Issue 230 of SFX features an incredibly flattering review of Jenny Ringo and the Monkey's Paw on page 41. Here's what the issue looks like...
The review says things like 'The film moves at a rapid pace with plenty of humour.' and 'It looks and sounds more expensive than it probably was, with the highlight being a song and dance routine in which the Magician explains the origins of the eponymous Monkey's Paw.'
Which is nice.
It's available in most newsagentey-magazine-selling-type places so shouldn't be too hard to find if you'd like to read the whole review. Which you should because it's really good. And if you haven't seen the film yet it's right here.
Ten Dead Men re-released in France!
Ten Dead Men, the feature film I wrote around five years ago (just prior to starting this blog) has been re-released in a limited edition steelcase! In France!!!
I don't know why but I do know that I definitely want one.
I interview the cast and crew of House Trafalgar!
A few weeks ago I was invited to interview the cast and crew of the most epic short film ever made, House Trafalgar. The first video from that session has just been released online, and here it is...
HOUSE TRAFALGAR - The Q&A Sessions 1 from Future Sun Film on Vimeo. If you've never been to MovieBar, the short film night I run in Brighton, it's a lot like this... only darker, everyone has usually had a lot more to drink and I would be wearing a hat. Check out the House Trafalgarwebsite for more information on the film and details of upcoming screenings. In other news... Jenny Ringo and the Cabaret from Hell is now even closer to completion after Ross and I put the finishing touches to the edit earlier this week. It now has effects, a couple of extra scenes and is slightly shorter in places! Now there's just the final sound mix and grading left to do... As always you can keep up to date on the progress of Jenny Ringo by signing up to the mailing list at www.jennyringo.com.
Been a bit crap at blogging recently, too much stuff going on. Was going to do a whole post about the ADR session we did a few weeks ago, and while I'm on the subject I should actually finish off the production diary seeing as I only made it as far as the second day. But I've been busy working on finishing the actual film itself, which is very nearly done.
Sort of very nearly anyway. I still need to get the effects shots edited into the film, sort out some of the voice-over sequences now I have the actual dialogue to go with them, co-ordinate the final sound mix and get the whole thing graded, but other than that it's nearly there!
Last week I spent an evening with editor Ross putting together a trailer for the film. It's not quite finished yet so I won't be putting it online anytime soon BUT I will be screening it as part of Halloween MovieBar TOMORROW NIGHT!
Whether you are interested in seeing the Jenny Ringo and the Cabaret from Hell trailer or not, if you are anywhere near Brighton you should definitely come along to MovieBar because it is going to be an amazing night. We'll be screening an eclectic mix of fantastic short horror films from 7.30pm at the Caroline of Brunswick in Brighton.
Full details can be found here - www.moviebar.co.uk
I wrote this ages ago, then had one of those 'aw, why should anyone care what I think' moments and didn't post it. I've now had one of those 'I haven't blogged for ages but I can't be bothered to write anything new' moments so here it is... Amber Heard represents one of the biggest problems with the way films are being made at the moment. Because she's really good. It just takes one really good performance in a good film for me to want to see more of that actor. With Amber Heard that film was All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, which is perhaps the only post-Scream slasher film to do anything at all interesting with the genre (that, and Cabin in the Woods obviously). And Amber Heard is really good in it.
I can't really explain why without spoiling the ending, but it's one of those films where the story (and particularly the major plot twist) is entirely dependent on the central performance, which in this case is really strong. Around the same time I also went to see the teen MMA film Never Back Down at the cinema. I'm not sure why I thought this was a good idea.
Amber Heard plays the main character's girlfriend and doesn't do anything at all interesting. Her lines could easily have been copied and pasted from similar characters a thousand other films. Unfortunately she would go on to play that same character over and over again. She played Jesse Eisenberg's zombie girlfriend at the beginning of Zombieland.
She was Nicholas Cage's sidekick in Drive Angry (basically the same girlfriend character but seeing her and Nicholas Cage have sex would be weird like it was with him and Jessica Biel in Next so they skip over any relationship stuff and have her following him around for no reason at all other than the film needs a girl in it).
And who could forget her standout performance as Seth Rogen's girlfriend in Pineapple Express. Me, that's who. I forgot, because it's not memorable at all.
But just as I'm about to give up on Amber Heard I see her in The Ward, a film that again hinges on the strength of her performance which is again very strong indeed (The Ward is kind of like Sucker Punch but with a script and acting and other things that proper films have).
