Alex de Campi: Gojira!

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23.5.06 Cannesblog Day 7: Ha Ha Ha Kill Me Now

Quote of the Day: "So it's... Rear Window meets Blair Witch, sort of."

"What? Rear Window? What's that?"

"Uh, it's this old Hitchcock film. This cameraman, who's played by Jimmy Stewart, thinks he witnesses a murder in the flat opposite his, and..."

"Isn't that Blow Up?"

"Um, no, that's Antonioni. It's good, too, if you got rid of the mimes... My film is kinda like Blow Up in some ways too-"

"What was the other one? Blair Witch? Why would you want to copy that piece of shit? It looked terrible... What names are in your film?"

That was my second pitch meeting of yesterday, and one of the few times in my life I've been glad to have a crushing hangover.

The day improved from there. Probably have to turn in my nerd card as I decided not to go to the X-men 3 premiere as I wanted to watch Daft Punk's Electroma on the Cinema du Plage (eg the beach) instead. Cold beer, sand, summer evening, mental film about robots in love, giant screen, what could be better? In the end of course we completely failed to get to Electroma for a couple of reasons, one of which involved just sitting in a cafe, drinking wine, and chatting about the industry with my housemates.

The other reason was something wonderful and joyous that happened at the New Producers' Alliance drinks: Huck and Jeremy gave me a camera. Huck and Jeremy are two indie director friends of mine who are shooting this semi-improv DV film called Hardly Bear To Look At Her. It stars them. They arrive at the NPA drinks, having just stepped off the plane from London.

I give them a big hello (I camera-opped on their film for a couple days shooting in December) and they're like, we're shooting. Want to op? "Hell yeah." So for 45 minutes I was engaged in the gentle and lovely art of creating attractive framing and interesting compositions on-the-fly, just working with whatever was happening in front of the camera. I think I got some nice stuff. The Canon's pretty much my favorite DV cam anyway. It was quite bright out so I could shoot at F10 and get a really nice, shallow depth of field. I spent a lot of time filming people's hands - very telling, to watch what people do with their hands at a cocktail party, especially one where everyone is trying to impress everyone else.

Chantelle and Caroline eventually dragged me out around 8.30 and that is really why we missed Electroma. (I'll catch a screening of it tomorrow). Met some interesting people at the NPA drinks, more music video opportunities, and a nice agent (yes! I know! I KNOW!). But as with most Cannes parties, there was not nearly enough booze... Good parties are not rocket science (good music, shedloads of booze, and a fair smattering of attractive women, and you're generally away), but the simple astrophysics of bash-throwing seem to escape most party scientists at Cannes. Still, who am I to complain? It's free.

I'm having Badge Trauma, though. My filmmakers' badge doesn't allow me to reserve tickets for the premieres, so I have to spend several hours each afternoon queueing for returned tickets. It's tedious. So is not automatically being allowed into the market/buyer screenings. Next year I'll have learned, and will get a full (yellow) market pass (which also gets me the big attendees book, which would aid me in my producer hunt). Still, it's better than the paper badge I had last year.

Lot going on today, including possibly more shooting with the lads. More tomorrow.

Oh! Almost forgot to mention. I have succumbed to the spreading evil that is MySpace, so if you prefer, you can read my blog on it here.

( 7:30 AM )

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