Argentina's underside

Every country has its Skegness. Just 4 hours by car from "Bs As" (as the trendy Buenos Aires seems to be called now), past Fray Bentos and just south of Bovril is a little town called Nogoya. Proudfoot had gone there to make a documentary about a film maker who had chosen the town as a location because of its unique qualities, namely inertia and a tendency towards bad weather. As we met people from the town and visited their houses, characters and stories seemed to unfold before our very eyes. Our film maker had found a rich source of inspiration. Old crumbling houses with silver spoons hung from the walls, and well-used rifles left on mantle pieces each projected a new scene or shot onto our film makers internal cinema screen. Nogoya, like Skegness, is not a town likely to be on page one of its country's holiday brochure, but, again like Skegness, you learn more about the culture and psychology of a nation going to places away from the global spotlight than their better looking, glitzier cousins down the road.

The Children's Shoes

Last week Simon and I had a lunch with quite a senior person in one of the cable/satellite channels. She is a charming, but pretty forthright sort of person, doesn't suffer fools gladly and may even be described as "tough". It just so happens that she was at the Dubai event at which our films for the Rolex Awards For Enterprise were being shown last November. This lady is not the first person to have mentioned to us that Eddie's film about the AIDS orphans in South Africa had her in tears.

The film is centered around Andrew Muir, an amazing guy who runs an holistic training programme for young people affected by the AIDS crisis in South Africa (because of AIDS, SA has a huge amount of child-headed households). The country's burgeoning eco-tourism industry needs skilled workers and the young people benefit by having stable incomes. Andrew has set up the training scheme, Umzi Whetu to make the link.

For the first time in a long time at a Rolex event I was not running around worrying about the projection being in focus, I was sitting at a table having dinner and being part of the audience. Eddie's film from the first viewings in the office had brought a lump to my throat so I wasn't surprised to see less jaded souls than I with tears streaming down their faces in Dubai. The film is only four minutes so there is a lot of information to get across and engage the audience emotionally with the subject.

I found myself thinking the other day, "what was it that moved people so much in this little film and why is it so efficient at drawing people onto the subject matter?" Firstly there is a music track which is one of Muir's trainees singing an improvised song at a slightly out of tune piano. There are some aerial shots of a township - one storey homes stretch far into the distance. Then we are on the ground in the township and can see these are very basic dwellings. We move inside one of the homes and see their simple interiors, minimal furnishings, soft toys on beds. All the while Andrew Muir is telling us in voice over about what the AIDS crisis has done to families in South Africa. The sequence is very carefully edited by Andreas Torner who cuts back to the trainee singing at one point and a piece of Andrew's in-sync interview. Then there is a shot that is neither beautiful or epic; no fancy pulling of focus or clever panning or tilting - its even a bit gloomy lightingwise. The shot is a close-up of a pair of children's sandals carelessly kicked off beside a bed - for some reason this is the one that always tips me over the edge, it's somehow deeply symbolic whilst being brutally real. I'm not sure if Eddie said to our excellent cameraman Mike James - "look over there, some children's shoes, somehow deeply symbolic whilst being brutally real" or whether Mike just saw it in his thorough harvesting of the scene. Either way, "the children's shoes" are one of the big moments in the films we made last year.

You can see the film here

Bank Holiday Moustaches

The Proudfoot Company spent their bank holiday weekends growing moustaches.

Hi-Di-Hi Campers!

I imagine that lo-fi indie rock, post-punk, and doom metal probably aren’t the first things that spring to mind when you think of Butlins, but for a couple of weekends a year the seaside holiday resort becomes a Mecca for alternative music fans when it plays host to All Tomorrow’s Parties music festival.

This weekend at All Tomorrow’s Parties: The Fans Strike back in Minehead, Somerset, it struck me (ahem) that this apparent mish-mash of cultures actually makes a lot of sense. Although most of the largely young, trendy middle class crowd would no doubt turn their noses up at spending their summer holidays at a British coastal holiday camp, ATP offers some pretty appealing advantages over other festivals. While the accommodation may have been "basic", the addition of a roof, bed, heating, hot water, cooker, fridge, kettle and tv is certainly a step up from traditional festival slumming, and there wasn’t even a glimpse of any sludgy brown stuff in any of the three indoor venues with their clean, flushing toilets.

But it seemed to me that a large part of the appeal of ATP was the “quaint” little Butlins touches. There was something quite refreshing about seeing pretty girls in vintage floral dresses and skinny boys in tight jeans totally immersing themselves in playing on 2p machines, visiting the waterpark, playing bingo or (in my case) stuffing their faces at the all-you-can eat Pizza Hut buffet. What Butlins essentially offers is the chance for everyone to act like a big kid and have some good, clean, simple fun. And regardless of your age, class or taste in music, no one can turn their noses up at a round of ten-pin bowling or a ride on the waltzers. Plus I’m sure I saw Beirut munching down on what looked suspiciously like a battered sausage. It’s not every weekend you can say that.  

Art, Fragrance and Excess baggage

The pleasures of filming on location seem to diminish with each passing trip. Last week cameraman Chris Morphet and soundman Paul Nathan and I flew to Berlin via Heathrow's Terminal 2 and Tiegel airport.  Terminal 2 is now about as glamorous as Doncaster bus station but not as efficient.  At Tiegel passengers were herded through passport control in a way my father wouldn't have allowed his cattle to be treated.  We then waited thirty minutes while the single baggage handler got our luggage on to the carousel. 

