Crowdfunding & Recent Inspirations
We're 19 days into our crowdfunding campaign for Wash Club. There's been insanely busy days and there's been nail-bitingly slow ones too - but I'm pleased to say that we've had at least one pledge every single day of the campaign so far. We've just had our 73rd pledge and raised £1772 from the crowd. Combined with our funding from Creative England and BFI.Network that's a total of £6,772 so far!
Crowdfunder.co.uk/washclub - 1st May 2016
Whilst we've been plugging social media feeds with updates, thank you's and personalised drawings, we've also been hard at work in the background, developing the script, our ideas and our creative team.
As much for my own records as anything else, I've put together a short list of some recent influences and ideas that have caught my attention online.
"Toilet Paper" by Chad Thompson may seem like a world away from Wash Club, but as the short builds there's some really interesting use of montage to tell the story. The film uses similar visual cues repeatedly - framing characters and action in similar ways in different contexts to propel the plot and create humour. Reminds me of the work of Edgar Wright. It's a surreal, strange little piece that's well worth your time - even if it doesn't really make any sense whatsoever.
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I stumbled across this track on Spotify while I was putting together a mix tape for Wash Club. I find that making a music playlist for a film project is a great way of getting into the zone of a project quickly. You can work on something so long you forget what it is that made you fall in love with it in the first place. Music is a shortcut back to that first impression.
Recently discovered Takeaway Scenes - an anonymous performance project where filmmakers across the globe produce single take scenes that follow a strict set of guidelines. Perhaps the most significant of which is that nobody is credited for their work. In a world where every creative is competing for the next job, not crediting yourself for a lot of hard work seems counter-intuitive, and yet this collection comprises of some of the best short films I've seen in a while.
Channel Criswell is a great resource for in-depth film analysis. This essay on Her caught my interest because of the way in which the characters needs and desires are applied to the cinematography and visual identity of the film. Theodore is often seen isolated, disconnected from his environment (the city) through the use of shallow focus. As the character becomes more self-aware, his environment starts to come back into focus.