Issue #102. April 28th - May 12th, 2005

Wishing you well
I found it this morning - a small angular thing, cool and hard, polished but not wholly smooth. It was fractured, unraveling the buttery early morning light into splintered strands of glassy rainbow as I held it between my forefinger and thumb.
By Karlien Van Der Schyff

Open Plan Films
It is wonderful to know that it is possible to truly enjoy your job and all the challenges and difficulties it involves. It reminds you that anything is possible if you want it and are willing to work hard enough.
By Grainne Lynch

It's good to be home!
Every time I go away on holiday now, I'm always slightly worried that me and the girl have moved houses again and will never be going back to my home
By Belle

Captured/Dreams a Dream/Ready To Go
In our town/ No one wanted to be/ a doctor/ or footballer/ or animal hunter/ or city hunter
By Bob Young

Record review #1: The Magic Numbers (Forever Lost)
Utterly infectious, stupendously melodious, spine tinglingly harmonious, ‘Forever Lost’, the debut single from The Magic Numbers points the way back to how pop should be
By Johnny Mac

Record review #2: I Am Kloot (Gods & Monsters)
It extols the virtues of shopping bags, bus stops, drizzle, wheelie bins, petrol fumes, graffiti, unemployment, mattresses dumped in canals, next doors vicious dog shitting in your garden and burnt out cars being dumped in the park.
By Johnny Mac

Other Releases: Demon Summer - Burn, The Morenas - It Shouldn't Mata, Riotmind - Riotmind

Wishing you well

I found it this morning - a small angular thing, cool and hard, polished but not wholly smooth. It was fractured, unraveling the buttery early morning light into splintered strands of glassy rainbow as I held it between my forefinger and thumb. I simply picked it up from the pavement, where it lay either lost or discarded, and because it was beautiful and broken, it made me think of you.

Feeling somewhat sentimental, I put in a glass of water on my windowsill. Like a flower. But unlike any flower it hung suspended in its own ethereal underwater ballet of broken light. I didn’t expect it to grow, but it seemed to be in want of nurturing.

Not quite knowing what it was, I decided to name it, and loving the whispered sweetness implied in the syllables of your name, I named it after you.

I always used to call you my little waif, my most delicate dear, not least because of the way you always seemed on the point of disappearing into the darkness of your own liquid eyes, but also because you refused to tell me your name until after about three months.
“Naming is power,” you said, hunched up in your oversized coat and stoically smoking cigarette after cigarette. “I’m not letting you have any power over me.”
We were standing by the pond in the park near your apartment, trying to catch a glimpse of the elusive fish rumored to live in its murky depths. Apparently they had evolved into a completely new and different species according to the strict laws of pollution and urban myth. People said they lived on the coins children threw into the water to make wishes on, and that if your coin got eaten the wish was sure to come true. Hordes of tiny hopefuls in a beautiful disorderly display of woolen scarves and mittens were already flinging their money into the water, dreaming of new bikes, new dolls, new puppies.
“Would you like to make wish, my little waif?” I asked, offering you a collection of small change in my palm. You screwed up your thin, pointed face in a grimace of distaste at my condescending paternal airs, but nonetheless picked out one coin with your warm fingers and flung it into the water with all the disdain you could muster. Still, you couldn’t quite hide the hint of hopeful expectation hidden in your voice when you whispered, “I wish for a new name.”

In the end you introduced yourself as Claire, a name I found somehow fitting because you always made me think of bright light trying to escape through the hairline cracks in your dark façade. “Au clair de la lune,” I sang into your ear at night, but you quickly grew grumpy if disturbed when sleeping, so that I had to resort to mentally projecting my lullabies at you as I stared at you while you slept.

