An occasional blog on topics related to my work. For a behind-the-scenes look, subscribe to my Patreon page.
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After several iterations of increasingly detailed tweaking of the edited form of the footage, there must come a point (else the film would never be finished) where you say, “OK – this is it”. From this point forth, the visual and audio clips are set in stone on the timeline, never again to be tampered with. This is what is known in filmmaking terminology as the ‘final cut’ or ‘picture lock’ stage, and it is cause for major celebration (woohoo!). However! It is not the end of the process. Not by a long shot. Here’s a run-down of what happens…
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Diary Of An Adventure Filmmaker: How To Overcome Creative Block
Sometimes, when you’re working on a creative project, the way forward is not at all clear. And sometimes it’s impossible to see it at all. As you may remember from the last update, this is where we found ourselves with the still-untitled Patagonia film project. What do you do in this situation? Go for a walk. You’ll find this kind of advice popping up across the full pantheon of creativity-related advice and self-help. Julia Cameron, in her ground-breaking book The Artist’s Way, prescribes a weekly ‘artists’ date’, in which you deliberately go and spend time with yourself, doing something new…
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Diary Of An Adventure Filmmaker: Reaching The Rough Cut, And What To Do When It Sucks
There comes a point in any major artistic endeavour when you have to stop what you’re doing, take a few steps back, and take a dispassionate look at what you’ve got. After 4 weeks (already!) of full-time editing work on the Patagonia film, this is where we’re at. Scott, Leon and I went through the process of whittling down the footage, pulling out the best stuff, putting it in an order that makes sense, cutting together the scenes, getting them flowing nicely together, adding temporary music, writing and recording first-draft voiceovers, producing placeholder VFX, and tidying up as many loose ends…
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Diary Of An Adventure Filmmaker: How To Choose Between The Infinite Ways To Tell Your Story
Leon and I have rarely argued on our expeditions and film projects together. Last week, however, we ran into a bit of a disagreement. Specifically, we disagreed on how the Patagonia film should end. With a week to kill before flying home, after completing the horseback journey up the Rio Santa Cruz we had embarked on a mission to try and understand the social consequences of the dam project. We did this by interviewing a whole bunch of people in and around El Calafate, currently the social focal point of the project, from concerned citizens to environmental activists to government…
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Diary Of An Adventure Filmmaker: Two Ways To Build A Story When Editing Your Footage
In my previous adventure filmmaking update, I ran through the process of whittling down the raw footage from an expedition to a manageable amount with which we could begin crafting the story. This specifically referred to the film we shot in Patagonia, journeying along the Rio Santa Cruz on horseback; the film for which we’re taking the most hands-on role in making. The physical journey was pretty simple – ride horses from A to B – but there were several threads to the underlying human story of Leon’s evolving understanding of the social, environmental and political issues surrounding the looming mega-dam project…
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Why I’m Not Qualified To Comment On The Armenian Genocide
So last weekend I went back to Armenia, the place around which so much of my early life as a traveller revolved. Ostensibly, my visit was to be present for the commemoration on the 24th of April of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Among countless others did I descend upon Yerevan to be here on this historical date. But I was an oddball in this crowd, being connected to the nation by marriage rather than by birth – which brings with it a crucially different perspective, despite my familiarity with the place, the people and the history. What…
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Diary Of An Adventure Filmmaker: How To Cut Your Raw Footage Down To Something Workable
It’s a deceptive beast, making a film. Because if you do it well, the result is an effortless and immersive experience. It totally engrosses the viewer. And it belies the amount of time and work that goes into its creation. The viewing experience can also somehow give the impression that a film emerges fully-formed from the mind of a filmmaker. This is rarely the case – no, this is never the case. Even now, having filmed two expeditions, watched and logged the ‘rushes’ (raw footage), spent hours discussing the styles and the storylines, and trimmed away a substantial part of the…
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Anatomy Of A Successfully Crowdfunded Documentary Film’s Kickstarter Campaign
This in-depth article is a post-mortem of 2015’s successful Kickstarter campaign for the A Tale Of Two Rivers film project. I’ll be looking at every element of the campaign – financial details included – and sharing some of the insights we learned along the way about running successful crowdfunding campaigns. The campaign aimed to raise post-production funds for two feature-length adventure films, of which the first, Karun: Misadventures On Iran’s Longest River, is released on Monday 16th November 2015. The Target My colleague Leon and I discussed our financial target at length before committing to it. For both of us, having assessed our audience size and done…
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We Did It! (Community Action 1, Mass Media 0!)
I’m up early this morning to begin working in earnest on two new film projects… which have just been successfully funded on Kickstarter! At the close of play last night, we’d raised the astonishing total of £26,329 – over 110% of our goal – to do this project properly. And that’s all thanks to the community who’ve rallied around these unusual yet (we think) important stories that Leon and I are now able to tell in full. No fewer than 662 backers got involved in funding the project. That’s a real encouragement to both of us that there are people out there…
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With 59 hours to go, here’s more on the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of A Tale Of Two Rivers
If you’re lucky enough to have a long weekend off for Easter, I hope you’ve got some fun things lined up for it! As it happens, Tenny and I are at a good friend’s wedding in Shropshire, England, and I’m dashing off this post while getting dressed up in a borrowed suit to pretend I’m a respectable member of society when I’m actually a hobo. Of course, being at a wedding is far from ideal when you’re in the last few hours of a massive fundraising campaign. But as a wise man/woman once said, “the perfect circumstances do not exist”. We’re…