Losing the plot. Finding the picture.
I've not really talked or written much about my project development process before - because, well to be honest, it's still been very much in... development.
I've been writing myriad things, and making theatre, installed performance, video art and now film for... god, I don't know - officially my biography says eight or so years, I think - but in reality it's been much longer. I mean, I've been writing since I was less than a metre high, so you know. It's been a while.
Throughout all this, I'm ashamed to say I've never really had much of a formally defined process. (Unless you can call staying up alone until 3am in your twenties shouting into the void alongside a half-drained bottle of red wine a "process".) Nothing that could be carried from project to project in any real sense.
The other contributor to my vague creative work structure has been that I've arted across such a varying array of styles, disciplines and media that a) it's made me entirely unemployable, and b) any hope of creating a container for the work defined by (shock! horror!) discipline has been entirely lost to me.
There have been some consistencies to the work, however, that I've only begun to really identify via the razor sharp insights of a new collaborator with whom I have just started working.
The first is that once I have an idea - a vague notion of what it is I am curious to explore - I always begin with the raw, whole, difficult image. I've known this much for years, but never really thought about it as a point of "process" per se. I've always just known I've needed image as my jumping off point.
From there I can find sound - rhythm of text or found or diagetic sound. Then I can discern movement. Shapes and volume. Light. Articulation of the body. Physical motifs, perhaps. Palette. Maybe a hint of photographic style. But not story yet. Nor characters. Not for a while.
After the first rush of images and tastes; subtle touches of what the finished film might feel like in the strange dark corners of my mind, then come the snatches of dialogue. When I can see the characters whose mouths wrap around these words, then I can start to carve out my story.
Coming into narrative filmmaking as a writer/director in a very disciplined and deliberate way, the need now for me to develop a process for sculpting story for cinema (as opposed to just image and sound) has shifted radically, and I've had to examine my process quite forensically in order for me to actually be able to do this without necessarily having to revert to the adherence to a traditional screenwriting structure, or to end up with a chaotic mess.
That means knowing that even if at the beginning of the process, the entire project does still feel like a giant, weird, nebulous splodge, I have something of a pathway and a guarantee that I'll get to a point where either there will be something that takes the recognisable form of a project, or - just as likely - a reason to diverge off into a different direction and try again.
And the beauty of being able to identify the way in which I work - very idiosyncratically - is that it's easier to sort out whose opinion of the work at whatever stage in the process I'm at is most useful. That includes my own sometimes awfully unhelpful opinion. By which I mean, I can now stand in front of my desk full of index cards, shake my head at how fucking wildly up in the air it still all is - and be very critical about that, but also be able to on the flip side, discern a pattern that I know will eventually lead me to a draft of a screenplay - be it good, bad or indifferent.
And then I'll be able to print that puppy out, stand back from that, and discern whether or not I need to rip it all up - save for one scene (it's usually one, I don't know why) - and start again, or whether it just needs a couple more solid re-drafts, and a couple of pairs of outside eyes.
There's more to it than that of course. It's much more complicated - and on many levels it needs must vary from project to project. There's a great deal of hair-pulling which goes with the territory. There's all the demons of self-doubt and resistance that still rear their ugly, green, bulbous heads. And sometimes it doesn't work this way. It won't work this way.
And of course, finding the idea that you want to begin to explore in the first place is another thing altogether. I don't really know where ideas come from. Reading. Watching. Talking a lot. Breathing in as much artwork by others as possible. Observing your own life. Collecting other people's stories. As predictable as all that might sound. Some ideas are just lying around and I stumble across them before I can even recognise them for what they are. Sometimes finding an idea is like trying to squeeze water from a rock.
Rock-squeezing process hacks? For me? Walking is good. Showering is good. Red wine is good. Bouncing ideas off my ever-patient husband until something breaks through is good. I'm not saying the hacks are foolproof but some combination of the above usually works for me in the end.
The screenplay draft I'm working on at the moment came very much from rock-squeezing. I think the more material you expose yourself to on the whole, the fewer rocks you will need to squeeze, but it doesn't negate the squeezing entirely.
And besides, the squeezing is good. It's a hale, invigorating thing to do. It gives your self-interrogation muscles a really good workout.
I'll write more on this as more unfolds, no doubt. For now - these are my first scratches on what the process looks like at the moment. Note - this is just the writing process. I'm nowhere near the visualisation, directing or editing process yet. Those still to come.
