Back to School

By Michael Clifford on Sep 16, 10 04:29 PM in Film

September - back to school and time for a spot of reflection and forward planning.

As they say at American Vogue, September is our January.... So, here goes.

One year ago I read an Observer film magazine special on the British Film Industry. It was sobering (even before the demise of UKFC) but very good, especially the Jason Solomons article and the interview with Michael Winterbottom.

The latter article contained two major nuggets:
1. If you want to emulate Britains most prolific director then stop waiting (see my earlier blog 'the waiting is kiliing me')
and 2. Behind every successful director, there's a great producer.

As soon as I put the article down, I called my long time producing partner Natasha Carlish and arranged to meet for coffee. We sat down in Maison Maici and I pitched my vision of the future, with the two of us working more closely and hurtling towards glory.

She told me that she was in fact thinking of knocking the whole film making business on the head...

Oh... I smiled bravely, asked her to think about it, then went home to think of plan B. No plan B came.

A couple of weeks later we met again. Natasha told me that she had had a change of heart, due in no small part to the fact that her two-year-old daughter was no longer keeping her up half the night...

Phew, big thanks going out to little D! We began talking about the film that would become Turbulence, which has now been shot and is about to be edited.

This week we met Line Producer Julia Higginbottom and PR wiz Caroline Ashton. One of the big challenges for a film that has a an online presence such as ours does is how to feed that presence whilst the film is being edited.

Unlike the shoot, there is little to report on or take nice pictures of. Our answer is to focus on the music in the film and we have some very exciting things planned for the coming months.

Natasha and I subsequently met for coffee and bacon sarnie, this time at our favourite greasy spoon - the Waterstone Diner (the urban coffee company narrowly missing out as a chosen venue).

The vibe was very different to a year ago. Natasha is no longer thinking of quitting but has a film in the cinemas - 'Soulboy', a placement with film legend Stephen Woolley through Guiding Lights and a new production company with producer Carol Harding 'Vicarious Dreams'.

That's in addition to our film Turbulence. As we sat in the September sun I felt pretty damn good, about the future but also about the past.

For once a couple of 'new years' resolutions had actually worked out!

With thanks to all of the cast and crew of Turbulence and the post production team at Aquila.

Links
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/aug/30/michael-winterbottom-british-cinema
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/aug/30/jason-solomons-british-film-industry
http://www.turbulencefilm.com