My first Crowdfunding endeavour

OMG. I'm so excited. After a month of having to watch my project languish in crowdfunding site Kickstarter because only US residents can use Amazon Payments [their only payment method], I switched to IndieGoGo.

The interface is slightly different, but the end result is very similar, with one big bonus. Even if I don't reach my funding target, I still get to keep the funds pledged. So very very excited.

What's this all about you ask? Well, it's a writer's nightmare. What started out as a fully paid artistic residency in the jungles of Guatemala has now turned into a fundraising exercise because of the global financial crisis. The US-based Non-Government Organization ArtCorps used to pay for their artists to fly to Central America and then covered the cost of the accommodation and food, as well as gave them a $1000 US budget for the artistic project they were undertaking. Fast -forward to our post global financial crisis situation and that is no longer the case. Unfortunately, I only found this out very very late in the picture.

I had applied to go to Guatemala with ArtCorps this year, to a place very close to Tikal, my dream paradise. Alas, the host NGO which was collaborating with ArtCorps lost their funding from the Ford Foundation when Ford went bust. Watch the rug get pulled. Watch me fall by the wayside. Watch ArtCorps promise to try again for 2011. This all happened in December last year.

I then spend most of this year working on getting my doco off the ground. It's still grounded, but the engine is almost ready for takeoff. The wings are getting built. The engineers are nodding in agreement at the blueprint. It's all good people. Then in September this year, I hear back from ArtCorps. They want me to start in January 2011 and they need my security deposit and my airfare right smartly.

Well... a little more notice would have helped. I was broke. Then I lost my part-time job. And then something happened. The universe smiled. ArtCorps refused to take no for an answer. They negotiated with new NGOs, with me, with whoever was willing to listen. The next thing I know they are asking if I will consider doing a six month project instead of a yearly project. I'm still broke mind you. However, something inside me shifts. Call it The Secret, the Law of Attraction, "creative visualisation", faith, whatever you want. I suddenly remembered, I had travelled through British Columbia in 1997 with $30 CAD to my name for one week. I also remembered I climbed on a plane to Japan when I was 21 armed only with the airfare I had borrowed from my boyfriend. In 1998 I had moved to London with no job, landing on one Ishan Muthalib's doorstep to his chagrin. Yet, I had overcome. I could overcome again. So I took a leap of faith.

I started looking for grants, funding schemes all sorts of things. In the middle of all this, crowdfunding went nuts. I discovered that the Queensland Government will fund professional development for artists, including their travel costs. I found a short-term contract with Dimension Data, an up and coming IT outsourcing company. ArtCorps granted me a reprieve. They allowed to pay only part of the deposit upfront and to come up with the airfare in January. It was as if the universe was saying: you're getting on that plane to Guatemala. No buts, not ifs. So I accepted this turn of events and began my fundraising effort by posting a project on IndieGoGo and reading through the Arts Queensland application form.

Wish me luck peeps, I'm about to embark on that nightmarish voyage that is a grant application. Between that and the crowdfunding platforms, I should be sorted. Oh, I guess you must be wondering how I came up with the money for the deposit. It was the generosity of one amazing woman: Nina Birch, who as she puts it, believes in karma. She lent me the money, bless her. I aim not to disappoint her.

What does physical theatre have to do with it?

I was asked recently why I'm training with Playback Theatre. Oh yeah. Forgot to tell you. I'm training to be a Playback performer. What is that?, you ask. Well, it's a troupe of artists enacting stories from the audience using improvisational theatre and music.

It sounds very vague. I know. That is because like any performance art, it comes to life on stage, face to face with an audience. It cannot be translated onto the page or the screen.

It involves listening to a member of the audience tell their story and then bringing it to life in front of them. It uses a variety of dramatic techniques and forms to create living sculptures, Greek choruses, pantomime, tensions between a pair of actos just to embody the emotions and the essence of the story told.

As a writer, I'm gaining a better understanding of how to writer for performers by learning how to enact using the body as a tool.

This past weekend was about just that. Anna Yen, a physical theatre practitioner, trained us in her particular style of physical theatre, allowing us to give flight to our imaginations using tried and tested methods used in Europe and Asia.

The most important thing we learnt was that the shape of the spine creates dramatic tension. Nobody had told us that when you make a spiral which moves and transforms, you affect the viewer. You create story through action. This has inspired me to learn how to direct physical theatre, which means learning it, really.

The closet choreographer inside of me revelled in the idea that you can almost dispense with dialogue and with stage directions and you can create of piece of theatre just from a treatment or a short story even.

My only dilemma now is how to translate it onto the page for another director. Suggestions are always welcome.

BIFF is over for the year

It's been a fairly intense BIFF for me this year. I was trying to get my own doco done, blogging done, an extra project and a sizzle reel. It all kinda went pear shaped but I still managed to watch a few films.

