I thought I'd do something a little bit different with this post, no pictures of Ghost and no wrestling talk. Instead I'm going to write about a film that's coming out April 5th that I think everyone should go and see, Papadopoulos and Sons. It's a self financed, self produced, self promoted and self distributed film by Marcus Markou. It's the story of a Greek self made millionaire who loses everything in the financial crisis and is forced to team up with his estranged brother to reopen the fish and chip shop that their dad left them. It's a great feel good story and it's really encouraging for anybody that wants to make films that aren't 'cool' or pander to the Hollywood market. It looks funny, it looks heartwarming and I can't wait to see it. You can check out the trailer here.
Last year I wrote a short film called Change, started up a crowd-funding project for it and one day noticed that we'd had a donation from someone called Marcus Markou. This was pretty unusual because up until that point it had mostly just been friends and family that had donated. Later on I was informed by my screen writing lecturer that Marcus was a friend of his from drama school whom he had shown the project to. I appreciated the donation and was psyched about the fact that somebody had actually taken an interest in something I had written but thought nothing more of it.
Fast forward six months and I was reading through the schedule for my MA and noticed that Marcus was scheduled to give a guest lecture to the group. Again I was pretty stoked for this because not only I could ask him questions about Change and was pretty excited to hear him talk about his experiences in the industry. I am admittedly not the most academic of students, I don't attend a great deal of lectures and I don't integrate myself with the group, but I do love listening to people that are passionate about story telling. Marcus talked candidly and openly about his adventures in acting, play writing and business before talking about his struggles with Papadopoulos and Sons. I'm not going to run through the lecture with you but Marcus is a funny and charming gentleman and if you ever get the chance to chat to him about his film you should, I believe he's done Q+A sessions at some of his screenings, if he's doing one near you make sure you go. I've thought a lot about that lecture since then and distilled all of his advice into a few short sentences that I've taken to heart and wanted to share with the people that read this blog. Basically my sister, my girlfriend and my dad (if he's found it yet).
Number one - Don't be afraid to break every rule in the book to get what you want.
If somebody's agent tells you that their client wouldn't be interested in your film, you hunt them down and you put your script in their hands. Let them make that decision for themselves. If nobody wants to help you distribute your film, do it yourself. Travel all over the world going to festivals, holding screenings, go absolutely anywhere that you can get people to watch your film. Marcus told us that he was sitting on his finished film, that had been given rave reviews at film festivals and he couldn't find a distributor because it wasn't 'marketable' or 'cool'. This didn't stop him, Marcus' persistence since then means that it is soon opening across the UK and has already had screenings across Europe.
Number two - Make the film that is going to change your life.
This may in fact be a direct quote from the lecture but my note taking is awful and is predominately drawings of sharks so I can't be sure. Marcus said that he slogged away trying to be an actor and a play-write before finally making Papa and Sons (yeah I'm abbreviating it now). It wasn't until he started work on a story that he was really passionate about and had been waiting his life to tell that things started coming together. If you aren't passionate about your film, why should anybody else be?
Number three - When one door shuts, break a fucking window.
I'm entirely sure this isn't a direct quote from the lecture but I think it sums up the determination that you need to make it in any walk of life. If you aren't getting experience as a writing, try directing, try acting, try producing etc etc Anything you can find out there that will hone your skills as a story teller is important in the industry and that other experience will help a lot when it comes to making something. I've learnt just as much about making films from acting as a script supervisor on set as I have from four years of lectures. If cinemas don't want to screen your film you need to look at making it online content, or showing it on television, or on planes. There are endless formats for films these days and if you want people to watch your film, eventually you'll find a way to bring it to them.
After the lecture I got the chance to correspond briefly with Marcus and he had nothing but kind words to say about Change. One day I hope to be tracking him across London, forcing him to read my scripts and bugging him for advice, just as soon as I write that one story that's going to change my life.
In other news I've not really been doing a lot lately, working on university assignments and some work has been starting to trickle through on Elance (something that I want to blog about in the next week or so). The boys in Yoke have just started production on a concept I came up with for an advertising campaign for a fancy restaurant/bar in Cardiff. I'm excited to see what the final products looks like, it's the first time I completely handed over creative control on one of my ideas and it's scary/exciting. Other than that I have more or less just been watching Breaking Bad and playing Final Fantasy IX.
I did watch Looper the other day, the opening forty five minutes were fantastic, after that it just lost it's way. The concept was something I loved and obviously I adored the noir aspects of it but it tried to do a bit too much for my liking. I would have preferred to see more of the city they lived in so I could believe in the setting more and I think it over complicated itself with TK aspect of the film. It didn't really add anything to the narrative and the film would have worked just as well if they had taken it out in my opinion it would have been better. They referenced it briefly at the start and then it was only in the last twenty minutes that TK came back into the film at all.
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