The reason for our trip was to film the japanese artist Masanori Handa and his mentor, the famous sculptor and performance artist Rebecca Horn.  Masanori is living in the Turkish quarter of Berlin in what looks like an old music shop. Rebecca Horn arrived and we proceeded to film the two as they discussed Masanori's work.  In one room there was a huge decorated palm tree and in another a pile of waste cardboard up to the ceiling with a water sprinkler on the top - the water trickled down the side of the cardboard sculpture.  Masanori expressed slight concern about the weight of the wet cardboard and the strength of the floor the whole assemblage was sitting on.  After saying what a great piece it was Rebecca said that the smell of wet cardboard was quite overpowering,  Masanori agreed and said this was all part of it.  I asked Rebecca whether she had ever worked with smell, she said  "Not exactly but a well- known cosmetics company once asked me to develop my own fragrance....they came to my house in Spain and with a special fragrance catching machine captured the smells of certain plants in my garden....the perfume was never available commercially, I am the only person with a few bottles left".  Rebecca has worked in just about every medium from sculpture to performance and even feature films but I hadn't expected the fragrance, she is truly a three hundred an sixty degree artist who continues to exhibit startling new pieces.  Horn's energy and continual wonderment at the world around her, keep on fueling the work.  She confessed in our interview that she makes art mainly for her own enjoyment.  

In the evening Rebecca very kindly invited us to dinner at a fantastic Italian restaurant near Checkpoint Charlie, Sale e Tabacchi where we drank numerous bottles of her favourite wine with Gunther, the photographer, Patrick, her cleaner and her friend, the artist Kimsooja.  

I realised I had been in this same restaurant before with a miserable John Peel in 1996 (Liverpool had lost).  Anyway all in all I shouldn't complain about airports and travel, it was a pretty life-enhancing trip.  

Our new best friend

On a grey, damp London morning it is cheering to hear the news that Sotheby's have sold the Blue Diamond (our Blue Diamond) for a record price - almost $10 million. A friend in the auctioneering game tells me that diamonds always do well in a recession - it's something to do with them being easy to transport. They are probably a good way to tie up large amounts of cash in a very small object, too.

We always imagine that our films make a difference, however tiny, but in this case perhaps it is true; the diamond caused a real stir and our film found it's way to a massive audience. It wasn't just uploaded onto various websites, we also supplied footage to news organisations all over the world. The story ran on the BBC but also popped up on ABC, Reuters, South African TV, Genius (I don't know either) and who knows where else.

And the result of all this publicity? A record price per carat for any gemstone sold at auction. Just call that the Proudfoot Effect. Either that or it's a really beautiful, extremely rare thing.

Twists

I'm trying to write a script at the moment. With each word it gets harder and harder. Just to finish one episode takes a lot more work than I expected. The trouble is, I'm trying to think of a twist and twists, by definition, aren't very easy. Someone suggested the 'non-twist' twist strategy the other day so I gave that a bash and it was even more difficult than just having a twist. I watched The Sixth Sense, The Crying Game, The Others, Old Boy, The Usual Suspects, The Empire Strikes Back, in an attempt to gain inspiration at the altar of 'Great Film Twists' ........until last night when it came to me. I finished my 30 pages with a great, simple twist no one would expect. When I read through the warm, freshly printed pages I realised it was just the rest that was crap.

Sex

A few weeks ago I noticed that my garden pond had some frog's spawn lodged by some garden centre water grass, for some reason or other it was an exciting moment (I am 54).  My garden pond is inhabited by four large goldfish - they started out small but seem to have doubled in size every year.  The largest is called Rustem Bay after a character in in Louise de Bernieres's excellent novel Birds Without Wings - the other three don't have names.  There are also at least thirty Sticklebacks who I think are pretty ravenous and probably more intelligent than the Goldfish.  Every morning for a few days I went out to see how the Frog's Spawn were getting on - after a few more days I could see their number was diminishing.  I decided to intervene and took a jam jar full into the house and plonked them into a larger Kilner Jar (google it!)

I am pleased to say that some of them seem to be thriving - over the last two weeks they have sprung legs and arms and started to look like frogs.  On the advice of my son George (22) the newly amphibious critters  have been transfered into an old aquarium and now have a slip-way they can get up on and observe the world above water level.

At some point I will have to re-introduce them to the dangers of the pond, we'll keep you posted.

If I'm awake I'm working

A few years ago we tried to develop a TV programme about the 'Slow movement'. Contrary to popular belief, living slow is not only, or even primarily, about the pace of life. At proudfoot we always say if we are awake we are working. I know that if my family heard me say that they would grimace, we've never been workaholics. Often on shoots there are moments when we are not filming that are more important to the resulting film than moments when we are. Ensuring that we don't flog ourselves and leaving time to think and look without pressure is vital. This is what 'slow' is about (I think). Not filling your time for the sake of it so that you can get more from life and maybe even give more to work. During my 'slow' time on shoots I often take pictures of the crew. Sometimes we are in places that demand that you stop what you're doing.

Avedon

I've been looking at Avedon's "In the American West" again, prompted by Laura Wilson's excellent book about her time traveling with the great man taking the pictures.  Some wonderful anecdotes about how Avedon got his subjects to be at ease and how he worked fast to make sure the precious, magic moment didn't pass.  There are some informative pictures of him and his two assistants setting up the shots with a huge large format camera in front of a piece of white paper Gaffa taped to whatever was convenient. Avedon is usually seen chatting with his subject inadvertently copying the physical posture of the person he is about snap.    His approach was unfussy and geared towards getting the real person onto the neg;  no flash, minimum equipment - we can probably all learn from him.