Gee, guys, what are we going to do today? The same thing we do every day, gentle readers, try to take over the world interview some amazingly creative people!
We bounced cheerfully from bed at first light–no, I lie. We crawled pathetically from our sleep caves at first light and caught a taxi to the London offices of the Raindance Film Festival. The lost sleep was well worth it, though, since we got to speak with the founder of the festival, Elliot Grove. The man is an eloquent and arresting storyteller, both on and off film. He described to us how he discovered his love of film, and I’m not going to spoil it here because I couldn’t possibly recreate his words well enough. I look forward to sharing it all with you at a later date in the documentary.
Elliot also has some utterly fantastic visions of where cinema might go in the near future, becoming more interactive with the audience via apps or in-theater controls. It sounds like some very exciting stuff. (And from the perspective of a writer, we’re starting to see a revitalization of the choose your own adventure idea because the internet makes it so much more flexible and multidimensional, so I totally dug how he was thinking.)
After that, we got ready for a whole new adventure in our filming trip–splitting into two units. We received approval to be on the red carpet for the premiere of The Invisible Woman, but at the same time had an interview scheduled with Jon S. Baird, director of the recently released movie Filth. (For my own somewhat profane take on the movie, you can see my blog.)
I was in the second unit, which interviewed Jon. Jon was very friendly and incredibly sweet, and patiently explained to us in several different ways the similarities and differences of English and Scottish film (both of which fall under the umbrella term of British, at least for now). He also came back to the point, again and again, that new filmmakers can’t focus on just one funding source, that they need to get out there and keep working and not give up until they take what they need, because nothing comes of sitting around and waiting to be given approval. It felt like a pep talk straight to the heart.
And then, once we’d asked all of our documentary-related questions, I quite literally got to ask him, “So about Filth. You seem like a nice person, Jon. Why would you do this to me?” It was an incredible experience getting to spend a few minutes speaking with him about his movie, because the more questions I asked, the more facets to it that I saw.
Meanwhile, the first unit was off at the red carpet, and apparently managed to speak with each of the people who were there for The Invisible Woman. Since it was a red carpet, it wasn’t exactly the time for an in-depth interview, but at least they got to ask each person one question. I can’t wait to see their footage from that.
As of right now, there are no interviews set for tomorrow. I think we’ll be out and about shooting some footage of London, but that’s only after we all get a nice lie-in. I feel like we’ve really earned it.
Rachael Acks
Executive Producer
@katsudonburi