"Brave Love", our "Mock Epic" feature. The Synopsis.

Valerie Brandon has a relationship crisis. Her boyfriend Evershed is an oil billionaire who delights in attention-getting showmanship as a climate change denier. But he has a deep dark climate change secret. Valerie is having an awareness awakening triggered by greenie activist Mitka getting into her elite lifestyle bubble. The climate change battle is then fought out in Valerie's relationship with Evershed, complicated further by Valerie's growing attraction to Mitka. 

From director John Calder: ‘My mentor asks "what's the genre?" I say "this is highly original alternative cinema that is beyond genre". The mentor says "don't talk rubbish, what's the genre?". I come up with "classic literature retold as a near-future science-fiction mock epic" or "mock epic" for short.’ 

Satirical comedy takes on climate change sceptics, corporate culture and billionaires. The classic literature comes from Katherine Mansfield: “Brave Love”, “The Garden Party”, other stories as well as letters, poems, book reviews and articles. With support acts from Jonathan Swift and William Shakespeare.

Regarding visions of the future: move over Nostradamus, here comes Katherine Mansfield! 

The big production experiment is to make a no-budget co-op mock epic possible by filming green screen. We report that as a success for filming the actors but we also discover in doing the often animated backgrounds that there is a reason epics have hundreds of background artists in the credits. After many years of epic DIY post-production, it is an amazing feeling to be submitting to film festivals and planning our premiere.

"Sliding Door" - green screen filming of actors with a meccano miniature set.

From "Brave Love", our indie co-op green screen climate change mock epic now entering film festivals.

Water Effects - "Old School" wins again.

About greenscreen scenes with water. At the time of filming I was into watering actors with a spray bottle and we imagined the rain etc. Whatever James Cameron is doing is not "trickling down" to indie land that I can see. So I reach for the garden hose.

From "Brave Love", our indie co-op green screen climate change mock epic now entering film festivals.

Indie Screenings finding an Audience

Now that our indie epic "Brave Love" is looking good for completion next year (2021) we are thinking about how to screen it.  I saw 2 different indie movie screenings this week. Both successful with good lessons for us. Both venues were large "lounge" spaces with big comfy sofas and armchairs so an audience size of 25 - 30. They were both full.

"The Man on the Island". Feature documentary, at the Monterey Cinema Takapuna, Mon, 23 Nov 2020. Presented by the film-maker Simon Mark-Brown with a Q and A session. Simon said it well that there are many eccentric characters who we may think of filming. However Colin McLaren is an eccentric character with depth of character and that is what makes this film work well. Simon noted that the current drop in commercial output had made it easier for films like his to get into cinemas. However the opposite may apply to "Brave Love" est. Sep-Oct 2021 with a flood of held-back product. In the 80s and 90s we had a good time doing Super-8 shows in cafes, music festival tents and other non-cinemas, so what does a modern equivalent look like? "Golden Nugget".

"The Golden Nugget International Film Festival". Tue, 24 Nov 2020. Shorts screening in a sports bar at the Kingslander pub. Presented by organisers Emme Lentino and Alex Wilson. The films covered a wide range, beginning with "Cinema of Unease" then moving to what I will label "Cinema of Exhuberance".  Many of the films displayed high production value looks on minimal budgets, as in amazing costuming and attention to detail: especially my show favourite, the satirical and super-exhuberant "Antifeminist".
https://www.sofijasztepanov.com/antifeminist

Emme and Alex were very active hosts. And exhuberant like their show. They welcomed and talked to everyone. They warmed up the audience so we became comfortable talking to each other. The bar was in the same room, closed while the films were playing but open before, after and during the interval. Yes, there was an interval. It worked well to have the one space for films, eating, drinking and socialising. They also had sponsorship from SkullCandy Headphones. We all got SkullCandy beanies and there was a prize draw for a set of  'phones. A second prize draw was for a 15 min podcast interview to promote your business venture. Lessons: (1) do active hosting. (2) events now need an event backdrop for the photos. This is the first time I have seen one at an NZ film screening. 

Me and Emme Lentino

Alex Wilson and me

Tech Story - Sony NEX-5N crash and fix - "unable to use memory card - Format?"

Last night - good filming session on project "Brave Love".

Today - problem.  Number one camera, Sony NEX-5N giving strange problems leading to a complete crash.

