved – our actors Ben Drysdale, Cara Irvine and Julia Johnson, our walk-on cameo/scene dressing car provider/technical expert Ben Lane, sound recorder Paul Heslin, and production assistants Karell Duchesne and Louise McGrath. Nick and I are gradually building up a steady, reliable crew, and it’s the most rewarding aspect of putting in as much time as we are.

FAUX FAUX AMIS

May 30, 2013

LUKE, MUSIC

Chris Gleeson (drummer extraordinaire for The Missing Lincolns) and I have started a band with Davey Fuzzsucker.

We’re working up an initial set of 9 songs – all but two I wrote in the last month. With songs, I generally write in clumps – a lot very quickly and then not much at all. This time, I can pinpoint what opened the floodgates.

I dig the song, but it was something about the effortless, tossed-off nature of the performance that got my juices flowing. Babyfreeze and Shine Tarts had shied away from a guitar-centric sound – seeing this made me want to play loud and fast again. I grabbed my guitar and sketched out a couple of songs that morning. I’ve returned to the video several times and its lost none of its power.

I also recently watched Sid And Nancy, and it rekindled my love of The Sex Pistols – their energy and insouciance is something we definitely want to capture.

These days, I mostly write music and lyrics separately. In this case, I imagined a meeting between two versions of myself – the snot that banged out the obnoxious punk of Lulu & The Tantrums (the free-est and quickest I’ve ever written songs), and the big-hearted classicist that co-wrote The Bluffhearts discography. What if they wrote songs together? I’m excited about sharing the results.

This’ll be the fifth incarnation Chris and I have played in together – we started together when we were 17. After that band (Littlefoot), we played in The Missing Lincolns (the only ongoing concern), Antman Vs. Keffletron (a home recording project including Chris’ sister Kerri), and The Michael Jackson Pollock Experience (a one-off gig and still my favourite band name).

Continuing my recent Francophilia, the band name is Faux Faux Amis (we also have a song in French). I’ve got some ideas about making performances more of a happening as well (a “punk mass” as Suicide called their shows) – aesthetically, I want to pitch us somewhere between Godard and Blank Generation. Once the rest of the line-up falls into place, we’ll get to gigging.

THE ABSOLUTE

May 28, 2013

LUKE, WORDS

I recently won a comic competition. Held by artist Katie Houghton-Ward (2000 AD, Heavy Metal), the challenge was to take 50 unrelated panels and write a script incorporating all of them. Out of 40+ entries, I won. Like Nick, I found winning something artistic was inordinately exciting.

I tried to imbue the panels with history and personality – I constructed a backstory for each and all characters that featured. I modelled my dialogue on the nonchalant tone Brian K. Vaughan has perfected in his space-fantasy SAGA (a favourite of Nick and mine) – no matter how outlandish his creatures or situation, they all speak like people we know, which I adore.

The title came early, well before the story – like in songwriting, I find a strong title helps. The Absolute was a result of scanning my bookcase and fixing on Absolute Identity Crisis (similarly, my main character names, Drupada and Sataya, came from a book of Indian Mythology kept close to my desk).

Katie and I are now discussing working on something similar – more as it comes to hand.

IN CANBERRA TONIGHT!

May 28, 2013

MUSIC, NICK

ICT is a splendid new thing happening every third Thursday at The Polish Club. It’s basically a live version of a seventies TV variety show dedicated to showcasing the fruity wealth of talent in the ACT. It’s my new favourite thing in Canberra.

Me being me, my first instinct was to worm my way in to the show as soon as possible, no matter the humiliating lengths I had to go to. On that basis, here I am performing my rendition of the new Daft Punk single ‘Get Lucky’ while dressed as a giant four leaf clover. Adding a touch of class to the proceedings are Catherine James and Gemma Wheildon in their amazing Dice costumes.

Anyone within a days drive really owe it to themselves to come and check out the next one.

SHORTS!

May 23, 2013

FILM, LUKE, MUSIC, NICK, WORDS

Presented for your edification, intrepid director Luke McGrath proves that wet weather is no impediment to outdoor shooting when one has the proper equipment.

So I won the ScreenACT Short Seasons competition. It’s the first time I’ve won a competition with a creative work and I’m embarrassed to say that it was a very exciting feeling. I feel like it was probably a triumph of reading the brief- my script is simple (both narratively and logistically) and engages earnestly with the theme of ‘Autumn in Canberra’.

I think the film will be a good showcase for Luke’s developing methods as a film maker. Hopefully the characters will resonate and be recognisable to other Canberrans. As a producer, I had to step up some of my skills a little, particularly location scouting. Quite frankly, the fact that I wasn’t acting in this one made my on-set experience a relative breeze. I tried to provide a writers perspective when I thought it would be helpful, but on the whole I was happy to stay out of Luke’s way.

Much more difficult was the Cracked Actor music video shoot, that with one thing or another we were forced to cram into two days in the middle of our larger shooting schedule. The video is for our forthcoming single Lemon On Your Lover, and my ambition was to create a three-minute, micro-budget, science fiction love scene.

It wouldn’t have been possible without the imagination and skill set of our production designer Julia Johnson, and the stunning performances of Marc Robertson and Ali MacGregor as the lovers in question. I ended up filling various roles on set, including Plastimake-Baker, Food-Dyer and Disposer-Of-Tongues.

Luke will be hooking into the edit after he hands in Lights, but the view from the viewfinder is very promising. I’m quite excited that we’ll have two pieces coming out that are so different from each other.

Shooting over the month of May created an interesting parallel with the story of Lights, in which the encroaching Winter becomes the organising principle in the characters lives. Suffice to say that I’ll be writing the next couple of projects for an indoor location!

—Lick Nuke

PERFECTION IS BORING