From this I learn I should only watch Amber Heard films in which she looks slightly dishevelled in all the promotional stills (with the exception of the remake of And Soon the Darkness in which she spends a lot of time looking slightly dishevelled and doesn't play a girlfriend. It's also not very good and is therefore at odds with my thesis so I'm not going to talk about it here). So the other night I sat down to watch The Rum Diary, a film I'm very much looking forward to because I like Bruce Robinson, I like Hunter S. Thompson (although from the films based on his work I can't help thinking he would've achieved so much more without all the drugs and alcohol) and I like Johnny Depp when he's not being a pirate or having anything to do with Tim Burton. There are also four of my favourite actors in the supporting cast - Richard Jenkins, Aaron Eckhart, Giovanni Ribisi and ... Amber Heard. I think this is going to be brilliant. Unfortunately it's not brilliant because Amber Heard plays Aaron Eckhart's girlfriend. A bit later she is Johnny Depp's girlfriend.
At various points in the film she disappears. The script is such that it really wouldn't matter if any of those moments were the last time we saw her on screen. She is completely superfluous to the plot of the film. If you cut out all her scenes it would be the exact same film, no question. By now I'm so sick of this it completely ruins the film for me. The film itself is actually quite good. At its best moments it recreates the tone of Withnail and I perfectly. And in a way that's the problem. Imagine Withnail and I if one of the characters had a girlfriend. Imagine the same film, same set-up, same tone but someone high up suggests the story needs a woman in it somewhere because us blokes feel a bit weird and insecure if we're just watching other blokes all the time so now Richard E Grant and Paul McGann are competing for the affections of the local barmaid. It wouldn't work. It would be horrible. I would like to think that's what happened with The Rum Diary; that the girlfriend character wasn't put in there on purpose but instead was inserted at the insistence of a random executive. Either way the result is the same. Here is a fairly decent story which is for the most part quite believable but every now and again we have to put common sense to one side so we accept the awkward romance plot that's been copied and pasted into the script from a thousand similar films, some of them the same films Amber Heard's previous roles were copied from. Let's compare the above to another actor I really like of a similar age. Let's take Joseph Gordon-Levitt for example. I really liked him in Brick where he plays a high school detective. Then I saw him in The Lookout where he plays a young man living with brain damage who somehow gets involved in a bank heist. In Stop-Loss he played a soldier struggling with the return to civilian life. In Inception he plays Leonardo DiCaprio's right-hand man and gets to wear awesome waistcoats and have a spectacular floating-around-in-a-corridor fight scene. The point is his least interesting role was as the bad guy in GI Joe, and even that was more interesting than any of the supporting characters Amber Heard ever played. You may ask, what do I know? Maybe Amber Heard was offered all kinds of interesting parts and she just prefers playing girlfriends. Maybe that's okay. But there is a bigger picture here. Part of what makes the above examples stand out is that quite often Amber Heard is the only female character in those films. Which means that in the world those films expect us to buy into Amber Heard represents all women. Which means for the most part women aren't very interesting. Not only that but in only having one woman in the whole story the films then fail to represent any kind of reality I'm familiar with. There is rarely a good reason for not having more than one female character in a script. But if for some reason that has to be the case (the only reason being someone high up thinks the film needs a woman for the blokes in the audience to look at in case they get confused) then there are things that can be done to make it work. They don't have to be written as one-dimensional pin-ups for the male characters to fight over, even if in reality that's exactly why they've been added into the story. There are examples of this being done well, like with Brittany Murphy's character in Drive (not the Ryan Gosling one, the Mark Dacascos one with lots of people kicking each other that features the line 'You cheese-eating dick monkey!'). Or Ally Walker's character in Universal Soldier (which stands out in my mind as being interesting but it's been a while since I've seen it). There are probably loads more too (but I can't think of any which is the other reason I didn't post this right away in case more examples came to me. They didn't.) But there is another solution. Sometimes its okay not to have roles for women in a film. Sometimes it's better that way, like in Withnail and I or Reservoir Dogs or 12 Angry Men and probably a thousand more examples (and these I could list here but you get the idea). If Amber Heard hadn't been in any of the films I mentioned above except for The Ward and All the Boys Love Mandy Lane I really wouldn't have noticed. In some cases it would've been an improvement. And you never know, maybe, just maybe she could have made something more interesting instead...
