Shivering Geoff – Episode #1
What’s important? It’s amazing. You spend years working on stuff and it goes unnoticed. You labour away and when it’s all finished and done – you wonder whether it was worth the bother. I’m talking about making films. These days, it’s called “producing content”. I’m but one of a million unknown filmmakers. When I made the “film” (top right) for YouTube with a couple of actor and writer friends, I had heaps of fun. It was grass-roots filmmaking as it was meant to be. It only took one working day to make Shivering Geoff. The shortest shoot-to-production I’ve ever been on.
I opened my short film Bertolt to a not-very-packed audience at the Melbourne International Film Festival 1988 -when I was 20. There were maybe 100 people seated in the old 500 seat cinema. Nobody really saw the film after my talk with Michael Bond (DOP) – and in fact – a lot of people left before the screening. Probably to see bigger, more important films – or as is the case at most film festivals – they probably left to go see their own film. And yet 500 or so people have visited my YouTube channel and seen Berolt there. But by far the most successful film I’ve ever made is the one that took only 1 day to make and asks of the viewer only one minute of time. I really think the net is the place where Gen-Y lives.
Phil and I come up with shit liek this all the time. It’s the sort of snap idea that arises when you are cooking – or, in our case, writing Various Ages. I found myself organising the film a few days later. A film “mascot” for our site (also named geoffrey). The idea was nuts – we even phoned our mate Geoff Miethe (the actor) to be in it – completing the geoffrey loop and making it whole.
I remember what Dad used to say. “Whenever you put just a little effort into one of your ideas, it flies – and yet when you get involved with big producers and production companies – nobody ever seees what you do.” Words to that effect. I can’t actually remember how Dad would put that, but he always thought that I laboured my best ideas and “lost the moment” as a result.
Maybe there’s something in it. Just get it out there creaive peopel. I hardly had to leave my laptop for this one. There are no excuses now. No gate-keepers. And, interestingly, you don’t have to be driven by the dollar to get htings done. I know for sure that that’s not my way.
