Masy Mas January 2011

más ymás

monthly newsletter of NISI MASA

JAN11 interview:

Franz Rodenkirchen Tältet Writers Block spotlight:

Communication Training Budapest

from Barton Fink (1991)

SCRIPT EDITING

agenda 17 - 22 JANUARY

21st JANUARY - 15th FEB

European Short Pitch rewriting session

POLYGLOT voting period www.polyglot-turku.eu

from The Ghost Writer (2010) by Roman Polanski

editorial "Another Year". Both a deeply moving film from the UK and an ephemeral thought that flies by when we fill in our contact details in the new Moleskine we got for christmas. Another set of memories, stories and future anecdotes. Another collection of frustrations and celebrations, and everything in the middle that has to be defined yet.

What Mike Leigh's film inspired me most was how it emphasizes a certain beauty in the bittersweet line between luck and bad chance: for some people things just don't go according to plan, and that's life.

In 2011 however, we are expecting a year of celebration. On September 1st, the NISI MASA network will be 10 years old! A decade full of adventures, all over Europe but also South America and the Middle East. Thousands of stories and their characters, who will all also be 10 years older... than 10 years ago. 10 years of different settings, sometimes trains, but also mills in Normandy, or all kinds of red carpets reaching from Tehran to Lima, passing by the most charming sceneries of Northern Italy, and the bling bling colossuses of Southern France.

a happy open end. Who knew back then where we would be today. Our history's script is written, edited and redacted by many, predictions for the future are impossible to make. But then, how much do you want to know about the ending of a film, when the script is good?

To start off our 11th year, we decided to have a metaphorical look at the silent winds and iron hands that shape the the "things" that make these "other years", with the help of a profession few people exercise and few people know, at least this side of Hollywood; script-editors! Those creative brains who act as consultants, or "doctors", and bring all sorts of projects to their full state of maturity.

Have a great "another" one, and please come meet us in the next 12 months.

We'll be happy to share our gained maturity in all sorts of field and you'll find plenty of different cures to fight this year's writing blocks, strange films commissions or careless magazine editors.

Yours sincerely,

But the reason why we stress the notion of decade is the milestone connotation it conveys. A 10 year span is a maturity process, and its celebration

Maximilien Van Aertryck

Mas y Mas is a monthly newsletter published by the association NISI MASA. EDITORIAL STAFF Coordination Maximilien van Aertryck Jass Seljamaa Design Maartje Alders

Contributors to this issue: Cecilia Bjรถrk, Andrea Franco Salgado, Joanna Gallardo, Riste Zmejkoski, Jass Seljamaa

NISI MASA (European Office) 99 Rue du Faubourg Saint Denis 75010, Paris, France Tel/Fax: +33 (0)9 60 39 63 38 + 33 (0)6 32 61 70 26 Email europe@nisimasa.com Website www.nisimasa.com

credits.

Script Editing

dossier

In film commission there is “film”, and there is “commission”. In the unfamiliar ear, one sounds like fun, the other like suits and bow ties.

What is for sure is that you won’t get a chance to find out how it can help your project if you don’t have a script; a commissioner reads, a filmmaker shoots. Both also write to share their experience.

WRITE AND SHOOT, SHOOT AND WRITE The Tent (Tältet) is a film about a Christian camp on an island just off the west coast of Sweden. For ten summer days every year since 1945, a big white tent is set up and ten thousand people gather to celebrate Jesus, sing and pray. Now, the tent is to be replaced by an arena.

As we started shooting, we had an idea about what the film would be like, a basic plot, key scenes etc. The intense filming period called for fast decisions and events, thankfully, developed in unforeseen directions. All in all, we left with a much better material than we could have hoped for, and also left our original blueprints behind.

While the core tone to the project remains – it has shaped everything from interview questions to camera angles – the film’s structure is very much a work in progress.

Learning to trust the intrinsic strength of the images, and leaning more and more toward a no-fuzz approach, script editing in this case is an incremental cleansing of the story.

Generally advocating for tiptoeing around this kind of delicate process, we have chosen to make it a more open one through participating in the workshop Pitchwork, hosted by Filmbasen in Stockholm and led by Upfront Films producer AnnaMaria Kantarius. Five selected documentary films participated in the workshop, in short a preparation for approaching financiers. Talking, pitching and showing material at an early stage, to the likes of documentary directors Måns Månsson and Olavi Linna, has forced us to quickly find our focal points. Also, it has in a very matter-of-fact way raised some relevant questions regarding conflict and character.