Fix.  Change the battery.

Insight.  This happened with my number 2 battery running low giving strange problems rather than useful warning messages.  Number 2 battery is a low cost 3rd party pattern battery.  Good service for 2 years but now this.

On changing the battery, everything came right.

Does this mean avoid 3rd party batteries?  I don't think so.  We just need to be aware that the "pattern" battery can give strange results when it is running low and the fix is to charge and/or change the battery.

What are these "strange problems"?

1.  I tried an experiment to shoot test video with "precision digital zoom".
(Aside, I know it does not make normal logical sense to do this but this is a special case where I wanted to try out some vintage c-mount lenses on the NEX.)  The video recording froze. Here was the classic case of the battery going low co-inciding with an unusual experiment so I lose a lot of time assuming that the event is connected with the unusual experiment.


2.  Repeating message on-screen.

"unable to use memory card
Format?"

This message does not make sense because there is only a "no" option with no way of responding with a "yes".

This message alternated with
"re-insert memory card"

3.   Dim-light dead
After some repeats of 2 above, NEX got into a state where switch the camera on, and the lcd screen lights up slightly, ie slightly lighter than the black of the off state.  And nothing else.  That one had me thinking battery.  Change batteries and everything recovered.

This may seem like a trivial and obvious piece of knowledge, but on running the Google search "unable to use memory card - Format?", I did not find useful information so maybe it is useful to put this into the internet mix with the contribution - "low battery - charge and/or change it!".

Thought experiment! The follow-up experiment which I do not have time to do would be to run an equally aged official battery to a low level and see if it delivers the same or more graceful behaviour.

And what about that play with old c-mount lenses?  With a battery change I discover that this is for stills only. Any "precision digital zoom" setting disappears when I press the video record button.

Congratulations to Bronwyn Calder - short story published in Landfall 229

Congratulations to my wife Bronwyn Calder - also my frequent film-making partner including her work on "Brave Love". Bronwyn won the "Graeme Lay Short Story Competition" run by the "NZ Society of Authors" with her short story "Endless Sea" set on a cruise ship visiting the Antarctic. "Endless Sea" has now  been published in "Landfall 229".  "Landfall" is a New Zealand literary journal and it is high status for NZ writers to appear in it.

Comments from the competition judge:
Hypnotic descriptions of the Southern Ocean and the Antarctic constitute the physical background to this story. The underlying theme is one of attempted escape and a yearning for personal fulfilment, aims which are ultimately defeated. Yet at the same time the woman narrator is made aware, by the ice which surrounds her, and the banal reactions of others to it, of the importance of what she has left behind. A finely conceived and executed story and a very worthy winner.

Links:
Landfall 229 description from publisher Otago University Press

Landfall 229 at "Time Out" bookstore

Askar - a fantasy novel by Bronwyn Calder

The Graeme Lay Short Story Award, 2014: Judge’s Report

"Brave Love" Post 03 - The Webcast Experience

Done! The webcast experience. I was a wreck by webcast time wrestling with the temperamental tech. Big big thanks to all involved for getting us through it. Special thanks to our guest Gerri Kimber for her insights into Katherine Mansfield and her work. For more on KM:
http://www.katherinemansfieldsociety.org/

If I need to do anything like this again I will seriously consider a pre-recording session with conventional cameras and editing. Does this webcast have some magic added value of an "authentic live feeling"?  I am too close to it to answer this question so others need to tell me.

The link here is to "Version 02". Soundtrack upgrade from an audio recorder that I had running in the room. Some editing. Some sub-titles. New "proper" uploads of the video clips. New is a trial edit of Scene 21 with green screen processing applied. Appears at 43min 17sec or start at 41min to see it with another version of the same scene as I filmed it in 1981.

Some comfort to know that others find webcasting difficult:
http://www.zdnet.com/…/finding-a-camcorder-that-works-with…/
Writer David Gewirtz is clearly an expert but he had similar trouble - with only 1 of him and 1 camera. We had 5 of us present, plus 1 Skyped in, plus 1 phoned in, and 3 cameras on the case.

--------------------------------------

Link to "Brave Love" Post 01

"Brave Love" Post 02 - "100 Years of Brave Love" - the webcast.