It all started so well! Jenny Ringo and the Monkey'sPaw was in 1st place in Shooting People's Film of the Month competition for the first few days of the contest. It held onto a spot in the top 5 for the whole of the first week. In the second week there was a battle to stay in fifth place and though the film frequently dropped out of the top 5 we always managed to claw back enough votes to get us up there again. But by the end of last week it had all started to go a little bit wrong. And now, half an hour before the end of the first round, the leaderboard looks like this:
That's my film, down in 24th place. It's not a complete loss. Last month the top film in Round 1 won by around 450 stars. I figured this month would be more competitive so I decided we needed at least 500 and there were times when I wasn't sure we'd ever hit more than 250. But we made it past 500 in the end, it's just that everyone else did way better. The film did get the most views, which means very little in the competition but it makes me smile. As a result of this and me mentioning it at every available opportunity it has also been played over 1,000 times on vimeo which was my other big target for this year (now we just need 1,000 Facebook likes and 1,000 people signed up to the mailing list). I think the fact that it had more views than plays is the root of the problem. I think people were put off by the running time. The fact is, I know where pretty much every single one of those 505 votes came from. The majority came from people I know or have worked with or have helped out in some way or another. The rest came from people I approached directly. What we missed out on was the casual voter, because I think the casual voter clicked the link, saw that it would take 25 minutes of their time and moved on (I refuse to learn anything from this). Also, surprisingly few of my filmmaker friends are Shooting People members, which didn't help. But the fact that we made it so far in spite of all this is pretty amazing. I'm really grateful to everyone who checked out the film and voted and to all the people who shared the link and were almost as relentless in promoting it as I was. The film also received some great comments which you can read in full here, below are some of the best - "Really liked the ending. Also, the mess in the kitchen reminds me a lot of my time at uni of course. You've nailed the layabout student to a tee with his character." "Love this, especially the Jeff Awesome character and the musical number. Looking forward to the sequel." "Talking washing up = awesome." "I love this piece of work. It's funny and disturbing - but it had the potential to have been so much more intense." "Terrific film. Great story, love the leads, excellent camera work - and very, very funny (particularly liked the chanting hippies!!)" "It made me smile, cheered me up, amused me greatly and left me looking for more!" "One of the best shorts I've seen in ages. Very ambitious and delivers, Jenny Ringo needs her own series!" Overall it's been an exhausting, time-consuming and occasionally stress-inducing experience but one that was totally worthwhile for all the extra people that got to see the film because of it. Would I enter again? Ask me that question when I've finished Jenny Ringo and the Cabaret from Hell. Speaking of which, I have work to do...
It's been an exciting, exhausting week. The Shooting People Film of the Month leaderboard now looks like this:
Okay, so it's not as pretty-looking as when Jenny Ringo was in first place like it was at the beginning of the week, but we are still in the top 5 which means we're still in with a chance of getting through to the next round! It just needs to stay in the top 5 for the next 12 days, which is a really long time! Hope it goes without saying at this point but if you are a Shooting People member, please click the link and give it some stars! https://shootingpeople.org/watch/111251/jenny-ringo-and-the-monkey-s-paw Competition has been fierce and at one point the film fell to 9th place and didn't look like it had much chance of getting any higher. I've spent pretty much every non-working, non-nappy-changing minute online pleading with people to vote which is probably a bit annoying now, but like Gabriel Byrne says to Albert Finney in Miller's Crossing - 'I don't ask much and I don't ask often.' Okay, the second part of that sentence may not be true anymore, but once this competition is out of the way I promise I will get on with the business of actually making stuff again. It's been really hard work to get this far, but pretty rewarding too. All kinds of people have seen the film now and I've had some fantastic feedback. When we were shooting Jenny Ringo and the Cabaret from Hell I made the assertion that I wouldn't even think about releasing it until the first film had been seen by at least a thousand people. This seemed an over-ambitious target and for a while I thought we would never make it, but as a result of the Shooting People competition the film has now been seen 711 times on vimeo which is fantastic! I've also seen some great films by other people and have lined up a number of them to show at MovieBar in the coming months (speaking of which, MovieBar on Monday was amazing! Standing room only, some of the best films we've screened and a wonderful audience that included my mum and dad). The support I've had from friends and fans of the film has been incredible and I'm really grateful to everyone who has shared the link or voted for it or left a comment. It makes me wonder what we could achieve if there was a similar competition that didn't require you to be a paid member to vote, so if anyone is aware of anything like that let me know! But it's not over yet. I still need stars to be in with a chance of winning and I'm starting to run out of contacts! If you're reading this and you're not a Shooting People member you can still help! Just share the link on Facebook and Twitter and ask if any filmmaking types you know are able to vote. The more views we get the better so please do encourage people to watch the film anyway. I suspect this coming week is going to be even harder than the previous week so wish me luck and I'll check in with you when I can!
