The Little Girl Standing Up

Good rainy morning ladies and gents!

Well, despite the moody weather I have to tell you I am excited. I’ve been spending the past nights working on the Light into Europe project. As I was saying on the website a little while ago, this has to be done in the following months so we can use it for presentation purposes both during the Caledonian Ball which will happen November 23rd, as well as in schools to assist in the Duke of Edinburgh program.

To be honest, when I first thought of this I wasn’t so sure I can make it. It’s a demanding project even though it seems so small, because it asks for a lot of time and detailed work. I can do the detailed work but time is my quintessential problem, the problem of my life. Plus, this is the kind of project that requires dedication, the kind of which I’m not required when I translate a legal document or put together a bank presentation. But that kind of soulful inspiration, where I have to get up from the chair, walk through the room listening to the songs I’ve chosen, get the feeling and envision things happening as the rhythm plays up and down in my ears.

This requires focus and energy and a mental effort that I cannot interrupt a hundred times, because then I lose the stream of thoughts. So, I take my time at night, in my little temple that I call home, when it's quieter and work becomes pleasure even if it has a standard deadline. And the more it comes to life the more excited and fearful I am. Writing the project, seeing it unfold before my eyes, it’s one thing.

The problem I’m facing is directing it. I research movie/documentary directing and there is not much to be said other than that the director's imagination plays a major role in how the screenplay will be translated into images. The thing is, I tend to be very chaotic in the representation of my thoughts, yet somehow they are very clear to me.

So last night I sat down and literally wrote the screenplay for both the trailer and the documentary into their shooting version – which means I added the technical details of the scenes, their sequence and how I would like the cameraman to shoot them, from which angles, the close ups, how fast or how slow the scenes should happen. All the technicalities that I am not allowed to use in the usual spec scripts I write.

A spec script is the screenplay that has not yet been bought by a production company so it doesn’t give any technical directions on how the movie should be filmed as there is no director to come up with the locations etc to tell you what scene happens how. For example, I could never use in a spec script transition terms between scenes such as CUT TO, FADE IN TO, ABRUPTLY CUTS TO, BLACK SCREEN, FADE OUT TO, CLOSE UP ON, CAMERA ON PROFILE, etc which tells the filming crew what the director expects from them when shooting certain scenes.

Well I’ve done it now. Which puts me in a director’s position and I haven’t thought that through just yet. All I can do is hope this will come out right. Cristi, who’s going to basically be my crew and editor at the same time, will surely help with his extensive experience as in how to approach different scenes better, in terms of angles and light and sound.

So I’ll just trust my vision of how the project should be filmed so that it delivers the message, mission and reason behind Light into Europe’s constant efforts as well as my understanding of the young people and children with sight and hearing disabilities, their world and their bravery in facing ours.

Yeah. I’m pretty much like a little girl standing up, hoping my first step into directing will be firm and steady. I got pretty shaky knees right now as we're very close to start shooting and I don't know what to expect. Especially because we'll have two deaf kindergarden children acting in it as well as other young people with severe sight dissabilities which makes it ten times more difficult to direct. And yes, let's not forget the dogs! I'm going to LOVE this, regardless! 

I wanted to share this with you because it’s building so much inside my head that letting it out takes a little off the pressure. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to show you the final result until after the ball, but I’ll try to make a The making of kind of episode and present that first. That’s probably going to be the fun part of the project. It’s like watching a Jackie Chan movie and right at the end you see all the mistakes they’ve made and endless trials to get a scene right. Yeah. That’s how it works.

Well, thanks for reading my endless blah blah. It helps… ME! J

MUAH!

Mela

"Nothing really becomes real until it is experienced."

                                                           John Keats