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Coherence applies to making a film or documentary or any kind of audio-visual project. Most accurately connects to drama. What I mean is that you have a uninformative creative line through every aspect of your project. That starts with the idea (the hunch and curiosity) which is the thing you want to investigate. It’s the ‘germ’ of the idea. If say one is making a film on a story you’ve heard, there’s some aspect of that idea that really touched you – which was the core of what drew you to that idea. 

That’s a memory or something that triggers something in you. There’s usually something in that book, but there was something in that book Heart of Darkness which Coppola found interesting in Apocalypse Now. Often something comes from something very small. Even if you read a great novel, there’s an image in it, or a moment in it, or an emotion in it, which is what you connected it to. There’s always something that triggers inside of us. 

When we make a film, it’s very important to try and find your central hook – find your emotional route that routed you into that idea. If you can’t find that single moment in your idea, most ideas spring from ‘the thing’ (the question, the image, the sound, the line, the moment). It’s very important that you clarify that for yourself in your creative project. Everything else grows from there and if you get clarity and coherence, usually everything else is dictated by that aspect. 

If we look at the different aspects of a film project, you should always ask yourself that question. But taking a traditional combination of other elements (you have cinematography, production design, editing, etc.), they become silos. The creator of the idea has to bring a continuity to that – which is not to say that it won’t happen when you don’t, but it won’t happen without that clarity that you bring. This applies to even a small documentary with your peers. The tendency of film is to divide – underscored by the capacity of people to work for and everything needs to be divided. As the director/creator you need to bring coherence to that. But also bring a creative intelligence to each decision. 

If you’re making a feature film, there’s a circus involved. Ultimately, there is a quiet time for script development. Suddenly, there’s that horrible period where you’re trying to raise money, and suddenly, it’s happening. It gets professional and people start coming in and out like a factory. What is slightly less obvious is that you, the creator, then connect all these decisions to your colonel, so your artistic decisions reflect the idea. How does all these decisions creatively embody the colonel of an idea of how I make these decisions? 

Two crucial things are (i) communication and (ii) keep hold of each aspect. Even if you don’t understand cinematography (for example), you have very people who go into a film and make it bad, you talk to the cinematography and you say; “when you say Steadicam, I don’t know what you’re talking about”, that’s fine. But, connecting to the colonel of the idea, the feeling is this…. Then they’ll say “I see, is that the kind of thing…?” with the best will in the world. It’s about a communication and be relate to the core idea. Even when you’re under pressure, you have a reference point. 

Everything you leave out, allows something else in – nothing is wasted. 

Form in any art form is important, but almost like there should be a creative intention between the form and your desire to escape the form. The form is almost like the rules from which you dispense with.

“Inspiration is useful if you can get it, but working is more useful.” – Burrows. When you start doing, is when things come together. there is something about putting one word in front of another (e.g. shooting and interview, getting out, etc.) liberates your mind and that’s hard because the process of working it brings something out. 

“Stealing is useful, as long as you know you’re stealing.” – Burrows. You have references and you have to search an argument and back up your argument. You’re not stealing, you’re developing your film. 

You have to have a connection to yourself, to your inner world and landscape (because that’s valuable). Look outside yourself and say: “how am I going to craft this?”

READING LIST:

General Specific: 

• Sculpting in Time by Tarkovsky – profound and sometimes hard to understand. 
• Making Movies by Lumet – the most practical book on making film. 
• Conversations by Ondaatji & Murch – conversations about editing English Patient.

General: 

• But Beautiful by Dyer – partly a factual book about the stories of jazz artists.
• The Argonauts or Bluets by Nelson – memoir & reflections on the colour blue.
• A Choreographer’s Handbook by Burrows – dancers and choreographers. 
• Essayism by Dillon – an essay on essays & where he fuses the idea of an essay.
• To The River by Laing – about depression and the river’s history.
• Notes to Self by Pine – strange mixture of her own memoir 
• Francis by Wroe – a biography of St Francis but also with poems about herself.
• Walk Through Walls by Abramovic – autobiography of her life and performance art.
• The Years by Ernaux – tells the story of modern France.
• M Train by Smith – her life as a kid.
• On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous by Vuong – his life and coming to America.