Opening up the process saying “tell me what you see”, rather than asking for advice, we have managed to get a lot of valuable input without compromising our own view. The script will be finished when the film is.

by Cecilia Björk

Capote

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One day in a film commission Being a jury member in a film festival, what a great experience! Watching a lot of films, meeting interesting people, being treated like a guest…I never did. But I experienced being member of a film commission: a bit similar but no V.I.P pass. All of cinema’s fields are represented in a film commission committee: director, producer, festival programmer, actors… You modestly bring your own professional experience and your sensibility to decide to financially support a movie or not. What it essentially means is reading a lot of scripts in a little period of time!

al film commission I took part in, there were decisive criteria regarding the location of the shooting and the money spent, but the film fund manager had checked these technical aspects before. Thus we had the luxury to focus on what the film will really bring if it’s produced, figuring out its potential and its impact.

One by one you try to have a fresh and objective look on each film project. A really exciting task to discover different stories and feel them as simple audience. I never read production and intention notes first, not to be influenced by some details like the reputation of the director for example.

by Joanna Gallardo

The work is almost voluntary, for cinema, not for glory. And the feeling gets you when the committee is taking its final decision. Is the project strong enough to be financed? Is it original regarding what has been previously done? We sometimes advise the scriptwriter to revise aspects of their project: developing characters, simplifying the story… The new version of project can then be submitted again. For the region-

This big responsibility naturally leads the film commission members to be discreet about this position, not to put up with pressure. Once I did not take part in the discussion because the short script previously participated in the European Short Pitch…

The Writer

dossier Fears and facts on creation

Writing about writer’s block blocks me.

Like Charlie Kaufman, I was in front of the blank sheet just a few minutes ago when I decided to confess that I was completely in blank. The best I could do was taking it as a start.

The lack of inspiration is a common evil, and there’s a huge catalogue of movies dealing with this distressing feeling.

From classics like Federico Fellini’s 8 ½ or Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry, to contemporaries like Coen’s Barton Fink or Christopher Nolan’s first work, Following. There’s no immediate cure for a lack of inspiration, and we can’t always run away to that lost cottage in the mountains, together with ourselves and a notepad, in order to have a fruitful

As you read these lines, 23 European scriptwriters are sitting in residence in Normandy, in the frame of NISI MASA’s European Short Pitch film development workshop. Stakes are high they have, or will one day start a script along these lines “Here I am, writing a script”…

“I do write: I write: I write… I write: «I write», I write that I write… etc. I do write: I trace words on a page. Letter by letter a text is formed, is reaffirmed, is consolidated, is fixed, it settles” –Georges Perec says in Species of Spaces and Other Pieces.

Sometimes it doesn’t really matter if you have a plan. Sometimes a script is just a starting point in order to avoid every of its instructions. Sometimes the real creation comes after creating, like Nicholas Provost does when he edits what he has created. Creation is a continuum, and quite often, it keeps the artist in a permanent state of grace, the ecstasy Stefan Zweig referred to in his essay on The Secret of Artistic Creation: “Any true creation only takes place when the artist is at a certain grade out of himself. (…) now then, if the artist is out of himself while he creates, where is he? The answer is simple, he’s in his work.”

by Andrea Franco Salgado

-----------------------------------------------------------Dear XXXX

Adaptation

Time goes by. The deadline approaches.

I write, I delete, I write, I delete. This article is a whole paradox.

8 1/2

W

riting about the inspiration on creating means a double challenge. Is not only about the idea, but also about how this idea came up.

talk with the muses. The famous muses!

Have you ever seen them, anyway?

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Deconstructing Harry

“To begin... To begin...

How to start?

I'm hungry.

I should get coffee. Coffee would help me think.

Maybe I should write something first, then reward myself with coffee.

Coffee and a muffin.”

Adaptation (Spike Jonze, 2002).

Script Editing

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dear nisi masa,

I'm coordinating our monthly newsletter and we are preparing a dossier about script-editing. Would you be interested to contribute to the issue with an article about how important script-editing has been and is to your work? all the best, nisi masa ------------------------------------------------------------

FROM OUR INBOX:

although you have always been so kind with us, I am afraid that we can’t follow your invitation.

We would have only a couple of days to write (and translate) it, and we are writing as slaves for a couple of tv projects.

The script-editors we are currently working with are Italian assholes who have the talent of Medusa but they don’t turn into stone what they touch, they turn into shit.

They are a tireless and criminal force of banalization.

Of course our experience with our past short film and especially our next project, the feature film we’re preparing, is completely different. We love our script editor Franz Rodenkirchen , who is at the core of the project creation from the very beginning.

Anyway… we don’t have time to vomit our rage against the Italian and to sing our love about the adored German.

If you ever visit Rome, let us know.