As of right now, Jenny Ringo and the Monkey's Paw is in first place in Shooting People's Film of the Month competition!!!
So here's how this works.
We're currently in Round 1 which is open until the 20th of September. In order to get through to Round 2 we need to stay in the Top 5 until then.
In Round 2 the votes get reset and the process starts again. If we can get into the top 3 in Round 2 this months guest judge, Danny Boyle, watches the film and gives us some feedback. He also picks a winner, but to be honest having the film seen by Danny Boyle is a big enough achievement in itself!
The only problem is only Shooting People members can vote and you have to pay to be a member. So here's what I need -
If you are a Shooting People member please vote for us by clicking this link and giving the film a star rating. Feel free to e-mail me at whatwritesatmidnight[at]gmail.com telling me you've done it and I'll send you an extremely grateful message back. I'll also happily do anything I can to help you out with your own projects, which is perhaps more useful!
If you're not a member, please click the link anyway and play the film. If there's a tie, like we end up with the same amount of stars as another film, then the number of views you have becomes the deciding factor so every click helps!
Also, if you know any filmmaking people chances are they could be members so please pass on the link. Here's the link in full -
Even if you don't know anyone who's a member, you could always tweet the link anyway, just in case!
My strategy is to try to stay at the top for as long as possible in the hope of picking up a few extra stars from curious passers-by. It's going to be a massive challenge to stay in the competition. Our film is about five times longer than most of the other entries so it's a bigger ask to get strangers to watch it. Last month the films that made it through Round 1 all had around 400 stars so we've got a really long way to go yet! But I have a few more tricks up my sleeve yet and have only called in favours from a handful of the filmmakers I know so far, so I'm confident we're in with a good chance.
I'll post updates as the month goes on. If we do win I'm going to record a commentary track for the film and post it online.
Oh, and I'm still trying to get as many people signed up to the mailing list as possible. We're on 317 at the moment so edging closer to 500, at which point I'll upload the outtakes video. Please sign up at www.jennyringo.com
My plan was simple. Set a high but not unrealistic target for new subscribers to the Jenny Ringo website. Write a direct and slightly dictatorial blog post about how people can help me hit that target. Sit back and let the internet work its magic!
Then I went on holiday to teach my son about the important things in life, like the names of all the gangs in Warriors.
When I came back I found there were a handful of new subscribers but not the 500 I was aiming for. The list was up to 250. From 245.
I know this is starting to look a little like maths with all these numbers but bear with me.
It's now up to 316, which isn't a crazy amount but it's pretty good all the same. It took a lot of effort to get that far. I've risked being a bit annoying and I'm guilty of spamming forums and Facebook and practically sabotaging my twitter account, but I have been sure to reply to any responses and have always offered to check out other peoples' stuff in return. I've also made good on that offer whenever people have taken me up on it.
At the risk of repeating myself, I honestly feel this is how the internet should work. We're all creators now, whether it's our blogs or films or ebooks or whatever. It's not enough to put something online and say 'look at me! look what I made!'. I knew this already, even before I went away and expected the internet to do all the work for me, I just hadn't properly put it into practice yet.
It doesn't always work. The majority of people I contact about the film ignore me, just like I used to ignore most people promoting their stuff online. But sometimes it does work, and that's mostly where the extra subscribers have come from.
I've learnt a great many things from this.
I've learnt you can't check out peoples' stuff, leave them
nice/helpful feedback and then expect them to seek out your stuff in
return. It happens sometimes, but mostly those people just say thanks
and you never hear from them again.
I've learnt that I really need to catch up with the rest of the world and get a magic phone instead of the primitive rubber bouncy phone I got because I kept getting posh phones and dropping them on the floor and down toilets. My rubber bouncy phone is specially made for construction workers and people doing extreme sports (who obviously need to make important calls when they're like jumping off mountains or whatever). And presumably clumsy people like me. But at the moment I can't do any of this stuff on the move so have to cram all my networking into the few minutes spare between work and teaching my son about important things like the complex history of the Geth/Quarian dispute.
I've learnt that there are a lot of people out there making stuff. Some of the stuff is really good and should be more popular than it is, some of the stuff is not so good but all of it is very creative.