When you came to see me this afternoon I showed it to you, still suspended in the glass, still distorting the water through its shards of brilliantly refracted light.
“What is it?” you asked, essentially curious, seemingly bored.
“I don’t know, but I want you to have it.”
You fished it out of the glass and held it up to your eyes, and I was forcibly struck by the similarities; the same fractured luminosity, the same impelling kaleidoscope attraction, made of the same substance that needed to be shattered first in order to obtain its singular beauty.
Oh Claire, oh Claire I thought, but whether I meant you or it I couldn’t be sure.

“It’s utterly worthless,” you decided.
“But nonetheless very rare.”
“Whatever shall I do with it?”
“Keep it. You may even begin to like it, maybe even love it. You never know…”
You sighed as you always did when I exasperated you, which was often and not always for the same reason. Sometimes for no reason at all.
“Let’s go out,” you sighed. “Let’s just go somewhere. I need some space, some air.”
I took your hand as we walked out the door, but it was still wet from the water in the glass and it slipped from my grasp as cleanly and easily as one the rumored fish might evade the searching eyes that would so dearly like to pin it down.

We eventually wound up in the park again, leaning against the railings encircling the pond. The little hopefuls were gone, their exuberant squeals replaced by the solemn twilight silence and the smoke from your endless cigarettes.
Once again I offered you a collection of coins to buy you the wish that would make you happy, but this time you rummaged in your own pocket and found your little namesake, that beautiful broken thing that resembled you in so many ways. You held it for a moment on your palm, testing its weight, admiring the way it shone under the first light of darkness. Then you flung it into the murky water with something approaching finality. “I wish for some space, some air,” you whispered.

You turned to me but this time you didn’t seem to shrink into your liquid eyes. They were huge and hard, unraveling the night into splintered starry strands just like that little reminder of you that I had lost forever.
“I need to go,” you sighed. “I need to go somewhere. I need some space, some air.”

Karlien Van Der Schyff

Open Plan Films

Next week, Open Plan Films, a production company set up last year by Jen Prince and Alyson Shelton, will start shooting Eve of Understanding their first full-length movie. This is a low budget feature about one woman’s journey to make peace with her past. It’s a script that Alyson wrote in five days last February. She will also direct the film and Jen will produce it. Although shooting doesn’t start until Monday, they have both been working very hard on this movie since February and writing about it on the internet.

Jen and Alyson set up OpenPlanProductions.blogspot.com last August to chart the process of making another movie called Everything In Between. It was a brand new production company and a source of brand new challenges for Jen and Alyson. They were learning as they went along and sharing the knowledge they acquired with their readers – whether they were linking to useful resources, such as SagIndie.com and the Academy Library or debating the merits of film panels and different types of film.

In January, Jen and Alyson went to the Sundance Film Festival to see what other people were doing. Inspired by what they saw there, and a couple of friends and acquaintances who were making cheap films without funding from big studios, Alyson wrote the script for Eve of Understanding. This was at the second week in February. The three months since then have been a whirlwind of collection donations, setting up auditions in LA and Texas (where the film is set), trying to find locations and props and coercing friends and family to help out. All of which they have documented on the website.

The website illustrates the highs and lows of their experience. It is very obvious that these two women (and a number of very supportive friends and family) are working extremely night and day on this project, and it is equally clear that they are enjoying the challenges and rewards of this adventure. During the last few weeks things have been falling into place, with actors and locations in Texas sorted out and money continuing to come in. All these triumphs are celebrated on the website.

However, it’s not all good news and Jen and Alyson are good at writing about the bad days too, such as their fruitless quest to find a production designer, or the day that UPS delivered the camera to the wrong house and said it would take two weeks to track it down, not to mention numerous battles with bureaucracy. Their willingness to share the setbacks only serves to make the website more honest. Jen and Alyson are also honest about the doubts and fears they have about the project and their own abilities. It is reassuring to know that nobody is absolutely certain of what they are doing, so matter how much confidence and self-assurance they seem to have, or how well they are doing. I think these moments of doubt and how they react to them is one of the most valuable things in the website.

