Travel and Subsistence

There is an illusion amongst some people that this business of ours involves jolly trips to the world’s most glamorous places, staying in top hotels and eating and drinking like Lords. Mostly our “travel and subsistence” is just that, travel and subsistence. Last week Chris Morphet and I alighted in the small Swiss town of St Suplice which nestles on the shores of Lake Geneva near Lausanne (forgive the tour brochure language). In the preceding days to our departure there had been talk about our choice of hotel and whether or not it was a suitable hostelry for a top executive of The Proudfoot Company and his trusty camera wielding aid, Morphet. In the end, budgetary intervention from the production department meant that we stuck with our original booking at the modestly appointed Hotel Pre Fleuri.

Certainly on our arrival in the gloom of a Swiss winter’s afternoon the Pre Fleuri did not look promising – the small, gothic looking hotel’s main building was tightly shuttered, only blue neon signs hinting at the possible luxury within, “Bates Motel” came to mind. At the reception we were greeted by a young man in a matelot sweater and horn-rimmed glasses, he looked a bit like Michael Caine in “Alfie”. After he had briefed us on how to gain re-entry to the hotel after the nine thirty pm curfew we explored our rooms. It was immediately apparent we were two of perhaps three guests at the Pre Fleuri that night. This may sound a little grim but actually the Pre Fleuri was both warm and comfortable. The hotel has many of the film crew’s minimum requirements: clean (cotton) sheets, a bathroom (with hot water) and a decent telly with BBC World. There is no bar at the Pre Fleuri (probably a crucial film crew minimum requirement but we’ll let that go) and only a modestly stocked mini bar, outside I noticed petrol station sign which meant I might be able to buy milk and make English Breakfast tea with my ever present travel kettle. I ventured out into the cold only to discover that at six thirty the petrol station was closed. Undaunted I strode in the direction of the village hoping to find an open grocery store, after ten minutes I reached Centreville only to find that it too was closed. Back at the hotel I cracked a bottle of Heineken and watched an item on BBC World previewing Tony Blair’s upcoming appearance at The Chilcott enquiry. Musing to myself that someone should question the ex PM on New Labour’s lack of performance on the promised “Education, Education, Education” manifesto pledge I set off to meet Morphet in reception. As usual Chris looked like a man who had just finished a combined session of Pilates and US Army Marine Callisthenics, in short, fit as a butcher’s dog, even after a day’s camera toting.

Having enquired of Michael Caine at reception, we headed off through the now stygian gloom to the local Auberge where we had an excellent and inexpensive dinner. I had Perch from the “Lac” with chips after a wonderful small pot of mushroom risotto – Chris had Dover Sole (a Morphet staple).

Breakfast was simple but serviceable and the Pre Fleuri turned out to be only a four minute drive to our location (proximity to the place of filming being another basic film crew requirement).

So, for any crews headed towards St Suplice, The Hotel Pre Fleuri and the local Auberge get a Proudfoot Company four star rating.

Proudfoot meets Ernesto Neto

Proudfoot's shoot in Brazil had many highlights, but my encounter with Ernesto Neto, the extraordinary sculptor, is destined to become a lifelong memory. My brief was to talk to Ernesto about his upcoming exhibition at the Hayward Gallery and his involvement in a project called 'The New Decor', both of which will be included in The South Bank Centre's 'Festival Brazil' this summer. 30 seconds after my first question, I realised I would be getting much more than I ever expected. Ernesto is an artist that likes to make his art and to talk about his art. There are definite, concrete ideas behind what are often described as abstract or surreal sculptures and installations. Looking at his luscious, sensual works of art it was surprising to hear about Ernesto's obsession with physicists such as Einstein, Plank, Newton and Faraday. I've always believed that the greatest scientists, working at the fuzzy boundaries of their fields, are really artists. It's interesting to see that the opposite is true too.

Rolex Mentor and Protege Arts Weekend and the Royal Opera House

Last week had all of Proudfoot working towards what was probably our biggest ever weekend. Over 4 days we filmed at the BFI, The Theatre Royal Haymarket, The Tate Modern, Saddlers' Wells, The Union Chapel and The Royal Opera House.

Once we recover from the collective tiredness and dizziness we'll tell you all about it!

Oh and by the way, to see our Scorsese film click here

New clips on FT.com

Some very short clips about the Rolex Mentor and Protege Arts weekend can now be found on the Financial Times website.

Among the highlights; when Aurelio met Youssou, and how Martin Scorsese's protege Celina Murga develops an idea for a film script.