I've learnt that it's a great way to find more films to show at MovieBar (if you're in Brighton next Monday head over to the Caroline of Brunswick at 7.30pm for a night of truly awesome short films, some of which I found by bugging people online)
I've learnt that mostly people are really nice and genuinely appreciate
random strangers taking the time to check out their work, much like I
do. I'm actually rather depressed about the fact that despite the film
being on vimeo and YouTube and a few dozen forums I haven't encountered a single troll to date. I should probably be careful what I wish for.
I've learnt that sometimes people are so nice they go above and beyond the call of duty and write stuff about my film online -
I've also learnt that Shooting People don't let people join their site for free anymore. They probably haven't for years, it's just I've been a fully paid up member since it started so just assumed it worked the way it used to. This is a significant blow as the focus of pushing up my numbers was to get an army of people to vote for Jenny Ringo and the Monkey's Paw in Shooting People's Film of the Month competition next month. Obviously I can't expect people to pay a membership fee just to vote for me so I now have to rely on the small proportion of subscribers who are actually Shooting People members to help.
But that's okay, because I like a challenge. Plus if I had realised that sooner I may not have bothered with all this networking nonsense, would have 70 or so less subscribers to the Jenny Ringo mailing list and wouldn't have chatted to a bunch of awesome people all over the world about their projects. Online distribution for short films may not be as glamourous or prestigious as the traditional film festival and awards route but it's certainly a lot more interesting!
So I'm still entering the competition next month (sign up to the mailing list at www.jennyringo.com to get details of how you can help) and I'm still going for 500 subscribers. It may take a while but as promised I will post that 10 minute outtake video once we hit 500.
As always, if you help me out with this I'll happily return the favour.
So last weekend I challenged Jenny Ringo fans to get the views of Jenny Ringo and the Monkey's Pawon vimeo up to 300. It's now on 343. Not massive numbers, I know, but for a 25 minute film 343 views is pretty awesome. And it gave me the idea for the next target.
People watching the film is fantastic. I hugely appreciate anyone taking the time to watch it and I'm thrilled that so many people have done so. However, if I'm going to take this any further I need people to get a bit more involved.
When I finished Jenny Ringo and the Monkey's Paw I set up a mailing list. The purpose of this was to gather an audience for the films all in one place. The problem was I didn't really know what I wanted to use it for. Now I do know.
As I mentioned in my last post, next month I'm entering Jenny Ringo and the Monkey's Paw into an online competition and I intend to win. For that I will need an army of voters, ready to sacrifice a couple of minutes and a few mouse clicks for the cause. That's where you come in.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help me get 500 subscribers to the Jenny Ringo mailing list. I know that sounds like a lot, but we're on 245 so we're already halfway there. You can do this by posting something like 'Sign up to the mailing list at www.jennyringo.com because it's awesome!!!' in all the usual places.
Here are some things to consider -
Why should you help?
BECAUSE I WILL POST AWESOME VIDEOS!!!
If we hit 500 subscribers by the end of the month I will upload the full ten minute outtakes video from the first film. This is not just any outtakes video - these are the outtakes of a bunch of people who don't really know what they're doing. On watching this video you will wonder how we ever managed to finish a film at all. It's quite funny. But I'm only going to upload it if we hit 500 subscriptions.
Why would you want to sign up to the mailing list in the first place?
BECAUSE I WILL SEND OUT AWESOME E-MAILS!!!
I'm planning on taking this campaign a little further each month so there should be some exciting stuff on the horizon. Plus I totally shot a sequel this year! It's a couple of months off being finished, but if you're not signed up to the list that won't mean anything because you won't be able to see it anyway. I plan on doing exactly the same thing I did with the first film - those who are signed up to the mailing list get to see it way before anyone else does.
I also have loads of extra awesomeness to upload as we go along so I will make it worth your while!
And don't worry about being inundated with e-mails. At most it will be one a month, usually less frequent than that. And I use Mail Chimp so it's easy to unsubscribe whenever you like.
What can I do for you?
I WILL REVIEW/LIKE/SHARE YOUR STUFF TOO!!!
As I've said before if you help me out I'm happy to return the favour.If you need support for your project and you've helped me out with mine just e-mail me at whatwritesatmidnight[at]googlemail.com with the details and I'll see what I can do.
If you don't have stuff to promote then I will just be very very grateful for your help.
I'm going away for a week now. When I get back I expect the numbers to be up near the 500 mark.