And there is a lot to get out of this website. It is a wonderful resource for anyone making or thinking about making a film themselves. An old professor of Jen and Alyson’s in the University of Southern California has suggested to her Advanced Producing students that they should start reading it. It is full of helpful links and really gives you a sense of all the different things that make to be done in order to get a film made. Personally, I had no idea there was so much paper work involved!

However, you don’t have to be a budding filmmaker to find an exciting and enjoyable read. It is wonderful to know that it is possible to truly enjoy your job and all the challenges and difficulties it involves. It reminds you that anything is possible if you want it and are willing to work hard enough. Jen and Alyson are just two people. They don’t have a big pot of money or a long list of famous friends backing them up, they don’t have a long and impressive CV or the backing of a big studio, however they are not letting any of that stop them from doing what they want to do. Jen and Alyson sometimes express surprise at how far they have come; they are doing things now that they won’t think themselves capable of 6 or 12 months ago. They are gradually becoming more sure of themselves as the film becomes more and more real.

This website is inspiring and hopeful for anyone who has a dream that sometimes feels too big to become a reality. It encourages you to just do it, start today and keep dreaming big.

There are a number of ways to support Eve of Understanding and Open Plan Productions. You can donate items to the Auction Drop, buy something from their Care Press Shop or donate through PayPal. You can also leave comments of support on the website or e-mail them!

Grainne Lynch

(More by this author)

It's Good to be Home

"Ahh… it is so good to be home" I thought as I rolled about the floor, occasionally re-acquainting myself with all my long lost toys.

I love my home. Me and the girl have lived here quite a long time but when I was a puppy we used to live in another place altogether. When we first came to live here I thought that we were just on holiday, but after a while I started to suspect that we were never going back. That suits me quite well though because I like this place.

In the place that I used to live there were a lot more buildings, and a lot more people and a lot more of everything really- except grass and trees. The only grass and trees I saw were in the park by my house where me and the girl went each day. We used to walk around in a big circle and I would try to talk to the pigeons.

When I first moved here I was amazed because each time the girl and I went out for a walk we would go to a different place and each place had about a 100 different but interesting smells. I can't tell you how exciting it was.

Every time I go away on holiday now, I'm always slightly worried that me and the girl have moved houses again and will never be going back to my home so I was very relieved when I get back home today. Especially as it had taken me and the girl ages to get here and we'd almost not made it back.

We had been away on holiday in a strange and distant land that the girl calls Rochdale and when we had finally arrived in a town that I recognised I wagged my tail and looked at the girl happily because I knew we were certainly coming home.

"Right we've an hour to wait for our bus. You wait here a second." The girl said said, then she tied me up and vanished into a building. I watched her go. I didn't know what the building was or why she had gone in there without me but I knew that I had lost the girl for good. I was overcome by sadness.

"Girl! Girl! Please! Please come back! I promise never to chew up your best jumper again, or dig holes in the garden or wake you up too early on a Saturday!"

I stopped crying for a second and noticed that a lot of people were looking at me and shaking their head's. That just made me cry even more. They obviously knew that my girl was not coming back.

I started to imagine what it would be like to live here instead of my home. Not good, I decided.

"Oh girl! Why did you leave me here? Don't you know it is almost time for my food?" I wailed.

I had almost given up hope when she had reappeared looking lovely and pink but a little bit cross.

"What is all this noise belle?! For goodness sake, I only wanted to buy a drink belle!" "Oh girl! I didn't think I'd ever see you again" I shouted. She was still looking a bit cross so I danced around her to show her how happy I was that she was back. This did not help much because we got a bit tangled up.

When the girl finally sorted us out, the girl made us walk away very quickly.

She didn't stop looking angry all of the way home, but as soon as we got through the front door and the girl dropped her bag to the ground and I chased around the house checking that there had been no cats invading while we were away, she started to smile again.

It's good to be home.

Belle