The Chronology of Dance

In the midst of shooting The Good Muslim I was contacted by a guy who wanted to do a short film. I was recommended by Robert, the director of the film I was doing at the time. He sent me the script and it was an interesting read. Not written like a scipt, more like a novel. At 2 pages, which in screenplay time is 2 minutes, it actualy should run at 10 minutes. The job was paid and it was shooting on Super16. This was a script to shoot. I met Tom (the writer/director) soon afterwards. He had a previous DP who he couldn't really lock down and I really wanted to shoot it. After talking, it was evident we both were well versed in each others cinematic vision or rather, anti cinematic vision. We both love Michael Haneke and particualrly Code Unknown. The style of the film, we are making is more like 71 Fragments of a Chronolgy of Chance, which I had to watch as homework. We have met a few times to discuss the shots in between sorting out the crew and equipment hire. It's been a real joy to do the shotlist for this film because we both share and converse ideas, intellectual/emotional ideas about why the shot should be more this or that. Also the fact that we have no establishing shots, no over the shoulders, no pans, tilts or tracks. It's all static. All shots are deliberate in it's framing frame size, composition and depth of field. This is the kind of shotlist I always wanted to talk about. Precision. An economical shoot of essentials. Tom is great as he really listens to what i have to say and it's a great thing where we are on the same wave length about what we want to see in relation to the tone of the film. He has also directed theatre. It's great to be working with someone finally who seems to have a good balance of good film making and the understanding and the clarity to do it. It's like working with Haneke on a small scale.

On another note, I recieved my second letter/email from Wizzo, an agent. They said they could not represent me because I would need to have 2-3 recognizable peices of work until they could consider me.

It was nice they took time to write back. I was going to reply saying that both The Concretes and Professor Green were both recogizable talents on the music scene but it's unfortunate they don't know them. Instead, I wrote a diplomatic email back.

I didn't expect to get rep'd by them. They have only about 20 DP's and they have all done pretty big stuff.

It made me think though, that it didn't seem so much about the quality of work as so much as anything I have done is not 'commercial', something that clients want. Which i understand. It makes it interesting considering I am currently enjoying the pre production putting an intellectually engaging shotlist together and then someone saying to me I haven't got a britpop band video on my reel so they won't consider me. No, I just 2 of some of the most interesting looking music videos to have been made this year.

I think both Wizzo and Prince Stone can see the potential of my work, they just know they cannot put me up to a client and say, "he can do that because look this". Most of my work is pretty specific looking and not commercial thus you can't put it up to a client because they will say, "but what have they done? I haven't heard of them". They won't say, "that looks fuckin amazing! Who's that guy??". Forgeddaboudit.

Anyway, I will keep chugging along and hope that I can continue to work with the likes of David Mullet and Tom Nerling (if he continues to make films) and hope to get another break. It has taken 4/5 years to start shooting stuff worth it's weight and it's nice. One single project can mean a fair amount to ones body of work.

- J

postdata. Daniel Levi who directed 2 of The Concretes music videos (which i think are great) had said to David Mullet, "Who shot that??" when he saw the video we did for Lucky Soul.