A few years ago my brother was working on a film that turned into an animation that ended up as a radio play. At one stage I was helping with the script, although in reality I was probably contributing to some of the setbacks by giving endless notes every time he wrote a new draft. In the end he did it his own way and it's all the better for it.
Pete has detailed the troubled production history of the project on his blog and it's worth a read because in some ways it ties into what the play is about. The fact that it started life as a film, turned into an animation and ended up as a radio play simply drives the point of the story home. It's a story about creativity and boredom and how sometimes things don't work out the way we plan them to, and how sometimes that's okay. It's a story about ambition and how sometimes it's hard to see what's really important because of it.
Pete wrote it when he was unemployed and making the most of the time between finishing his A-levels at Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College and leaving for university in Newport. It reminds me of the summer I spent making a short film when I was unemployed between finishing my A-levels at Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College and going to university in Norwich (although films from that era of my existence will never ever be shown, mostly because I act in them. It's not pretty). Like Pete I abandoned that project when ambition gave way to reality, but unlike Pete I didn't go back and finish it.
That's partly what makes this awesome. The story of Everyday Joe is a story that started a decade ago, but it's also a story us creative types will be re-living over and over again. If you've ever worked on any kind of project that took over your life for a while, you will relate to Everyday Joe. Please listen, leave comments and share with the internet -
So Jenny Ringo and the Monkey's Paw hit 300 views over the weekend, mostly due to awesome people sharing the link on Facebook and Twitter. In return I promised an update on where I am with the sequel. Along with some photos, like this one.
To recap, the edit was finished a few months ago but then progress stopped for a bit because of this bloke...
But before my son was born I managed to get it to a sound designer and a composer who have been working on it ever since, plus I have a sound mixer helping to get things organised for when the various elements are ready to be put together. I've had the first few sound and music samples through and it's all sounding fantastic. I still need to arrange a session to re-record some dialogue but hopefully that will be the last thing I need to do when it comes to the sound. Yes, that's a pretty big, time-consuming thing, but on my to do list it looks no more intimidating than one of the lesser jobs like 'write new blog post'.
On the visual side of things there is one major effects shot that needs to be done, and then there are a couple of other bits that would vastly improve things if they are possible so I need to find someone who can do effects-type stuff.
I'm also hoping I can get a trailer and a music video edited too.
If all goes to plan I think we're probably two or three months off being finished. It's taken a bit longer than I wanted it to, but all things considered I think we're making good progress. And it's given me some time to start pushing the first film a bit more in the hope of creating an audience for the second.
(You have seen the first film, right? And you've signed up to the mailing list? And liked our Facebook page? Have you considered leaving a comment on vimeo or YouTube? Maybe even an imdb review?)
The next phase of my evil plan to take over the world is to get more people to sign up to the mailing list. Getting more people to see the film is awesome, obviously, but what I need are people who will stick around for the next one. In September I'm going to enter it into a competition that requires a public vote and I fully intend to win. For that I will need help. I'll post full details later in the week, and this time I promise the rewards will be much more awesome than a blog post like this one (although you did get to see baby Eric in a Batman top - is there anything more awesome than that?)
Jenny Ringo and the Monkey's Paw was finished around this time last year. It had its first public screening at MovieBar in September and subsequently screened at Cinecity in Brighton, Cine East in London and the Edge of the City Film Festival where it picked up an award. The film has also had some fantastic support from bloggers and a full list of reviews can be found here.
AWESOME NEWS!!! THE WHOLE FILM IS NOW AVAILABLE ONLINE!!!
This is the part I've really been looking forward to. My plan for Jenny Ringo has never been limited to one film. We've already shot a second film, Jenny Ringo and the Cabaret from Hell, and we have an excellent script for a third. However, if I'm going to take this any further I need to get as many people to see it and share it as possible, and to do that I'll need help.
First, please watch the film. Finished? Okay, what did you think?
If it's not your thing then that's okay. I really appreciate you taking the time to watch it and if you get chance to leave some feedback in the comments here or on vimeo that would be awesome.
If you liked it, even if you only liked bits of it, then here's a list of stuff you can do to help. Now I realise some of these things are a big ask but if you stick with me I will get to the part about what I can offer in return. First, here are your instructions...
1) Sign up to our mailing list at www.jennyringo.com. That way you can keep up to date on the progress of the second film and any other related projects. At the moment we send out an update once every two months so you won't be bombarded with e-mails. My wife Andrea writes most of the e-mails and she is funnier than I am so that's an added bonus.
