Message to My Girl?

I've been comptemplating whether the lead character (played by Heydon Hohaia) should perform an acoustic rendition of Neil Finn's Message to My Girl as part of the film.

Permission to use the track is subject to writer clearance and would be relatively expensive. Considering the cost, it's important that the song works successfully as a cover version to audiences. 

Heydon Hohaia, Message to My Girl (Acoustic Cover), 2010

Split Enz, Message to My Girl (Original), 1984

...is Heydon's interpretation of the song too different from the original to be effective as a cover?  Or is that a good thing?

Does anyone out there in Internetland have any feedback for us?
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What's in a Name?

A friend who happens to be a branding guru phoned me this morning:

AL: "Hey, have you looked up how many other movies are called The Chameleon*?"

EB: "Nah, I haven't"

AL: "I checked to see if your blog is registering in the search engines and all these other movies came up - so I had a look at IMDB - there's like five or six, and one coming out this year - did you know that?"

EB: "Oh shit - what's it about? Who's in it - anyone massive??"

AL: "Hang on, I'll have a quick look"

My heart is in my mouth. I can see it now... The Chameleon - the story of a man searching for his con man brother starring George Clooney and Matt Damon, coming soon to a multiplex near you!

AL: "You there?"

EB: "Yeah"

AL: "No one that big - ah, Famke Janssen... Ellen Barkin"

Crap.

AL: "...Nick Stahl"

Double crap.

EB: "What's the synopsis?"

I sit down and brace myself for the worst. A year's work is potentially down the drain.

AL: "An FBI agent is hot on the tracks of Frederic Boud - Bourdin? Some French sounding name.. He's taken the identity of a woman's long lost son completely convincing the police and the boy's family of his identity"

EB: "Oh... okay"

Phew. At least it's not the same storyline or anything.

What's in a title? Everything. I imagine it's a bit like naming a child. It shouldn't be too long and it has to look good in print. A film can go some distance with a good title, a great poster or photographic still and a well written synopsis.

Case in point, Snakes on a Plane. I heard that Samuel L. Jackson threatened to quit when he heard the powers-that-be were going to change the title to Pacific Flight 121.

Pacific Flight 121? What were they (momentarily) thinking?? That sounds like a TV movie of the week where a passenger jet has to make an emergency landing because it lost cabin pressure...

Pacific Flight 121 doesn't encapsulate that movie at all. The best part of the movie Snakes on a Plane IS the title!

So, even in a dire worst case scenario where the only people who end up seeing my film are my family and the cinema's janitor, it looks like I need to change the title.

I'm sure something will come to me.

*Title has since changed to FINDING HONK.
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Balls, Sir?

Excerpts from Eldon Booth's Writer Profile in the latest issue of New Zealand Writer's Guild Magazine.

Your hot tips for other writers?

I heard a story once of an advertising creative presenting a pitch to a client. After absorbing the concept, the client requests to squeeze more aspects of their business' services into the one campaign. Frustrated, the creative up and leaves the boardroom without a word and the client is left bemused.

The creative returns a short time later with a sack of tennis balls over his shoulder (turns out he was a part-time tennis coach). The client doesn't know what to make of it all. The creative stands at the opposite end of the boardroom table. "Catch this". He bounces one of the tennis balls down the boardroom table and the client nets it safely in two hands. "Easy right?" The client nods, still unsure of the creative's intentions or sanity for that matter.

"Now catch all of these". The creative throws every tennis ball down the table in rapid succession and the client fumbles and misses every single catch. "See what happens when you try to include too many ideas, the main message gets lost".

I'm not sure if this is actually a true story, but I like the analogy.


Your worst ever day job?

Two weeks, ten hours a day stocktaking an entire warehouse full of forklift parts in the ice-cold of winter. I never would've guessed that many parts could possibly fit into a forklift!

It was freezing due to all the surrounding metal and I had FM Country, the store manager's radio station of choice to make every single minute...resonate. The job was so tedious that I actually considered taking up smoking just so I could have more breaks.

To this very day, the sound of a country and western fiddle makes me shudder and curl up into the foetal position.
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Pen Darts

You made it! Thanks for clicking in.

Who am I? Eldon Booth, writer and director of The Chameleon*.

What is The Chameleon?* 

It's a feature length film, currently in pre-production.  

What's it about then? Actually, I wrote a fairly good synopsis the other day...hang on one second while I copy and paste...

A young man (Heydon) searches for his estranged older brother so the family can make peace before their father succumbs to terminal illness. With time running out, Heydon soon discovers that he is on the trail of a career criminal not looking to be found.

In making the film we’ll look to mix scripted drama with the process and spontaneity of documentary – actors will perform scripted scenes but also do improvised scenes and interviews with real members of the public…a bit like Borat but maybe without the two hairy naked dudes wrestling…maybe.

What else? Although I'm not a fan of reality television, I’ve always been fascinated by the sociological aspect of it – I’m interested in our perception of reality via the media, including the camera ‘persona’ that reality television or documentary subjects inhabit and ethical concerns regarding the potential exploitation of those participants for entertainment purposes – especially if a programme documents the actual death of a real person.

But first and foremost, the goal is to make a film that is entertaining and heartfelt, a good old-fashioned yarn told well - something you and your Grandma can eat popcorn to.

Hopefully this all sounds interesting. Interesting enough for you to want to see and interesting enough to justify spending a year and a half of my life working on it!

Now that the production has the green light, I wish I’d started this blog earlier. The work you have to go through to convince funding panels or rich people to invest in your film can be a harrowing process (and obviously a vital one unless you can get away with shooting it on your cellphone!). The Chameleon is the third feature length screenplay I have written and the first one to actually get made.

The reality is many film scripts never see the light of day. Being an independent filmmaker raising finance for a project is a bit like being a short, fat ugly guy that only dates supermodels; there’s a constant flow of rejection but if you keep persisting, occasionally you get lucky.

So how did I manage to finance my production? This time it was through the tertiary institution where I ply my trade as a lecturer. Thanks MIT! (That’s Manukau Institute of Technology, not Massachusetts – in case you were wondering, I’m a visual arts tutor in South Auckland, not an astrophysics professor for NASA).

It's great to get the opportunity. The challenge is to make sure it turns out good. 

*Title has since changed to FINDING HONK.

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THE CHAMELEON

Copyright 2010. Eldon Booth. All Rights Reserved.

Synopsis, Treatment & Screenplay resigtered with NZ Writer's Guild ( No. 09/123)