Ciao, XXXX

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Script Editing

dossier

Interview Franz RODENKIRCHEn Script Consultant for Script&Pitch

Script editors : necessary evil or beloved gurus ? If you’ve ever scratched the surface of this small professional circle, you’ve certainly heard of Franz Rodenkirchen. Intrigued by our scriptwriting friend’s feedback, we decided to have a chat with him and find out more about a very, very, very important task.

H

ow did you end up becoming a script consultant?

It was a long and winding path, like with most people I know. They all have started to work in some area of the film industry. I started making films with a friend of mine, Jörg Buttgereit as a cowriter. He is maybe not famous, but infamous in some areas, we made 4 feature films together. At one point got me into contact with a French producer who was based in Berlin at the time, Philippe Bober and we got to know each other and he started asking me after a while if I would be interested in reading scripts that he was reading. At one point he started paying me for it.

Over time it occurred to me that this could really be the profession I was looking for. In the end of 90s, deciding I want to make script consulting my full profession, I took a workshop/course that was at that time available in Germany, it was a one-off thing to train script consultants and script editors.

This workshop brought me in contact with a lot more of those American trainers, whose books I had already read. I found that my personal, mostly so-called arthouse, experience with film, was not really tallying with what those books seemed to say. I was not willing to blame the films, I would rather blame the books. I had to in a way also to unlearn what I had learned in the workshop, but it gave me a professional credibility to go out and say that this is who I am.

W

hat is the ideal relation between the author and the script consultant?

Well, in an ideal situation, I am a little bit like the wall that bounces back the ball. I somehow also handle the ball and maybe even try to make it look a little different before bouncing it back.

But in any case the first thing is that I am not working on my project, but their project, so its not about pushing my ideas, its about understanding what they want and help them as much as possible to get there. If in the process I come up with a really great idea (in my opinion) and I explain it, offer it, get a ’no’ and I understand that the person understood what I mean what this could do and its still a ’no’ - I have to drop it. I am

basically, to say it in a more humble way than I usually am (laughs), I am a service provider. It sounds horrible, but in a way that is it, I cannot push my ego and I cannot push my own ideas. I have to find it in me to try to be very good, lets say, advocate of the filmmaker or maybe even more precisely, the project. In an ideal relation you work together, you understand the needs and the targets and its a process of continous shaping, helping and mirroring to achieve the best possible results that will then become a film.

Y

ou have in the past, but do you nowadays also write as an author?

Not anymore. I am asked once in a while, if I would be willing to join a project as a cowriter and I usually decline. It’s a different kind of job, it’s different kind of energy. I become useless as a consultant, so somebody else would have to take that job and actually I think i’m best at exactly what i’m doing.

I am slow and very self-critical. I’m afraid I might just slow down the process more than necessary. .....

I might sound too humble, im not at all humble in that sense, but there is always this funny thing when you talk about script editing. A lot of people sell themselves, it was something told to me too, when I did this workshop more than 10 years ago. You can be totally objective about every project as long as you have your toolbox, which is all those things about structure and character development and all those things. For a while I bought it and then realised that its not only true, its also really harmful to deny that you have your own taste and you are actually a human being that relates to every other human being in a personal way. I think its very important to recognise that you are not a machine, a robot, that you are not some strange person turning out rules and regulations, but that you also come with your own taste to the whole process. The good thing about it is that if you’re aware of it, you can get it out of the way and try to overcome it. But! It has led me to say that no script editor can work on any project. There’s always limits. There’s stuff I dont want to work on, because I’m just not interested. Even if I could do structurally a good job or whatever kind of OK-job, it would not be the best I can do, so in that case one should recommend somebody else.

C

an the tastes of author and consultant sometimes collide?

Yes, absolutely. In those cases, you have to be careful, but usually its enough if I say: we are now venturing into the area of taste, so if you ask me personally, I think this would be the good thing to do, but I completely acknowledge that this is a matter of taste so, you like it or just dont like it and thats that.

by Jass Seljamaa

news Polyglot voting open!

script&pitch transmedia projects

CALL FOR APPLICANTS

We are happy to announce that we received 101 submissions for our Polyglot video contest. Now, the public (you!) alongside a professional jury will select 18 (9+9) best videos. The directors of these clips we will send on a wonderful journey in the archipelago of Turku, Finland for the Cine-Boat filmmaking workshop. To view all the videos and vote for your favorites, visit

The Script&Pitch Workshops teams up with Power to the Pixel and Michel Reilhac (Head of ARTE France Cinema) to launch their newest development training, the Writer's Room. If you are looking to develop a cross-media project in a team you should not miss their

30th of January deadline

www.torinofilmlab.it

Languages through Lenses CALL FOR PROPOSALS

www.polyglot-turku.eu

greenhouse Program

CALL FOR APPLICANTS A shout out to our emerging filmmaker friends from Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Syria & Tunisia.