2) 'Like' our Facebook page. We tend to post more regular updates on there plus you can interact with other people who liked the film. And then all your friends will wonder what this awesome-looking thing you're a fan of is all about and maybe they'll sign up too! You can also 'like' the film on vimeo or on YouTube.
3) Leave a comment telling me and the rest of the world what you think. You can do that at the end of this post, or on vimeo or on YouTube, or on the Facebook page or even write a review on the imdb page. I'm not after 100% positive feedback here, be as critical as you like (and yes I may regret saying that), but what I'm interested in is starting some interaction and generating discussions.
4) Like what Batman said, 'Tell all your friends about me.' i.e. share the video on Facebook, retweet the link, e-mail people, maybe even use good old-fashioned talking with your mouth.
5) If you have a blog of your own, or a vlog, or contribute to anything that is vaguely related to films at all then consider writing a review all of your own. Then send me the link and I'll publicise your blog/vlog/whatever on here.
6) If you know anyone who writes a blog or contributes to a film review website, pass on the link to the film and see if they will consider reviewing it.
As I said, a big ask. I am aware that I am but one of a billion online artists craving your time and attention. However, what I can offer is this. If you have a creative project of your own, whether it's a film, a band, a blog or anything at all, let me know and I'll return the favour. If you do any of the above for Jenny Ringo and the Monkey's Paw I'll do the same for your project. I can't promise to like everything, but as regular readers will know I'm not big on negativity here so I will always highlight the positives. If this is something you are interested in here's what you need to do -
- E-mail me at whatwritesatmidnight[at]gmail.com
- Say something to the effect of 'Hey! I liked/reviewed/blogged about Jenny Ringo and the Monkey's Paw! Please do the same for my film/band/art/blog/stuff [insert link here].
- I will confirm that you are awesome and that I have reciprocated your awesomeness.
I can't promise a quick turnaround due to dad duties but I will definitely return the favour.
I wasn't going to write anything about The Dark Knight Rises. I mean, I loved it. It was kind of perfect. I cried at the end. But no one needs to know that. Besides, I have a son now and the days when I had the time or the inclination to write 5,000 word blog posts about films seem like they belong to a different person.
Then I saw Georges Franju's Judex and the film theorist in me wanted to come out and play.
My dad has a habit of handing me copies of obscure French films with no explanation. Every time he comes over there will be a DVD or two deposited somewhere in my flat with titles I can't pronounce. Which would be great except I've become a bit of a philistine when it comes to foreign-language films recently. I'm not sure why, I just went through a phase of wanting to watch easy stuff with things exploding. And playing Xbox games in which you make things explode. So these obscure French films piled up. Until I had a son and decided to give him some culture.
So I picked up Judex, a 1963 remake of a 1916 serial by Louis Feuillade (who also made Fantômas and Les Vampires - neither of which I've seen, but I have seen Irma Vep, a 1996 film about a filmmaker attempting to remake Les Vampires, which is worth mentioning here because it's awesome). I had no idea what it was about, other than I knew that Georges Franju had directed Eyes Without a Face, one of my favourite horror films.
To summarise the plot (and this blog post), Judex is kind of like Batman. He fights crime, he has a secret idenity and he even has a secret lair. Judex is out to get this evil banker dude, Favraux (because bankers were evil even way back in 1963). We don't really know why Favraux is evil at first, we just see him get these notes from Judex telling him he is. In fact, for the first ten minutes of the film I almost thought Judex was going to be the bad guy as we have no idea who he is or what his motivations are. Then we see Favraux run over an old guy in his car and we realise this Judex bloke is probably onto something.
The first time we see Judex is possibly the most awesome introduction of a character ever. As always I seriously recommend you check out the whole film but if you would like to see the most awesome introduction of a character ever the whole scene is here -
So Judex kidnaps Favraux and initially sentences him to death, but then has a change of heart because he falls for his daughter so he figures life imprisonment will do just as well. Meanwhile there's a Catwoman-type character called Diana Monti who was hoping to steal some valuable documents from Favraux's house but is then spotted by his daughter so makes various attempts to kill her. Judex obviously doesn't like this too much. Hijinks ensue.
There are more kidnappings and dastardly plots and chases and fights. And there is a scene towards the end in which Diana Monti (who is a bit like Catwoman), has tied up Judex (who is a bit like Batman) and confesses that she has a huge crush on him and suggests they run away together. In spite of this I didn't make the connection to The Dark Knight Rises until I watched an interview with Jacques Champreux who co-wrote the film, because it's not the narrative similarities that I'm interested in.
