Vote for The Dreamers

Either read to the bottom (and it’s a very good read) of guest blogger Matt Maude of Left Eye Blind’s  eloquent article and vote or vote now! But don’t delay voting ends Friday. Do spread the word. Over and out

“The UK’s biggest short film competition, Virgin Media Shorts, last week unveiled the film makers that have successfully made this year’s shortlist.

Over a thousand films are entered into the competition each year, and now the twelve shortlisted film makers will now go on to be judged by a panel of industry heavyweights. All are now in the running to receive the Grand Prize: up to £30,000 film funding to make their next film hand-in-hand with the British Film Institute. Each of the twelve shortlisted films will now have their work transferred to 35mm ready to be shown at 200 cinemas across the country for an entire year”

Last year, at around this time, reading that email, I was in complete agony. I was pretty inconsolable to be honest… I know what you’re thinking – we’ve all been there, we’ve all stubbed our toe on the table leg – but this was worse. About ten billion times worse. It felt like I’d just stubbed out my soul on the sharpest and heaviest table leg ever conceived. It felt like God was specifically trying to hurt me 

Last year, I entered my film The Dreamers into the Virgin Media Shorts competition. I had, amongst other things, a track that was written, scored and performed by the incredible Icelandic vocal explorers Sigur Ros. Before the 2010 shortlist was announced to the world, I was contacted by Virgin Media Shorts and asked to submit my paperwork for The Dreamers, as the curators wanted my film in the final 12. 

You can imagine the feeling. It’s a lot like what athletes must feel when they cross over the line in first place at the Olympics. Or when you score in Injury time in the World Cup Final. Or when you’ve just bought THAT awesome blue cheese burger at GBK and it comes with free chips. An incredible combination of contentment, achievement and masses of relief… 

I had no idea what that felt like. Literally nothing. Because I didn’t get the clearance for the track. I couldn’t afford the five thousand that the record label were asking. Or the other five grand that publishing were demanding. I didn’t go through to the Virgin Media Shorts Shortlist in the year of our Lord, Two Thousand and Ten. God hated me. So did the record labels. So did I. I hated myself. I stubbed my soul out on the sharpest and heaviest table leg I could find and cried bitterly for nearly a year.

The Dreamers was made in three and half days in the Serbian capital of Belgrade. It was shot with a crew of four and seven actors over the course of one cold September evening. Starting shooting at 5PM we wrapped at 6AM, and the edit was completed at midnight of the same evening, or night, or day. Time didn’t really have much meaning in the complete deficiency of sleep.

The real struggle came not in the writing of the film, or it’s production. It came in getting the clearance of the music. Whereas the film took just sixty hours to go from inception to complete, the clearance would take the best part of two years…

Failing to make the Shortlist last year I wiped away the anger and got back on the horse. I spent the next year learning a lot about clearances. A lot of time on the phone. I went about getting the permission from the management, then the sync, then record label, then the publishing company. I wrote to everyone and everything. From the band’s lead singer to Universal. I hounded Sigur Ros. I was like a mountain climber tackling Everest with no legs. Or no money. I went at them with the full force of poverty and earnest enthusiasm.

In the end… I got it. I spent money I didn’t have on getting it. But it wasn’t much. A tenth of what they’d charged me last year. I got a loan and put the film into the 2011 Virgin Media Shorts competition. I crossed every part of my anatomy I could manage. I prayed to the God I don’t believe in.

Four months of waiting, my bollocks completely twisted and my fingers looking more like snarled zombie victims I was told that the three and half day film and the two year music clearance project had made the shortlist. The Dreamers was in. It would play now to two hundred cinemas, up and down the country, for an entire year. It was being transferred onto 35 millimeter. It’s amazing. It’s everything to me

For us too at Left Eye Blind it’s added a bit more of legitimacy to what we do here. Setting up your own production company, at this time, and this age (I’m now 26 but we started this way back in my early twenties) has always been incredibly daunting.  But now, all the hard work, all the time of living on nothing with no money is just about coming together

We’ve just completed our first feature film. Our second begins in November shooting entirely in Albania in a co-production between ourselves and the Albanian Film Council. We’re running projects for the community (2.8 Days Later asks filmmakers across the city to write, shoot and finish a film in just under three days) in the absence of the UK Film Council’s activity, any sort of public money and Screen Yorkshire moving into Creativity England. The Blind Club, our music arm, is working with real bands and musicians with talent when the music industry has no money and is relying increasingly on X-factor styled music manufacturing. Based at Marshall’s Mill we’ve got offices that are letting us achieve the plans we’ve always dreamt of but never been able to from our bedroom offices. There’s eight of us now working here. It’s finally beginning to fit

And this whole Virgin Media Shorts thing. To have our work watched by a cinema paying audience. And by such a panel of judges including acclaimed British actor John Hurt CBE, The Bourne Ultimatum director Paul Greengrass, and Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll director Mat Whitecross. It’s just brilliant. Since learning of the news, my feet haven’t touched the ground. This opportunity is unbelievable, shocking, electric… And I understand so much of it, feel it so strongly because I know the extremes of the positivity against the negativity. I missed this opportunity so bitterly last year. I understand how close and painful the rejection can be. 

Virgin Media Shorts are doing something that barely no one else is doing across the entire country. They’re providing opportunities. We all need things to move up the ladder in the beginning. But in reality it’s all about the opportunity of getting your work seen by as many industry peers as possible. It’s getting your name known and your face about. It’s all about networking your talent before people begin to invest time and money into you. And that’s what Virgin are doing within this scheme. Their acting like big signposts to new undiscovered talent. One with flashing lights saying ‘Invest here’

There’s others companies too that are doing similar things. Nokia, Kirin Beer, Getty Images; private business offering up filmmakers prizes, budgets and showcasing opportunities. Why are they doing this? Absolute Vodka entirely funded Spike Jonze’s last short and their product didn’t feature one frame within his film. The only time you saw their brand was in the beginning and end of the credits.

Filmmakers do something freaking awesome. Especially Spike Jonze who just breathes cool (Directing ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ as well as ‘Being John Malkovic’) and eats awesome (Creating of Jackass). Brands supporting film is like Vans, Converse and Monster supporting music and musicians. Fashion follows culture’s heroes. And Virgin are wanting first dibs on the future Bafta award winners. Support someone in the beginning and you’ll always be able to be the proud parent sending successive cards at Christmas saying ‘look at what our Charley did this year’…  They’re creating people loyal and thankful to the opportunities they run under their company… And two and possibly even more importantly, these private business are creating the idea that their cool by associating themselves with people doing cool things (for the record I don’t think I’m cool – or anyone near it – I’m not hot either – what I mean is I’m doing something that is freaking cool). BFI take note. Private enterprise is taking back what Labour governments tried to do (I’m looking at you Gallagher / Blair super-group). It’s PR that not even Alasteir Campell could spin. 

If you’d like a look at Left Eye Blind’s film in the Virgin Media Shorts competition it’s in the following link. If you like it, please vote for it too. There’s a public vote people’s choice too within the competition:-

http://www.virginmediashorts.co.uk/film/1571/the-dreamers-sanjari