Greenhouse 2011, supported by the European Union, is looking for documentary projects at any development stage to develop an international production package in their seminars.

Deadline is 28th of February

www.ghfilmcentre.org

The European League of Institutes of the Arts and International Association of Film and Television Schools are issuing a Call for Proposals for their member students for the production of new short audiovisual productions to promote multilingualism in Europe (minimum 60 - maximum 90 seconds). Prize: 5000 € production grant.

Deadline: 25 March 2011

www.languages-lenses.eu

NISI MASA twitter hashtag Twitterers! Whenever you happen to tweet about NISI MASA please use the official hashtag #nisimasa. Those of you who are not following us yet – what are you waiting for, go to www.twitter. com/nisimasanetwork and click follow. Our twitter feed is the most up-todate information channel.

European Short Pitch 2011 The first session of European Short Pitch 2011 will take place from 17th - 22nd January. Initiated in 2007, European Short Pitch is a scriptwriting and pitching project aiming to support the development of young directors and to get their short films made as European co-productions. The 5th edition in 2011 will be composed of a rewriting session and a producer’s forum. Follow the course of the project on the official blog page:

esp.nisimasa.com

Save our Scripts CALL FOR APPLICANTS

SOS is launching a call for short film scripts for their development lab. Both scriptwriters and producers can apply.

All MEDIA program partner countries are eligible.

Deadline is 31st of January

http://www.saveourscripts.com/

2011 was the year of a certain Mr. Zuckerberg, leading man of The Social Network. We don’t know if the script-editors of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s script were exactly that, but they chose to stress out one peculiar opinion the characters in the film all share: he’s an asshole. Yet, he’s behind what has been thoroughly discussed during one of our latest network meetings.

The topic was modern mass communication, and the place Budapest; Riste Zmejkoski reports.

2,000,000 degrees above the communication How many of you still do not use Facebook? 5...3...

None? Twitter, Skype, LinkedIn, Windows Live, Wiki, like buttons, share buttons, bit.ly, wordpress, blogspot, google doc’s…? It seems that people who are not using these online social tools are becoming the new earth minority. The importance of using such social or instant messaging tools has become one of the essential parts of human daily communication. Long distances have become easy distances, and even the neighbors waving hands are sometimes substituted with Facebook pokes. Step by step we are getting deeper and deeper into the new world of communication. This doesn't mean we will stop communicating (as the doomsday believers are predicting), it means that the way of communication has been improved and we are now doing it differently, faster and easily; and you all know this.

This article is minded to be an overview of our communication gathering in Budapest last December... or at least a try to sound like it. Well, we are talking about hard copy no friendly communication! It is the way we have started. Imagine us, applying to a call posted in the daily newspaper, sending applications by snail mail, waiting for the letter to be delivered in Paris, then sending back infos… No. No, we don’t like it that way. We prefer to do that online. And we know you do also, because you are reading us online.

So let’s go further. The key word is communication, and the key mission is setting up clear rules for its successful future. How? Combining everything that can be useful: Web page, Twitter, Wiki, Facebook Fan page, Issuu, Wordpress, Skype conference, Paola, Movie maker, Cameras, Web video, like buttons, share buttons, online forms, group communication, google calendar, google docs... At the meeting in Budapest the new communication agenda of Nisi Masa was discussed and agreed. The internal and external communications are now quite improved. Representatives from the associations of the Nisi Masa network were discussing and envisioning the future way of communicating during one week. Some of the refreshments on that way will be decentralizing the administration of Nisi Masa’s Facebook Fan Page, being more active on Twitter, inspiring the network member to share their news more frequently and to give a contribution as much as they can in Mas y mas, as well as creating a better structured web site.

Regarding the internal communication, Nisi Masa will start using Wiki platform for internal coordination and sharing news between network members, we will improve our cooperation related to the projects partnering and project development, sharing important mails and calls rapidly via single mailing list. The trial period will expire in March, when we will meet again in Kosovo to check what has been done and what is left to do.

Aware that expensive ways of mass media communication is not more the prior target, we are now embracing the social medias and micro media management. We are targeting our friends and audience, adding them as friends, sending them warm mails with cute links about everything that we have been doing for them.

Nisi Masa is continuously working on the new communication agenda. Sooner we will be closer and more interactive. Somewhere, 2.000.000 degrees above the communication, on different spots around Europe, bringing the news of our network, keep our readers informed, improving our internal communication, and always online for a friendly chat. If you need this experience, FOLLOW US.

by Riste Zmejkoski

Pictures by SINA B HICKEY and RISTE ZMEJKOSKI

COMMUNICATION TRAINING BUDAPEST

spotlight

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