According to Champreux, Franju had a bit of an odd approach to Judex. On the one hand he had been a fan of Louis Feuillade and wanted to make a tribute to the silent adventure serials. At the same time he regarded the original Judex as one of Feuillade's worst and had no real interest in the character. So he made the film his own way. He cut out key elements of exposition and backstory, such as the fact that in the original film Judex is shown as a child witnessing the death of his father at the hands of Favraux and being sworn to seek revenge by his mother. Franju decided we didn't need all that, so he cut it all. And now Judex just turns up dressed as a bird. The film is full of incongruous moments like this and yet it is never difficult to follow and still tells a solid story. Franju just had a lot more faith in his audience than many filmmakers do now.
Franju was also happy to allow symbolism to take precedence over a clear narrative. At one point the detective working with Judex notices a passing circus and asks an acrobat dressed in white to give him a hand. We don't know anything about her, but within moments she becomes one of the main players in the climax of the film and ends up in a fight with Monti who is dressed in black. During this fight Franju focuses on the characters' legs, emphasising the contrast between the colours. A fight scene in which we only see legs is one of those things that will divide an audience. I thought it was awesome.
And then there's the speed of the film, which glides along at a consistent pace without ever ramping up to emphasise the tension or highlight the action. This makes the whole piece feel rather dream-like and not like an adventure film at all.
My point is that Franju made an art film out of a popular adventure series. On the surface there are chases and fights and dastardly plots and all the other elements that make up an adventure story. But the film never feels like an adventure story and as a result compels the viewer to look deeper into the material. This is exactly what Nolan did with Batman.
There were hints of it in Batman Begins but I don't think Nolan really made the material his own until The Dark Knight. The Joker does not belong in a mainstream superhero blockbuster. For a start he does not exist until the moment he appears on screen; he has no backstory. He describes himself as an agent of chaos, but in fact he is chaos itself in human form meaning he isn't really a human character at all and therefore obeys none of the rules we have come to expect from characters in films. He is unpredictable, he has no real character arc, and at the end of the film he wins. This is what makes the film different and interesting, and Nolan took this approach to the next level with The Dark Knight Rises.
There may be spoilers.
Instead of throwing one or two interesting ideas into the mix, Nolan has constructed a whole film around allegory and symbolism. The best example of this is the prison where Bane came from and where he sends Bruce Wayne after his defeat. There is no attempt to even pretend this prison is a real place. As a result the comparisons come easy - it is the Nietzschean abyss, it is Kafka's Penal Colony, it is Foucoult comparing modern society to Bentham's Panopticon; it is pure allegory. And because it is pure allegory it throws the rest of the film into a different light. Gotham no longer feels like a real city and so may as well be every city. Just as it's not clear whether Batman survives at the end or not, it's not even clear whether he makes it out of the prison at all. Then there's the kangaroo court scene, a reference to Fritz Lang's M and another example of the narrative taking a back seat so Nolan can play with images.
Except the narrative never really does take a back seat. That is why Nolan is a genius. If you want The Dark Knight Rises to be nothing more than a film about a man in a daft costume kicking people in the head then all of that is there and it works just fine. But if you want it to be a film about the financial crisis, if you want it to be a film about terrorism, if you want it to be a film about where the Occupy movement would've ended up, if you want it to be a film about a crazy millionaire day-dreaming about the man he could have been, all that is there too. Few filmmakers are able to accomplish that balance successfully and certainly not with a much-loved and well-established franchise, but like Franju before him Nolan has cracked it.
Decades from now it won't matter whether we've had twenty more incarnations of Batman or whether, like Judex, the character himself has become a relic of past popular culture, people will still be talking about The Dark Knight Rises.
Probably won't be any blog posts for a while as I need to teach the little guy about all the important stuff like existentialism and quantum physics. That's why they take up so much time, isn't it?
I'm a writer with a day-job which means I don't usually get down to writing until around ten in the evening, hence the blog title. My first feature as a writer, Ten Dead Men, was released on DVD in 2009. I'm currently working on a series of short horror films following the adventures of a witch called Jenny Ringo. There are currently three films in the series - Jenny Ringo and the Monkey's Paw, Jenny Ringo and the Cabaret from Hell and Jenny Ringo and the Infinite Spellbook. You can find out more at www.jennyringo.com. I live in Worthing, which is a bit like Innsmouth.
