shanks’ pony pictures/wrong foot’d present
idiosyncratic novocastrian cinema

Streetsweeper
outdoor ‘feature film’ screening

fundraiser for ‘acetate’: alternative cinema east coast tour late 08
plus new film clips & live music by Grandmastermonk & Tad Poedee

Sunday 17th August, 2008
sunset

Lass O’Gowrie Hotel
14 Railway St Wickham
Newcastle

ramble on
(streetsweeper screening no. 9)

I love the idea of film festivals. The romantic idea that they are a place where cinema might matter.

We are waiting on a final few before completing the festival cycle - but we have had 43 rejections. No interest at all from any “local” film festivals. Dungog and Sydney both rejected the film. I called and emailed SFF, and was not even replied to. We had a last minute glimmer of an offer from Dungog, but they seem content showing mostly films that have been in general release at Hoyts.

More and more I feel that the festival circuit is a pile of shit. The open entry system appears to be merely a paper pushing facade for an actual selection process that depends entirely on whom the filmmakers, and more importantly their distributors know.

I’ve wasted an enormous amount of time learning this and entering all these festivals. I don’t mind that they are a commercial and corporate concern, but I wish that they would drop the charade and simply select the films that they are lobbied to do - be open and transparent in their festival marketing and branding exercise. I would be shocked if any festival accepted our film now. It’s a good film. Real Australian Cinema. Audiences like it, and I am the harshest critic.

At least I know that the next film we make should be gently inserted into the rectum of the festival director over a long lunch - and then we’ll be getting somewhere… TR

I just sat on a panel for Megan Spencer’s Destination Film Festival, talking about the internet and filmmaking. It was pretty exciting. I think that Megan is trying to start a revolution in the Australian filmmaking community. This involves screening a cool film or ten, inviting a diverse bunch of bodies to chat and field questions on any given topic to do with our chosen art or craft, and then getting the whole mob down at the pub to talk and drink together.

The pub is the important part. Inevitable excitable exchanges take place, but the jist of it all is that - we ‘young’ and younger filmmakers can get together and help each other with knowhow and encouragement, and just the rare feeling that we are not all alone in our little isolated worlds. The rough consensus seems to be that the old models do not work for us, and that we need to reinvent the system to suit ourselves, rather than wrestling it from the hands of the babyboomer gatekeepers in their death throws.

This presents us with a situation that is both exciting and daunting. We now have the technology to make a film like Streetsweeper in three days, and, with the financial goodwill of our friends and allies, we use this new freedom to liberate the medium of filmmaking, big or small, for a renaissance in the biggest small country in the world. It’s a grand ambition, but then - why the fuck not? Let’s do it.

Thanks Megan. You’re a bloody champ. TR

Shots from Destination Film Festival at Carriageworks

Greetings from the Nation’s Capital. Down here, drinking coffee & walkin’ ’round, looking at great art, local & international–from Impressionism to Pop Art–and visited the only place in this country where you can appreciate a century of Australian cinema; they’ve even got stuff from my first movie in their archives, including a handmade zine. I will try & make it back for flEXiff in Sydney tonight, the Bombadore loves the open road. (meanwhile, the Magna has morphed into a swampy spider hotel.) NM

Day 1, 6.30am, East Newcastle: heading North by North West.
Only 60 hours & 20 kilometres to go…

Toby has been running & ringing around for the past few weeks like a 3 legged mongrel dog (?) trying to get this fanatstic rocket off the launch pad. At the same time, of course, he’s also had his own life to live: shootin for $, lookin for a house… & then there was that “Ridonikus Coin Purse” episode!… Now we’re in Post & some people have come on board at great speed (thanks again to Leonard & Bernard–henceforth to be known collectively as The `Ards?–from Speedwedge) and other folks–who we thought might, at least, offer some expert advice– have been dragging a heavy chain… (I would say that “maybe they’re scared that if they do recognise & publicly acknowledge that good films can be made this way well then their whole world–including big mortgages in the most expensive suburbs in Australia–might collapse” but I won’t say that cos then, wll, y’know, loose lips sink ships. [We don’t want their slice of the pie. We don’t like their pie.] Anyway, I’ve written the script so that we can tick the right box cos at this point we need a lot of grease on the wheels: we built the big wooden horse, during the night, out of scrap wood, with our bare hands, on a sandy beach, and now we’ve gotta push it a long way up a very steep rocky hill towards the castle gates… NM

Mmm… apparently HD Post Production has got something to do with the numbers 25, 60, 4 by 4 by 4 & 720… Just watched 10 hours of rushes. Very exciting!
But. Well, at this point, I still dunno when I’m actually gonna get something I can edit.
Soon, my pretties, soon. NM.

Okay, it’s 10 past 10 and my train leaves in 20 minutes… gotta go. (The Magna is still out of action.) Transferring all 10 hours of rushes this weekend (big thanks to Leonard & Bernie)… then we can finally get stuck into the editing… Get on board or get out of the way! NM

Megan shoots behind the scenes (Neil & Marin)
Originally uploaded by streetsweeper.

Why shoot in Newcastle? I asked permission to shoot in one location only & got turned down so I stopped asking. We then walked 20 kilometres, maybe more, in 3 days and we shot in every conceivable location: on beaches, in parks, on roads & streets & highways & lanes & malls & bridges & car parks & roundabouts, on rail bridges & rail crossings, in the cemetery … at all times of the day, between 4 in the morning til 10 at night, and we got regularly checked out by the police, rangers, security guards… and we never got stopped once. We got waved at. We got the thumbs up. We got friendly smiles. Everyone was friendly - even the junkies & the drunks! Newcastle, you bloody rock: you can’t beat that down to earth appreciation of the arts.
(In photo: Megan shoots behind-the-scenes of Neil mis-directing Marin.)

It’s Saturday morning & I just got back from Sydney last night. I’ve been teaching and trying to do the right thing by the film, i.e. setting up post production (picture & sound editing) properly. And so, cos the Magna (my old car) is still “off the road”, I’ve been walking quite a lot, to & fro across Sydney (& also catching trains & buses) from one ‘client’ to another, and, well, it occured to me that walking around like that is where the original idea for this film came from… We still have some money in our war chest (BIG THANKS TO ALL THE NEW SPONSORS who have kicked in money recently, it is most appreciated (& I must confess here now, that, with the money I saved by walking, I did buy a couple of cups of coffee with the production money: see, I am a producer. [Never fight with a monster, for you might become that monster!]… So, I’ve got a lot of paperwork to catch up on and I’ve gotta put some more photos up and I will do so this weekend.
I’ve started editing two sequences of the film so that we can have a ‘teaser’ promo reel together by early next week, which we will then show to some good folks who we hope will be impressed enough to put up the real $ needed to finish this film properly… Now it’s time to drink coffee & work. NM