Tyler Gibb – Writer, Director, Editor, Filmmaker

I’m giving it a name. And tentatively that name is The Great Big Emptiness.

There’ll be more soon. Lots more. But sufficed to say this week I’ve been learning about “shooting scripts” and “production schedules” – things that didn’t have much relevance in the life of a solo animator.

So what is The Great Big Emptiness? Well it’s going to be a bit of a departure from Minushi, that’s sure enough… It’s going to have music, and drama, tears and blood and music. Did I mention music?

As I said, more to come. I want to make this as transparent a process as possible so that you can come along the production journey of Emptiness. But so far that journey hasn’t really even reached the foothills. It’s little more than words on a page; and a couple camera tests… But soon.

I don’t have anything new to post this week. I like to think that’s because I’m in the midst of the proverbial calm.

I’ve been cleaning house. Both hard drives and hardwood. It’s been a chore but I feel I need this freshness around me before I plunge into the unknown.

Within a week I’ll have pulled a script out of a drawer (where it’s been for a fortnight), read it over and started redrafting it. Within a month I’ll be casting actors to perform the roles I’ve written in the script. Within a year I’ll have a new feature.

That’s the plan.

Well, that’s half the plan… More soon.

T

Not fifteen minutes ago I had a near miss involving my precious phalanges and the canines of a… Well, canine. The dog in question belongs to a neighbour of mine who I’ve always gladly stopped to talk to whenever our paths crossed. For reasons unknown (and possibly unknowable) to me, my neighbour’s dog however has disliking for me; always has. Today however, when I ran into them, my neighbour offered me a potential olive branch; a doggy treat which I could then take and offer to the pouch. This seemed like a perfect solution to years of uncomfortable encounters! I humbly offered the dog her treat. She humbly accepted. Whatever bad blood there had been between us seemed to have simply disappeared. Contented, I gave her a scratch behind the ear, said goodbye and walked away.

That’s when the bitch bit me in the ass.

My neighbour was horrified but fortunately also a responsible dog owner and he was quick with the leash. Which was nice because it meant I didn’t have to kill his dog… Which would have been my next move. Also, to my great fortune, it’s February and I was wearing my long coat which is only this side of being as heavy as kevlar, so my ass remains quite unscathed.

Now I have no intention of making this webspace a depository for the weekly banality of my life and I’m going somewhere with this so stay with me…

Dogs don’t like me. I get along great with most of the animal kingdom but it seems that man’s best friend is no friend of mine. Blame it on pheromones, maybe it’s my hirsuteness, whatever. I’m tired of trying to rectify things when I seem to be the only one who’s making any effort, which brings me to my point:

You can’t please everybody. Some people just won’t get your work. They just won’t get you. In fact they may even take an instant disliking to you before you even have a chance to prove yourself. What you’ve got to remember is that this has nothing to do with you (and I mean the collective “you” – I’m really talking about myself here). There are any number of reasons why somebody just may not like you and as an artist you can’t take that personally. Any equivalency of the phrase “It’s just not for us,” exists as a reminder of this. Taste is subjective and nothing’s personal.

As for me and the bitch who bit my ass, I’m not sure what I did in another life to deserve that, but in the next one I’m coming back as a flea.

I recently declared this year to be “The Year of Production” over here in the Tylerverse. And so far so good, I say. What this really means for me is that if I’m not either sleeping or writing I want to make sure I’ve got a camera rolling.

I’m in the early stages of producing a live-action feature (sorry animation buffs, you’ll have to wait little longer for me to get back on that horse). So in preparation I’ve been trying to shoot a little something every weekend. I think of these little shoots as ways of honing the different aspects of filmmaking that I’m going to need to produce the bigger project. And rather then simply making these little shoots nothing more than “camera tests” I’m trying to treat them like the short films they have every possibility of being.

For instance, a few weeks ago I wanted to test a my ability to organize camera set-ups and manage the more administrative side of shooting a film; planning the shoot, marking the scenes, keeping a record of everything; that kind of thing. It’s tedious but if you don’t do it then you’re going to be in a world of crap when you get down to shooting and moreover, editing. So I wrote a short script… It came out to about 15 pages – which is short for me. Then I went about creating a list of the shots I wanted which meant rehearsing and blocking them (that’s figuring out how the actors would move around the set and where to put the camera).

The shoot was fun… For the first two days. Then I realized that to get everything on my list (there were about a hundred shots because I’m a gluton for punishment) I was going to be at this for at least another three days. I’d originally thought the whole thing would take just one weekend.

But that’s why I shot the thing. To teach myself what I wanted to learn as well as encounter whatever other problems might arise. In this case that lesson was: Calculate your schedule then triple it… And that was shooting video… Yeesh.

Anyway, thanks to the ever forgiving nature of my stunning partner, Vidya, we persevered and finished the project… Or so we thought. But I think I’ll leave post-production and the art of additional dialogue recording an entire short film to another day.

Here’s a trailer for our fifteen minute short film The Seven Second Slice:

I’d just like to preface this editorial by pointing out that I’m an autodidact in this business and that any perceived wisdom I may have to impart should be taken with that grain of salt.

Minushi’s been invited to submit to more film festivals since I decided to self-distribute than it was rejected from prior to distribution… Go figure. That said and flattered as I am to have received this attention I haven’t taken any of these fests up on their offer to screen the movie. I know, I’m a self-destructive idiot right? Maybe so, but on the other hand this is how I’ve rationalized my decision:

As far as I’m concerned (and this is really a subjective appraisal of things) film festivals are there to serve two basic functions for me, the filmmaker. Press and the possibility of distribution/representation. Now I’m not saying that’s the only purpose a film festival serves! For a particular community or for the art of filmmaking festivals are a great resource. But if you’re an indie filmmaker who’s boiling the broom for soup then you may have to be a bit more pragmatic in your feelings on the matter.

So I say again; press and/or the possibility of distribution is what I have to consider if I want to continue to eat. So I had to look at what any given festival was going to bring me in terms of those two criteria. And realistically, your average small town festival isn’t exactly going to be attracting the kind of business folks you want to have screen your movie… (Unless your small town happens to be L.A. or N.Y.) And again, that’s not to say there isn’t value to these festivals! There’s enormous value culturally, but even small festivals can cost you in the way of time and money to participate. And for me, that time and money was best served in going after a festival in my own hometown. This way if your film is selected then you have that hometown advantage of not only being able to attend the festival but also with any luck capitalize on the buzz of being a homegrown filmmaker.

There were only a handful of other festivals to which I submitted Minushi. Giant festivals for which the possibility of selection seemed impossible. And ultimately was. But I take solace in telling myself Minushi just isn’t “that kind of movie.” The point is, it can’t hurt to try because you never know what a selection committee might be looking for any given year and if you ever do land a giant festival well then that’s just pay dirt isn’t it?

My only exception to these guidelines laid out with my finite knowledge would be specialty festivals. If you’re making a vampire movie and you know of a horror movie festival that’s maybe not so big or local but it fits your film’s genre then that would probably serve you well as far as finding an audience. However, I think these days, the 24/7 festival of the internet can probably fill that need better than any other source at the moment.

To sum up: Big festivals that look at little movies; good. Hometown festivals; good. Some small town festival on the other side of the planet; good for the filmmaker who lives in that small town on the other side of the planet.

But maybe that’s just me?