A trailer and a news story got me thinking. The trailer was for an animated version of The Ten Commandments. The article was on the new trend for desktop supercomputers.

It used to be that it took many minutes for the fastest computers to produce a single frame of computer animation. For The Last Starfighter back in the 80s, the rented Cray XMP took over 40 minutes per frame. The same sort of animation can be rendered in real time on a computer costing hundreds of dollars instead of millions of dollars.

This means that we can rely on Moore’s law to deliver more than enough computer power for all of us to have virtual movie studios on each of our desks.

The bad news is that we will no longer be able to blame the lack of access to toys as a barrier to our imaginations. It’ll come back to storytelling and talent. We’ll be able to make films as obviously bad as The Ten Commandments (without the talents of the slumming voice actors).

Pixar hire those who know story and those who can animate. The software they use is designed to support creative people. It is easier to teach creative people how to use Pixar software than it is to teach computer experts how to create compelling characters and tell a good story.

Therefore all the rest of us need do is learn a lot moore about storytelling.

A tough question was asked at last week’s Sheffield International Documentary Festival. The top auteurs were asked “would you volunteer to be the subject of an observational documentary on you and your work?”

They all said no. This is seen as a matter of trust. People say that factual TV is in crisis if even the best practicioners would not trust their colleagues, how can the rest of us?

I don’t think this is a matter of trust. The people who make documentaries know that the film and the writer/director’s vision is more important than caring about the people at the core of their story. If were to make a film about a series of people looking for love, it is more important to tell the audience a useful story than to make sure the individuals involved are happy. Documentary makers know this. They will only get involved with a film if they get something out of being featured in it.

If the people you’d like to feature in your fly-on-the-wall documentary don’t want to be involved, you might as well create a fictionalised drama based on your research.

At the screenwriters group last week people were asking why the availability of digital tools hasn’t brought about a renaissance in film making. The usual reason given at the moment is access to distribution. There are many films made in the UK every year. Few get distributed.

Maybe there are two other problems to take care of. People don’t know how to write films that audiences are interested in, and people don’t know how to be producers who can recognise the right ideas and raise the money to make the films.

Undistributable films are made by bad producers who don’t recognise that they have made a film based on a script written by a writer who doesn’t understand audiences and re-written by a director who cannot write.

The alternative view might be that the writer and director do know how to write, but the director doesn’t have the skills to bring the story to life on screen. That means the producer is at fault.

Alternatively, you might have a great writer, a director who can rewrite and direct – but the film doesn’t find an audience. There are two possibilities at this point: either the distributor didn’t handle the release well, or the producer couldn’t get anyone to distribute the film.

…what these possibilities come down to is the fact that film making is a producers medium, despite the need for the industry to sell the idea of the ‘omnipotent director.’

So if writers and directors now have access to all the tools they need to make a film for much less money, the reason there isn’t a new wave of film making is a lack of good enough producers.

So, if you are in the UK, please join the New Producers Alliance. There is a industry crying out for you to get the producing skills the British film industry needs.

…so the director asked me for my opinions on the 1st assembly of his documentary.

It was scary. Why? Because it was a documentary on the adventures of an English brain surgeon’s mission to the Ukraine. Not too worrying in of itself. But as this wasn’t appearing on TV or at a film festival yet, it was unmediated. Standards and practices hadn’t approved it. That meant that anyone being operated on could die. That meant that there could be any number of gory shots of surgery – without any sort of warning.

The worst shot I witnessed was the point where a serrated thread was being used to saw through a man’s skull. The surgeon moved the metal band back and forward – it was covered in blood. Just the sort of thing you don’t want to switch over to when flipping channels.

This meant an exciting watch for me, but helped me realise how comforting mediated media is. I feel safer if someone has checked what I’m going to watch. That could be a TV station or a festival programmer. That’s why classification of content is a good idea. I don’t want content censored, I’d just like to have a good idea of what I’m in for.

Who will you turn to on the internet to mediate your media?

*Mediated – connected indirectly through another person or thing; involving an intermediate agency

At lunch today, the talk was on films. Someone asked why directors are so feted when it comes to films whereas in other media, the writer is king (or queen). The answer is that those who market films need a representative of the crew – all those people who make the film who do not act in the film.

The public have no need to understand how producers come up with the ideas for most films, how cinematographers come up with most of the shots, how production designers design most of the film. It is much easier to market the director as the author of a film. They can be portrayed as ‘artists’ and ‘visionaries’.

This even happens when the director is replaced during production. Visionary directors such as Terry Gilliam and Brad Bird have made films where they were brought in to save a production in trouble. Few journalists question the artistry that went towards the making of ‘Ratatouille’ and ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’. They just don’t bother understanding the complex path that these and other films took to get to our screens.

Magazine and newspaper readers would rather hear about what wonderful lives directors have, with inspiring stories of how almost anyone can make it in Hollywood.

See you by the pool!