Project Specific: 

• Decoding Advertisements by Williamson – seminal book about understanding ads.
• Poems and Sister Outsider by Lorde – essays on race.
• An Unquiet Mind by Redfield Jamison – mental illness and art.
• Black Performance On The Outskirts by Gaines – essays on race.
• Space and Place in Irish Cinema by Holohan (ch. 22) – landscape in Irish film.
• The Big Goodbye by Wasson – the making of Chinatown. 

It focuses your mind on what you’re doing. You start with your instinct and your curiosity. There’s something drawing you to them and you might not have worked it out fully. You have a path to go down, you don’t know where you’re going, but there is some logic to where you’re going. 

Start jotting down questions on what you’re doing. In the process of jotting down questions, you logline your proposal. They often want to see you asking questions about yourself. You should ask yourself about these questions. In your proposal, state the obvious. By asking yourself those questions and putting your answer down, it helps whoever is conducting the lecture. 

In this area, any visual material is useful. Including images somehow livens it up for people. It’s a great way of expressing your idea particularly because you’re working on a visual medium. 

Documentary is a journey of exploration. You need to strip it back but they’re fundamentally a combination of images and sounds. There’s a subject involved and you have to develop a relationship with it/them. 

Communication your vision is about being clear, articulate about it, but not being dogmatic. That’s tricky because if you’re the director or writer or the primary creative in whatever process, you have to give a sense of direction. 

The editor usually never meets the crew. Like everything else, if you can bring everyone together at the start, everything is protocol. If there’s a conflict that erupts, take a break and don’t humiliate them publicly.

Documentary is about trying to find the truth. You have to be honest with them. Usually, people make the mistake of tricking the subjects and not telling them everything – which backfires. 

Ask people open-ended questions because people often say what’s on their mind. Don’t use a list of questions, but a list of bullet points or words or themes that you want to deal with. 

• Stimulate your brain:
  • Listen to music
  • Read books
  • Watch old/films

Part of the problem is there is a huge reservoir within us all. This links a little bit to the idea is valuing your own instincts, emotions whether they’re good or bad. Our experience and physical and psychological DNA is interesting. As creative people, it’s interesting and valuable. 

Finding the quiet place allows you to tap into yourself, but it’s also about instinct. There’s a sense of trust in instinct – some unknown power (which is you or maybe it’s not you). You have to give yourself almost with the discipline of an athlete who gives to the gym every day. But you often have to actively provoke them. The creative push/ignition often comes in doing something, even when you don’t feel like doing it. 

We created the environment and the possibility of having thoughts. We jot them down, because they’re bit like dreams. Jot down your ideas (which can be anything like intellectual ideas) which have come from creative well and the next phase is that you have to excavate them. 

Be alert to your curiosity. If you interrogate something, discuss it to people and if it grabs other people’s attention, you’ve got something. It doesn’t need to be the most interesting thing to everyone else. 

There’s an archetypal arc and if you have you’re breakdown with boxes, maybe you have another empty sheet which is your narrative arc. Then you think that there’s certain things I want to put into that arc. 

Finding an authentic connection to something. It doesn’t ned to be our interest that comes from us, but it needs to come from an authentic interest. There is something in that discipline that’s quite productive and creative. Within that procrastination, it’s also having the ability not to beat yourself up – the balance between giving yourself breathe and giving yourself discipline.  

What are my limitations? If it’s word count or duration or time available are positives for you. You do need to get into the intellectual thinking – how much do you need to back up in your thesis?

Here goes nothing! 🙂

“The beginning is the most important part of the work.”

– Plato