To have a look, click here

Fan-tashe-tic

Thanks, friends, colleagues and family, for all your support throughout the month of Movember. I am genuinely humbled by the level of generosity and I have been amazed by the rich variety of jokes (and abuse) aimed in my direction. I am particularly grateful to my gorgeous wife who has been unfailingly polite to me for the entire month whilst obviously hating the thing and refusing to show it any affection.

I wish I could say that all the kindness and generosity has made the month easier - 30 days is scarcely a long sentence, after all - but a moustache is a unpleasant, itchy beast that should be kept in a box in a locked cupboard, not publicly displayed on one's top lip. Mine is also extremely ginger. But in just a few hours it will all be over and, who knows, maybe I will miss it just a little bit.

But I doubt it.

The Compulsion to Make

Now here’s a thing…why do artists make art? Aware as I am that I lead a privileged life where I am fortunate to meet interesting people and absorb whatever it is that makes them tick I want to share with you here some accumulating thoughts I have had over the last few weeks.

A couple of weeks after Chris Morphet and I went to see Geoff Ridgen’s talk at the APT studios in Deptford we returned for the Open Studio day. This is an annual event where all the artists who work there put up their art in their studio space and anyone can go and look for free. They also sell their work, which is a cheaper way to buy, if you are in the market, because gallery fees etc are not added on. It was a beautiful day and Chris and I had a great time talking to John Mclean, Mali Morris and others. The art on view was pretty fantastic and it led me to think about these artists and what motivated them to explore their work with such scientific dedication. In all of the painting and sculpture on show you could see varying degrees of discovery, blind alleys, re-visiting of a central idea and probably points where the whole thing had come to a standstill while the artist had to re-group and begin again. There are certainly a few artists working at APT who have got their work to a point where they seem to be surfing an area of technical complexity, intellectuality and originality that will keep them going for years. The work of these artists seems to provide the viewer with endless opportunities of different experiences all played out through the particular universe of their work. I came away from APT thinking that there is no “success” or ”failure”, just a higher level of endeavour for these artists. Making the work is both a compulsion and a journey.

Two weeks later and I’m sitting in front of Martin Scorsese interviewing him for our Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative films. This is something of a moment for me as I spent most of the seventies as a young film student watching his films over and over again trying to figure out how he had done it. Undaunted by sitting in front of one of my heroes (again) we chatted for about an hour. Marty (if I may be so bold) touched on many things about his past career but we spent much of the discussion talking about making movies and his approach to film directing. A couple of things I will never forget, one was when he quoted Orson Wells who once said you can teach the mechanics of making a movie to anyone in about four hours, cameras, lenses, tracks, dollies etc but its all meaningless unless you have something to say. So a lesson for all you young film makers out there planning the endless Steadicam shot; just stop to think about WHY? you are getting the toy out in the first place.

Scorsese works with a pretty tight team of collaborators, Thelma Schoonmaker, his editor, Tom Fleischman, his sound mixer, Robbie Robertson ex of The Band, who Scorsese met while making one of the best rock movies of all time, The Last Waltz still advises on music. These people, and many more, have all been around him for years. Scorsese is most definitely the author of his films but he relies on the skills of these collaborators and craftsmen to get the movie finished. He described working with Fleischman for weeks searching for the exactly the right “silences” for each different room atmosphere in “Shutter Island”. Scorsese revels in the thousands of minute details that make up his films and the decisions or choices he has to make in order to get them close to the movie that is running in parallel in his head. At one point he used the world “euphoria” when it all comes together, but there are also times when after all the planning and setting up, he is surrounded by hundreds of technicians waiting for him to say "Action" the scene before him dissolves into something he can’t believe; at times like these he and his trusty collaborators have to work hard to bring the movie back to life in the way that he imagined it.

As he has got older and more experienced Scorsese has found ways of “guarding” his “energy”, presumably stripping away things in his life that get in the way of the act of making (including talking to people like me). Having said that his office displays all the evidence of a normal guy: photographs of family and drawings by young children.

Just like the artists at APT I am struck by Scorsese’s compulsion to create, even though it must involve raising thousands of bucks, having to deal with unsympathetic studios and a overcoming a lot of practical obsticals. Making movies for Scorsese is almost a spiritual (a word he used) need.