Leap Year, which I watched on Saturday was a social realism piece from Mexico, delving into the loneliness of a woman who leaves her family and hometown for the big smoke to work in magazines, only to find out she can work from home. This gives her certain freedoms but also makes her life intensely lonely. A compulsive liar, she pretends to everyone that she is happy until it all reaches its nadir. I won't spoil the ending but suffice it to say that it wasn't just one scene in the film that was shocking but several. Apparently it belongs to a genre of films shown in the early hours of the morning on independent digital television channels in Mexico. Which is almost depressing. If low budget films with experimental narratives bordering on expressionism can find a television audience in Latin America, why can't Aussie films find an audience here?

Howl then cleansed my mind from the depressive after effects of Leap Year. Everything from the editing style, to the acting, even to the surreal psychedelic animation lifted the soul. It was inspiring to see that a work of poetry had such a strong impact on a decade that smacked of McCarthyism and conservatism. It was also quite ironic that the defense attorney also appears as Don Bradman in MadMen, another 1950's story.

Friday night I was silly enough to watch Kaboom, the latest Greg Araki young body exploitation film. It was entertaining, but had a lot of unnecessary sex scenes, though beautifully shot. I normally wouldn't object to so many beautiful bodies gracing the screen, but this just felt like a soft porn with a vague plot to call it a film.

On the other hand, Reign of Assassins, John Woo's latest, had the smallest amount of nudity as tastefully depicted as possible. However, the character development was shallow with not a single character evoking an emotional response from the audience. The main saving grace were the martial arts choreography and the sword fighting. It was John Woo trying to do Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but without Christopher Day's help. There was great potential for an epic film but it just fell short of that mark. Having said that, I was on the edge of my seat during every fight scene. I would call it essential kung-fu watching.

I sadly missed out on seeing Orchids: My intersex adventure, but I will obtain a copy from the Executive Producer, Faramarz K-Rahber who assisted in the birthing process of the film.

This was a strange Brisbane International Film Festival. There were a lot of big names, commercially viable films and less than ten days duration. The Regent was no longer the main hub of the festival, losing a bit of edginess and character in the process. Although the Tribal Theatre took up the torch, as the former George St Dendy, the atmosphere had changed. Same faces, different ambience.

The Regent is dead. Long live the Regent. BIFF is over. Long live BIFF.

Machete Maidens Unleashed

The other day Veronica Fury sent me an invite to the Brisbane International Film Festival screening of Machete Maidens Unleashed! I went to the screening not really expecting a Who's Who of Brisbane Filmmaking.

After all, I had not run into anyone yet at the other screenings.

How wrong I was. From the director of My America, Peter Hegedus, to the famous zombie filmmakers the Spierig brothers, anyone who is anyone in Brisbane was there. Mark Hartley was a wee bit nervous in front of a savvy audience that wanted to see what he'd done to the intellectual baby spawned by Trash Video's own Andrew. Of course, Trash Video is now defunct and Andrew is instead doing a PhD on the original subject matter: Weng-Weng, Filipino secret agent.

It was a highly entertaining documentary, told in classical Hartley style: talking heads interspersed with archival clips illustrating the sound bytes. It was all good fun, especially the competition to count the amount of breasts featured on the film. Everyone got it wrong. It was 182.

Among the moviegoers there were a few other writers, filmmakers and film students who I got talking to and ended up repeating everything I had heard at the National Young Writers Festival regarding e-book publishing. Forget Vanity publishing. We're talking Smashwords here.

Smashwords is a website that has created a unique platform. They turn your text manuscripts into the right format for any e-book reader and then publish it to the relevant retailer's website, as content ready to be bought and downloaded. All for a very tiny commission, particularly compared to what book publishers take in royalties.

My own friends, Peter H and Axel Grigor also asked me about other digital content vehicles like Twitter and blogs. After reading, re-reading and listening to Yaro Starak talk about creating relationships of trust with other bloggers and other Tweeters, I finally get it. It's about a tribe of like minded individuals who don't plug a product unless they believe in it and do so only in an impartial manner, whether they get affiliate marketing out of it or not.

So, my own take on this all is based Yaro's blog, Entrepeneur's Journey: go read other people's blogs, go read other people's Tweets and interact with them. It's a conversation. Social media is just that: social. It's not a one way street, like traditional advertising. You want an audience? Win their trust first. Show them you're one of them first. The rest will follow naturally.

Sound like a lot of work? Then don't blog or Tweet. If you wish to have no readers, then write all the time but you'll get no traffic. If you want your stuff out there being read by other people, then make it interesting to them, talk to them. Listen to their needs. Pretty simple stuff really.

Now, back to Machete Maidens, Unleashed! It all started out as The Search For Weng-Weng. It is now a major motion picture. I'm really glad I took up Veronica's invitation now. And for the record, I paid for my own ticket.