Webcast: 100 Years of Brave Love

On 12 Jan 1915, Katherine Mansfield wrote:

".. actually finished the story Brave Love today and I don't know what to think of it even now…"

On 12 Jan 2015, our indie film-making group takes time out from our production of "Brave Love" to mark this centenary with our guests.
20:30 NZDT Auckland.
07:30 GMT London.
13:00 India, New Delhi.
02:30 New York, USA East Coast.
23:30 on 11 Jan for USA West Coast.

The webcast looks and plays on Youtube like a conventional Youtube video.
It remains available afterwards as a replay.
Planned running time is 1 hour.

The webcast will be a gathering of cast and crew from the movie talking about KM and "Brave Love" and indie film-making. We plan some interviews in character. We plan to play some work-in-progress clips from the movie. We are hoping to recapture some of the spirit of the kind of creative gatherings where Katherine Mansfield and her "Bloomsbury Set" friends threw around ideas that sparked a major historical burst of creative achievement.  We are going for an entertaining time taking our cue from TV talk shows, with a touch of KM's satirical social comment and how it is still relevant today.

LATER. Achieved with some tech challenges. The link here is to a post-edited version with the delays edited out. Guest Gerri Kimber was excellent value. It is interesting to write this note in 2021 after doing a lot of webcasting as an educator through the COVID pandemic. Webcasting has come a long way since these pioneering days of 2015.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXVszLEKAKc

--------------------------------------

Link to "Brave Love" Post 01

"Brave Love" post 01 - our indie feature length movie is in production

We are on the great indie adventure - living the dream - making our no-budget feature movie.

Shooting started 09 Oct 2013.  I have held back from public discussion until now when completion is looking good.  We have been taking on an ambitious mock epic. Time and time again we have faced impossible barriers then dramatically, ingeniously and heroically have rescued the production.  Or putting it another way, a normal indie no-budget collaborative experience!

Aimed initially at film festivals. Experimental in its extensive use of green screens to shoot most of the scenes in one borrowed classroom over our New Zealand(NZ) summer break.  Has "green screen" technology trickled down far enough that we can make it work for this? Let's do it to find out! [Later, Jan 2015, Yes! it is working.]

Working titles:

"Katherine Mansfield Retold: Brave Love"

"Brave Love"

"The Secret Desert of Your Mind"

IMO this story, written then lost 100 years ago, on rediscovery scores remarkable hits on issues that are relevant today. Katherine Mansfield (KM) is big on The Gap Between Rich and Poor. I also bring in the global warming debate as sparking conflict between the characters. This is mainly achieved by taking KM's banker villain and changing his occupation to oil company chief.

The script is my adaptation of classic literature into a present day setting. Inspired partly by the "Shakespeare Retold" TV Plays from the BBC a few years back. Includes material mainly from Katherine Mansfield (NZ, UK, Stories and notebooks, 91-107 years ago), also Jonathan Swift ("Gulliver's Travels", 300 years ago) and William Shakespeare (400 years ago). What emerges is a satirical big-business mock epic set in the imaginary oil boom city of Lagado, 300 years after its appearance in "Gulliver's Travels".

Why make a feature when it is so difficult?  Because it is so difficult?  Partly!  Also the democratisation of film-making is now giving us a flood of short films.  eg The Winterthur Short Film Festival recently had over 5000 entries chasing only 41 screening opportunities. Features need a big human organisational effort regardless of how accessible the tech gets, so there may yet be time to stand out from the smaller crowd going the feature way.  Also we have had some film festival successes with short films.  To us that means that growing and developing means taking on the monster challenge of the feature.

To creative enthusiasts in Auckland, NZ - we are now moving into "second unit" filming where we need supporting role actors and extras and more crew help.  We mostly hold day jobs and film at night so to all you enthusiasts with day jobs, here is your big opportunity.  For info, audition or interview, find me via

IMO most no-budget narrative movies are either 2-actor intense unusual-relationship dramas or horror-zombie-vampire attempts to repeat the breakthrough success of Peter Jackson in the late 1980s. Time for something different.  In The Guardian article "The Burning Question" - http://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/sep/24/featuresreviews.guardianreview29  Robert Macfarlane asks "where is the literature of climate change?"  OK so modern writers are not up to this challenge so let's bring in the power of classic literature - who you gonna call?  Katherine Mansfield!