Geoff Rigden

On Sunday, my wife Wendy and I went down to Deptford to the APT gallery to see a talk by the artists Geoff Rigden and Norman Toynton. Visitors to our office will have seen a few of Geoff Rigden's paintings placed strategically on our walls to give us (me at least) little sparks of joy each day. Cameraman Chris Morphet and his partner Johanna Freudenberg were at the talk too. Johanna met Geoff in the sixties while he was at the Royal College of Art painting school. Morphet, who was at the RCA film school at the time, made a film about harmonicas called "Playing The Thing" (a cult classic) in which Rigden made an appearance along with Sonny Terry, James Cotton, Duster Bennett and other "blues harp" luminaries.

In the talk on Sunday, Geoff didn't say that much but what he did say was both funny and enlightening - someone asked about the two artists working habits and Geoff related a story about the American Art critic, Clement Greenberg who had told him that Jackson Pollack had quite long periods of not painting, some days were made up of going to the store to buy beer and then drinking it, followed by sudden flurries of painting activity. I think Geoff's point was habit doesn't have too much to do with creativity, it's more a state of mind, - make your painting when you have decided what to make wherever you want to. Geoff's current favourite location to work being the kitchen table. Wendy asked whether the two artists had a special object that had stayed with them throughout their careers - Geoff remembered visiting the V and A while he was at the RCA to look at the Indian miniatures (the V and A was right next door to the old painting school) - he loved them so much that he bought a repro from the shop for "thirty bob" and its been with him ever since.

It's quite difficult to define Geoff's work, he came out of what might be called the "Abstract Expressionist" movement but there is something very startling about what he does - startling because of it's honesty, which in turn gives the paintings a magical quality. They are fascinating to look at but apparently effortlessly made - he's not laying a big idea on us, he seems to be going for something deeper and human. In the talk he told us about his annual visits to Cyprus where he spends quite a lot of time looking at ancient art - designs on ceramics, frescos and mosaics, presumably with mystical or pagan messages which he finds inspiring. Anyway Rigden's work has a similar effect on me - Geoff's treasured possession is his Indian miniature repro bought in the V and A all those years ago, mine is a 1977 drawing made by him in Cyprus hanging on our kitchen wall at home.

Photocopyright © Chris Morphet

Parachuting into Berlin

I could pretend that it was me in the white jumpsuit; the truth is I was standing 5,000 feet below the helicopter wishing I had not given up smoking in 1995. We had one chance - a little over 3 minutes of jump time - to capture the footage we needed to make our film. The client, South Korean electronics colossus LG, was excited about seeing their logo (and their latest washing machine) on 2 massive banners. But we only had one jump, the type on the banner was never going to be easy to read and we were running out of time - pulled down by the massive weight of the banners, the jumpers were hurtling to earth far faster than any of us had imagined.

The team of jumpers - 2 carrying the banners and 2 cameramen - were fantastically professional. Ice cool before the jump and good fun after it, they drove all night to get to Berlin from the Midlands, did the jump and drove straight back home again. Their landing was pinpoint perfect, right in the centre of the prescribed landing zone. If anything their camerawork was even better - they captured everything we needed on their helmet-mounted HD cameras while managing not to plummet to their deaths. The lead jumper, a dare-devil with more than 14,000 jumps to his name, declared it the scariest thing he had ever done in his life.

It took a long stroll around Berlin's beautiful, thought-provoking Holocaust Memorial for my heartbeat to return to normal. It was a crazy, scary day and a totally new experience for me. We are delighted with the result and I am ready to do something similar soon.

And next time maybe it will be me in the white jumpsuit.

Beef Curry £3

So farewell then, Bruno's. We will miss you, even if your display of ingredients made us feel queasy. And even if we believe that most of the food poisoning cases in the Clerkenwell area over the last decade can (probably) be directly linked to you. And even if you were a typical whingeing Tottenham fan. We will miss you. Not many places can offer Beef Curry for only £3, and a generous portion, too. And we will miss your Mum.

Wild Tracks

It appears that sound engineers seem to be working less and less in the TV industry. Anyone who has watched TV next to my mum knows that being able to actually hear what is being said during a TV programme is important. During an episode of The Sopranos she once asked if a slick suited man who had just killed someone next to Newark Airport had said, after a solemn pause, "butter bean". If my mother had really considered the context of the utterance she would surely have come to the realisation that the more likely candidate was "Badda-bing" (say it out loud in an Italian American accent).

The Sopranos, of course, did use sound recordists and this particular problem was with the hearing of the viewer, but for many productions the fault lies with the budgets that are given to the filmmakers.