William S Burroughs

My name is Patricia and I'm a Beat generation addict. No, I'm not into the hallucinogenics. No, I don't take heroin and no, I'm definitely not into berets. However, talk to me of Ginsberg, Kerouac and William Carlos Williams for days. I will not complain. I will talk back. So, when I saw the Brisbane International Film Festival was screening two films about the Beat Generation, my interest was sparked immediately. Not one. But two. And not just any two.

The first one was a documentary about William S Burroughs. It used animation in novel and experimental ways to give a sense of the trippy consciousness of the man himself. This feature length doco was a pastiche of styles. It convinced me that I can go out there and flaunt the rules on documentary making with Not A Chance. But enough about me. Let's talk Burroughs.

This is a man who influenced everyone from the Doors, to Kurt Cobain, from Sting, to Andy Warhol. His unapologetic political agenda shone through in his books. He coined the work junkie. He appropriated the work "queer" for a whole movement, in an era when homosexuality was so closeted and secretive that there was no such thing as gay rights. He unpacked the whole idea of using drugs as an artist. He called it "junk".

And then, there's Howl. Allen Ginsberg was taken to court for obscenity because of Howl. To think a poem would make it to the Supreme Court of the United States, because of obscenity charges is well...obscene. Howl has informed and inspired the writing of so many authors in the last 50 years that I've stopped counting. My first encounter with his poetry chilled me. It confronted me. I just can't wait to see the film.

Thank you BIFF, for these morsels that feed the soul. I imbibe them gratefully.

Crowdfunding

The word's been kicking around for a bit now. I had not really paid it much attention, but now that it's taking off, I have had to sit up and take notice.

What is crowdfunding, I hear you ask? To put it simply, it's harnessing the power of communities through the internet to fundraise. In the last few years, quite a few films have been made using crowdfunding. In fact, community projects, inventions, art installations, all sorts of other things are getting off the ground using crowdfunding.

How do you go about it? Well, that's the funny part. Some pretty smart entrepeneurs out there have cottoned onto the twin concepts of social networks powering the idea behind raising cash. Instead of begging everyone through facebook to lend you money, you set up a project in one of the popular crowdfunding sites. You create your own funding tiers with various returns for the money, whether it be social value or material goods, you give something in return for the investment. The people who have already signed up to these new fundraising networks then pledge a certain amount of money to your project and if you meet your fundraising deadline/goal, the money is transferred into the account created for the project. Too good to be true? Not at all.

The success stories abound. From the film DAY which surpassed its funding goal of $3500 on IndieGoGo, to the Glif, an iPhone4 tripod stand raising $137,417 on the site Kickstarter, the stories keep coming. The most well-known ones are IndieGoGo, Kickstarter, Fundbreak, FansNextDoor, Profounder and CreateAFund.

As with all forms of fundraising, how successful you are depends much more on your own publicity efforts than on the actual website. They all have their own quirks. Some of the website don't let you collect the funds unless you've reached your target, others take a cut or a percentage of your funds towards the cost of hosting your fundraising platform. Some are more industry specific than others. IndieGoGo is aimed at film. Profounder is more a business entrepeneurship site.

The things is, there are no shortcuts. If you know how to drive traffic and attract audiences, you're set. If you don't, you need to learn really fast if you want to use these platforms.

I'm about to embark on two or three fundraising efforts. One is for an artistic residency in Guatemala, using the Kickstarter platform. The second one is raising funds towards completing my documentary and the third one is to raise enough funds towards making PodTales (my production company) a going concern, with some staff and infrastructure.

Stay tuned. I'll update you on when the funding campaigns go live and how well I go. I'm sold on this idea of fundraising. After all, I just pledged $20 towards the Glif. If they can do it, I can do it and so can you.

Wasted On The Young

My friend Janelle just spent the better part of her life the past year getting Wasted On The Young ready for viewing. I see why now. I also think I need to start making money so I can afford to employ Janelle. Wasted On The Young is a disturbing film about the extremes to which spoiled rich teenagers will take bullying and cliques. Bully meets Skins, and then some. I think it marks a coming of age for Australian films. The DOP captures mood with his lighting, his framing and quite definitely colour. It feels like a Kiwi film. No offence, but our cousins on the other side of the Tasman are famous for cinematography and particularly for dark tales of the soul. Wasted On The Young transcends the usual teenage angst, taking violence, ambition and unchecked egos to a place they should never be. It holds a mirror to today's society where parents don't want to know what their children are doing.

I left the Palace Centro, where it was screened for the Brisbane International Film Festival, with a sick feeling in my stomach. My visceral response means only one thing: it is an amazing script and film, despite glamourising grammar schools and teenage drug use. I wanted to punch the director. If I didn't know Janelle, I would have completely bagged the director, but her integrity as a producer makes it impossible for me to believe anything other than in the authenticity of the script.

To all those who moan about Australian scripts today, you can stop now. Wasted On The Young signals a turn for the better.